during different intervals, extending up to one hundred hours. The
difference in virulence seems to have depended on the degree of
freshness of the venom, which apparently lost its strength as it became
dry.

The possession of a weapon so deadly as this, together with the agility
and daring and the unerring marksmanship of the forest dwarfs, seem
sufficient to give them absolute control of the animals of the African
wilds. The lion, the elephant, and the buffalo, the largest and fiercest
of the beasts of field and forest, are powerless before the virulent
venom of the arrows of the Pygmies, and doubtless for ages they have
held dominion as the fearless rulers of wood and wild. Captain Burrows
says of the skill with the bow of the Pygmy that "he will shoot three or
four arrows, one after the other, with such rapidity that the last will
have left the bow before the first has reached its goal."

The bow and spear are not their only means of obtaining food. They have
certain of the arts of the trapper, perhaps original with them, perhaps
borrowed from their larger neighbors. They sink pits in the pathways of
their game, covering them with light sticks and leaves and sprinkling
earth over the whole. They build hut-like structures, and lay nuts or
plantains beneath, for the purpose of tempting chimpanzees, baboons, or
other apes. A slight movement causes the hut to fall on the incautious
animals. Bow traps are placed along the tracks of civets, ichneumons,
and rodents, which snap and strangle them. The Pygmies do not hesitate
to attack the elephant, spearing it from beneath, and hunting it for its
ivory, which they trade with the settled tribes. In short, they are of
unsurpassed agility, and are the best of woodsmen and hunters, their
skill being taken advantage of by the settled tribes, who trade with
them vegetables, tobacco, spears, knives, and arrows for meat, honey,
the feathers of birds, the ivory of the elephant, and other forest
spoil. So destructive are they of game that they would soon denude the
surrounding forest if they stayed long in one spot, so that they are
compelled to move frequently. Schweinfurth speaks of them as cruel and
fond of tormenting animals.

They serve the settled natives in other ways, acting as scouts and
informing them of the coming of strangers while still distant. Every
forest road runs through their camps, their villages command every
crossway, and no movement can take place in the for