est without their
knowledge, while they are adept in the art of concealment.

The superior woodcraft, the malicious disposition, and the poisoned
arrows and good marksmanship of these forest folks make them formidable
enemies, and the settled tribes hold them in dread and are glad to keep
on good terms with them. Yet they find them much of a nuisance, since
their dwarfish neighbors claim free access to their gardens and
plantain fields, where they help themselves to fruit in return for small
supplies of meat and furs. In short, they are human parasites on the
larger natives, who suffer from their extortions, yet fear to provoke
their enmity. Burrows says that they will never steal, but that they pay
very inadequately for the plantains they take, leaving a very small
package of meat in return for an ample supply of food.

The Pygmies build their camps two or three miles away from the negro
villages, living in groups of sixty to eighty families. A large clearing
may have eight to twelve of these Pygmy camps around it, with perhaps
two thousand inmates. Their dwellings are of the shape of an oval cut
lengthwise, and are built in a rude circle, the residence of the chief
occupying the centre. The doors are two or three feet high. On every
track leading to the camp, at about one hundred yards' distance, is a
sentry house large enough to hold two of the little folks, its doorway
looking up the track from the camp. While wandering in the forest they
build the flimsiest of leaf shelters.

The intelligence of the Pygmies is of a very low order. In the arts
which they have been developing for ages they are experts, they are
thoroughly familiar with the habits of animals, and as hunters they are
unsurpassed. But in intellect they are decidedly lacking. They are
destitute of agriculture, possess no animals except a few dogs, and
have none of the elements of culture. The Bushmen, for instance, can
count only up to two; all beyond that is "many." Yet this low tribe of
desert nomads is, as we have said, skilled in the art of drawing, its
sketches of men and animals being widely distributed through Cape
Colony.

The Pygmies seem greatly lacking in the social sentiments. Burrows, in
his "Land of the Pygmies," says that they do not possess even the most
ordinary ties of family affection. Such common and natural feelings of
affinity as those between mother and son, brother and sister, etc.,
seemed to be wanting in them.

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