A RACE OF PYGMIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1927, Page 20

A RACE OF PYGMIES

DISCOVERED IN NEW GUINEA. A race of pygmies in New Guinea has suddenly become of world interest, and several expeditions are setting out to find them, writes Robert M. Macdonald in the "Daily Mail." The pygmies live in the country in which the Sepik river has its sources, among the mysterious Snow Mountains near the Dutch boundary. According to themselves, they have lived there since about midway through time, when a great flood overwhelmed the "little lands" of the Pacific (the Caroline Islands) and forced their ancestors, who were birdmen, to fly to the towering mountains where their descendants now live. The chief village is known as Warnbarima. Kb population is about 5000. It never grows larger, as the • people continually send out colonists to settle in the impregnable mountain valleys in both British and Dutch territories. The men—rthe women are never seen — are almost uniformly 42 . inches in height, sturdy in build/and almost covered with light grey hair, but- otherwise perfect specimens of manhood. They have voices like megaphones, can blow tiny darts through tubes with unerring, precision, and carry _ those needle-like missiles in their frizzed hair.

They have strange tapoo laws which forbid them to have intercourse with the outside world except through the medium of some tribes of giant cannibalistic natives who live around them. Those tribes have never been brought under subjection by British, Dutch, or. German authorities, and are known throughout New Guinea for their ferocity; but they are practically the servants of the pygmies and guard: them against intruders. They say, "Little, fellows work devil-magic on us," and certainly the dwarfs have a knowledge of some things that the white prospector finds it hard to explain. Wainbarima is a village consisting of about a score of public edifices built of bamboo and bark,'and many tree-houses. The public buildings stand on , piles over the river, their gables decorated with weird winged monstrosities sup : posed to represent the gods and devils of the people's ancestors. Exquisitely woven mats serve as windows and doors.

Taro, yams, sweet potatoes, ; and a kind of tobacco are cultivated, and a. drug—soothing but memory-stealing-r----is manufactured and traded for outside commodities.

Tho pygmies are very hospitable once you are received as a friend, but if you break a tapoo law or gaze upon their womenfolk a poisoned dart, ends that friendship—and your life.. ,