SUPREMELY HAPPY FOLK

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 147, 24 June 1933, Page 22

SUPREMELY HAPPY FOLK

Dorp in the luxuriant Iturl Forest of the Equatorial Congo dwells a i.ice ot pvgnues. Long botoie Euiopeans penetrated iuto the countiy these dwarfs had letired hundred*, ot miles into the backwoods where lew c.en ot tue Negroes c\cr set eyes on them. Among most abongmal. they aie little moie than a legend. Only a year ago i Government official brought a tube ot them into" Stanleyville, on the verge of the primitive foie<*t, in connection with the Belgian centcnaiy celebrations; and ciowds of Negroes -jostled each othc- to obtain a glimpse ot. them iv theii compound. The most the aver-, age .\hrte*e_i_oier sees, if he is lucky enough to .stumble on thcii haunts, is a diuiiuutivo footprint, tor at his appioach they vanibh into the forest's gloom in a flash. ' It is a remarkable, achievement, thcrofoie that "a German cxploicr should -succeed not only in running them to eaith, but in living among them for eighteen months, and on such familiar teuns that the Negioes gave him the title of ,'J.aba wa Bttinbuti";-'- the, iathet of1 the pvgmics." This explorer was Paul Sehebesta, and in "Among Congo Pygmies^" he tells a most-inter-esting story. He dcscilbes the , Ituri pygmies —some twenty thousand aH told —as "the happiest people on earth,' and pleads tor their preservation against the encroachments of a white civilisation which brings disease in its tiain. "Among Congo Pygmies," most creditably translated .by Mr. Gerald Gnfliii and Illustrated!1 by , maps and nearly ninety photographs, is' a« abJrorbiug, intimato account o£ tho lore aiid haftits, of a little-known-1 people, convincing be.ause it is conscientiously written and deyoid of sensational Africanesc" ' ,- - A WELLS'OMNIBUS* "The Scientific Romances of H. G. Wells" „*is au'omnibus book, which should prove highly popular. It contains''''The Pood of the Gods," "In the Days of the Comet," '/The Island' of Dr. Morcnu,'. "The War' of the ■Worlds," "The First Men in the Moon," "Tho Invisible Man," "The Time Machine," and "Men Like Gods,"'and there ,aro 1232 page?. Tho bopk is well printed on thin but opaque paper, and is not too heavy to .hold in comfort whilo reclining in an armchair. "Isn't this the best of all omnibus volumes'?" the publisher asks; and it would be hard to say that it is not. In the eourso of an introduction Mr, Wells sqys: "Itis a bore doing imagina-. tivo books that do not touch , tlicimagination, and at length one-stops, even 'planning them. I'think I,am better employed now nearer* reality, trying to make a working analysis' of our deepening social pcrploxitics," The romantic Wells, however, may claim a larger circle of readers than tho propagandist Wells.