GIANTS AND PIGMIES

Evening Star, Issue 19199, 16 March 1926, Page 11

GIANTS AND PIGMIES

AFRM PETER PAHS 75,000 MILES UNARMED An Englishman, who was quite unarmed, and whe°has travelled during the last ten years 75,000 miles in Africa, has just returned to London on furlough (says the London ‘ Daily Chronicle ’).• In a forest encampment, to reach which he had to crawl underground, Mr W. J. W. Roome, F.R.G.S., who is a secretary for the British and Foreign Bible' Society, came across a colony of pigmies. Few were more than 4ft in height; little mothers of 3ft 9mwere nursin" their babies. He was also the guest of a 7ft king who rules over a great nation, many of whom nro as tall as himself. Many are athletes who would put Olympic champions to the blush. t,trange unknown tribes, when they saw the explorer, were nwed, for they had never before seen white men. . The man who has seen all this, and who has pushed his way through the Dark Continent often with no more deadly equipment than a bicycle and a camera stood before a largo map of Africa recently and gave some idea of his journey mgs. Air Roome is' by profession a. surveyor and architect; but for some years lias been the. Bible Society’s secretary m East and Central Africa. Five times he has crossed Africa, east to west, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic; five times he has journeyed, south to north, from South Africa to the Mediterranean—a record for African travel. He is not exactly the mission of a George Borrow, though the_ vagrant life he has led has brought him into touch with people far stronger than the champion of the gipsy could ever have imagined. Mr Roomo’s groat task has been the making of an ethnographic survey of the continent. It has been his work to discover, as far as possible, bow many languages and how many dialects are. spoken, and to arrange, between missionaries and the Governments concerned, conferences with the opiect ot reducing the medley of longues into definite languages. One of the most important tasks in the Christianisation of Africa is to overcome the hundred and one language difficulties. Already Mr Roome has published the result of his years of research in a map which gives a chart of the tribes and sub-tribes, the position of all languages and dialects used in educational work, and a chart showing the extent of Islamic influence on the Pagan .Mr Roome has also completed a gazetteer giving data of 3,000 tribes and main sub-tribes.

But. thorp is still much to accomplished,' and the quiet, unassuming explorer returns to his task and his adventures in the autumn.

On a recent run of 2,000 miles he went with his cycle, from Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's great snow-capped mountain, to Salisbury,” Rhodesia, through the wild parts of Tanganyika, Nyassaland, and Portuguese East Africa. For 400 miles of that journey Mr Roomo and his four native boys had to push their cycles across sandy wastes and mountains. .It took them eighty-five days to travel from one missionary station to another in the primitive country in Northwest Congo and the French Chari Chad territory. It was in tho great belt of forest, 1,000 miles in length, and from 500 to 600 miles in breadth, that runs across Africa at this part that Mr Roomo saw tho real pigmies. Previously ho had been through the forest without seeing a trace of the queer little people, “ They live right in the heart of tho forest,” ho said, “ and are without doubt tho wildest specimens of humanity existing at the present time. They are the real pigmies, and not like tho pigmy mongrels, one foot taller, one sees on the Uganda border. On approach they run like rabbits and hide behind tho trees. 1 have pulled foliage aside and soon tho little eyes pooping at me. Wo met one pigmy on our way in the forest, and by signs persuaded him to lead us to his people. Right in the douse undergrowth wo came to a little opening not more than 3ft high, through which wa had to crawl. This went on for some hundreds of yards, and then the passage-way in tho forest opened up so that we could stand. Then wo camo to a stream at one side of wheih wo saw tiny footprints. Tho other side was a wall of' trees. We sent on onr pigmy guide to prepare his fellows for our visit, otherwise we,'might have been greeted with a shower of poisoned arrows. Presently he returned, and we wont on to the little encampment of about quarter of an acre, in winch were fifty people, 1 saw (hero was a chance of a photograph, as a great, tree had fallen, and there was a little light. The pigmies danced away, and I got a very good photograph. They live just like animals, and entirely by hunting. They ,carry little spears and bows and arrows, and conduct silont trade with other tribes in tho forest.' They will place a piece of meat at the but of a man of another tribe, and expect a full return of other goods. It does not do to try and cheat the pigmy.. Ho is small, but he is desperately dangerous. Many a man has died from a poisoned arrow, and the pigmy who fired it has never been seen, They have very monkey-liko faces, and great hairy chests. Also they are very strong, just as strong as the norma! negro. They climb trees as well as tho cat, and arc as near to the Tarzan typo as you can imagine. Apparently they ape always on the move,

for when they have scared away the game they follow it. Strange !y enough, they are neither nude nor cannibalistic, and usually wear a hark cloth or a leaf. They are wonderful marksmen, I tried them with a small mark mi a tree at 20yds, and all who used the bow and arrow shot practically on the mark, many right on the spot. As a result of their confined, hidden life—for they never see the sun in the forest—they have sallow, ochrc-like complexions. How many of those pigmies live in the great forest? No one knows.”