cornfield. I can remember on more than one occasion, while marching in a shower of rain, walking over their little footprints, which were still dry but which in a few moments became wet, thus showing that the small people must have passed within a few yards of me, though I had seen and heard nothing; the silence of the great forest seeming, from the presence of human beings, more unbroken than usual.

For though man may frequently be unaware of the proximity of his fellow-man, nature, whether animal or insect, seems often instinctively to know when the arch-enemy is in the vicinity. The pygmies possess an intimate knowledge of poisons, and their bows and arrows, which have the appearance of harmless toys that children in Europe would disdain as playthings, are as deadly engines in hunting or war as have ever been invented.