They perform other services to the agricultural and larger class of aborigines. They are perfect scouts, and contrive, by their better knowledge of the intricacies of the forest, to obtain early intelligence of the coming of strangers, and to send information to their settled friends. They are thus like voluntary picquets guarding the clearings and settlements. Every road from any direction runs through their camps. Their villages command every cross-way. Against any strange natives, disposed to be aggressive, they would combine with their taller neighbours, and they are by no means despicable allies. When arrows are arrayed against arrows, poison against poison, and craft against craft, probably the party assisted by the pigmies would prevail. Their diminutive size, superior wood-craft, their greater malice, would make formidable opponents. This the agricultural natives thoroughly understand. They would no doubt wish on many occasions that the little people would betake themselves elsewhere, for the settlements are frequently outnumbered by the nomad communities. For small and often inadequate returns of fur and meat, they must allow the pigmies free access to their plantains, groves, and gardens. In a word, no nation on the earth is free from human parasites, and the tribes of the Central African forest have much to bear from these little fierce people who glue themselves to their clearings, flatter them when well fed, but oppress them with their extortions and robberies. The pigmies arrange their dwellings--low structures of the shape of an oval figure cut lengthways; the doors are from two feet to three feet high, placed at the ends--in a rough circle, the centre of which is left cleared for the residence of the chief and his family, and as a common. About 100 yards in advance of the camp, along every track leading out of it, is placed the sentry-house, just large enough for two little men, with the doorway looking up the track. If we assumed that native caravans ever travelled between Ipoto and Ibwiri, for instance, we should imagine, from our knowledge of these forest people, that the caravan would be mulcted of much of its property by these nomads, whom they would meet in front and rear of each settlement, and as there are ten settlements between the two points, they would have to pay toll twenty times, in tobacco, salt, iron, and rattan, cane ornaments, axes, knives, spears, arrows, adzes, rings, &c. We therefore see how utterly impossible it would be for the Ipoto people to have even heard of Ibwiri, owing to the heavy turnpike tolls and octroi duties that would be demanded of them if they ventured to undertake a long journey of eighty miles. It will also be seen why there is such a diversity of dialects, why captives were utterly ignorant of settlements only twenty miles away from them.