They possess more than one poison; one being a dark substance of the color and consistence of pitch, which is supposed to be made out of a species of arum. It is laid in the splints of their wooden arrows, or spread thickly upon their iron arrowheads, when they possess these. Another poison is of a pale glue color, which is supposed by Stanley to be made of crushed red ants. When fresh these poisons are deadly, producing excessive faintness, palpitation of the heart, nausea, and deep pallor, soon followed by death. In Stanley's experience one man died within a minute, from a mere pin prick in the breast. Others lived during different intervals, extending up to one hundred hours. The difference in virulence seems to have depended on the degree of freshness of the venom, which apparently lost its strength as it became dry. The possession of a weapon so deadly as this, together with the agility and daring and the unerring marksmanship of the forest dwarfs, seem sufficient to give them absolute control of the animals of the African wilds. The lion, the elephant, and the buffalo, the largest and fiercest of the beasts of field and forest, are powerless before the virulent venom of the arrows of the Pygmies, and doubtless for ages they have held dominion as the fearless rulers of wood and wild. Captain Burrows says of the skill with the bow of the Pygmy that "he will shoot three or four arrows, one after the other, with such rapidity that the last will have left the bow before the first has reached its goal." The bow and spear are not their only means of obtaining food. They have certain of the arts of the trapper, perhaps original with them, perhaps borrowed from their larger neighbors. They sink pits in the pathways of their game, covering them with light sticks and leaves and sprinkling earth over the whole. They build hut-like structures, and lay nuts or plantains beneath, for the purpose of tempting chimpanzees, baboons, or other apes. A slight movement causes the hut to fall on the incautious animals. Bow traps are placed along the tracks of civets, ichneumons, and rodents, which snap and strangle them. The Pygmies do not hesitate to attack the elephant, spearing it from beneath, and hunting it for its ivory, which they trade with the settled tribes. In short, they are of unsurpassed agility, and are the best of woodsmen and hunters, their skill being taken advantage of by the settled tribes, who trade with them vegetables, tobacco, spears, knives, and arrows for meat, honey, the feathers of birds, the ivory of the elephant, and other forest spoil. So destructive are they of game that they would soon denude the surrounding forest if they stayed long in one spot, so that they are compelled to move frequently. Schweinfurth speaks of them as cruel and fond of tormenting animals.