Having only reached the outskirts of the Congo Forest we never had an opportunity of seeing the pigmies at home. Those we have met and conversed with are women and boys that were stolen some years ago, and now have no desire to go back to the forest. At Mboga we found seven under Christian instruction, one of whom had been baptised. In Kabarole there are two pigmy girls and one lad learning to read besides Blasiyo, who was the first of his tribe to be baptised. [Illustration: BLASIYO, FIRST BAPTISED PIGMY.] He was my first God-child, the first of these wee and ancient people to step forth from their physical and spiritual darkness and before the listening Host of Heaven declare his belief in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, his faith for salvation, for salvation in Christ’s sacrifice, and his desire to never be ashamed “to fight under the banner of the Cross.” He is a quaint little figure, with a high sense of his own importance, and is quite able to stand his ground alone when assailed by his taller companions. Work is a great trouble to him, but he is always ready for tricks and games. Football is his speciality, and he never misses a chance of squeezing his way into the game, even when the men’s team is on the ground. In order that he might have a game with his friends whenever he could shirk his work, he invented a very ingenious football of a goat skin stuffed with dried banana leaves. While learning to read we took him on our staff of boys, not that he did much work, but in order that we might try and instil clean and industrious habits into him. His duties were to help the cook by feeding the fire with fuel and keeping clean the pots and pans, but when he knew his master and mistress were at lunch, he would run away from his post, and fetch a large ivory warhorn; then, taking up his position outside the dining-room window, would blow for all he was worth. He accompanied the blasts with weird, swaying movements that gradually developed into wild dancing, and transformed the little figure into a veritable imp or gnome. His idea was that this entertainment would quite justify his act of truancy; and he reasoned that if he could get his master and mistress to laugh their anger would be dead, for laughter drives out wrath. When he came to us, cleanliness was not a strong point with him, and he was for the time being quite debarred from playing football on account of being crippled with jiggers—an irritating, infinitesimal insect that bores in under the surface skin of the feet, and if allowed to remain there sets up mortification. The fact of their being there did not trouble him in the least, but his inability to kick the football drove him to get them extracted. A message one day was brought in that a man wished to see me on business. Going out on to our verandah I found a powerful, muscular figure dressed in a colobus monkey skin. He told me that his name was