"Yes, they do!" they exclaimed. "Then we move off far away, several days' journey from where the leopards have come to eat some of us; and often we make traps to catch them. We hate the leopards!" the Obongos shouted with one voice.
"How do you make your fires? tell me;" and I could not help thinking that, however wild a man was, even though he might be apparently little above the chimpanzee, he had always a fire, and knew how to make it.
They showed me flint-stones, and a species of oakum coming from the palm-tree, and said they knocked these stones against each other, and the sparks gave them fire.
Then, to astonish them, I took a match from my match-box and lighted it. As soon as they saw the flame a wild shout rang through the settlement.
"Obongos, tell me," said I, "how you get your wives, for your settlements are far apart, and you have no paths leading through the forest from one to another. You never know how far the next settlement of the Dwarfs may be from yours."
"It is true," said they, "that sometimes we do not know where the next encampment of the Obongos may be, and we do not wish to know, for sometimes we fight among ourselves, and if we lived near together we should become too numerous, and find it difficult to procure berries and game. Our people never leave one settlement for another. Generation after generation we have lived among ourselves, and married among ourselves. It is but seldom we permit a stranger from another Obongo settlement to come among us."
"How far," said I, pointing to the east, "do you meet Obongos?"
"Far, far away," they answered, "toward where the sun rises, Obongos are found scattered in the great forest. We love the woods, for there we live, and if we were to live any where else we should starve."
"As you wander through the forest," I asked, "don't you sometimes come to prairies?"