order to strip them of all they possess in the world. That has been
going on for years. It is going on to-day. It has come to be regarded
as the natural and normal law of existence. Of the religion of these
hunted pygmies Mr. Stanley tells us nothing, perhaps because there is
nothing to tell. But an earlier traveller, Dr. Kraff, says that one
of these tribes, by name Doko, had some notion of a Supreme Being, to
whom, under the name of Yer, they sometimes addressed prayers in
moments of sadness or terror. In these prayers they say; "Oh Yer, if
Thou dost really exist why dost Thou let us be slaves? We ask not for
food or clothing, for we live on snakes, ants, and mice. Thou hast
made us, wherefore dost Thou let us be trodden down?"

It is a terrible picture, and one that has engraved itself deep on the
heart of civilisation. But while brooding over the awful presentation
of life as it exists in the vast African forest, it seemed to me only
too vivid a picture of many parts of our own land. As there is a
darkest Africa is there not also a darkest England? Civilisation,
which can breed its own barbarians, does it not also breed its own
pygmies? May we not find a parallel at our own doors, and discover
within a stone's throw of our cathedrals and palaces similar horrors to
those which Stanley has found existing in the great Equatorial forest?

The more the mind dwells upon the subject, the closer the analogy
appears. The ivory raiders who brutally traffic in the unfortunate
denizens of the forest glades, what are they but the publicans who
flourish on the weakness of our poor? The two tribes of savages the
human baboon and the handsome dwarf, who will not speak lest it impede
him in his task, may be accepted as the two varieties who are
continually present with us--the vicious, lazy lout, and the toiling
slave. They, too, have lost all faith of life being other than it is