Liberia +-- 



cross-pieces. The door may be secured from within by a long 

 bar of wood. In nearly all the villages or towns of the interior 

 there is a half-open guest-house or palaver-place with a lofty 

 roof of palm thatch and a raised clay floor. This sometimes 

 becomes the fetish temple of the village. 



As regards ideas of sanitation, many of the Negro races of 

 inland Liberia are distinctly in advance of the coast peoples, who 

 have probably retrograded under European influence. The 

 surroundings of the Kru and Grebo and some of the Vai villages 

 on the coast are often filthy, 1 and probably insanitary from the 

 accumulation of ordure ; but away from the coast influence, 

 most of the tribes, especially in Eastern Liberia, have latrines 

 arranged in their villages, very similar to those which can be seen 

 in Uganda. There may be as many as four latrines to a village. 

 Sometimes the retiring-place is masked with high fences of sticks 

 and thatch ; in other cases it is open to view, and consists of 

 a long pole laid horizontally on low supports of forked sticks, 

 with a deep trench behind. From time to time these trenches 

 or pits are filled up, and fresh ones are dug. There seems to be 

 generally a discrimination between the retiring-places of the men 

 and of the women. 



The manufactures of the native races of Liberia are simple, 

 except perhaps for the leather-work which has been introduced 

 by the Mandingo, and the silversmiths' work amongst the 

 Vai. 



Pottery is made by all the tribes, even by the uncultured 

 Kru ; but in the coast countries, especially between Monrovia 

 and Cape Palmas, the making of pots on the part of the natives 

 has to a great extent become a lost art, through the introduction 

 from Europe (dating from the fifteenth century) of iron pots 

 and coarse earthenware vessels. It is probably in the Vai 



1 Tliis is particularly so in the native quarter ol Monrovia. 

 1008 



