40 CHIEFS & CITIES OF CENTRAL AFRICA 



woven matting. The amount of storage provided 

 proves the agricultural wealth of the country. 



The people were much interested in us and were 

 very friendly, so we paid visits to some of their huts, 

 and also to the chiefs compound, which is entirely sur- 

 rounded by a wall with one entrance. On the inner 

 side is a network of apartments radiating from it, 

 and a yard that contains another building which 

 forms a rough division between the men's and women's 

 quarters. 



Out in the yard women were squatting upon their tiny 

 stools, laughing and talking as they busied themselves 

 over their various domestic occupations. Each wife 

 possesses her own apartments, and these consist of an 

 outer and two inner rooms, leading one through the 

 other, and dependent upon the outer one for light, 

 though each has a shaft to the roof for ventilation. 

 The larger room is naturally that lived in, and 

 contains a quern for grinding corn, and, in two cases, 

 a wicker bedstead, shaped like a huge bottle - tray 

 turned upside down. In the inner closets water-pots 

 are stored, and young kids stabled with their mothers. 

 Indeed, goats and fowls wander everywhere, inside and 

 out, with equal freedom. The African chicken is a 

 small bird, with no chance of becoming large, for it 

 scrapes together a meagre existence on what it can 

 find, and no one troubles to feed it. It is carried by the 

 legs, and when there is any distance to go the fowls are 

 tied together and hung over a stick, by which means 

 a large number are carried with ease. It seems 

 barbarously cruel, but they suffer extraordinarily little 

 from the treatment. The eggs are small, and a 



