ITS POPULATION. 223 



It is about two hundred feet wide, and about 

 a mile long, and the market is held in it every 

 Friday. The houses are all circular with coni- 

 cal roofs built of clay, with the exception of 

 the chief Mallam's, which had a gable end to it. 

 The verandahs in the front give them a cool and 

 pleasant appearance. 



It is difficult to estimate the population of 

 Fundah. I may venture to say, that it contains 

 from five to six thousand huts, and that the 

 average of each hut cannot be less than six per- 

 sons, two thirds of which are children. On the 

 night that we made our fetish, in my opinion, 

 there were twelve or fifteen thousand people 

 present, and I have frequently been carried 

 through the main street when the crowd was so 

 dense as to require my Kroomen to force their 

 way ; but this was on market days, when great 

 numbers of people from the country were as- 

 sembled. Nothing is more difficult than to 

 state an accurate approximation to the popula- 

 tion of a negro town. Most of the respectable 

 inhabitants are Mahomedans, but nine tenths of 

 the whole population are Pagans. The propor- 

 tion of slave population to the free, as nearly as 

 I could judge, is as five to six. The slaves gene- 



