358 GARDENS AND VILLAGES. Chap. XIX. 



the appearance of a great number of tall dead trees standing 

 without bark, and maize growing between them. The old 

 gardens continue to yield manioc for years, after the owners have 

 removed to other spots, for the sake of millet and maize. But 

 while vegetable aliment is abundant, there is a want of salt and 

 animal food, so that numberless traps are seen, set for mice, in all 

 the forests of Londa. The vegetable diet leaves great craving 

 for flesh, and I have no doubt, but that, when an ordinary quan- 

 tity of mixed food is supplied to freed slaves, they actually do 

 feel more comfortable than they did at home. Their assertions, 

 however, mean but little, for they always try to give an answer to 

 please, and if one showed them a nugget of gold, they would 

 generally say that these abounded in then country. 



One could detect, in passing, the variety of character found 

 among the owners of gardens and villages. Some villages were 

 the pictures of neatness. We entered others enveloped in a 

 wilderness of weeds, so high that, when sitting on ox-back in the 

 middle of the village, we could only see the tops of the huts. 

 If we entered at midday, the owners would come lazily forth, pipe 

 in hand, and leisurely puff away in dreamy indifference. In 

 some villages weeds are not allowed to grow ; cotton, tobacco, 

 and different plants used as relishes, are planted round the huts ; 

 fowls are kept in cages, and the gardens present the pleasant 

 spectacle of different kinds of grain and pulse at various periods 

 of then growth. I sometimes admired the one class, and at times 

 wished I could have taken the world easy for a time, like the 

 other. Every village swarms with children, who turn out to see 

 the white man pass, and run along with strange cries and antics ; 

 some run up trees to get a good view: all are agile climbers 

 throughout Londa. At friendly villages they have scampered 

 alongside our party for miles at a time. We usually made a 

 little hedge around our sheds; crowds of women came to the 

 entrance of it, with children on then backs, and long pipes in 

 their mouths, gazing at us for hours. The men, rather than 

 disturb them, crawled through a hole in the hedge, and it was 

 common to hear a man in running off say to them, " I am going 

 to tell my mama to come and see the white man's oxen." 



In continuing our W.N.W. course, we met many parties of 

 native traders, each carrying some pieces of cloth and salt, with 



