PRECOCIOUSNESS OF AFRICAN CHILDREN. 533 



so in Central Africa generally. Indeed, the women have often decidedly the 

 upper hand. The clearances by law and custom were the work of the men ; 

 the weeding was the work of the whole family, and so was the reaping. The 

 little girls were nursing baby under the shade of a watch-house perched on 

 the tops of a number of stakes about twelve feet or fourteen feet high ; and 

 to this the family adjourn when the dura is in ear, to scare away birds by 

 day, and antelopes by night. 



"About 11 a.m. the sun becomes too hot for comfortable work, and all 

 come under the shade of the lofty watch-tower, or a tree left for the purpose. 

 Mamma serves out the pottage, now thoroughly cooked, by placing a por- 

 tion in each pair of hands. It is bad manners here to receive any gift with 

 but one hand. They eat it with keen appetites, and with so much relish, 

 that for ever afterwards they think that to eat with the hand is far nicer than 

 with a spoon. Mamma takes and nurses baby while she eats her own share. 

 Baby seems a general favourite, and is not exhibited till he is quite a ball of 

 fat. Every one then takes off beads to ornament him. He is not born with 

 a spoon in his mouth, and one may see poor mothers who have no milk mix 

 a little flour and water in the palm of the hand, and the sisters look on with 

 intense interest to see the little stranger making a milk-bottle of the side of 

 the mother's hand, the crease therein just allowing enough to pass down. 

 They are wide-awake little creatures, and I thought that my own little ones 

 imbibed a good deal of this quality. I never saw such unwearied energy as 

 they display the live-long day, and that, too, in the hot season. The meal over, 

 the wife, and perhaps daughter, goes a little way into the forest and collects 

 a bundle of dry wood, and with the baby slung on her back in a way that 

 suggests the flattening of the noses of many Africans. Placing the wood on 

 her head, and the boy carrying her hoe, the party wends home. Each wife 

 has her own granary in which the produce of the garden is stowed. It is of 

 the beehive shape of the huts ; the walls are about twelve feet high, and it 

 is built on a stage about eighteen inches from the ground. It is about five feet 

 in diameter, and roofed with wood and grass. The door is near the roof ; and 

 a ladder, made by notches cut in a tree, enables the owner to climb into it. 

 The first thing the good wife does on coming home is to get the ladder, 

 climb up, and bring down millet or dura grain sufficient for her family. 

 She spreads it in the sun ; and while this is drying or made crisp, occurs 

 the only idle time I have seen in the day's employment. Some rested, 

 others dressed their husband's or neighbour's hair, others strung beads. 

 I should have liked to see them take life more easily, for it is as pleasant to 

 see the negro reclining under his palm as it is to look at the white man loll- 

 ing on his ottoman. But the great matter is, they enjoy their labour, and 

 the children enjoy life as human beings ought, and have not the sap of life 

 squeezed out of theui by their parents, as is the case with nailers, glass- 



