FEEUNGS OF FREED SLAVES. 333 



a capping of ferruginous conglomerate. The scenery would 

 have been very pleasing, but fever took away much of the 

 joy of life, and severe daily intermittents rendered me very 

 weak and always glad to recline. 



As we were now in the slave-market, it struck me that 

 the sense of insecurity felt by the natives might account 

 for the circumstance that those who have been sold as 

 slaves, and freed again, when questioned, profess to like 

 the new state better than their primitive one. They lived 

 on rich fertile plains, which seldom inspire that love of 

 country which the mountains do. If they had been 

 mountaineers they would have pined for home. To one 

 who has observed the hard toil of the poor in old civilized 

 countries, the state in which the inhabitants here live is 

 one of glorious ease. The country is full of little villages. 

 Food abounds, and very little labour is required for its 

 cultivation ; the soil is so rich that no manure is required; 

 when a garden becomes too poor for good crops of maize, 

 millet, &c, the owner removes a little farther into the 

 forest, applies fire round the roots of the larger trees to 

 kill them, cuts down the smaller, and a new rich garden is 

 ready for the seed. The gardens usually present 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 forest of I^onda. The 

 vegetable diet leaves great craving for flesh, and I have 

 no doubt but that, when an ordinary quantity 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 their 

 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 



