8o 
TRAVELS IN 
when a few planks, properly put together, would enable them 
to carry over any fort of carnage, cattle, or horfes, with fafety 
and convenience, in five minutes. 
The women of the African peafantry pafs a life of the moft 
liftlefs inactivity. The miftrefs of the family, with her coffee- 
pot conftantly boiling before her on a fmall table, feems fixed to 
her chair like a piece of furniture. This good lady, born in 
the wilds of Africa, and educated among flaves and Hottentots, 
has little idea of what, in a ftate of fociety, conftitutes female 
delicacy. She makes no fcruple of having her legs and feet 
wafhed in warm water by a flave before ftrangers ; an opera- 
tion that is regularly performed every evening. If the motive 
of fuch a cuftom were that of cleanlinefs, the practice of it 
would deferve praife ; but to fee the tub with the fame water 
palfed round through all the branches of the family, according 
to feniority, is apt to create ideas of a very different nature. 
Moft of them go conftantly without ftockings and fhoes, even 
when the thermometer is down to the freezing point. They 
generally, however, make ufe of fmall ftoves to place the feet 
on. The young girls fit with their hands before them as lift- 
lefs as their mothers. Moft of them, in the diftant diftridts, 
can neither read nor write, fo that they have no mental re- 
fources whatfoever. Luckily, perhaps, for them, the paucity 
of ideas prevents time from hanging heavy on their hands. 
The hiftory of a day is that of their whole lives. They hear 
or fpeak of nothing but that fuch-a-one is going to the city, or 
to church, or to be married, or that the Bosjefmans have ftolen 
the cattle of fuch-a-one, or the locufts eaten their corn. The 
young 
