PICTURESQUE VIEWS ON THE NIGER. 
II 
It is difficult, with our prejudices, to appreciate the principles of fitness and taste, by which the architects of Africa are governed. From the 
unvarying style of the buildings, to which the lapse of ages has probably brought no improvement, one might imagine that they have been guided 
solely by animal instinct, and that they have never departed from the lesson first taught by nature. The houses are usually devoid of every 
qualification which we look for in a dwelling, with the exception of shelter from the sun and rain. No difference is found between the palace and the 
poor man's hut ; the former being in fiict but an assemblage of the latter, proportioned to the number of wives and slaves of the possessor. These are 
thrown together apparently without plan, being merely inclosures made by joining with a low mud wall the circular huts, which seem dropped by 
accident on a large piece of ground. They usually contain but one chamber each ; although sometimes a small space is partitioned off for a store 
or lumber closet. A few have flat ceilings of palm branches laid diagonally, but they are mostly open to the apex of the high conical thatched roof, 
and abundantly garnished with cobwebs. The floor is of mud, sometimes tessellated with bits of earthenware jars ; more frequently, however, it is 
simply the rough uneven ground, as I found to the great discomfort of my bones, which were not then so well furnished with their fleshy covering as 
they usually are. The only admission of light and air, is by a small doorway, having the upper part so low, and the threshold so high, that a 
stranger is very likely, in paying his respects to the Penates, to break his head and his shins at the same time. The communication with the street, 
and from one courtyard to another, is by a hut called Zauli, having two of these inconvenient apertures. The meals are always eaten in the open air, 
or under verandahs formed by the projecting thatch of the roof, where the master of the house luxuriates with his friends, sending forth volumes of 
smoke ; but they do not appear to have met for the purpose of exchanging very many important ideas. 
The dwelling of our old one-legged trade woman at Joggiih, is represented in the accompanying sketch, and may be considered as a fair 
specimen of the residence of a respectable individual. 
