94 
JOURNEY FROM KATUNGA TO BOUSSA. 
The country abounds in wild animals of all the different kinds to 
be found in Africa. Slaves are numerous : the males are employed 
in weaving, collecting wood or grass, or on any other kind of' work ; 
some of the women are engaged in spinning cotton with the distaff 
and spindle, some in preparing the yarn for the loom, others in 
pounding and grinding corn, some cooking and preparing cakes, 
sweetmeats, natron, yams, and accassons , and others selling these 
articles at the markets ; the older female slaves are principally the 
spinners. The mere labour is very light, and a smart English ser- 
vant would accomplish their hardest day’s work in one hour : but 
if their labour be light their food is also light, being confined to 
two meals a day, which almost invariably consist of paste of the 
flour of yams, or millet, in the morning about nine o’clock, and a 
thicker kind, approaching to pudding, after sunset, and this only 
in small quantities ; flesh, fowl, or fish, they may occasionally get, 
but only by a very rare chance. Their owners, in fact, fare very 
little better : perhaps a little smoke-dried fish, or some meat now 
and then ; principally only a little palm oil, or vegetable butter, in 
addition to their paste or pudding ; but they indulge freely in 
drinking palm wine, rum, and bouza. 
Of the slaves for sale I can say but little, and a stranger sees 
very little of them. In fact when not going on a journey to some 
slave mart, or sent out to the wells or rivers in the mornings to 
wash, they are seldom seen. Even then they are fastened neck to 
neck with leather thongs ; and when this duty is over, they are 
confined closely in the houses until they are marched off. When 
on their march, they are fastened night and day by the neck with 
leather thongs or a chain, and in general carry loads ; the refractory 
are put in irons, in addition to the other fastening, during the 
night. They are much afraid of being sold to the sea coast, as it 
is the universal belief that all those who are sold to the whites are 
eaten ; retorting back on us the accusation of cannibalism, of which 
