18 A REMARKABLE YOUNG LADY. 
old cruiser on tlic African station, guided us through the 
narrow and filthy streets. We observed that the houses 
were mostly built of rough stone, were two-storied, and 
possessed of a singularly-unfinishcd appearance. They 
had to me the look of houses that had been hurriedly 
built while the art of masonry was yet in its infancy. 
‘‘I have said that the ‘streets were narrow and filthy;’ 
tlicy were also disgraced by the shameless gambols of 
naked children of all colours, and the loitering presence 
of indolent, half-dressed adults of both sexes. One of 
the latter, a girl of at least fifteen, and clothed in the 
lightest iiossible style, lounged by us with a bold and inqui- 
sitive stare, and without the least evidence of shame or 
attempt at concealment. 
“A walk of ten minutes through such streets and 
scenes as these took us to our journey’s end, when we 
entered a lialf-finishcd house of rough stone-masonry, 
and were pi'osented by the captain to three females, a 
mother and her two daughters, — old friends of his, and 
iem. our washerwomen. He introduced them jest- 
ingly as ‘one of the first families of the place,’ and gave 
as his reasons that the mother and her elder daughter 
slept on a bedstead that had been ordered all the way 
from Lisbon, and that the younger one had married the 
‘ military commander’ of the place. This latter was a 
young African, an advocate of the long-cherished desire 
of some of our ultra abolitionists for the amalgamation 
of the African and Caucasian races, and was, I heard, as 
noble a specimen of the ‘buck’ order as one would wish 
to see. 
“I looked upon the olive complexion, the sparkling 
