90 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
and his family from quake and fever, curled from the 
door ; and where the bed was a straw pallet, with a log 
of wood for a pillow. But the Congoese is better lodged 
than we were before the days of Queen Elizabeth ; what 
are luxuries in the north, broad beds and deep arm- 
chairs, would here be far less comfortable than the mats, 
which serve for all purposes. I soon civilized my hut 
with a divan, the Hindostani chabutarah, the Spanish 
estrada, the “ mud bank ” or “ bunting ” of Sierra Leone, 
CONGO, LOOKING SOUTH. 
a cool earth-bench running round the room, which then 
wanted only a glass window. But no domestic splen- 
dour was required ; life in the open air is the life for the 
tropics : even in England a greater proportion of it 
would do away with much neuralgia and similar com- 
plaints. And, if the establishment be simple, it is also 
neat and clean : we never suffered from the cimex and 
pulex of which Captain Tuckey complains so bitterly, 
and the fourmis voyageuses (drivers), mosquitoes, scor- 
pions, and centipedes were unknown to us. 
