198 
AFE1CA AND ITS EXPLOEATION. 
in a state of the greatest alarm and trepidation ; but 
when we are at the opposite side of the hut they draw 
as near as their fears will permit them, in silence and 
caution. 
“ Egga is a town of vast extent, and its population 
must be immense. Like all the towns on the banks of 
the Niger, it is inundated every year. We can but 
conclude that the natives have their own reasons for 
building their houses in situations which, in our eyes, 
are alike so inconvenient and unhealthy. Perhaps it 
may be because the soil of the surrounding districts 
consists of a black greasy mould of extraordinary fertility, 
supplying all the necessaries of life at the cost of very 
little trouble. Although the King of Egga looked more 
than a hundred years old, he was very gay and light¬ 
hearted. The chief people of the town met in his hut, 
and spent whole days in conversation. This company 
of greybeards, for they are all old, laugh so heartily at 
the sprightliness of their own wit, that it is an invari¬ 
able practice, when anyone passes by, to stop and 
listen outside, and they add to their noisy merriment 
so much good will, that we hear nothing from the 
hut in which the aged group are revelling during 
the day but loud peals of laughter and shouts of 
applause.” 
One day the old chief wished to show off his accom¬ 
plishments of singing and dancing, expecting to astonish 
his visitors. 
“ He frisked,” says Lander, “ beneath the burden of 
five-score, and shaking his hoary locks, capered over the 
ground to the manifest delight of the bystanders, whose 
plaudits, though confined, as they always are, to 
laughter, yet tickled the old man’s fancy to that degree, 
that he was unable to keep up his dance any longer 
without the aid of a crutch. With its assistance he 
hobbled on a little while, but his strength failed him; 
he was constrained for the time to give over, and he sat 
himself down at our side on the threshold of the hut. 
He would not acknowledge his weakness to us for the 
world, but endeavoured to pant silently, and suppress 
