358 
GAEDENS AND VILLAGES. 
Chap. XIX. 
tlie appearance of a great number of tall dead trees standing 
without bark, and maize growing between them. The old 
gardens continue to yield manioc for years, after the owners have 
removed to other spots, for the sake of millet and maize. But 
while vegetable aliment is abundant, there is a want of salt and 
animal food, so that numberless traps are seen, set for mice, in all 
the forests of Londa. The vegetable diet leaves great craving 
for flesh, and I have no doubt, but that, when an ordinary quan¬ 
tity of mixed food is supphed to freed slaves, they actually do 
feel more comfortable than they did at home. Their assertions, 
however, mean but httle, for they always try to give an answer to 
please, and if one showed them a nugget of gold, they would 
generally say that these abounded in their country. 
One could detect, in passing, the variety of character found 
among the owners of gardens and villages. Some villages were 
the pictures of neatness. We entered others enveloped in a 
wilderness of weeds, so high that, when sitting on ox-back in the 
middle of the village, we could only see the tops of the huts. 
If we entered at midday, the owners would come lazily forth, pipe 
in hand, and leisurely puff away in dreamy indifference. In 
some villages weeds are not allowed to grow; cotton, tobacco, 
and different plants used as relishes, are planted round the huts; 
fowls are kept in cages, and the gardens present the pleasant 
spectacle of different kinds of grain and pulse at various periods 
of their growth. I sometimes admired the one class, and at times 
wished I could have taken the world easy for a time, like the 
other. Every village swarms with children, who turn out to see 
the white man pass, and run along with strange cries and antics; 
some run up trees to get a good view: aU are agile climbers 
throughout Londa. At friendly villages they have scampered 
alongside our party for miles at a time. We usually made a 
httle hedge around our sheds; crowds of women came to the 
entrance of it, with children on their backs, and long pipes in 
their mouths, gazing at us for hours. The men, rather than 
disturb them, crawled through a hole in the hedge, and it was 
common to hear a man in running off say to them, I am going 
to tell my mama to come and see the white man’s oxen.” 
In continuing our W.N.W. com’se, we met many parties of 
native traders, each carrying some pieces of cloth and salt, with 
