CHAP. V. 
DRAWERS OF WATER. 
121 
home from the house of my friend on the dark evenings were 
sometimes enlivened by two or three slave boys sent with me 
with a lantern, who occasionally amused themselves and me 
by marching on before me to the rude music of a jew’s harp 
and a little drum, both apparently of native manufacture. I 
was, however, more frequently gratified in beholding the large 
number of fire-flies flitting about in great numbers, with their 
singularly brilliant greenish sort of light, at times close to my 
face, and then among the adjacent vegetation. 
My house was so situated in the midst of the settlement as 
to afford frequent opportunities for observing some of the 
habits and usages of the people around me. Their houses, 
with several others, stood in a large enclosure, part of which 
was cultivated as a garden. In the front was a well, from 
which many of the houses in the neighbourhood were supplied 
with water. The well was about twenty feet deep, sunk 
through the sand, which was kept up by boards at the sides. 
The water was drawn up in a large bullock’s horn fastened to 
the end of a string made of bark, and let down by the hand 
to the water. Numbers of slave girls came every morning 
with long bamboo canes for water. These canes were six or 
eight feet long, and the partitions at the joints inside being 
broken, formed cylinders three or four inches wide, in which 
the water was conveyed from the well to the adjacent houses. 
This water, when first drawn, was not clear, but when filtered 
or allowed to stand, was tolerably good. I succeeded in ob¬ 
taining a photograph of the end of my house and the yard 
adjacent, as well as portraits of several of the slaves who came 
daily to the well for water. In the same enclosure, other 
slaves might often be seen pounding rice in a large wooden 
vessel to separate the husk from the grain. 
Many of the natives came daily to my house, and among 
them some young chiefs holding subordinate offices in the 
place, who asked me to teach them English, proposing to 
