Village Life in Pongo-land. 153 
with drawing from the nude a picture of the vil¬ 
lage and village-life in Pongo-land. 
The Mpongwe settlements on the Gaboon 
River are neatly built, but without any attempt at 
fortification; for the most part each contains one 
family, or rather a chief and his dependants. In 
the larger plantation “ towns,” the abodes form a 
single street, ranging from 100 to 1,000 yards in 
length; sometimes, but rarely, there are cross 
streets; the direction is made to front the sea- 
breeze, and, if possible, to present a corner to 
storm-bearing Eurus. An invariable feature, like 
the arcaded loggie of old Venetian towns, is the 
Nampolo, or palaver-house, which may be de¬ 
scribed as the club-room of the village. An open 
hangar, like the Ikongolo or “ cask-house ” of the 
trading places, it is known by a fire always kept 
burning. The houses are cubes, or oblong squares, 
varying from 10 to 100 feet in length, according to 
the wealth and dignity of the owner; all are one¬ 
storied, and a few are raised on switch foundations. 
Most of them have a verandah facing the street, 
and a “ compound ” or cleared space in the rear 
for cooking and other domestic purposes. The 
walls are built by planting double and parallel 
rows of posts, the material being either bamboo or 
the mid-rib of a wine-giving palm (Raphia vini- 
fera) ; to these uprights horizontal slats of cane 
are neatly lashed by means of the never-failing 
