In Afric’s Forest and Jungle 
any important visitor, especially an “oyinbo” or 
white man. For some reason they greatly fear 
assassination and by sleeping in a different place 
every night in the midst of the intricacies of their 
dwellings, they make it impossible for any one 
but those they can trust to know where they may 
be found during the night. 
The walls of the compounds are built of a kind 
of solid adobe and, when securely thatched, will 
endure indefinitely. The mission house was 
built of this material. Each layer of stiff clay is 
allowed to harden in the sun before another is 
placed upon it. If it is desired, the walls may in 
this way be carried up two stories. In the mis¬ 
sion-house the walls had been made very smooth 
on the inside and then plastered with a kind of 
fine, blue clay. This had been so skillfully 
whitewashed with lime made from oyster shells 
brought up from the coast, that a stranger would 
never suspect the coarse material underneath. 
The doors, window-frames and sashes, ceilings, 
flooring and some of the furniture of this house, 
had been made of a beautiful wood called “roko,” 
very hard and capable of a high polish. It was 
sawn in “ pits ” in the forest by the Liberian and 
Sierra Leone carpenters with the assistance of th§ 
natives. 
28 
