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: all are agile climbers throughout Londa.
At friendly villages they have scampered alongside our party
for miles at a time. We usually made a little 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 mamma to come and see the white man's oxen."
In continuing our W.N.W. course, we met many parties of native traders,
each carrying some pieces of cloth and salt, with a few beads
to barter for bees'-wax.
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