They Also Told Me That When You Got Close To Them, They
Had A "'trong, 'trong 'niff; 'niff Too Much." I Did Not Try, But I
Am Quite Willing To Believe This Statement.
The other animals most in evidence in the streets are, first and
foremost, goats and sheep.
I have to lump them together, for it is
exceedingly difficult to tell one from the other. All along the
Coast the empirical rule is that sheep carry their tails down, and
goats carry their tails up; fortunately you need not worry much
anyway, for they both "taste rather like the nothing that the world
was made of," as Frau Buchholtz says, and own in addition a fibrous
texture, and a certain twang. Small cinnamon-coloured cattle are to
be got here, but horses there are practically none. Now and again
some one who does not see why a horse should not live here as well
as at Accra or Lagos imports one, but it always shortly dies. Some
say it is because the natives who get their living by hammock-
carrying poison them, others say the tsetse fly finishes them off;
and others, and these I believe are right, say that entozoa are the
cause. Small, lean, lank yellow dogs with very erect ears lead an
awful existence, afflicted by many things, but beyond all others by
the goats, who, rearing their families in the grassy streets, choose
to think the dogs intend attacking them. Last, but not least, there
is the pig - a rich source of practice to the local lawyer.
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