The first and most important feature of observation is the position of the female sex.  This regulates the size of the houses and the towns, the nature of agriculture, and the whole social economy.  In Africa the women are emphatically the working-class of the community, and hold an intermediate station between wife and slave, occupying the rank and employments of both.  A wife is usually bought for so many head of cattle or such a number of slaves, and then becomes the property of her husband.  There is no limit to the number of wives.  Even the Mohammedan negroes do not conform to the Koran in its restriction to the number of four.  One chief boasted that he had eighty wives; and upon the Englishman answering that his countrymen thought one woman quite enough to manage, the African flourished a whip, with which he said he kept them in order.  In some countries one of these wives is recognised as head-wife, and enjoys certain prerogatives appertaining to this place.

Being desirous of obtaining an insight into the minutiae of African life, we accepted the invitation of a negro who traded on the Gambia to pay him a visit, and spend a day in his town, especially as there would be a dance in the evening.  We left our vessel in the morning, and having rowed for some miles up a tributary stream, landed in an open place.  Here we met the horses which Samba had sent for us, as the town lay at a considerable distance.  They were fine animals, of a small breed, but very spirited, and apparently only half-trained.  Their accoutrements were in some respects novel; for the saddle was an unwieldy article, with a high pommel in front, and an elevation behind, so that we were fairly wedged in the seat, and had many thumps before we learned to sit correctly in these stocks.  We therefore had no wish, as we had little opportunity, of trying the speed of our beasts, the road lying through a vast forest.  The men who accompanied us were armed with muskets, and kept a sharp look-out among the bushes, though there was not much fear of being attacked in this place by wild beasts in the day-time, as it was a frequented route and had been often visited by the hunter.  By and by we came, to a stream, which was fordable in the dry season.  Senegambia abounds with rivers and creeks; indeed it seems to be one of the best-watered regions of the earth, and has excellent means of communication for trade.  These waters are full of fish, which form an important article of food for the people.

After crossing the river, we saw the place of our destination on a rising ground surrounded with fields.  The town was surrounded with a low mud-wall and stockade to keep off wild beasts, and as a slight protection against roving freebooters.  Larger towns, especially those belonging to warrior chiefs, have high mud-walls, sometimes with loopholes and bastions, and are capable of standing a siege where the enemy has neither cannon nor battering-rams.  The gate was made of planks