After inspecting the kitchen and its contents, our host conducted us to the bentang or palaver house, which answers the purpose of a town-hall and assembly-room.  It is a large building, without side-walls, being a roof supported upon strong posts, and having a bank of mud to form a seat or lounging-bench.  It is generally erected under the shade of a large tabba-tree, which is the pride of the town.  Here all public business is transacted, trials are conducted, strangers are received, and hither the idle resort for the news of the day.  As Africans are interminable speakers, they make excellent lawyers, and know how to spin out a case or involve it in a labyrinth of figures of speech.  Mungo Park, who frequently heard these special pleaders, says that in the forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts of confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not easily surpassed by the ablest pleaders in Europe.  The following may serve as an example of their talent:—­An ass had got loose and broken into a field of corn, much of which it destroyed.  The proprietor of the corn caught the beast in his field, and immediately cut its throat.  The owner of the ass then brought an action to recover damages for the loss of the ass, on which he set a high value.  The other acknowledged having killed it, but pleaded as a set-off that the value of the corn destroyed was quite equal to that of the beast which he had killed.  The law recognised the validity of both claims—­that the ass should be paid for, and so should the corn; for the proprietor had no right to kill the beast, and it had no right to damage the field.  The glorious uncertainty was therefore displayed in ascertaining the relative value of each; and the learned gentlemen managed so to puzzle the cause, that after a hearing of three days the court broke up without coming to any decision, and the cause was adjourned for a future hearing.

Another palaver which lasted four days was on the following occasion:—­A slave-merchant had married a woman of Tambacunda, by whom he had two children.  He subsequently absented himself for eight years without giving any account of himself to his deserted wife, who, seeing no prospect of his return, at the end of three years married another man, to whom she likewise bore two children.  The slatee now returned and claimed his wife; but the second husband refused to surrender her, insisting that, by the usage of Africa, when a man has been three years absent from his wife without giving notice of his being alive, the woman is at liberty to marry again.  This, however, proved a puzzling question, and all the circumstances on both sides had to be investigated.  At last it was determined that the differing claims were so nicely balanced that the court could not pronounce on the side of either, but allowed the woman to make her choice of the husbands.  She took time to consider; and it is said that, having ascertained that her first husband, though older than the second, was much richer, she allowed her first love to carry the day.