About noon we were visited by the confidential slaves of a neighbouring chief, who prospectively welcomed us to his territory.  These men were gaudily attired in cast-off clothes, and in the crimson night-caps formerly affected by the English labourer:  on the mountains, where the helmet is confined to royalty, it is the head-dress used for state occasions.  They sat in the hut, chatting, laughing, and discussing palm wine by the gallon, till they had their wicked will in the shape of a bottle of gin; after this, they departed with many low conges.

It was a study to see Gidi Mavunga amidst the vassals and serfs of his own village.  He had no moated castle, no “Quinquengrogne;” but his habitation was grander far,—­that glorious hill-side, with all its prospects of mountain and river, field and forest, valley and village.  As he sat upon the mat under his little piazza, all the dependants gathered in an outer semicircle, the children, dogs, and cats forming an inner chord.  A crowd of “moleques” placed before him three black pots, one containing a savoury stew, the others beans and vegetables, which he transferred to a deep platter, and proved himself no mean trencherman.  The earthenware is of native make, by no means ornamental, but useful because it retains the heat; it resembles the produce of the Gold Coast, and the “pepper-pot” platter of the West Indies.  His cup was filled as fast as he drained the palm wine, and, at times, he passed a huge mouthful to a small son or daughter, smiling at the serious and awkward attempts at deglutition.  The washing of hands and mouth before and after feeding shows progress after Tuckey’s day (p. 360).  We were not asked to join him:  an African, when upon a journey, will beg for everything he sees you eat or drink, but there is no return in kind.  I have read of negro hospitality, but it has never been my fate to witness an approach to that virtue.  The chief will, it is true, quarrel with you if his house be passed without a visit; but his object in taking you in is to make all he can of you.  If a purse be pulled out, he waxes wroth, because he wishes to secure at once the reputation of generosity and the profits of a present doubling the worth of a regular “addition.”  When Gidi Mavunga rose from his meal, the elder dependants took his place; the junior bipeds followed, and the remnants were thrown to the quadrupeds.  It was a fair copy in black of a baronial and mediaeval life.

The dogs were not neglected during the meal; but over-eagerness was repressed by a stout truncheon lying handily near the old negro Jarl.  The animals are small and stunted, long-nosed and crooked-limbed, with curly tails often cut, sharp ears which show that they have not lost the use of the erecting muscles, and so far wild that they cannot bark.  The colour is either black and white or yellow and white, as in Stambul and India.  Overrun with ticks and foul with mange, they are too broken-spirited to rob, except by secretly