arm-chairs, would here be far less comfortable than the mats, which serve for all purposes.  I soon civilized my hut with a divan, the Hindostani chabutarah, the Spanish estrada, the “mud bank” or “bunting” of Sierra Leone, a cool earth-bench running round the room, which then wanted only a glass window.  But no domestic splendour was required; life in the open air is the life for the tropics:  even in England a greater proportion of it would do away with much neuralgia and similar complaints.  And, if the establishment be simple, it is also neat and clean:  we never suffered from the cimex and pulex of which Captain Tuckey complains so bitterly, and the fourmis voyageuses (drivers), mosquitoes, scorpions, and centipedes were unknown to us.

The people much resemble those of the Gaboon.  The figure is well formed, except the bosom, whose shape prolonged lactation, probably upon the principle called Malthusian, soon destroys; hence the first child is said to “make the breasts fall.”  The face is somewhat broad and flat, the jowl wide, deep, and strong, and the cerebellum is highly developed as in the Slav.  The eye is well opened, with thick and curly lashes, but the tunica conjunctiva is rarely of a pure white; the large teeth are of good shape and colour.  Extensive tattoos appear on breasts, backs, and shoulders; the wearers are generally slaves, also known by scantier clothing, by darker skins, and by a wilder expression of countenance.  During their “country nursing,” the children run about wholly nude, except the coating of red wood applied by the mothers, or the dust gathered from the ground.  I could not hear of the weaning custom mentioned by Merolla, the father lifting the child by the arm, and holding him for a time hanging in the air, “falsely believing that by those means he will become more strong and robust.”  Whilst the men affect caps, the women go bare-headed, either shaving the whole scalp, or leaving a calotte of curly hair on the poll; it resembles the Shushah of Western Arabia and East Africa, but it is carried to the fore like a toucan’s crest.  Some, by way of coquetterie, trace upon the scalp a complicated network, showing the finest and narrowest lines of black wool and pale skin:  so the old traveller tells us “the heads of those who aspire to glory in apparel resemble a parterre, you see alleys and figures traced on them with a great deal of ingenuity.”  The bosom, elaborately bound downwards, is covered with a square bit of stuff, or a calico pagne—­most ungraceful of raiment-wrapped under the arms, and extending to the knees: 

“In longitude’tis sorely scanty,
But ’tis their best, and they are vaunty.”

The poor and the slaves content themselves with grass cloth.  The ornaments are brass earrings, beads and imitation coral; heavy bangles and manillas of brass and copper, zinc and iron, loading the ankles, and giving a dainty elephantine gait; the weight also produces stout mollets, which are set off by bead-garters below the knees.  The leg, as amongst hill people generally, is finely developed, especially amongst the lower orders:  the “lady’s” being often lank and spindled, as in Paris and Naples, where the carriage shrinks the muscles as bandages cramp Chinese feet.