hours of general idleness and revelry: your African Christian is
meticulous upon the subject of 'Sabbath;' he will do as little work as
possible for six days, and scrupulously repose upon the seventh. Whether
he 'keeps it holy' is quite another matter, into which I do not care to
enquire. Service- and school-hours are announced by a manner of
peripatetic belfry--a negroling walking about with a cracked muffin-bell.
From the chapel, which adjoins some wattled huts, the parsonage, surges at
times a prodigious volume of sound, the holloaing of hymns and the
bellowing of anthems; and, between whiles, the sable congregation, ranged
on benches and gazing out of the windows, 'catches it 'ot and strong' from
the dark-faced Wesleyan missionary-schoolmaster.

We were never wearied of the 'humours' of native Axim. The people are not
Fantis, but Apollonians, somewhat differing in speech with the Oji; both
languages, however, are mutually intelligible. [Footnote: Oji is also
written Otschi, Tschi, Chwee, Twi, Tswi, Otyi, Tyi, or whatever German
ingenuity can suggest. I can hardly explain why the late Keith Johnston
(Africa) calls the linguistic family 'Ewe' (Ewhe, or properly Whegbe),
after a small section of the country, Dahome, Whydah, &c. He was probably
led to it by the publications of the Bâle and other German missions.] The
men are the usual curious compound of credulity and distrust, hope and
fatalism, energy and inaction, which make the negro so like the Irish
character. But we must not expect too much from the denizens of African
seaports, mostly fishermen who will act hammock-bearers, a race especially
fond of Bacchus and worshippers of the 'devil Venus.' Perhaps a little too
much license is allowed to them in the matter of noisy and drunken 'native
customs,' palavers, and pow-wows. They rarely go about armed; if you see a
gun you know that the bearer is a huntsman. They are easily commanded,
and, despite their sympathies with Ashanti-land, they are not likely to
play tricks since their town was bombarded. In the villages they are civil