enough, baring the shoulders, like taking off the hat, when they meet
their rulers. Theirs, also, is the great virtue of cleanliness; even when
the mornings are coldest you see them bathing on the beach. They are never
pinched for food, and they have high ideas of diet. 'He lib all same
Prince; he chop cow and sheep ebery day, and fowl and duck he be all same
vegeta'l.' They have poultry in quantities, especially capons, sheep with
negro faces like the Persian, dwarf milch-goats of sturdy build, dark and
dingy pigs, and cattle whose peculiarity it is to be either black or
piebald. The latter are neat animals like the smallest Alderneys, with
short horns, and backs flat as tables. There are almost as many bulls as
there are cows, and they herd together without fighting. Being looked upon
as capital, and an honour to the owner, they are never killed; and,
although the udders of cows and goats are bursting with milk, they are
never milked.

The women differ very little from their sisters of the Eastern Gold Coast.
You never see beauty beyond the _beauté du diable_ and the naïve and
piquant plainness which one admires in a pug-pup. The forms are
unsupported, and the figure falls away at the hips. They retain the savage
fashion of coiffure shown in Cameron's 'Across Africa,' training their
wool to bunches, tufts, and horns. The latter is the favourite; the
pigtails, which stand stiff upright, and are whipped round like pricks of
tobacco, may number half a dozen: one, however, is the common style, and
the size is said to be determined by a delicate consideration. Opposed to
this is the highly civilised _atufu_, 'kankey,' or bussle, whose origin is
disputed. Some say that it prevents the long cloth clinging to the lower
limbs, others that it comes from a modest wish to conceal the forms; some
make it a jockey-saddle for the baby, others a mere exaggeration of
personal development, an attempt to make Aphrodite a Callipygé. I hold
that it arose, in the mysterious hands of 'Fashion,' from the knot which