and grounds of the "Commandant Particulier." The outside walls,
built in grades with the porous, dark-red, laterite-like stone
dredged from the river, are whitewashed with burnt coralline and
look clean; whilst the house, one of the best in the place, is
French, that is to say, pretty. Near it is a cluster of native
huts, mostly with walls of corded bamboo, some dabbed with clay
and lime, and all roofed with the ever shabby-looking palm-leaf;
none are as neat as those of the "bushmen" in the interior, where
they are regularly and carefully made like baskets or panniers.
The people appeared friendly; the men touched their hats, and the
women dropped unmistakably significant curtsies.

After admiring the picturesque bush and the natural avenues
behind Le Plateau, we diverged towards the local Pere-la-Chaise.
The new cemetery, surrounded by a tall stone wall and approached
by a large locked gate, contains only four tombs; the old burial
ground opposite is unwalled, open, and painfully crowded; the
trees have run wild, the crosses cumber the ground, the
gravestones are tilted up and down; in fact the foul Golgotha of
Santos, Sao Paulo, the Brazil, is not more ragged, shabby, and
neglected. We were shown the last resting-place of M. du Chaillu
pere, agent to Messrs. Oppenheim, the old Parisian house: he died
here in 1856.

Resuming our way parallel with, but distant from the river, we
passed a bran-new military storehouse, bright with whitewash.
Outside the compound lay the lines of the "Zouaves," some forty
negroes whom Goree has supplied to the Gaboon; they were
accompanied by a number of intelligent mechanics, who loudly
complained of having been kidnapped, coolie-fashion. We then