countrymen and countrywomen, they are importunate beggars, and seem
greatly to prefer the fiery liquors of the white man to their own mild
palm-wine and cocoa-nut milk. One of our party offered rum to the eight
young wives of Tom Beggree, our trade-man; and every soul of them tossed
off her goblet without a wry face, though it was undiluted, and
thirty-three per cent. above proof.

As at other places, each family resides in a separate enclosure, which is
larger or smaller, according to the number of houses required. Domestic
harmony is in some degree provided for, by allotting a separate residence
to each wife. There is a courtyard before most of the enclosures, after
traversing which, you enter a spacious square, and perceive neatly built
houses on all four of its sides. They are constructed of bamboo-cane
placed upright, and united by cross-pieces of the same, strongly sewed
together with thongs of some tough wood. Some of the floors are not
untastefully paved with small pebbles, intermingled with white shells.
Doors there are none, the entrance being through the windows, in order to
keep out the pigs and sheep, which abound in the enclosures. The streets
or passages through the town are about five feet wide, and are bordered on
either side by the high bamboo wall of some private domain. The settlement
extends more than a mile in length, and is the largest and best-built that
I have yet had the good fortune to see on the coast of Africa.




CHAPTER XVI.

Visit from two English Trading-Captains--The Invisible King of
Jack-a-Jack--Human Sacrifices--French Fortresses at Grand Bassam, at