Others Try To Appear Warlike
By Never Going Out Of Their Huts Except With A Load Of Bows And Arrows,
Or A Gun Ornamented With A Strip Of Hide For Every Animal They Have Shot;
And Others Never Go Any Where Without A Canary In A Cage.
Ladies may be seen
carefully tending little lap-dogs, which are intended to be eaten.
Their villages are generally in forests, and composed of groups
of irregularly-planted brown huts, with banana and cotton trees,
and tobacco growing around.
There is also at every hut a high stage erected
for drying manioc roots and meal, and elevated cages to hold domestic fowls.
Round baskets are laid on the thatch of the huts for the hens to lay in,
and on the arrival of strangers, men, women, and children
ply their calling as hucksters with a great deal of noisy haggling;
all their transactions are conducted with civil banter and good temper.
My men, having the meat of the oxen which we slaughtered from time to time
for sale, were entreated to exchange it for meal; no matter how small
the pieces offered were, it gave them pleasure to deal.
The landscape around is green, with a tint of yellow, the grass long,
the paths about a foot wide, and generally worn deeply in the middle.
The tall overhanging grass, when brushed against by the feet and legs,
disturbed the lizards and mice, and occasionally a serpent,
causing a rustling among the herbage. There are not many birds;
every animal is entrapped and eaten.
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