With Very Trifling Manual Labour, The Path, Which Was Little Better Than A Mere Gutter Formed By Repeated Rains, Might Be Converted Into A Good And Commodious Road; And Were A Tree Simply Thrown Over Them, The Streams And Morasses Might Be Crossed With Ease And Safely.

But the natives appeared to have no idea whatever of such improvements, and would rather be entangled in thick underwood, and wade through pools of mud and water, than give themselves any trouble about repairing the road.

But the native, however, says to himself, and not unjustly, cui bono? neither in England or in Africa are individuals to be found, who will undertake a work of difficulty and fatigue gratuitously, merely for the benefit and accommodation of others; characters of that description are very rarely to be found, and perhaps the interior of Africa is the last place in the world where we should look for them. An Englishman might find it to be his interest to repair the roads on which he is frequently obliged to travel; but what benefit can accrue to the uncivilized African, and particularly the slave, who has not a blade of grass under the canopy of Heaven, which he can call his own, to trouble himself about the repair of a road, on which he might never have occasion to travel, and which, with the great uncertainty which is always hanging over his future condition in life, he may never fee again. Trees not unfrequently fall across the pathway, but instead of removing them, the people form a large circuit round them, even a small ant hill is an object too mighty to be meddled with, and it is left in the centre of the narrow road, to be jumped over, or to be travelled round, according to the option of the traveller.

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