Two doors (mlango) are marked out before they plaster, but one of these is generally shut up, and may even be dispensed with. There are no windows. The wall is not above 3 feet high, the roof projects so as to form a small verandah in which a person may sit. Sometimes there are apertures in the wall calculated to let through the muzzle of a gun. The houses being occupied chiefly during the night, part of the floor is often raised for a bedstead. The bed which is merely a mat made of bamboos or reeds, and is not nearly so soft as an ordinary door-mat or hearth-rug, is laid on this mound. By the side of the “bedstead” are placed a few logs of wood which form a fire during the night. The head of the house lies nearest to this fire, while his partner is placed on his other side, as he remarks, _away from the fire_. Blankets are unknown. The cloth that covers the man during the day may be drawn over him at night. Quite as often he lets it remain round his loins. Occasionally it seems as if a little flour had been spilt on the ground beside his head. He will not speak of this to a stranger, but you are on holy ground, and let me tell you in a whisper that it is an _offering to his gods_. Candles are not used, the logs that smoulder in the fire give a little light. They burn beeswax occasionally, and when light is required, a little dry grass may be readily obtained. The native retires to rest soon after dark, and is astir at the first streaks of dawn. The fire is in the middle of the floor, and there are no holes in the roof as in the old Highlands of Scotland. The houses are without any chimney whatsoever, and the smoke goes curling about in the roof and may ultimately escape through the thatch or at the doors. The roof is beautifully black and glossy inside, but outside it has an ugly brown appearance. A European finds it a most inconvenient thing at first to enter a native hut, the smoke so fills his nose, mouth, and eyes, but when he sits down to talk to an invalid, the inconvenience is of course less than when he stands upright; at best the atmosphere resembles a London fog. In native huts it is sometimes difficult for a man of ordinary stature to stand upright. The doors of the houses are never over 3 feet high. What pigmies the natives must be! We have heard a learned professor arguing that the height of the doors in certain very ancient houses proved that the human race was not degenerating in stature, but this argument, true in many cases, would not do here. If the native wants to stand upright, he never thinks of trying to do so in his doorway.