A quiet game in contrast to the hand-ball is the native game of draughts in which the opponents “eat” one another to use the native expression. Four rows of little holes are made in a shady place. The opponents sit on opposite sides and each has command of two rows. Sometimes there are six and at other times eight holes in each row. Each player has a number of seeds or little pieces of stone or other small things, about the size of marbles and he places one in each hole leaving a certain one empty. Then begin mysterious movements of taking out and putting in. So it seems to the European at first. But there are rules, and the black boys know them well. The idea is to move one’s own “men” one hole along at a time, until those in any hole surpass in number those in the enemy’s hole opposite when they are taken and placed out of the game. The game is won when one is able to take the last remaining “man” on his opponent’s side. To the boys it is a very engrossing game, and they often forget all about time over it. Sometimes the holes are chiselled out on a board and the game played by the grown-up people on the verandah of their houses. Quite a different game from any of those described is that played by both boys and girls among the cassava bushes in the gardens. When one finds a single leaf growing in a fork of a bush he calls out to his neighbour, “I have bound you.” The neighbour considers himself bound till he finds a leaf in a similar position, when he calls out, “I have freed myself.” He who first finds the leaf binds the other, and so the game goes on till the children are tired of it. The boys have another use for the cassava leaf. They pluck a nice big one. Then the left hand is closed fist-like, but leaving a hollow in the hand. The leaf is then laid across the hollow, resting on the thumb and the bent fore-finger. The open, right hand is now brought down whack upon the leaf, which is split in two with a loud report. Hide-and-seek you all know. I think it must be played by children all over the world. It is played by the black children of Africa and enjoyed very much. There are splendid opportunities for hiding in the long grass. You have only to go into it a few feet, and you are completely hidden. Sometimes the black children vary the game from the ordinary hide-and-seek. The seeker will be a wild beast--say a lion--and the hiders will be deer. They go off and hide in the grass and the lion has to find his prey. Sometimes the hider will represent a deer and go and conceal himself, and the seekers will be hunters on the chase. Then if there is water near one will hide in the water and pretend to be a crocodile, and when the others come down to the stream to bathe or draw water the crocodile rushes out on them and tries to seize them by the legs. The boys also play at war with tiny bows and arrows made of grass stalks. They stand in rows facing one another and try to “kill” one another with their arrows.