The widow Zuma has been kind enough to send me provisions ready cooked, in great abundance, ever since I have been here. Now that she has failed with Richard, she has offered Pascoe a handsome female slave for a wife, if he could manage to bring about matters with me. Not being much afraid of myself, and wishing to see the interior arrangement of her house, I went and visited her. I found her house large, and full of male and female slaves; the males lying about the outer huts, the females more in the interior. In the centre of the huts was a square one of large dimensions surrounded by a verandah, with screens of matting all around except in one place, where there was hung a tanned bullock’s hide; to this spot I was led up, and, on its being drawn on one side, I saw the lady sitting cross-legged on a small Turkey carpet, like one of our hearth rugs, a large leather cushion under her left knee; her goora pot, which was a large old-fashioned English pewter mug, by her side, and a calibash of water to wash her mouth out, as she alternately kept eating goora and chewing tobacco-snuff, the custom with all ranks, male or female, who can procure them: on her right side lay a whip. At a little distance, squatted on the ground, sat a dwarfish hump-backed female slave, with a wide mouth but good eyes: she had on no clothing, if I except a profusion of strings of beads and coral round her neck and waist. This personage served the purpose of a bell in our country, and what, I suppose, would in old times have been called a page. The lady herself was dressed in a white coarse muslin turban; her neck profusely decorated with necklaces of coral and gold chains, amongst which was one of rubies and gold beads; her eyebrows and eyelashes blacked, her hair dyed with indigo, and her hands and feet with henna; around her body she had a fine striped silk and cotton country cloth, which came as high as her tremendous breasts, and reached as low as her ankles; in her right hand she held a fan made of stained grass, of a square form. She desired me to sit down on the carpet beside her, which I did, and she began fanning me, and sent hump-back to bring out her finery for me to look at; which consisted of four gold bracelets, two large paper dressing-cases with looking-glasses, and several strings of coral, silver rings, and bracelets, with a number of other trifling articles. After a number of compliments, and giving me an account of all her wealth, I was led through one apartment into another, cool, clean, and ornamented with pewter dishes and bright brass pans. She now told me her husband had been dead these ten years, that she had only one son, and he was darker than herself; that she loved white men, and would go to Boussa with me; that she would send for a malem, or man of learning, and read the fatha with me. I thought this was carrying the joke a little too far, and began to look very serious, on which she sent for the looking-glass, and looking at herself,