Having thus dilated with more minuteness than elsewhere upon the external features of Bongo life, such as their agriculture, hunting, and fishing, I may proceed to call attention to those arts by which, even in this low grade of development, man seeks to ameliorate and embellish his existence. [Sidenote: BONGO DWELLINGS.] First of all, the dwelling-place may demand our notice, that which binds every man more or less to the soil which affords him his subsistence—that family nucleus, from which the wide-branching tree of human society has derived its origin. In the period when the Khartoomers first made their way into the country, the Bongo, quite unlike the other tribes, inhabited extensive villages, which, similar to the present Seribas, were encompassed by a palisade. Neither towns nor villages are now to be seen, and the districts which are occupied at all are only marked by scattered enclosures and little gatherings of huts, as in the country of the Dinka and the Niam-niam. Very rarely are more than five or six families resident in the same locality, so that it is almost an exaggeration to speak of their being villages in any sense. The communities in past times seem to have had a preference for gathering round some great tamarind, ficus, or butter-tree, which often still survives and constitutes the only relic of habitations which have long fallen to decay; and even to the present time the Bongo appear to retain this partiality, and more often than not they may be found beneath the natural shade of a spreading roof of foliage, enjoying the light and space which are prohibited to their cramped and narrow dwellings. The ground for a considerable circuit about the huts is all well cleared and levelled, its surface being the general scene of labour on which all the women perform their ordinary domestic duties. The corn is there thrashed and winnowed; there it is brayed in the wooden mortars or pounded by the mill; there are the leaves of the tobacco plant laid out to dry; there stand the baskets with the loads of mushrooms or supply of fruit; and there may be seen the accumulated store of nutritious roots. Dogs and poultry alike seem to revel in security under the majestic covering, while the little children at their play complete the idyllic picture of life in Central Africa.[30] Upon the erection of their dwellings there is no people in the Gazelle district who bestow so much pains as the Bongo. Although they invariably adopt the conical shape, they allow themselves considerable diversity in the forms they use. The general plan of their architecture has already been sketched. The materials they employ are upright tree-stems, plaited faggots, canes of the bamboo, clay from the mushroom-shaped white-ant hills, and tough grass and the bast of the Grewia.