"On the west coast of Africa, the true negro-land, the thermometer not infrequently stands at 120° in the shade. For months together it remains, night and day, above 80°. The year is divided into the dry and the rainy season; the latter setting in with an incessant drizzle, continues until May. It culminates in the most awful thunderstorms and overwhelming rains. This is particularly the case in the mountains. When the dry season has fairly begun a pestiferous miasm is engendered from the vast quantities of vegetable matter brought down into the low lands by torrents. From the fevers thus arising the negroes themselves suffer severely. "Moisture and heat, thus so fatal in their consequences to man, give to that country its amazing vegetable luxuriance. For hundreds of square miles there is an impenetrable jungle, infested with intolerable swarms of musquitoes. The interior is magnificently wooded. The mangrove thickets that line the river banks upon the coast are here replaced by a dark evergreen verdure, interspersed with palms and aloes. A rank herbage obstructs the course of the streams. The crocodile, hippopotamus, pelican find here a suitable abode. Monkeys swarm in the woods; in the more gloomy recesses live the chimpanzee, gorilla and other anthropoid apes approaching man most closely in stature and habits of life. In the open land--the prairie of equatorial Africa--game is infrequent; there are a few antelopes and horned cattle, but no horses. Man--or perhaps more truly woman--is the only beast of burden. "Plantains, sweet potatoes, cassava, pumpkins, ground-nuts, Indian corn, the flesh of the deer, antelope, bear, snake, furnish to the negro, his food. He lives in a hut constructed of bamboo or flakes of bark, thatched with matting or palm leaves. His villages are often palisaded. Too lazy, except when severely pressed, to attend to the labors of the field, he compels his wives to plant the roots or seeds, and gather the scanty harvest. In hunting and in war, his main occupation, he relies upon cunning and will follow his prey with surprising agility, crawling like a snake prone upon the ground. He has little or no idea of property in land; slaves are his currency; he makes his purchase and pays his debts with them. 'A slave is a note of hand that may be discounted or pawned. He is a bill of exchange that carries himself to his destination, and pays a debt bodily. He is a tax that walks corporeally into the chieftain's treasury.'