The colours of the houses are various; plain white is rare, and the prevailing tints are the light-brick of the fresh laterite and the dark rusty ochre of the old. But all are the same in one point, the mildewed, cankered, gangrened aspect, contrasting so unfavourably with the whitewashed port-towns of the Arabs. The upper stories of wood-work based on masonry, the fronting piazzas or galleries, the huge plank-balconies, and the general use of shingle roofs--in fact, the quantity of tinder-timber, reminding one of olden Cairo, are real risks: some of the best houses have been destroyed by fire; and, as in Valparaiso and the flue-warmed castles of England, it is only a question of time when the inmates will be houseless. Thanks to the form of ground, the townlet is well laid out, with a gradual rake towards the bay. But there is no marine parade, and the remarkably uneven habitations crowd towards the water-front, like those of Eastern ports, thinning off and losing style inland. The best are placed to catch the 'Doctor,' or sea-breeze: here, as at Zanzibar, the temperature out of the wind becomes unendurable. Freetown lies upon a gentle declivity, a slope of laterite and diluvium washed down from the higher levels. The ground is good for drainage, but the soft and friable soil readily absorbs the deluging torrents of rain, and as readily returns them to the air in the shape of noxious vapours. The shape is triangular. The apex is 'Tower Hill,' so named from a ruined martello, supposed to have been built by the Dutch, and till lately used for stores. The barracks, which lodge one of the West India regiments, are six large blocks crowning the hill-crest and girt with a low and loopholed wall. In winter, or rather in the December summer, the slopes are clad in fine golden stubbles, the only spectacle of the kind which this part of the coast affords. Though not more than four hundred feet or so above sea-level, the barracks are free from yellow fever; and in the years when the harbour-town has been almost depopulated the only fatal cases were those brought up from below. Moreover, the disease did not spread. The officers' quarters, with cool and lofty rooms, twenty feet high, are surrounded by shady and airy piazzas or verandahs, where the wind, when there is any, must find its way. For many years they had _jalousies_ and half-windows instead of glass, which forced the inmates to sit in outer darkness during tornadoes and the Rains. The garrison, like the town, owes an eternal debt of gratitude to Governor J. Pope Henessy. Seeing the main want of Sá Leone, he canalised in 1872, with the good aid of Mr. Engineer Jenkins, a fine fountain rising below 'Heddle's Farm,' enabling the barracks to have a swimming-bath and the townsfolk to lay on, through smaller pipes, a fair supply of filtered water. For this alone he amply deserves a statue; but colonies, like republics, are rarely grateful.