At 1 P.M. we resumed our way along the beach, under sunshine tempered by the 'smokes.' These mists, however, are now clearing away for the tornado-season, and 'insolation' will become more decided. We ran by sundry little bush-villages: their names will be found in my companion's careful route-survey. I shall notice only those which showed something notable. There is sameness in the prospect, which, however, does not wholly lack interest. Soon after dawn the village urchins begin disporting themselves among the breakers and billows upon broken bits of boat, while their fathers throw the cast-net nearer shore. The brown-black pigs and piglets root up the wet sand for shell-fish; and, higher up, the small piebald cattle loiter in the sun or shade. From afar the negro-groups are not unpicturesque in their bright red and brimstone yellow sheets, worn like Roman togas. A nearer view displays bridgeless, patulous noses, suggesting a figure of [Symbol: Figure-8 on its side.]; cheek-bones like molehills, and lips splayed out in the manner of speaking-trumpets: often, indeed, the face is a mere attachment to the devouring-apparatus. Throughout the day sexes and ages keep apart. The nude boys perch upon stones or worn-out canoes. Their elders affect the shade, men on one side of the village and women on the other. All the settlements are backed by cocoa-trees in lines and clumps. Those who view Africa biliously compare them with hearse-plumes; I find in them a peculiar individuality and likeness to humankind. There is the chubby babe, six feet high; the fast-growing 'hobbedehoy;' the adult, bending away from you like a man, or, woman-like, inclining towards you; there is the bald, shrunken senior; and, lastly, appears death, lean and cold and dry. Between sea and settlement stand the canoes, flat-bottomed and tip-tilted like Turkish slippers; where the land is low and floods are high, each is mounted upon four posts. Fronting and outside the village stands a wall-less roof of flat matting, the palaver-house. The settlement is surrounded by a palisade of fronds stripped from the bamboo-palm and strengthened by posts; the latter put forth green shoots as soon as stuck in the ground, and recall memories of Robinson Crusoe. The general entrance has a threshold two to two and a half feet high. The tenements are simple as birds' nests, primitive as the Highlander's mud-cabin and shieling of wattle and heather. The outer walls are of bamboo-palm fronds, the partitions are of bamboo-palm matting, and the roofs are of bamboo-palm thatch. Each place has its _osafahin_, or headman, and each headman has his guest-house, built of better material, swish or adobe.