A more animated scene is presented by the _hato_ of a regular farmer, a proprietor living on the premises, employing several hands and working with them. Here we may expect to see a solid house of several rooms, with mud walls and an earth floor. If the farmer is a person of substance and taste, his bedroom may be furnished with an up-to-date bedstead, and a wardrobe or chest of drawers, and a few chairs, while the chief living-room probably has a rough table and a few chairs also. In the living-rooms the mud or clay of the walls is broken here and there about six feet above the ground, giving glimpses of the wooden framework inside the wall. This is, however, not due to accidental damage or neglect, for at night strangers, or some of the farm hands, sleep in these living-rooms, and passing their hammock-ropes through these holes, attach them to the wooden posts inside. Round about the house, or near it, is an enclosed stockyard, built, like the houses, of upright posts, with horizontal poles attached to them. In the middle of this yard is an upright post, to which the beasts requiring any sort of operation are secured one at a time. There are, perhaps, other similar enclosures, some covered with palm thatch, in which any part of the stock may be kept separate if desired. These yards are also used at times for the accommodation of travelling herds, especially if the farm be on or near the recognised route to some market town or port. The drovers pay the farmer a small rental, generally based on the number of cattle they have, and secure them for the night, thus preventing them from straying about the plains and ensuring an early start in the morning. Near the house, in a roofed shed, is the bakery; there we may find a small fireplace with clay walls, the top of which is formed by a circular iron plate about three feet in diameter, the whole being about the height of an ordinary table. On this the cassava-bread is baked. The flour, duly prepared and freed from superfluous water, is thinly spread on the iron and rapidly baked, the finished loaf being a large circular disc very hard and brittle, and thinner than our ordinary milk biscuits.