Their assertions, however, mean but little, for they always try to give an answer to please, and if one showed them a nugget of gold, they would generally say that these abounded in their country.
One could detect, in passing, the variety of character found among the owners of gardens and villages.

Some villages were the pictures of neatness.

We entered others enveloped in a wilderness of weeds, so high that, when sitting on ox-back in the middle of the village, we could only see the tops of the huts.

If we entered at midday, the owners would come lazily forth, pipe in hand, and leisurely puff away in dreamy indifference.

In some villages weeds are not allowed to grow; cotton, tobacco, and different plants used as relishes are planted round the huts; fowls are kept in cages, and the gardens present the pleasant spectacle of different kinds of grain and pulse at various periods of their growth.