[Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone]@TWC D-Link book
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa

CHAPTER 23
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Their villages are generally in forests, and composed of groups of irregularly-planted brown huts, with banana and cotton trees, and tobacco growing around.

There is also at every hut a high stage erected for drying manioc roots and meal, and elevated cages to hold domestic fowls.

Round baskets are laid on the thatch of the huts for the hens to lay in, and on the arrival of strangers, men, women, and children ply their calling as hucksters with a great deal of noisy haggling; all their transactions are conducted with civil banter and good temper.
My men, having the meat of the oxen which we slaughtered from time to time for sale, were entreated to exchange it for meal; no matter how small the pieces offered were, it gave them pleasure to deal.
The landscape around is green, with a tint of yellow, the grass long, the paths about a foot wide, and generally worn deeply in the middle.
The tall overhanging grass, when brushed against by the feet and legs, disturbed the lizards and mice, and occasionally a serpent, causing a rustling among the herbage.

There are not many birds; every animal is entrapped and eaten.

Gins are seen on both sides of the path every ten or fifteen yards, for miles together.


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