y had in abundance, but as they did not fear any enemy,
these were pastured outside the town, their milk and meat being brought
in as required. A considerable number of people were gathered to
observe us, not in a crowd, but in little family groups which collected
separately at the gates of the gardens.

For the most part these consisted of a man and one or more wives, finely
formed and handsome women. Sometimes they had children with them, but
these were very few; the most I saw with any one family was three, and
many seemed to possess none at all. Both the women and the children,
like the men, were decently clothed in long, white garments, another
peculiarity which showed that these natives were no ordinary African
savages.

Oh! I can see Rica Town now after all these many years: the wide street
swept and garnished, the brown-roofed, white-walled huts in their
fertile, irrigated gardens, the tall, silent folk, the smoke from the
cooking fires rising straight as a line in the still air, the graceful
palms and other tropical trees, and at the head of the street, far away
to the north, the rounded, towering shape of the forest-clad mountain
that was called House of the Gods. Often that vision comes back to me in
my sleep, or at times in my waking hours when some heavy odour reminds
me of the overpowering scent of the great trumpet-like blooms which hung
in profusion upon broad-leaved bushes that were planted in almost every
garden.

On we marched till at last we reached a tall, live fence that was
covered with brilliant scarlet flowers, arriving at its gate just as the
last red glow of day faded from the sky and night began to fall. Komba
pushed open the gate, revealing a scene that none of us are likely to
forget. The fence enclosed about an acre of ground of which the back
part was occupied by two large huts standing in the usual gardens.

In front of these, not more than fifteen paces from the gate, stood
another building of a totally different character. It was about fifty
feet in length by thirty broad and consisted only of a roof supported
upon carved pillars of wood, the spaces between the pillars being filled
with grass mats or blinds. Most of these blinds were pulled down, but
four exactly opposite the gate were open. Inside the shed forty or fifty
men, who wore white robes and peculiar caps and who were engaged in
chanting a dreadful, melancholy song, were gathered on three sides of a
huge fire that burned