s, bananas, and a pulpy globe resembling the
peach in form and flavor, quenched our thirst and satisfied our
hunger.

Besides these, our greedy natives foraged in the wilderness for
nourishment unknown, or at least unused, by civilized folks. They
found comfort in barks of various trees, as well as in buds, berries,
and roots, some of which they devoured raw, while others were either
boiled or made into palatable decoctions with water that gurgled from
every hill. The broad valleys and open country supplied animal and
vegetable "delicacies" which a white man would pass unnoticed. Many a
time, when I was as hungry as a wolf, I found my vagabonds in a nook
of the woods, luxuriating over a mess with the unctuous lips of
aldermen; but when I came to analyze the stew, I generally found it to
consist of a "witch's cauldron," copiously filled with snails,
lizards, iguanas, frogs and alligators!

CHAPTER XX.

A journey to the interior of Africa would be a rural jaunt, were it
not so often endangered by the perils of war. The African may fairly
be characterized as a shepherd, whose pastoral life is varied by a
little agriculture, and the conflicts into which he is seduced, either
by family quarrels, or the natural passions of his blood. His country,
though uncivilized, is not so absolutely wild as is generally
supposed. The gradual extension of Mahometanism throughout the
interior is slowly but evidently modifying the Negro. An African
Mussulman is _still_ a warrior, for the dissemination of faith as well
as for the gratification of avarice; yet the Prophet's laws are so
much more genial than the precepts of paganism, that, within the last
half century, the humanizing influence of the Koran is acknowledged by
all who are acquainted with the interior tribes.

But in all the changes that may come over the spirit of _man_ in
Africa, her magnificent external _nature_ will for ever remain the
game. A little labor teems with vast returns. The climate exacts
nothing but shade from the sun and shelter from the storm. Its
oppressive heat forbids a toilsome industry, and almost enforces
indolence as a law. With every want supplied, without the allurements
of social rivalry, without the temptations of national ambition or
personal pride, what has the African to do in his forest of palm and
cocoa,--his grove of orange, pomegranate and fig,--on his mat of
comfortable repose, where the fruit stoops to his lips without a
struggle