With very trifling manual labour, the path, which was little better
than a mere gutter formed by repeated rains, might be converted into
a good and commodious road; and were a tree simply thrown over them,
the streams and morasses might be crossed with ease and safely. But
the natives appeared to have no idea whatever of such improvements,
and would rather be entangled in thick underwood, and wade through
pools of mud and water, than give themselves any trouble about
repairing the road. But the native, however, says to himself, and not
unjustly, _cui bono?_ neither in England or in Africa are
individuals to be found, who will undertake a work of difficulty and
fatigue gratuitously, merely for the benefit and accommodation of
others; characters of that description are very rarely to be found,
and perhaps the interior of Africa is the last place in the world
where we should look for them. An Englishman might find it to be his
interest to repair the roads on which he is frequently obliged to
travel; but what benefit can accrue to the uncivilized African, and
particularly the slave, who has not a blade of grass under the canopy
of Heaven, which he can call his own, to trouble himself about the
repair of a road, on which he might never have occasion to travel,
and which, with the great uncertainty which is always hanging over
his future condition in life, he may never fee again. Trees not
unfrequently fall across the pathway, but instead of removing them,
the people form a large circuit round them, even a small ant hill is
an object too mighty to be meddled with, and it is left in the centre
of the narrow road, to be jumped over, or to be travelled round,
according to the option of the traveller.

Several women, with little wooden figures of children on their heads,
passed them in the course of the morning; they were mothers, who,
having lost a child, carry these rude imitations of them about their
persons for an indefinite time, as a symbol of mourning. Not one of
them could be induced to part with one of these little affectionate
memorials.

They entered Egga, which is a very large town, in the early part of
the afternoon. On their arrival, they were introduced into the house
occupied by Captain Clapperton on his last journey, in the yard of
which, repose the remains of an Englishman, named Dawson, who died
here of a fever when that officer passed through the country. Both
the hut and yard were soon tilled with peop