placed in whatever position the wind is blowing.
Some of these houses are built with great care, and those with domed
roofs are elaborately decorated inside with beads of various sizes and
colors.

The furniture consists of a few mats, several baskets, a milk-pail, a
number of earthen pots, a bundle of assagais, and a few other weapons
of war. Next, to guard against the perils of the rainy season, a ditch
about two feet in width and of equal depth is made about the new
dwelling. Now multiply this hut by five hundred, preserving the
circle, and you have the village. The _palaver-house_, or place for
public debates, is situated in the centre of the circle of huts. Among
the northern and southern tribes, a fence is built around their
villages, when they are called "kraals." The space immediately outside
of the fence is cleared, so as to put an enemy at a disadvantage in an
attack upon the village. Among the agricultural tribes, as, for
example, the Kaffirs, they drive their cattle into the kraal, and for
the young build pens.

The other method of building villages is to have one long street, with
a row of houses on each side, rectangular in shape. They are about
twenty-five or thirty feet in length, and about twelve to fifteen feet
in width. Six or eight posts are used to join the material of the
sides to. The roofs are flat. Three rooms are allowed to each house.
The two end rooms are larger than the centre one, where the door opens
out into the street. Sometimes these rooms are plastered, but it is
seldom; and then it is in the case of the well-to-do class.[72]

We said, at the beginning of this chapter, that the government in
Africa was largely patriarchal; and yet we have called attention to
four great kingdoms. There is no contradiction here, although there
may seem to be; for even kings are chosen by ballot, and a sort of a
house of lords has a veto power over royal edicts.

"Among the tribes which I visited in my explorations I found
but one form of government, which may be called the
patriarchal. There is not sufficient national unity in any
of the tribes to give occasion for such a despotism as
prevails in Dahomey, and in other of the African
nationalities. I found the tribes of equatorial Africa
greatly dispersed, and, in general, no bond of union between
parts of the same tribe. A tribe is divided up into numerous
_clans_, and these again into numberless little v