rkets of large cities, even on a great day of sale, there is
never much noise or confusion. Among the civilized the need of selling
exceeds the desire to buy. Among these African savages offers are made
with as much eagerness as demands.

The "lakoni" is a festival day for the natives of both sexes, and if
for good reasons they do not put on their best clothes, they at least
wear their handsomest ornaments.

Some wear the hair divided in four parts, covered with cushions, and
in plaits tied like a chignon or arranged in pan-handles on the front
of the head with bunches of red feathers. Others have the hair in bent
horns sticky with red earth and oil, like the red lead used to close
the joints of machines. In these masses of real or false hair is worn
a bristling assemblage of skewers, iron and ivory pins, often even,
among elegant people, a tattooing-knife is stuck in the crisp mass,
each hair of which is put through a "sofi" or glass bead, thus forming
a tapestry of different-colored grains. Such are the edifices most
generally seen on the heads of the men.

The women prefer to divide their hair in little tufts of the size of
a cherry, in wreaths, in twists the ends of which form designs in
relief, and in corkscrews, worn the length of the face. A few, more
simple and perhaps prettier, let their long hair hang down the back,
in the English style, and others wear it cut over the forehead in a
fringe, like the French. Generally they wear on these wigs a greasy
putty, made of red clay or of glossy "ukola," a red substance
extracted from sandal-wood, so that these elegant persons look as if
their heads were dressed with tiles.

It must not be supposed that this luxury of ornamentation is confined
to the hair of the natives. What are ears for if not to pass pins of
precious wood through, also copper rings, charms of plaited maize,
which draw them forward, or little gourds which do for snuff-boxes,
and to such an extent that the distended lobes of these appendages
fall sometimes to the shoulders of their owners?

After all, the African savages have no pockets, and how could they
have any? This gives rise to the necessity of placing where they can
their knives, pipes, and other customary objects. As for the neck,
arms, wrists, legs, and ankles, these various parts of the body are
undoubtedly destined to carry the copper and brass bracelets, the
horns cut off and decorated with bright buttons, the rows of red
pearls, cal