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“These are very foolish people, sar.”

“Are they? How?”

“They put dem writings on the bolts, and then think nobody can open the doors.”

“Oh!”

“Yes; and them Mandingos won’t touch them when they’re leff so—they ’fraid to.”

“You’re not afraid, I suppose?”

“Me? No, I don’t care for grisgris. By’mby I show you my farm; when these foolish people sleep on dark night, I take as much corn as I want for planting time. They think it must be devil,” and he chuckled at the joke.

“What religion are you then?”

“Oh! I b’long to the Wesleyans.”

“Ah! I thought so.”

My co-religionist informed me that the deer usually devoured half his crops, and that leopards, and animals “that howled like drunken men at night,” by which graphic description he meant hyenas, were so numerous and bold in their raids on the poultry and dogs that the thorn hedges, which I had noticed surrounding the village, were erected for their special behoof. Beguiling the time with such artless conversation, he led me round the village, and finally halted before a hut, which he asked me to enter, saying it was his. As I thought he had been unusually civil and obliging for an English-speaking negro, I did not like to refuse, though I do not care to invade the sanctity of such houses and inhale the odour thereof. I saw some six or seven women suckling babies and pounding kous-kous, whom I learned were the wives of my host, and sat down as far from them and as near to the door as possible; while their lord and master produced a dirty-white piece of paper and a lead pencil, and began writing away most laboriously.