domestic purposes.  The walls are built by planting double and parallel rows of posts, the material being either bamboo or the mid-rib of a wine-giving palm (Raphia vinifera); to these uprights horizontal slats of cane are neatly lashed by means of the never-failing “tie-tie,” bast-slips, runners, or llianas.  For the more solid buildings thin “Mpavo,” or bark slabs, are fitted in between the double posts; when coolness is required, their place is taken by mats woven with the pinnated leaves of sundry palms.  This is a favourite industry with the women, who make two kinds, one coarse, the other a neat and close article, of rattan-tint until it becomes smoke-stained:  the material is so cheap and comfortable, that many of the missionaries prefer it for walls to brick or boarding.  The windows are mere holes in the mats to admit light, and the doors are cut with a Mpano (adze) from a single tree trunk, which would be wilful waste if timber were ever wanting.  The floor is sometimes sandy, but generally of hard and level tamped clay, to which the European would prefer boarding, and, as a rule, it is clean—­no fear of pythogenie from here!  The pent-shaped roof of rafters and thatch is water-tight except when the host of rats disturb it by their nocturnal gambols.

Rich men affect five or six rooms, of which the principal occupies the centre.  The very poor must be contented with one; the majority have two.  The “but” combines the functions of hall, dining-room, saloon and bachelor’s sleeping quarters.  The “ben” contains a broad bed for the married, a standing frame of split bamboo with mats for mattresses; it is usually mounted on props to defend it from the Nchu’u or white ants, and each has its mosquito bar, an oblong square, large enough to cover the whole couch and to reach the ground; the material is either fine grass-cloth, from the Ashira country, a light stuff called “Mbongo,” or calico and blue baft from which the stiffening has been washed out.  It is far superior to the flimsy muslin affairs supplied in an Anglo-Indian outfit, or to the coarse matting used in Yoruba.  Provided with this solid defence, which may be bought in any shop, one can indulge one’s self by sleeping in the verandah without risk of ague or rheumatism.  The “ben” always displays a pile of chests and boxes, which, though possibly empty, testify to the “respectability” of the household.  In Hotaloya’s I remarked a leather hat-case; he owned to me that he had already invested in a silk tile, the sign of chieftainship, but that being a “boy” he must grow older before he could wear it.  The inner room can be closed with a strong door and a padlock; as even the window-hole is not admitted, the burglar would at once be detected.  Except where goods are concerned, the Mpongwe have little respect for privacy; the women, in the presence of their husbands, never failed to preside at my simple toilette, and the girls of the villages would sit upon the bedside where lay an Utangani in almost the last stage of deshabille.