This hearty breakfast is washed down with long drinks of palm wine, and followed by sundry pipes of tobacco; after which, happy souls! all enjoy a siesta, long and deep as that of Andine Mendoza; and they “kill time” as well as they can till evening.  The men assemble in the club round the Nampolo-fire, where they chat and smoke, drink and doze; those who are Agriophagi or Xylobian AEthiopians, briefly called hunters, spend their days much like the race which Byron declared

                “Merely born
    To hunt and vote, and raise the price of corn.”

The Pongo venator is up with the sun, and, if not on horseback, at least he is on the traces of game; sometimes he returns home during the hours of heat, when he knows that the beasts seek the shady shelter of the deepest forests; and, after again enjoying the “pleasures of the chase,” he disposes of a heavy dinner and ends the day, sleep weighing down his eyelids and his brains singing with liquor.  What he did yesterday that he does to-day, and what he does to-day that he shall do to-morrow; his intellectual life is varied only by a visit to town, where he sells his choice skins, drinks a great deal too much rum, and makes the purchases, ammunition and so forth, which are necessary for the full enjoyment of home and country life.  At times also he joins a party of friends and seeks some happier hunting ground farther from his campagne.

Meanwhile the women dawdle through the day, superintending their domestic work, look after their children’s and their own toilette, tend the fire, attend to the cooking, and smoke consumedly.  The idle sit with the men at the doors of their huts; those industriously disposed weave mats, and, whether lazy or not, they never allow their tongues and lungs a moment’s rest.  The slaves, male and female, draw water, cut fuel, or go to the distant plantations for yams and bananas; whilst the youngsters romp, play and tease the village idiot—­there is one in almost every settlement.  Briefly, the day is spent in idleness, except, as has been said, for a short time preceding the rains.

When the sun nears the western horizon, the hunter and the slaves return home, and the housewife, who has been enjoying the “coolth” squatting on her dwarf stool at her hut-door, and puffing the preparatory pipe,—­girds her loins for the evening meal, and makes every one “look alive.”  When the last rays are shedding their rich red glow over the tall black trees which hem in the village, all torpidity disappears from it.  The fires are trimmed, and the singing and harping, which were languid during the hot hours, begin with renewed vigour.  The following is a specimen of a boating-song: 

 (Solo.) “Come, my sweetheart!”
      ( Chorus.) “Haste, haste!”
 (Solo) ‘How many things gives the white man?’
     (Chorus chants all that it wants.)
(Solo) ’What must be done for the white man?”
     (Chorus improvises all his requirements)
(Solo) “How many dangers for the black girl?”
     (Chorus) “Dangers from the black and the white man!”