Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/134

Rh as I wandered through the village. Some unusual looking trees and fruit in a little enclosure to the right attracted me, and there I determined to make a morning visit. The little gate was the most ricketty gate in the world, but the most willing to allow ingress. I passed through it, and advancing along a little sanded path, which wound round to the left, arrived at a palm-thatched, bark hut under some cocoa-palms. A little below lay a shadowy grove of banana and mango trees, and trees with a kind of white, round fruit hanging from their flexile branches; near the hut grew the tall trees, like some kind of palm, which had particularly attracted my attention; they were, I found, cactus plants and flowers. I was here struck, beyond everything else, with a general appearance of order and attention, which it is very unusual to find in and about the houses of the children of Africa. The hut was well-built and kept up, and the numerous tropical trees around it had evidently been planted con amore. The little hut had also its piazza under the palm-leaf roof, and some sugar-cane was lying on the table.

The door stood open; fire burned on the floor—a certain sign that it was inhabited by an African! The morning sun shone in through the door, and I also looked in. The interior was spacious, neat, and clean. On the left sat an old negro on his low bed, dressed in a blue shirt and woollen cap; he sat with his elbows propped on his knees, and his face resting on his hands, turned towards the fire, and evidently half asleep. He did not see me, and I therefore could look around me undisturbed. An iron-pot with a plate over it stood on the fire, and before the fire sate a tortoiseshell cat, and by her, on one leg, stood a white chicken. Fire, iron-pot, cat, and chicken, everything seemed half asleep in the sunshine which streamed in upon them. The cat just looked at me, then winked her eyes again, and gazed at the fire. It was a picture of real tropical still-life. Golden ears of maize-corn,