An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone (Volume 1); To Which Is Added, an Account of the Present State of Medicine Among Them (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. V. SITUATION OF AFRICAN TOWNS. HOUSES. PALAVER HOUSE. TOWNS OF THE MAHOMMEDANS. IN the choice of a spot of ground whereon to build a town, security is the primary object of the Africans. This is owing to the barbarous custom, which has too long prevailed in that country, of seizing the unsuspecting inhabitants of villages, and hurrying them away into slavery. To guard against this danger they generally choose the bank of some small river or creek, lined with thick mangroves, and thus rendered difficult of access: or where such a situation cannot be conveniently procured, a small piece of ground is cleared, barely sufficient for the houses to stand upon, which is surrounded by, and as it were buried in the bosom of a thick impenetrable wood. The only approach to the town is by one or more narrow foot-paths, sometimes scarcely perceptible, which are carried in a winding direction round the place, so that a traveller wandering through these gloomy forests may suppose himself, even when arrived within a few yards of a town, to be many miles from any human habitation, until he is undeceived by the noise of the inhabitants within. This circumstance renders tHeir towns for the most part unhealthy xto Europeans, the breeze which comes to them through the woods being in general laden with moisture, which makes the mornings and nights unpleasantly cool; while, during the middle of the day the breeze dying away, the heat reflected from the ground renders the air in- supportably hot. The native inhabitants also suffer in their health from the same cause, though in a less degree. Having, however, no idea that their illness can have this origin, or proceed from the vicinity of swamps; whenever any extraordinary sickness or mortality occurs, they impute it to the effects of witchc...