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"To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II A Personal Narrative"

Building is easy;
oysters and other shells supply lime; the clay dug to the north makes good
adobes, and stone is easily quarried from the old fort.
We found Prince's in a state of unusual jollity, drinking the proceeds of
their three puncheons, dancing and playing what Sa Leone calls
'warry.' [Footnote: A game with counters and holes in the ground or a board
hollowed with cups. The same, called _bao_, or tables, is found in East
Africa (Zanzibar) and Cameron traced it extending clear across the Dark
Continent.] The bell and the psalm blended curiously with the song and the
palm-clapping that announces negro terpsichore. Of course 'fetish' was
present, in the shape of a woman peculiarly ornamented. Her very black
face was dazzlingly chalked, lines by threes running from hair-roots to
nose-bridge and meeting others drawn across the temples; the orbits of the
eyes were whitened, and thence triple streaks stretched up the nose and
across the cheeks. Hung to the extensive necklace of beads and other
matters were tassels of dry white fibre; her forearms carried yellow
bunches of similar material, and she held a broom of blackened bamboo and
the metal bell familiar to Unyamwezi.


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