The commodities sold in market are too tedious to mention, even if all could be remembered. Besides home productions, there are frequently imported articles from the four quarters of the globe. Various kinds of meat, fowls, sheep, goats, dogs, rats, tortoises, eggs, fish, snails, yams, Indian corn, Guinea corn, sweet potatoes, sugar-cane, ground peas, onions, pepper, various vegetables, palm-nuts, oil, tree-butter, seeds, fruits, firewood, cotton in the seeds, spun cotton, domestic cloth, imported cloth, as calico, shirting, velvets, &c., gun-powder, guns, flints, knives, swords, paper, raw silk, Turkey-red thread, needles, ready-made clothing, as trowsers, caps, breeches shirts without sleeves, baskets, brooms, and no one knows what all.
This description was given by Mr. Bowen in his (in many respects) admirable work, published in 1857, after a missionary residence and tour of seven years, from 1850 to the time of writing, among the people of whom he wrote.
Native Houses and Cities
The houses are built of unburnt clay which hardens in the sun, covered with a beautiful thatch-long, peculiar grass—exhibiting only the walls to the streets, the doors all opening inside of these walls, which are entered by a gate or large doorway; the streets generally irregular and narrow, but frequently agreeably relieved by wider ones, or large, open spaces or parks shaded with trees; all presenting a scene so romantic and antiquated in appearance, that you cannot resist the association with Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, and Thebais. The buildings are heavy and substantial for their kind, many of which are very extensive. These towns and cities are all entrenched and walled; extending entirely around them; that of Abbeokuta with the new addition being twenty-seven miles, though the population is less by forty thousand than Ibaddan, which embraces about twenty-three miles.
Conjugal and Filial Affection. Activity of Children
Great affection exists between husband and wife, the women being mostly restricted to household work, trading, and gathering in the fields, and aiding in carrying, whilst the men principally do the digging, planting, chopping, and other hard work. The children are also passionately beloved by their parents, sometimes with too much indulgence. They are very active, and every day some of them of all sizes may be seen dashing along a road or over a plain at fearful speed on horseback. They are great vaulters and ankle-springers, and boys may frequently be seen to spring from the ground whirling twice—turning two summersets—before lighting on their feet.
Population of Monrovia and the State
It may not be out of place here to add, that the population of the capital of Liberia is certainly not above three thousand, though they claim for it five thousand. And what has been said of the lack and seeming paucity of public improvement may be much extenuated when it is considered that the entire population of settlers only number at present some 15,000 souls; the native population being 250,000, or 300,000, as now incorporated.
Canine and Feline
As the enquiry has been frequently made of me as to "whether there are really dogs and cats in Africa," and if so, "whether they are like other dogs and cats"; and since a very intelligent American clergyman said to me that he had read it somewhere as a fact in natural history, that dogs in Africa could not bark; I simply here inform the curious enquirer, that there are dogs and cats plentifully in Africa, which "look like other dogs and cats," and assure them that the dogs bark, eat, and bite, just like "other dogs."