In an African Market Place

1884

An African market, with so many commodities to sell and so many eager sellers and loungers, is a most animated scene. The din of voices may be heard afar off, and when you enter the great open square, where, under the shade of great trees, perhaps a thousand people are disposed in little chaffering groups around their heaps of wares, it is worse than the parrot-house at the Zoological Gardens.

The women are the keenest traders; they haggle and scream and expostulate, and chuckle aside over their bargains, while the hulking men lounge about in good-humored uselessness, or squat in rows stolidly smoking. Although the strife of tongue is great, few real quarrels occur. There is in most cases a chief of the market, perhaps an old Fetish man, who regulates all disputes, and who so heavily fines both litigants that all are chary of provoking his arbitration.

This babel lasts but one day, and then for the rest of the "week" or "fortnight" the market place is void and desolate; only the old wicker baskets, banana skins, corn-shucks, feathers and egg-shells remain to witness to the great assemblage which has taken place. Of such a kind is the great market near Isaugila, and there are similar gatherings at Manyanga, Lutete, and in proximity to most of Mr. Stanley's stations. — Johnson's Congo River.


A Zulu belle is like the proverbial prophet. She has not much on'er in her own country. — Chicago Sun.


1926:

If the amount of tea drunk in England in one year were held in one teapot it would require a vessel as high as the cross on St. Paul's Cathedral, and in proportions of a teapot that high. Four trains could race abreast through its spout.