road-side, and selling boiled potatoes, roast-meats, etc. "Nonsense," said he, "that is all English romance: can you believe such folly?" Nevertheless I assert, and appeal to every one who has visited this section of Africa to verify my assertion, that there is not a more industrious people on the face of the earth. Rise as early as you please and enter a native compound, and you will there find the women engaged at their varied occupations. Go at night as late as you please, and there by the feeble light of her lamp she is seen in the act of labor, spinning, weaving or preparing food for the ensuing day. There is not a child among the Akus—I say nothing of other African tribes—who is not instructed in some means of realizing a living. The men are builders, blacksmiths, iron-smelters, tanners and leather-workers, tailors, carpenters, calabash-carvers, weavers, basket, hat and mat-makers, farmers: the women weave, spin, dye, cook, brew, make pots, oils, soap and I know not what else.
Not many years since, much attention was excited among practical chemists by the invention of the Percolator, an apparatus for extracting in a very short time the virtues of medicinal herbs, etc. Essentially the same contrivance is used, and has been used from time immemorial by the native Africans, in making lye from ashes for the manufacture of soap, and for
