Sometimes they had children with them, but these were very few; the most I saw with any one family was three, and many seemed to possess none at all.

Both the women and the children, like the men, were decently clothed in long, white garments, another peculiarity which showed that these natives were no ordinary African savages.
Oh! I can see Rica Town now after all these many years: the wide street swept and garnished, the brown-roofed, white-walled huts in their fertile, irrigated gardens, the tall, silent folk, the smoke from the cooking fires rising straight as a line in the still air, the graceful palms and other tropical trees, and at the head of the street, far away to the north, the rounded, towering shape of the forest-clad mountain that was called House of the Gods.

Often that vision comes back to me in my sleep, or at times in my waking hours when some heavy odour reminds me of the overpowering scent of the great trumpet-like blooms which hung in profusion upon broad-leaved bushes that were planted in almost every garden.
On we marched till at last we reached a tall, live fence that was covered with brilliant scarlet flowers, arriving at its gate just as the last red glow of day faded from the sky and night began to fall.

Komba pushed open the gate, revealing a scene that none of us are likely to forget.

The fence enclosed about an acre of ground of which the back part was occupied by two large huts standing in the usual gardens.
In front of these, not more than fifteen paces from the gate, stood another building of a totally different character.