VII. The Little Black Children Who Lived in a "Zoo"
It was noon but the little boys and girls were all asleep, in the huts under the palm trees. No, they were not still asleep. They had got up with the sun, but when the sun was high and hot they went to bed again. Their fathers and mothers were asleep too.
The huts were as round as big sugar bowls. You might think there was sugar inside of them from the swarms of ants and flies. The walls of the huts were made of bark, the cone-shaped roofs of long palm leaves. The trees and the river seemed to be asleep, and the comical monkeys in the trees, and the ugly crocodiles in the river. The leaves were wilted by the heat. Among the drooping leaves hung cocoanuts as big as baby brother's head, and bunches of fat, yellow bananas. By and by a shower of rain fell and cooled the air. The rain was like the kiss of the prince in "Sleeping Beauty." The crocodiles yawned, the monkeys chattered, little black heads popped from the doors of the huts. Then the whole village of people tumbled out of doors.
Such funny little boys and girls! You would have laughed to see them, and they would have laughed to see you. They were as happy as kittens and laughed at everything. They were black all over. That was easily seen for they had no clothes on at all. They had big, black eyes with very white rims. Their teeth were as white as ivory, and their hair curled tight to their heads in little knots. They laughed and cried and talked and screamed. They were as noisy as the monkeys in the trees. They were negro children. Their home was in the hot jungle of a far away country called Africa.
Every child had his breakfast in his hands. Some had bread made from the flour of the manioc root. They all had baked yams, a kind of sweet potato; and ground nuts, something like our peanuts. The babies sucked sugar cane. Maybe some of them had eggs, for there were little speckled Guinea chickens in the village. They drank from long-handled gourds, and from cocoanut shells. They were as fat as little butter balls.
These children could not swim in the river, for the crocodiles would bite them in two. They did not wash their faces. When they had put bracelets of iron and copper and ivory on their arms
