My Stock Of Medicines Was Smashed;
And All Our Furniture And Clothing Carried Off And Sold At Public Auction
To Pay The Expenses Of The Foray.
I do not mention these things by way of making a pitiful wail over my losses,
nor in order
To excite commiseration; for, though I do feel sorry
for the loss of lexicons, dictionaries, &c., which had been
the companions of my boyhood, yet, after all, the plundering only set me
entirely free for my expedition to the north, and I have never since
had a moment's concern for any thing I left behind. The Boers resolved
to shut up the interior, and I determined to open the country,
and we shall see who have been most successful in resolution, they or I.
A short sketch of African housekeeping may not prove uninteresting
to the reader. The entire absence of shops led us to make
every thing we needed from the raw materials. You want bricks
to build a house, and must forthwith proceed to the field,
cut down a tree, and saw it into planks to make the brick-moulds;
the materials for doors and windows, too, are standing in the forest;
and, if you want to be respected by the natives, a house of decent dimensions,
costing an immense amount of manual labor, must be built.
The people can not assist you much; for, though most willing
to labor for wages, the Bakwains have a curious inability
to make or put things square: like all Bechuanas, their dwellings
are made round. In the case of three large houses, erected by myself
at different times, every brick and stick had to be put square
by my own right hand.
Having got the meal ground, the wife proceeds to make it into bread;
an extempore oven is often constructed by scooping out a large hole
in an anthill, and using a slab of stone for a door. Another plan,
which might be adopted by the Australians to produce something better
than their "dampers", is to make a good fire on a level piece of ground,
and, when the ground is thoroughly heated, place the dough
in a small, short-handled frying-pan, or simply on the hot ashes;
invert any sort of metal pot over it, draw the ashes around,
and then make a small fire on the top. Dough, mixed with a little leaven
from a former baking, and allowed to stand an hour or two in the sun,
will by this process become excellent bread.
We made our own butter, a jar serving as a churn; and our own candles
by means of moulds; and soap was procured from the ashes of the plant salsola,
or from wood-ashes, which in Africa contain so little alkaline matter that
the boiling of successive leys has to be continued for a month or six weeks
before the fat is saponified. There is not much hardship in being
almost entirely dependent on ourselves; there is something of the feeling
which must have animated Alexander Selkirk on seeing conveniences
springing up before him from his own ingenuity; and married life
is all the sweeter when so many comforts emanate directly
from the thrifty striving housewife's hands.
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