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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