The Chief Declined
To Sell A Harpoon, Because They Could Not Now Get The Milola Bark
From The Coast On Account Of Mariano's War.
He expressed some doubts
about our being children of the same Almighty Father, remarking that
"they could not become
White, let them wash ever so much." We made
him a present of a bit of cloth, and he very generously gave us in
return some fine fresh fish and Indian corn.
The heat of the weather steadily increases during this month
(August), and foggy mornings are now rare. A strong breeze ending in
a gale blows up stream every night. It came in the afternoon a few
weeks ago, then later, and at present its arrival is near midnight;
it makes our frail cabin-doors fly open before it, but continues only
for a short time, and is succeeded by a dead calm. Game becomes more
abundant; near our wooding-places we see herds of zebras, both
Burchell's and the mountain variety, pallahs (Antelope melampus),
waterbuck, and wild hogs, with the spoor of buffaloes and elephants.
Shiramba Dembe, on the right bank, is deserted; a few old iron guns
show where a rebel stockade once stood; near the river above this,
stands a magnificent Baobab hollowed out into a good-sized hut, with
bark inside as well as without. The old oaks in Sherwood Forest,
when hollow, have the inside dead or rotten; but the Baobab, though
stripped of its bark outside, and hollowed to a cavity inside, has
the power of exuding new bark from its substance to both the outer
and inner surfaces; so, a hut made like that in the oak called the
"Forest Queen," in Sherwood, would soon all be lined with bark.
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