As We Were Sleeping One Night Outside A Hut, But Near Enough To Hear
What Was Going On Within, An Anxious Mother Began To Grind Her Corn
About Two O'clock In The Morning.
"Ma," inquired a little girl, "why
grind in the dark?" Mamma advised sleep, and administered material
for a sweet
Dream to her darling, by saying, "I grind meal to buy a
cloth from the strangers, which will make you look a little lady."
An observer of these primitive races is struck continually with such
little trivial touches of genuine human nature.
The mill consists of a block of granite, syenite, or even mica
schist, fifteen or eighteen inches square and five or six thick, with
a piece of quartz or other hard rock about the size of a half brick,
one side of which has a convex surface, and fits into a concave
hollow in the larger and stationary stone. The workwoman kneeling,
grasps this upper millstone with both hands, and works it backwards
and forwards in the hollow of the lower millstone, in the same way
that a baker works his dough, when pressing it and pushing from him.
The weight of the person is brought to bear on the movable stone, and
while it is pressed and pushed forwards and backwards, one hand
supplies every now and then a little grain to be thus at first
bruised and then ground on the lower stone, which is placed on the
slope so that the meal when ground falls on to a skin or mat spread
for the purpose.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 468 of 505
Words from 126309 to 126570
of 136856
