The Prime Utensil Of
The African Savage Is The Gourd; The Shell Of Which Is The Bowl
Presented To Him
By nature as the first idea from which he is to model.
Nature, adapting herself to the requirements of animals
And man, appears
in these savage countries to yield abundantly much that savage man can
want. Gourds with exceedingly strong shells not only grow wild, which if
divided in halves afford bowls, but great and quaint varieties form
natural bottles of all sizes, from the tiny phial to the demijohn
containing five gallons. The most savage tribes content themselves with
the productions of nature, confining their manufacture to a coarse and
half-baked jar for carrying water; but the semi-savage, like those of
Unyoro, affords an example of the first step towards manufacturing art,
by the fact of COPYING FROM NATURE: the utter savage makes use of
nature - the gourd is his utensil; and the more advanced natives of
Unyoro adopt it as the model for their pottery. They make a fine quality
of jet black earthenware, producing excellent tobacco-pipes most finely
worked in imitation of the small egg-shaped gourd; of the same
earthenware they make extremely pretty bowls, and also bottles copied
from the varieties of the bottle gourds: thus, in this humble art, we
see the first effort of the human mind in manufactures, in taking nature
for a model; precisely as the beautiful Corinthian capital originated in
a design from a basket of flowers.
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