A Narrative Of Captivity In Abyssinia With Some Account Of The Late Emperor Theodore, His Country And People By Henry Blanc
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General Merewether, with kind forethought, had sent us some seeds,
and we obtained more from Gaffat.
Rassam's inclosure had been
considerably enlarged by the chiefs, and he was able to arrange a
nice garden. He had before sown some tomato seeds; these plants
sprang up wonderfully well, and Mr. Rassam, with great taste, made
with bamboos a very pretty trellis-work, soon entirely covered by
this novel creeper. Between our hut, the fence, and the hut opposite
ours, we had a small piece of ground, about eight feet broad on the
average, and about ten feet long. Prideaux and myself laboured hard,
delighted at the idea of having something to do; with slit-up bamboos
we made a small trellis-work, dividing our garden into squares,
triangles, &c., and on the 24th of May, in honour of our Queen's
birthday, we sowed the seed. Some things came out very quickly;
peas, in six weeks, were seven or eight feet high, mustard, cress,
radishes, and salads prospered. But our central flower-bed remained
for a long time barren; and when at last a few plants came out,
they belonged to some biennial species, as they only flowered in
the following spring. A few peas, just to taste (our garden was too
small to enable us to get from it more than a scanty dish or two),
raw lettuces (we had no oil, and only inferior vinegar made out of
tej), with now and then a radish, were luxuries we immensely enjoyed
after our long meat diet.
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