It is singular that the Kabyles, so proficient in moulding vases, dishes, and lamps, and in ornamentation, should yet be unacquainted with such a simple and ancient device as the potter’s wheel. This fact points in a very significant manner to the isolation in which they have lived. I have previously described how, in weaving, the woof is passed through the warp with the fingers instead of with a shuttle, a curious proof of the same thing. There is a good collection of Kabyle pottery in the Museum of Native Industries at Algiers, showing great skill, originality, and fancy in the shapes and in the patterns drawn on them.
In Commander Cameron’s ‘Across Africa,’ he describes a woman near Tanganyika Lake making pots, and says that ‘the shapes are very graceful and wonderfully truly formed, many being like the amphoræ in the Diomed at Pompeii.’
A vase ending in a point appears at first sight to be an inconvenient arrangement; but it is well adapted to be carried on the back, it cannot be left out in the open, where it is most likely to be exposed to knocks, but must be put away in some corner, when the peg holds it firm.
The fields were now becoming denuded of their crops, and the corn was piled in sheaves on the flat ground about the tent. ‘Some on their part indeed were reaping with sharp sickles the staff-like stalks laden with ears, as it were a present of Ceres. Others I wot were binding them in straw ropes, and were laying the threshing floor.’
While the reaper fills his greedy hands,
And binds the golden sheaves in brittle bands.
A few days before I left, threshing began. The preparations surprised me. A party of women brought from the village a large supply of cow-dung, which they mixed with water and spread out. On asking why they made that mess, I was told it was to keep the corn clean. The layer, spread in a large circle, very soon dried hard. The peas (for they began by threshing peas) were heaped upon it, and two yoke of oxen driven over them; a man followed each yoke, and they circled round and round all the afternoon, till the haulm was broken up, and the peas knocked out.
Thus with autumnal harvests covered o’er,
And thick bestrown, lies Ceres’ sacred floor,
When round and round, with never-wearied pain,