Sunday, August 22.—
We woke up this morning with a bright sun shining through the canvas of the tent, and making it intolerably hot inside; and as we threw open the door of the inner compartment, the fragrant aroma of the ‘boss pie’ was wafted to us on the morning air.
We spent the morning in quiet Sunday fashion, chiefly in lying under the shade of an awning made with rugs which we call the ‘sycamine tree,’ and eating wimberries and cream. Besides this we perpetrated a great deal of high art; every one was seized with the desire of sketching the camp, and so we sat around on pinnacles like so many pelicans, libelling the unfortunate place from every position whence it could be seen.
It is looking very comfortable just now. The tent itself is pitched in an angle of a steep little cliff which effectually protects it from cold winds at one side and the back, and at the other side we have put up a thick fence of birch branches to temper the storm to the sleeping-tent. We find it very convenient to have the two compartments: the inner one is only used for sleeping in, and always immediately after reveillé is plunged in an apparently hopeless confusion of rugs, sheepskins, mattresses, and boots, with here and there a book or a hat protruding (to use the Skipper’s beautiful simile) like brickbats in a dust-heap. After breakfast all the bedding is dragged out to be aired on the rocks, and the tent generally tidied.
But the outer tent is always a picture of order and neatness, for here we keep our stores, boxes of flour and biscuits, cartridges, cooking utensils, tools, whisky, and potatoes. One of the boxes was made specially under Esau’s directions to be used as a table: the top and bottom are both hinged, and so when the box is put on its front and these two lids opened it makes a very good large table; the lids are held up by a batten screwed underneath them, and for greater security we have added two legs. But at present the weather is so pleasant that we always feed outside, a few yards from the tent and nearer to the oven.
On the extreme left, as the penny showman says, you will observe one of the meat safes, the other one ‘thou canst not see, because it’s not in sight,’ being close to the back of the tent. Also behind the tent may be faintly seen the mustard and cress garden, always covered with a sheet by day to save it from the heat of the sun, and with the same sheet by night, to guard it from the cold, so that the poor thing never gets any light, and does not flourish very exceedingly. None of the mustard seeds have as yet grown up as big as the one in the parable, but when one does we mean to make a lot of salad out of it, enough for all the camp.
Above the middle of the outer tent are three things which look like lightning conductors, but are only our rods, which are always stuck in the ground there when not in use. At their foot under the rock is the egg larder, neatly constructed of stones and turf, with a wooden lid; and hanging from the cliff hard by is a very pretty and curious spider’s nest made of paper, like a miniature wasp-nest, about two inches in diameter.
High up in the centre is ‘the meteor flag of England,’ engaged in its customary occupation of ‘yet terrific burning,’ there being absolutely no Dutch Boers here. Underneath its shelter are many forked poles with cross-bars, all made from the birch with which the valley abounds just here, and on which clothing of some sort is always hanging out to dry; so that the place looks like a laundry-ground, and deceives even the ravens, which come down in swarms from the mountains in search of maids’ noses to devour. In the midst of these poles may be seen the oven, with its flue reaching halfway up the hill, and its two openings, the lower one for fuel, the upper for food.
THE CAMP IN MEMURUDALEN.