The house, however, had the advantage of two small rooms—one at either end of the larger central room. In one of these small rooms we stored our tools, nails, and various materials for building our station; into the other small room we put our barter goods and our scanty stock of provisions; and in the central room we arranged our two camp bedsteads, a table, a trunk or two, our chairs, and when we went in ourselves there was not very much room to spare. That night when we went to bed we discovered that although the women had removed their pots, hoes, mats, etc., they had left behind them a large population which we wished they had also taken with them.
To make our hut more habitable was our first object. We cut away the high door-sill of sticks, canes, and grass; then in the eaves above the doorway we made a gap in the roof by shortening a few rafters and removing the palm-frond thatch—this gave us an easy means of entrance and exit. Then we placed two poles about eight feet from the front of our hut, and six feet from each other; a small pole was tied to the posts about six feet from the ground, and other thin poles were run from the cross-piece to the roof, and on these we arranged and tied a large number of fronds from a small species of palm tree—this gave us a fine shady porch to our house, which we used as dining-room, study, pantry, and reception-room. We routed out a good percentage of the surplus population from our hut, and on fine days we were not so uncomfortable as to have any real ground for complaint.
But alas on wet days! The discomfort of them has left a lasting impression on my memory. With a tornado the temperature often dropped from 90° down to 65° in less than two hours; the strong, stormy winds whistled through the grass walls of our hut; and the rain that fell in torrents percolated through our roof, and in some places, along the ridge especially, it ran in gentle cascades, anything but pleasant to the owners of such house property to behold. To have made a fire in the house to warm ourselves, as the natives did, would have meant being more than half choked and blinded by the smoke that would have filled the chimneyless house. We eventually found that the best way to weather the storms comfortably was to lie on our camp beds, pull a waterproof sheet over us, light a candle, and putting it on a dry spot read until the tornado had spent itself.
There was another difficulty that we had to meet, viz. cooking. It was easy enough to boil and fry our food; but boiled meat and fowls after a few weeks somewhat pall; and we had not sufficient fat or lard to fry much. There was palm-oil in abundance to be bought for a few brass rods, but we had too frequently watched the natives make it to relish food fried in it. We therefore bought two native saucepans for a penny each; these were about 10 inches in diameter, 6 inches deep, and semicircular in shape. One we stood on three stones, placed an empty sardine tin in the bottom, and, laying a fowl on a tin dish, arranged it on the sardine tin, and then turned the second saucepan upside down on the first, fitting their edges together. Our fowls baked beautifully in this improvised oven; but the saucepan had a tendency to crack.
Later on we procured an empty paraffin-oil drum, cut out the top with a hammer and chisel, laid the drum down, and put in a layer of clay along the bottom side. This clay not only gave us a level surface on which to stand our dishes, but also kept the food from burning, and retained the heat. We then nailed some tin, procured by flattening out a few empty meat tins, over some pieces of wood, and there we had an admirable door for our new oven. It cooked fowls, puddings, and bread[[6]] splendidly. No patent has yet been sought for these inventions, so all those placed in a similar predicament are free to use them.
[6]. See Appendix, Note 1, p. 335.
Fowls were plentiful, such as they were; but fresh meat (beef, mutton, or goat) was a rarity. Consequently we were not at all sorry when two head-men brought us, one day, a goat each as a present. Up to that time we had not received a single present from them, not because the natives had not brought any to us—they would have loaded us with their so-called gifts—but we had persistently refused them on principle, knowing as we did that the offerings were simply presented that the givers might receive two or three times their value in return presents, and we had no desire to foster such a spirit of selfishness, and no money to waste on foolish amenities. We had refused so many “gifts” that when these two head-men brought their goats and offered one to Mr. Stapleton and the other to myself, we decided to accept them. We had, however, no enclosure in which to keep goats, so putting a private mark on them we sent them to herd with the other goats of the town.
We arranged that as the goats were of the same size, we would give exactly the same return presents. We reckoned the goats at fifty brass rods each—the market value of them; but we decided to give in barter goods the equivalents of one hundred rods each, which we thought was sufficiently generous for the occasion.
Mr. Stapleton called Dintela, the head-man who had presented him with his goat, and spreading out the goods he made the usual speech of good-will, etc., that the event demanded.
Dintela gave him to understand that the present was too small, that white men who were so rich should give a much larger quantity of goods, and that he could not accept such a paltry present. As Mr. Stapleton would not increase the offering, Dintela demanded the return of the goat, and tying a string round its neck he led it away, much disgusted that he had not made so good a bargain out of his present to the white man as he had anticipated.