Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon

by Sir Samuel White Baker

There are few positions more tantalizing to a hungry man than that of being surrounded b oysters without a knife. It is an obstinate and perverse wretch that will not accommodate itself to man's appetite, and it requires a forcible attack to vanquish it; so that every oyster eaten is an individual murder, in which the cold steel has been plunged into its vitals, and the animal finds itself swallowed before it as quite made up its mind that it has been opened. But take away the knife, and see how vain is the attempt to force the stronghold. How utterly useless is the oyster! You may turn it over and over, and look for a weak place, but there is no admittance; you may knock it with a stone, but the knock will be unanswered. How would you open such a creature without a knife?

This was one of the many things that had never occurred to me until one day when I found myself with some three or four friends and a few boatmen on a little island, or rather a rock, about a mile from the shore. This rock was rich in the spasmodic kind of oyster, large detached masses of which lay just beneath the water in lumps of some hundredweight each, which had been formed by the oysters clustering and adhering together. It so happened that our party were unanimous in the love of these creatures, and we accordingly exerted ourselves to roll out of the water a large mass; which having accomplished, we discovered to our dismay that nothing but one penknife was possessed among us. This we knew was a useless weapon against such armor; however, in our endeavors to perform impossibilities, we tickled the oyster and broke the knife. After gazing for seine time in blank despair at our useless prize, a bright thought struck one of the party, and drawing his ramrod he began to screw it Into the weakest part of an oyster; this, however, was proof, and the ramrod broke.

Stupid enough it may appear, but it was full a quarter of an hour before any of us thought of a successful plan of attack. I noticed a lot of drift timber scattered upon the island, and then the right idea was hit. We gathered the wood, which was bleached and dry, an we piled it a few feet to windward of the mass of oysters. Striking a light with a cap and some powder, we lit the pile. It blazed and the wind blew the heat strong upon the oysters, which accordingly began to squeak and hiss, until one by one they gave up the ghost, and, opening their shells, exposed their delightfully roasted bodies, which were eaten forthwith.

How very absurd and uninteresting this is! but nevertheless it is one of those trifling incidents which sharpen the imagination when you depend upon your own resources.

It is astonishing how perfectly helpless some people are if taken from the artificial existence of every-day life and thrown entirely upon themselves. One man would be in superlative misery while another would enjoy the responsibility, and delight in the fertility of his own invention in accommodating himself to circumstances. A person can scarcely credit the unfortunate number of articles necessary for his daily and nightly comfort, until he is deprived of them. To realize this, lose yourself, good reader, wander off a great distance from everywhere, and be benighted in a wild country, with nothing but your rifle and hunting-knife. You will then find yourself dinnerless, supperless, houseless, comfortless, sleepless, cold and miserable, if you do not know how to manage for yourself. You will miss your dinner sadly if you are not accustomed to fast for twenty-four hours. You will also miss your bed decidedly, and your toothbrush in the morning; but if, on the other hand, you are of the right stamp, it is astonishing how lightly these little troubles will sit on you, and how comfortable you will make yourself under the circumstances.

The first thing you will consider is the house. The architectural style will of course depend upon the locality. If the ground is rocky and hilly, be sure to make a steep pitch in the bank or the side of a rock form a wall, to leeward of which you will lie when your mansion is completed by a few sticks simply inclined from the rock and covered with grass. If the country is flat, you must cut four forked sticks, and erect a villa after this fashion in skeleton-work, which you then cover with grass.

You will then strew the floor with grass or, small boughs, in lieu of a feather bed, and you will tie up a bundle of the same material into a sheaf, which will form a capital pillow. If grass and sticks are at hand, this will be completed thus far in an hour.

Then comes the operation of fire-making, which is by no means easy; and as warmth comes next to food, and a blaze both scares wild animals and looks cheerful, I advise some attention to be paid to the fire. There must be a good collection of old fallen logs, if possible, together with some green wood to prevent too rapid a consumption of fuel. But the fire is not yet made.

First tear off a bit of your shirt and rub it with moistened gunpowder. Wind this in a thick roll round your ramrod just below the point of the screw, with the rough torn edge uppermost. Into these numerous folds sprinkle a pinch of gunpowder; then put a cap on the point of the screw, and a slight tap with your hunting-knife explodes it and ignites the linen.

Now, fire in its birth requires nursing like a young baby, or it will leave you in the lurch. A single spark will perhaps burn your haystacks, but when you want a fire it seldom will burn, out of sheer obstinacy; therefore, take a wisp of dry grass, into which push the burning linen and give it a rapid, circular motion through the air, which will generally set it in a blaze.