MAKESHIFT AXES OR ADZES
The other two figures represent the manner in which a broad chisel may be converted into a serviceable axe or adze, by smoothing off and channelling the front of the knob, and firmly lashing the chisel to it with raw hide either fore and aft or athwartships as required. A plane iron ([p. 140]) is often made to answer the same purpose. The hoes used by the women in Africa are made in nearly the same manner as the axes, but larger; sometimes they are flat, thin, and oval; sometimes chisel or adze shaped; and sometimes a gouge like form is given to the blade, but in all cases a spike is left at the top for insertion into the heavy knob of the handle. At times this knob is cut where two branches project from it, so as to form a double-handled hoe, an example of which is shown in our engraving of a Bechuana hut on p. 281.
Hurdle or wattle work.
It may not be amiss here to give an example of the manner of making a piece of wattled work for a door, a window shutter, a table, a bedstead, or any other purpose. As many stakes as are required are planted firmly in the ground, either in a trench or, which is better, in holes separately made with a “grauwing” stick for the purpose. Rattans, osiers, twigs, reeds, or grass, are then wattled in in the manner shown in the sketch, their ends being either cut off, if they are not flexible enough to bend well, or returned round the outermost stake, and wattled in again if they are. In doing this, care must be taken not to draw the outermost stakes unduly together; and to prevent this it is a good plan to cut a strong stick, with a fork at one end and a notch like gaff jaws in the other, and set it between the stakes to keep them apart, removing it when it is necessary to put fresh wattles over the top, and replacing it when they are to be forced down. Baskets, crates, or gabions of any size, may be made by setting up squares or circles of stakes, and removing them when wattled; or houses may be built by fixing them more permanently and using them as the walls.
WATTLED WORK.
We have often admired the simplicity of the equipment of a Javanese ship carpenter; the ponderous maul or heavy axe and adze of our workman is unknown to him; all his tools, axe, adze, maul, hammer, and augers, are made so as to fit successively on one handle about 2ft. in length (see [p. 44]), and are carried in a canvas haversack slung upon his shoulder. We have seen, perhaps, a hundred Javanese workmen squatting about the decks and sides of our little schooner busy as bees, and tapping away like so many woodpeckers, where one-fourth the number of English carpenters could not have worked without injuring each other.
Blocks or pulleys.
The attention of the traveller is too seldom directed to blocks and tackle. These useful and unpretending economisers of labour are thought to belong to a ship, and therefore to be out of place on an inland journey. Nevertheless, we have found that the possession of eight or ten blocks of different sizes, and two or three coils of rope to suit them, has often done us most essential service; and as a traveller may unexpectedly find them necessary, where perhaps nothing but rope of hide or native vegetable fibre can be obtained, we subjoin directions for making the simplest forms, which we believe will meet most of the probable requirements: