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There never is in the hut of a Puna shepherd. Utensils! yes there was an earthen "olla," or pot to cook soup in, another to boil or roast maize, a jar to hold water, a few split gourd-shells for plates, two or three others for cups that was all. This was the catalogue of utensils. A couple of dirty sheepskins lay upon the ground. These were the bed. Nothing more was to be seen.
When every one had brought his quota, and the whole was properly arranged in small gourd-shells, the schoolmaster offered up a short prayer, the substance of which was that God and the holy Prophet might preserve us from robbers and all bad people, that our provisions might never fail us, nor our limbs become fatigued.
The whole day we are beset by crowds of starving people, bringing small gourd-shells to receive the expected corn. The people of this tribe are mere apes, trusting entirely to the productions of nature for their subsistence; they will spend hours in digging out field-mice from their burrows, as we should for rabbits.
Utensils! yes there was an earthen "olla," or pot to cook soup in, another to boil or roast maize, a jar to hold water, a few split gourd-shells for plates, two or three others for cups that was all. This was the catalogue of utensils. Two stones set a little apart formed the fireplace, in which the shepherd, when he makes a fire to cook with, makes it out of dry dung.
All were volunteers, some to remove from the wreck of the old building such timbers as might still be of service; some to quarry stone for a foundation, an extravagance never before dreamed of by an islander; some to bring sand in gourd-shells upon their heads, or laboriously gathered in the folds of bark-cloth aprons; some to bring lime from the coral reefs twenty feet under water; whilst the majority hurried to the forest belt, miles away on the mountain side, to fell the straightest and tallest trees.
During this time many men had been baling out with large buckets, and now that she was safe, a general rush was made on board to empty the water with every conceivable utensil gourd-shells, basins, cooking pots, &c. "When baled out, we discovered and stopped the leaks, and floated her.
Mats for his tent, ropes manufactured with the hair of his goats and camels, pots for carrying fat; water-jars and earthenware pots or gourd-shells for containing milk; leather water-skins for the desert, and sheep-skin bags for his clothes, these are the requirements of the Arabs.
On entering the negro quarter, you cannot fail to observe tall papaw poles or cane-reeds stuck up in front of many of the cabins, and carrying upon their tops large, yellow gourd-shells, each perforated with a hole in the side.
Babies accompanied their mothers, strapped upon their backs with leathern bands, and protected from the weather by the usual tortoise-like coverings of gourd-shells. Thus it may be imagined that the Shooli tribe were born hunters, as they had accompanied the public hunts from their earliest infancy. My two boys, Saat and Bellaal, carried spare guns.
Mats for his tent, ropes manufactured with the hair of his goats and camels, pots for carrying fat, water-jars and earthenware pots or gourd-shells for containing milk, leather water-skins for the desert, and sheep-skin bags for his clothes these are the requirements of the Arabs.
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