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There was an unpleasant dampness in the air, and, although the rainy season would not commence until June, showers would occasionally fall among the mountains throughout the month of May. I accordingly purchased a number of large tanned ox-hides, that are rendered waterproof by a preparation with milk. The horse-fair was a disappointment.
It was a strange and stirring sight to behold the long files of Kafir women, straight and graceful as Venus in body, ugly almost as baboons in visage, coming to the fair from all parts of the land with enormous loads on their heads of ox-hides, horns, gum, and elephants' tusks.
There may be a thousand men idling, and poorly fed and clothed, in a neighborhood: along comes one of these shrewd adventurers; he sees an opportunity to utilize the bark of the trees and the ox-hides of the farmers' cattle, and he starts a tannery. He may accumulate more money than the thousand men he sets to work; but has he not done more?
I could not help thinking how completely they were at the mercy of the natives at that moment, had they chosen to attack them; the trader's party were lying under their untanned ox-hides with their empty guns. Each of my men was provided with a piece of mackintosh, with which his gunlocks were secured. We lay upon an angarep covered with a bull's hide until the storm was over.
Ives in the year 1275: "William of Fleetbridge and Anne his wife complain of Thomas Coventry of Leicester for unjustly withholding from them 55s. 2-1/2d. for a sack of wool.... Elias is ordered to attach the community of Leicester to answer ... and of the said community Allan Parker, Adam Nose and Robert Howell are attached by three bundles of ox-hides, three hundred bundles of sheep skins and six sacks of wool."
His invariable practice was, whenever a village or estate could be surprised, to sew up the leading inhabitants as tightly as possible in raw ox-hides stripped from their own cattle, when, being laid in the burning sun, the contraction of the hides as they dried caused a slow and lingering death of perfect agony, which it was the amusement of himself and the savages whom he led to enjoy whilst smoking their cigars.
Howe, are related in his report Idiotic children were found with their heads covered over with cold poultices of oak-bark, which the foolish parents supposed would tan the brain and harden it as the tanner does his ox-hides, and so make it capable of retaining impressions and remembering lessons.
Baker and I converted them into a stew, and then took refuge, wet and miserable, under our untanned ox-hides until the following morning.
And when these men saw that they were constrained, and could not possibly avoid the peril, they covered their ship with ox-hides, and filled it with abundant store of provision. In this ship they sailed away, and came to a sunless land, which knew not the stars, was void of daylight, and seemed to overshadow them with eternal night.
Two or three well-prepared ox-hides were spread upon the ground; and he requested Mrs. Baker to sit on his right hand, while I sat upon the left. Thus satisfactorily arranged, he called for some merissa, which his wife immediately brought in an immense gourd-shell, and both my wife and I having drunk, he took a long draught, and finished the gourd.
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