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Updated: June 24, 2025
The holy man whose summer resting-place it was had long since abandoned it, and the weather had broken the red-daubed image of his god. The two men stumbled, heavy-limbed and heavy-eyed, over the ashes of a brick-set cooking-place, and dropped down under the shelter of the branches, while the rain and river roared together.
The room might have been easily made into a handsome dark oak dining-parlour by removing the oven and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which were evidently never used, the real cooking-place being at some distance.
Part of its flesh went into the soup-kettle, and the rest was salted for the next day. We then sought for some flat stones in the bed of the charming little river that ran at a little distance from us, and set about constructing a cooking-place.
Several of these duck villages can scarcely be said to be situated on terra firma, as many of the nipa or attap-houses are founded on the supporting trunks of trees growing out of the sedgy swamp. The houses have a small lower platform of bamboo on two sides, for a cooking-place and for landing from a boat, below and around being trees or bamboos growing out of the water.
Agelan knows a simpler way; she fills her mouth with water and squirts it on her hands. The cocoa-nut gratings are kneaded with a little water, while the girls sweep the earth off the cooking-place and uncover the stones; an appetizing smell spreads, and the master of the house watches the preparations with a sharp eye and a silent tongue.
This is done for two reasons: when a typhoon sweeps over the islands, the lowland coast is sometimes flooded; moreover, the wind blows with such terrific force that none but the most strongly built house will withstand it. In the centre of the floor is a pit, or fireplace, much like the cooking-place one sees in Samoa or in Hawaii.
At one end of it was a cooking-place, with a clay floor, and shells for crockery. Several families occupied the other parts of the house, which was very extensive. There were generally half-a-dozen or more visitors in addition to the families.
Toward the farther end, a hole in the floor was the family cooking-place, and behind it an elevation of beaten earth made a wide shelf for a long row of jars shaped like the Roman amphoræ of two thousand years ago. Pegs driven into one of the walls were hung with gandourahs and a foutah or two; and of furniture, worthy of that name in the eyes of Europeans, there was none.
The place had rows of bunks in various stages of untidiness. It was lighted by two very smoky kerosene lamps, and had in its middle a table with cards on it. Three men sat about the table, as if they did not quite know whether to come forward and be included in the conversation or not. At the further end Marjorie could see the door that led to the cooking-place, and eyed it with interest.
To add to this evil, the co-boose or cooking-place being upon deck, it would not have been possible to have cooked for so large a company in the event of bad weather.
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