United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Their furniture consists simply of a few ingeniously-woven mats for sleeping on, and some vessels made of gourds and cocoa-nut shells. The disposition of the Tahaitians is gentle, benevolent, open, gay, and peaceable, although some of them show scars of wounds received in war, which prove that they are not deficient in courage. To hatred and revenge they are wholly strangers.
The Bornouese make very good nets of a twine spun from a perennial plant called kalimboa: the implements for fishing are two large gourds nicely balanced, and fixed on a large stem of bamboo, at the extreme ends; the fisherman launches this on the river, and places himself astride between the two gourds, and thus he floats with the stream, and throws his net.
What seem to be white gourds hanging on its naked branches are their skulls! Go your way quickly, for the evil spirit that keeps me prisoner, and will not release me until I have sworn an oath to become his wife, will soon return. His name is Misdral, he is very fierce and mighty, and lives among the waste rocks over there on the north shore of the lake.
Less than three leagues from Tuxtla Gutierrez is Chiapa, famous for the brightly painted gourds and calabash vessels there manufactured and sent out to all parts of the republic. Toys, rattles, cups, and great bowl-basins are among the forms produced. We visited a house where five women were making pretty rattles from little crook-necked gourds.
In every case people were there; they might assist him. In this hope he shouted for aid with all his might before he reached them. But this was his last effort. It grew redder still in his eyes, breath failed his lungs, strength failed his bones; he fell. They heard him, however, or rather saw him. Two men ran with gourds full of water.
From the Masai women we tried to buy some of the milk they carried in gourds; at first they seemed not averse, but as soon as they realized the milk was not for our own consumption, they turned their backs on poor Sabakaki and refused to have anything more to do with us. These Masai are very difficult to trade with. Their only willing barter is done in sheep.
Poor Mukkun has, indeed, a very human side, and the phenomenon which we recognise as our Mussaul is not the whole of him. By birth he is an agriculturist, and there is in the environs of Surat a little plot of land and a small dilapidated hut in one corner of it, overgrown with monstrous gourds, which he thinks of as home, sweet home.
I talked it over with him. He was to bring his boat round on a certain night to an old wharf which was never guarded, and there he was to pick me up. I gave him directions to have several gourds of water and a lot of yams, cocoa-nuts, and sweet potatoes. "He was stanch and true, was little Tonga. No man ever had a more faithful mate. At the night named he had his boat at the wharf.
Then, loaded with our guns and gourds alas! almost empty we prepared to start on our journey without having the courage to undeceive Lucien, who thought we were going to meet his friend. At last, having examined the horizon carefully, I placed Master Job on my shoulder, and, led by Sumichrast, Lucien being borne between us, we pursued our course. The undertaking was beyond our strength.
It happened one day that I passed a tree under which lay several dry gourds, and catching one up I amused myself with scooping out its contents and pressing into it the juice of several bunches of grapes which hung from every bush.
Word Of The Day