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In a little while he stumbles on another of these balls, as big as a man's hat, which he breaks, and opens with increasing eagerness; when, lo! it is as empty as a 'deaf nut' the water which percolated through the shale having rusted the iron that goes to form the crust along with the ochre, but failed, as in the previous case, to form crystals in the interior.
"By this time, several of the hills before us were crowded with women and children, who, having their faces painted with ochre, and their heads adorned with white feathers, were waving their mats, and calling out to us 'ara mi, ara mi, the usual welcome home.
By sunrise the next morning, all that remained of the threatened attack on Fort Peak, were the smouldering ashes of some wood fires eighty muskets piled in the fort and the yellow ochre, and red stripes that still adorned the countenance of the late Indian chief, but now snoring Lieutenant Maurice Malone.
There was something inconceivably hopeless in his face in that ochre light. Then the place where I was born and brought up came to me with a startling completeness, and I began to go over my own life, step by step. To make a long story short, I perceived that what my father had tried to teach me, in his own way, had some reason in it. He was a good deal of a man.
To make an excellent stucco, which will adhere to wood work, take a bushel of the best stone lime, a pound of yellow ochre, and a quarter of a pound of brown umber, all in fine powder. Mix them to a proper thickness, with a sufficient quantity of hot water, but not boiling, and lay it on with a new white-washer's brush.
Spongy and blistered, they were horrible, the flesh tumefied, swollen over the head of the spike, and the gripping toes, with the horny blue nails, contradicted the imploring gesture of the hands, turning that benediction into a curse; and as the hands pointed heavenward, so the feet seemed to cling to earth, to that ochre ground, ferruginous like the purple soil of Thuringia.
There were few of the natives present who were not more or less marked with it, and it was no doubt, indicative of mourning. Some of the men, however, were painted with red and yellow ochre, with which it was evident to me they had besmeared themselves since our appearance, most likely in preparing for the combat in which they fancied they would be engaged.
The great sheik came behind them. He was quickly ushered into my presence beneath a shady acacia, close to my tent door. He was perfectly red from head to toes, having been freshly smeared with red ochre and grease for the interview. A well-dressed skin of an antelope was slung across his shoulder, and descending across his loins it constituted his scanty clothing.
Manenko was a tall, strapping woman about twenty, distinguished by a profusion of ornaments and medicines hung round her person; the latter are supposed to act as charms. Her body was smeared all over with a mixture of fat and red ochre, as a protection against the weather; a necessary precaution, for, like most of the Balonda ladies, she was otherwise in a state of frightful nudity.
The opposite hill, hollowed by time, had a frowning front, sandy, rocky, and yellow; here were shallow caverns, dips without depth; the soft and pulverizing rock had ochre tones. A few plants with prickly leaves above, and burdocks, reeds, and aquatic growths below, were indication enough of the northern exposure and the poverty of the soil.
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