FOUR WEEKS IN FIKA 271 



cloth to complete the image. The children make 

 them, and they brought a whole army to us in 

 camp. 



The little girls also have clay toys, dolls rudely 

 moulded and very conventional in expression, orna- 

 mented with white stripes. Some have sticks in one 

 nostril like the children's mothers, but the form is 

 somewhat similar to that of an Egyptian mummy. 

 Cross-questioned as to how they got there, the Mallam 

 answered that his people had brought them from 

 Yemen, in Arabia, which they left at the end of the 

 thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. 



A third toy is used for babies. It is very simple, and 

 consists of a bird's beak bound round in cloth that 

 darts in and out on bamboo sticks like a lazy-tongs. 



Generally Mrs Talbot and I dispensed with the 

 Mallam's, or indeed any other, escort in our daily 

 walks. Sometimes we would come and watch the 

 baking of the pots, or the processes of dyeing, for 

 which indigo is in common use. 



At other times we roamed the hills, where a mis- 

 adventure once befell Mrs Talbot. She was bitten in 

 the leg by a snake, the fangs passing through her 

 leather stocking. Unluckily I was not with her, and 

 it was twenty minutes before she got home, where 

 we could apply the correct cures — permanganate, liga- 

 tures, champagne, brandy, and black coffee. As her 

 pulse never fluctuated, the snake cannot have been a 

 poisonous one, and she suffered no ill result — except 

 from the cures, which did make her very sick and 

 miserable all the next day. 



Meanwhile Mr Talbot, though a prisoner in bed, did 

 not neglect his opportunities, and for hours together 



