THE FIRST POTTER 317 



his life entirely devoid of cups and platters. Coconut 

 shell and calabash rind, horn of ox and skull of enemy, 

 bamboo-joint and capacious rhomb-shell, all alike, no doubt, 

 supplied him with congenial implements for drink or storage. 

 Like Eve in the Miltonic Paradise, there lacked him not 

 fit vessels pure ; picking some luscious tropical fruit, the 

 savoury pulp he chewed, and in the rind still as he thirsted 

 scooped the brimming stream. This was satisfactory as 

 far as it went, of course, but it was not pottery. He 

 couldn't boil his joint for dinner in coconut or skull ; he 

 had to do it with stone pot-boilers, in a rude kettle of 

 puddled clay. 



But at last one day, that inspired barbarian, the first 

 potter, hit by accident upon his grand discovery. He had 

 carried some water in a big calabash the hard shell of a 

 tropical fruit whose pulpy centre can be easily scooped out 

 and a happy thought suddenly struck him : why not put 

 the calabash to boil upon the fire with a little clay smeared 

 outside it ? The savage is conservative, but he loves to save 

 trouble. He tried the experiment, and it succeeded admir- 

 ably. The water boiled, and the calabash was not burnt 

 or broken. Our nameless philosopher took the primitive 

 vessel off the fire with a forked branch and looked at it 

 critically with the delighted eyes of a first inventor. A 

 wonderful change had suddenly come over it. He had 

 blundered accidentally upon the art of pottery. For what 

 is this that has happened to the clay ? It went in soft, 

 brown, and muddy ; it has come out hard, red, and stone- 

 like. The first potter ruminated and wondered. He didn't 

 fully realise, no doubt, what he had actually done ; but he 

 knew he had invented a means by which you could put a 

 calabash upon a fire and keep it there without burning or 

 bursting. That, after all, was at least something. 



All this, you say (which, in effect, is Dr. Tylor's view), 



