Birth of the Calf 19 



women, who were also experts in preparing 

 condiments of fish or vegetables to savour their 

 monotonous food. It was the women also who 

 wove the cloths of cotton or silk, who cured 

 the tobacco on the bamboo frames, who rolled 

 the big cigars in the tender sheath of the 

 growing bamboo. For the men remained the 

 more arduous tasks of building and repairing 

 the homestead, and of defending the village 

 from man or beast. Each carried the heavy 

 knife of the country, so balanced in its handle 

 that it seemed to guide the hand that swung 

 it in its deadly work. Yet with it at one 

 moment the owner would be felling bamboos 

 of a foot circumference at one blow, or at the 

 next be opening a green coco-nut to drink 

 the cooling milk, or peeling with care a pine- 

 apple as with a silver knife. The ever-present 

 bamboo was put to a hundred uses ; they wove 

 it into baskets to hold many bushels of grain, 

 or into others so fine that they might be folded 

 flat without injury ; from the bamboo they 

 constructed matting cool and polished to the 

 feet, vessels for storing drinking water, even 



