46 HOUSEBUILDING AND HOUSEKEEPING. 



teresting to the reader. The entire absence of shops led us to 

 make every thing we needed from the raw materials. You want 

 bricks to build a house, and must forthwith proceed to the field, 

 cut down a tree, and saw it into planks to make the brick-moulds ; 

 the materials for doors and windows, too, are standing in the for- 

 est ; and, if you want to be respected by the natives, a house of 

 decent dimensions, costing an immense amount of manual labor, 

 must be built. The people can not assist you much ; for, though 

 most willing to labor for wages, the Bakwains have a curious in- 

 ability to make or put things square: like all Bechuanas, their 

 dwellings are made round. In the case of three large houses, 

 erected by myself at different times, every brick and stick had to 

 be put square by my own right hand. 



Having got the meal ground, the wife proceeds to make it 

 into bread ; an extempore oven is often constructed by scooping 

 out a large hole in an anthill, and using a slab of stone for a 

 door. Another plan, which might be adopted by the Australians 

 to produce something better than their " dampers," is to make 

 a good fire on a level piece of ground, and, when the ground is 

 thoroughly heated, place the dough in a small, short-handled fry- 

 ing-pan, or simply on the hot ashes ; invert any sort of metal pot 

 over it, draw the ashes around, and then make a small fire on the 

 top. Dough, mixed with a little leaven from a former baking, and 

 allowed to stand an hour or two in the sun, will by this process 

 become excellent bread. 



We made our own butter, a jar serving as a churn ; and our 

 own candles by means of moulds ; and soap was procured from 

 the ashes of the plant salsola, or from wood-ashes, which in Africa 

 contain so little alkaline matter that the boiling of successive leys 

 has to be continued for a month or six weeks before the fat is 

 saponified. There is not much hardship in being almost entirely 

 dependent on ourselves ; there is something of the feeling which 

 must have animated Alexander Selkirk on seeing conveniences 

 springing up before him from his own ingenuity ; and married life 

 is all the sweeter when so many comforts emanate directly from 

 the thrifty striving housewife's hands. 



To some it may appear quite a romantic mode of life ; it is one 

 of active benevolence, such as the good may enjoy at home. 

 Take a single day as a sample of the whole. We rose early, 



