40 HOUSEBUILDING AND HOUSEKEEPING. Chap. II. 



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

 make everything 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 forest ; 

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

 dimensions, costing an immense amount of manual labour, must 

 be built. The people cannot assist you much ; for, though most 

 willing to labour for wages, the Bakwains have a curious inability 

 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 scooijing 

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

 a door. Another plan, which might be adojited 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 

 frying-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 succes- 

 sive 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 tlie 

 feelino; which must have animated Alexander Selkirk on seems: 

 conveniences springing up before him from his own ingenuity ; 

 and married life is all the sweeter w T hen 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, 



