154 A NATURALIST ON DESERT ISLANDS. 



enough ; and if it is true that according as our wants are 

 few and easily suppKed, so are we proportionately happy , 

 the explanation of his happiness was easily forthcoming. 

 His wants, in fact, seemed strangely few. His house 

 was built of material which he had but to go a few yards 

 to find all ready to his hand. The mangrove swamp 

 supplied him with poles and sticks for its framework. 

 Its roof and walls were thatched with palm branches 

 stripped from his cocoanut plantation. His fumituie 

 was of the simplest — a home-made bed, a table, and a 

 box to sit on. His cooking utensils — a few earthenware 

 pots and pans. His fireplace — the floor of his hut ; his 

 fuel — the husks of the cocoanuts. He ground his own 

 home-grown maize in a stone quern, which might well 

 have dated from NeoHthic ages. For milk and meat he 

 had his goats ; for eggs his fowls ; and a better or healthier 

 lot of these last you could not wish to see. Bananas, 

 cocoanuts and pomegranates furnished him with dessert ; 

 sweet potatoes and yams with vegetables. What he did 

 with the cotton plants which grew in such luxuriant 

 profusion round his little estate we never discovered. 



His whole compact little holding, was, in fact self-sup- 

 porting ; and as we have said, was fenced in as securely 

 as ever was Robinson Crusoe's. Indeed it was some little 

 time before we discovered the proper way in. Once, as 

 in the case of Remus and the walls of Rome, we vaulted 

 over it to save going round, but with instant regret ; for 

 it was evident from the look of humbled pride in the old 

 man's eyes that we had hit him in a tender spot. There 

 was only one thing we could never have brought ourselves 

 to face, and that was his water supply ; for he had sunk 

 his well on the borders of the mangrove swamp, where 

 gruesome land-crabs and other noisome creatures of slimy 

 aspect, stirred up its muddy brackish depths and made one 

 shudder. 



The sailors loaded the old man with gifts, among which 

 plug tobacco must have played a prominent part ; for we 

 never saw him afterwards without a tell-tale trickle of 



