40 
HOUSEBUILDINa AND HOUSEKEEPING. 
Chap. II. 
teresting to the reader. The entire absence of shops led us to 
make e^eiything 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 tilings square: like all Bechuanas, their dwellings 
are made round. In the case of tliree 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 antlull, and using a slab of stone .for 
a door. Another plan, which might be adopted by the Australians 
to produce something better than thefr “ 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 the 
feeling which must have animated Alexander Selkirk on seeing 
conveniences springing up before him from his own iugenuity; 
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. 
