Poor fellows' blankets, which at best
were but greasy skins, which sometimes happened in the villages,
the picture was one of perfect peace.
The cooking is usually done in the natives' own style, and,
as they carefully wash the dishes, pots, and the hands before handling food,
it is by no means despicable. Sometimes alterations are made
at my suggestion, and then they believe that they can cook
in thorough white man's fashion. The cook always comes in
for something left in the pot, so all are eager to obtain the office.
I taught several of them to wash my shirts, and they did it well,
though their teacher had never been taught that work himself.
Frequent changes of linen and sunning of my blanket kept me more comfortable
than might have been anticipated, and I feel certain that
the lessons of cleanliness rigidly instilled by my mother in childhood
helped to maintain that respect which these people entertain
for European ways. It is questionable if a descent to barbarous ways
ever elevates a man in the eyes of savages.
When quite beyond the inhabited parts, we found the country abounding
in animal life of every form. There are upward of thirty species of birds
on the river itself. Hundreds of the `Ibis religiosa' come down the Leeambye
with the rising water, as they do on the Nile; then large white pelicans,
in flocks of three hundred at a time, following each other
in long extending line, rising and falling as they fly so regularly all along
as to look like an extended coil of birds; clouds of a black
shell-eating bird, called linongolo (`Anastomus lamelligerus');
also plovers, snipes, curlews, and herons without number.
