Fritz had
spoiled his gourd by cutting it irregularly with his knife. I advised
him to try and make spoons of it, as it would not do for basins now. I
told him I had learnt my plan from books of travels. It is the practice
of the savages, who have no knives, to use a sort of string, made from
the bark of trees, for this purpose. "But how can they make bottles,"
said he. "That requires some preparation," replied I. "They tie a
bandage round the young gourd near the stalk, so that the part at
liberty expands in a round form, and the compressed part remains narrow.
They then open the top, and extract the contents by putting in pebbles
and shaking it. By this means they have a complete bottle."
We worked on. Fritz completed a dish and some plates, to his great
satisfaction, but we considered, that being so frail, we could not
carry them with us. We therefore filled them with sand, that the sun
might not warp them, and left them to dry, till we returned.
As we went on, Fritz amused himself with cutting spoons from the rind of
the gourd, and I tried to do the same with the fragments of the
cocoa-nut; but I must confess my performances were inferior to those I
had seen in the museum in London, the work of the South Sea islanders.
We laughed at our spoons, which would have required mouths from ear to
ear to eat with them.
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