This induced my ingenious Elizabeth to make us a
sort of blouse and hood out of old garments of the sailors, which we
covered with coatings of the caoutchouc, and thus obtained two capital
waterproof dresses; all that the exhausted state of our gum permitted
us to make.
The care of our animals occupied us a great part of the morning, then we
prepared our cassava, and baked our cakes on iron plates. Though we had
a glazed door to our hut, the gloominess of the weather, and the
obscurity caused by the vast boughs of the tree, made night come on
early. We then lighted a candle, fixed in a gourd on the table, round
which we were all assembled. The good mother laboured with her needle,
mending the clothes; I wrote my journal, which Ernest copied, as he
wrote a beautiful hand; while Fritz and Jack taught their young brother
to read and write, or amused themselves with drawing the animals or
plants they had been struck with. We read the lessons from the Bible in
turns, and concluded the evening with devotion. We then retired to rest,
content with ourselves and with our innocent and peaceful life. Our kind
housekeeper often made us a little feast of a roast chicken, a pigeon,
or a duck, and once in four or five days we had fresh butter made in the
gourd churn; and the delicious honey which we ate to our cassava bread
might have been a treat to European epicures.
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