Then he
dug a big hole in the soft mud close to the water's edge, and let the
water (rather muddy) percolate into it, or sometimes even he plastered
over its bottom with puddled clay. After that, he heated some smooth
round stones red hot in the fire close by, and drawing them out gingerly
between two pieces of stick, dropped them one by one, spluttering and
fizzing, into his improvised basin or kettle. This, of course, made the
water in the hole boil; and the unsophisticated savage thereupon thrust
into it his joint of antelope, repeating the process over and over again
until the sodden meat was completely seethed to taste on the outside. If
one application was not sufficient, he gnawed off the cooked meat from
the surface with his stout teeth, innocent as yet of the dentist's art,
and plunged the underdone core back again, till it exactly suited his
not over-delicate or dainty fancy.
To be sure, the primitive savage, unversed as he was in pastes and
glazes, in moulds and ornaments, did not pass his life entirely devoid
of cups and platters. Coconut shell and calabash rind, horn of ox and
skull of enemy, bamboo-joint and capacious rhomb-shell, all alike, no
doubt, supplied him with congenial implements for drink or storage. Like
Eve in the Miltonic Paradise, there lacked him not fit vessels pure;
picking some luscious tropical fruit, the savoury pulp he chewed, and in
the rind still as he thirsted scooped the brimming stream.
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