ive our
thoughts to the subject;--though, of course, we could not expect to
accomplish much at first, as we had very little knowledge of the art we
proposed to exercise. Kallolo, however, said that he would show us how
matting was manufactured in his country. It could be made sufficiently
fine for clothing, or thick and coarse for roofs of cabins on board
river-boats, or very strong for sails.

Some feathery-leaved reeds grew on the shore of the lake not far off,
and as we were eager to begin, Arthur and I cut a few, and bringing them
back to Kallolo, begged him to show us how to plait. He at once
undertook to do so, observing, however, that the reeds were not fit for
any other purpose than to make coarse hats; and that they must be first
dried, and then split, before they could be fit for use. "However, they
will do to learn with, and you can at once make hats with your
plaiting," he added. Being anxious to learn, we kept hard at work, and
before Marian repaired to her hut for the night we had made several
yards of plaiting, and my father had designed a plan for manufacturing
matting.

I cannot attempt to describe the labour of each day, or the progress we
made in our work. Kallolo, who had started as he intended at daybreak,
returned in the evening with the materials for his blowpipe, and the
ingredients for manufacturing the woorali poison. He had brought
several stems of small palms, from which he selected two of different
sizes. Outside they appeared rough from the scars of the fallen leaves;
but he said that the soft pith within them would soon rot if steeped in
water, and being easily extracted would leave a smooth polished bore.
The smaller one was very delicate, being scarcely thicker than a finger;
the other was an inch and a half in diameter. He explained that the
smaller one was to be pushed inside the larger--this was to be done that
any curve in the one might counteract that in the other. Having allowed
his stems to remain in water two or three days, he was able to remove
the pith, which had thus become rotten. He then fastened a cup-shaped
wooden mouthpiece to one end, and bound the whole spirally with the long
flat strips of the black bark of the climbing palm-tree. Among other
materials, he had brought a quantity of wax of a dark hue, with which he
smeared the whole of the outside. The tube he had thus formed tapered
towards the muzzle, the mouthpiece being fitted to the upper end. Both