One old man in a village where we rested had trained the little hair he had left into a tail, which, well plastered with fat, he had bent on itself and laid flat on his crown; another was carefully paring a stick for stirring the porridge, and others were enjoying the cool shade of the wild fig-trees which are always planted at villages.

It is a sacred tree all over Africa and India, and the tender roots which drop down towards the ground are used as medicine--a universal remedy.

Can it be a tradition of its being like the tree of life, which Archbishop Whately conjectures may have been used in Paradise to render man immortal?
One kind of fig-tree is often seen hacked all over to get the sap, which is used as bird-lime; bark-cloth is made of it too.

I like to see the men weaving or spinning, or reclining under these glorious canopies, as much as I love to see our more civilized people lolling on their sofas or ottomans.
The first rain--a thunder shower--fell in the afternoon, air in shade before it 92 deg.; wet bulb 74 deg.

At noon the soil in the sun was 140 deg., perhaps more, but I was afraid of bursting the thermometer, as it was graduated only a few degrees above that.