Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

EASTWARD HO! 105
penalty. For the same wind that blows out a candle,
only fans two faggots into a flame, and wisdom is thus
justified of her children.
{Later.)
Hats off to the African lady, she—brave heart !—is a
wonder. Undeniably she is stamped sterling. The
negro may laugh at a woman because she has a few
ounces less brain than a man, but very often the daughter
of Eve makes up in muscle what she lacks in mind.
Witness, a woman at the salt-pans who killed her lion as
deftly as a man, howbeit the method was quite a la Mrs.
Beeton. Out on the salt-pans the big earthenware pots
are kept boiling all night, with someone lying out to tend
the fire. A widow she happened to be. Past midnight the
fires had gone low, and the lonely watcher awoke from her
doze to see a large lion on the opposite side of the pot
proposing to grab her. Slightly scared as all lions are at
a blinking fire, this very delay on the beast's part was the
widow's choice opportunity. Well, and what did that
homely housewife do if not drench the lion with the
scalding salt water— yes, drenched it dead ! Mrs. Beeton
could not have given clearer instructions how to scald
and salt a prize lion, and she was a local Luban heroine
for a week.
But that is only incident No. 1, and the curious coin-
cidence of the second afiair is that a woman and her
water-pot are again the central facts of the history. This,
too, is a woman whose life is under a cloud : witness her
slinkino^ off after sundown to draw water from the well.