It stood in a good-sized courtyard
beautifully paved with a sort of concrete of limestone which looked very
clean and white, and surrounded by a hedge of reeds and sticks tightly
tied together, inside which ran a slightly raised bench, also made of
limestone. The hut itself was neatly thatched, the thatch projecting
several feet, so as to form a covering to a narrow verandah that ran all
round it. Inside it was commodious, and ornamented after the Egyptian
style with straight and spiral lines, painted on with some kind of red
ochre, and floored with a polished substance. Certainly these huts are
as much superior to those of the Zulus as those who dwell in them are
inferior to that fine race. What the Basutus gain in art and handiness
they lose in manliness and gentlemanly feeling.
We had just laid ourselves down on the grass mats in the courtyard--for
it was too hot to go into the hut--thoroughly exhausted with our day's
work and the heat, when in came two men, each of them dragging a fine
indigenous sheep.
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