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-6 [[strikethrough]] 4 [[/strikethrough]] ^[[5]] -

The house is a pleasant one, of mud covered with cement, with cement floors, and a zinc roof. There is a very large living room and two bedrooms. The kitchen is a separate building - a little mud hut, - and there is a pleasant little wash house of matting and thatch, with a toilet and a shower - the shower bucket was still hanging from a cord. The last man who left the place got a sudden chance at a passage home, and did not stop to pack up more than his personal belongings. Consequently we were always coming across some strange item that had been left behind in this deserted  [[strikethrough]] village. [[/strikethrough]] farm house. The furniture consisted of several tables, big comfortable chairs, wardrobes, two desks, and a cot, but in cupboards and on desks were such remnants as two half-empty bottles of Maggi and one of Worcestershire, a well-crystallized radio storage battery, a bunch of porcupine quills, various chemicals used in photographic developing and printing, three boxes of anti- venin, a meat grinder, coffee mill, two filters, large framed photographs of Pilsudski and the President of Poland, a jar of Dutch mustard, an onyx cup with shot, an alarm clock, a stack of phonograph records, and, most pitiful of all, a strip of fly-paper with last year's files still clinging to it.

Charlie the cook had a hot supper for us as soon as we got into the house and settled; Flomo put up our cots; we bathed under the shower bucket, and Matilda, Bill and I went early to bed. Louis however, went out immediately after dinner to hunt. Although we were asleep when he came in, we learned later that he had shot a red deer (harnessed antelope) less then half an hour's walk from the house.

June 22 - 

We ate, with considerable relish, deer liver, bacon and onions for breakfast, and then set out on a trail across the plantation which David, the caretaker, said led to a small stream. It was about an hours walk, but it was a nice creek to fish, so Bobo and Flomo put in Derris root, set up the net, and waded up and down for about three hours catching the fish. When we got back to the house and Bill put the specimens in alcohol he found he had 400.

Natives brought us one sooty mangaby, one turtle and a baby porcupine today.

We continued to live on venison, having it stewed for lunch and roast for dinner. We were also able to buy a bowlful of fresh green okra, and all the pineapples we wanted, and three chickens - so I think we will live well here.

June 23 -

Louis had promised to take me on a real bush trip, so he and I started out immediately after breakfast, crossed the plantation to the Banga trail, and eventually turned off of that onto a bush trail. It was the first time I had covered any real distance in the bush, and I was pleased to find that I could follow Louis and the hunters all morning, bending low where the forest was densest, clambering up hills over mossy stones, crossing little jungle streams on stepping stones. We saw both monkeys and deer, but not at close enough range to shoot. We got back to the house at lunch time, and found that the boys had cut a fine trail direct from the house into the nearest bush. They had actually cleared nearly two miles of fairly broad road, and