All the white employes would mess
together, unless it be found advisable to make two divisions. The house
would be of the usual pitch-pine boarding on piles, like those of Lagos,
omitting the common passage or gallery, which threatens uncleanness; and
the rooms might be made gay with pictures and coloured prints. The natives
would build bamboo-huts.
Cameron, well knowing what _ennui_ in Africa means, would send out a
billiard-table and a good lathe: he also proposed a skittle- or
bowling-alley, a ground for lawn-tennis under a shed, an ice-machine and
one for making soda-water. Each establishment would have its library, a
good atlas, a few works of reference, and treatises on mining, machinery,
and natural history. The bulk would be the cheap novels (each 4_d_.) in
which weary men delight. In addition to the 'Mining Journal,' the
'Illustrated,' and the comics, local and country papers should be sent
out; exiles care more for the 'Little Pedlington Courant' than for the
'journal of the City,' the 'Times.'
Gardening should be encouraged. The vegetables would be occros
(_hibiscus_) and brinjalls, lettuce, tomatoes, and marrow; yam and sweet
potatoes, pumpkins, peppers and cucumbers, whose seeds yield a
fine-flavoured salad-oil not sold in London.
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