wanted to hear all about this new place, but they also wanted to
tell of their own country. It was like when you come back from
your holidays and you want to hear and to tell everything at the
same time. As the talk went on there were more and more words
that the girl could not understand, and the children soon gave up
the attempt to explain to her what their own country was like,
when they began to see how very few of the things they had always
thought they could not do without were really not at all
necessary to life.

The girl showed them how the huts were made--indeed, as one was
being made that very day she took them to look at it. The way of
building was very different from ours. The men stuck long pieces
of wood into a piece of ground the size of the hut they wanted to
make. These were about eight inches apart; then they put in
another row about eight inches away from the first, and then a
third row still further out. Then all the space between was
filled up with small branches and twigs, and then daubed over
with black mud worked with the feet till it was soft and sticky
like putty.

The girl told them how the men went hunting with flint spears and
arrows, and how they made boats with reeds and clay. Then she
explained the reed thing in the river that she had taken the fish
out of. It was a fish-trap--just a ring of reeds set up in the
water with only one little opening in it, and in this opening,
just below the water, were stuck reeds slanting the way of the
river's flow, so that the fish, when they had swum sillily in,
sillily couldn't get out again. She showed them the clay pots
and jars and platters, some of them ornamented with black and red