Several years ago, one of the schoolmasters in that island became a Christian. After he had partaken of the Lord's supper, his wife considered him so defiled, that she would not put his segar into her mouth for a month afterwards. She, however, has since become a Christian.
I spoke just now of the plantain-leaf. This leaf is sometimes six feet long, and in some places a foot and a half wide. It is an unbroken leaf, with a large stem running through the middle of it. It is one of the handsomest of leaves. Pieces enough can be torn from a single leaf, to take the place of a dozen plates. When quite young, it is an excellent application to surfaces which have been blistered.
When this people eat, they do not use tables and chairs. They sit down on mats, and double their legs under them, after the manner of our friends the tailors in America, when they sew. This is the way in which the natives as a general thing, sit in our churches. It is not common to have benches or pews for them. Carpenters and other tradesmen also sit down either on a board, or on the ground, or on their legs, when they work. It would divert you much to see their manoeuvring. If a carpenter, for instance, wants to make a little peg, he will take a small piece of board, and place it in an erect position between his feet, the soles of which are turned inward so as to press upon the board. He then takes his chisel in one hand, and his mallet in the other, and cuts off a small piece. Afterwards he holds the piece in one hand, and while he shapes it with his chisel with the other, he steadies it by pressing it against his great toe.
The blacksmiths, with the exception of those who use the sledge-hammer, sit as do the carpenters while they hammer the iron. I wish you could see them at work with their simple apparatus. They have small anvils, which they place in a hole made in a log of wood which is buried in the ground. They do not use such bellows as you see in America.
Theirs consist of two leather bags, about a foot wide and a foot and a half long, each having a nozzle at one end. The other end is left open to admit the air. When they wish to blow the fire, they extend these bags to let in the air. They then close them by means of the thumb on one side, and the fingers on the other, and press them down towards the nozzle of the bellows, which forces the air through them into the fire. I should have said before, that the nozzle of the bellows passes through a small semicircular mound of dried mud.