The pottery is made entirely by hand—nothing of the nature of a wheel being known. The clay, having been mixed with fine sand, is rolled into long sausages, and these are coiled, one above the other, in a hollow circle, this forming the base of a round pot. Having partly moulded this into shape, the potter takes a smooth round stone in her left hand, and holds it inside the clay, while with the other hand she beats the exterior with a flat piece of wood like a spoon, and constantly moistens the clay. Fresh sausages are then built up round the top, and gradually narrowed till there only remains room to insert one finger (if for a water-pot), or the food (if for a cooking-pot); and these are, in like manner, beaten to a smooth surface, both inside and out. The rim of the vessel must now be fashioned, and then comes a final wetting and smoothing of the whole, and probably a very elaborate geometrical pattern is, last of all, marked with a small sharp stick. Sometimes a pattern is laid on in raised work, almost like clusters of grapes. The work must be done ere the day wanes, as towards sunset the clay falls, and will not mould obediently to the potter’s hand. We stayed a couple of hours watching different women at work, and tried hard ourselves to model a peculiar vase with three cups on one stand, of which I had secured one unique specimen, without being able to ascertain where it was made. I am very anxious to procure others of the same pattern, which is singularly graceful; so the women are to try and make several for me.[45] When the waning sun warned the potters to desist from working (and we found that the clay really did fall as fast as we attempted to model anything), we adjourned to the house of the village teacher to see his wife painting a very large and most beautiful piece of _tappa_. It was a heavy curtain, to which she was just putting the finishing touches. It was most artistic, and I coveted it exceedingly, and tried hard to bribe her to sell it to me. I have no doubt she coveted my dollars as much as I did her handiwork; but she dared not sell it, as it had already been annexed by the omnivorous Tui Mbua: so I had to content myself with watching her at work. She had designed an admirable and most intricate pattern, which she cut out on a heated banana-leaf, laid this on the cloth, and rubbed it over with a scrap of _masi_, dipped either in vegetable charcoal and water, or in red earth, liquefied with the sap of the candle-nut tree—_i.e._, the silvery-leaved croton.