Having got the clay ready, Gofa took a lump of it in her hands and laid it on a stone slab which served her as a working bench. Then, with her fingers and a smooth stone, and a stick shaped into a kind of blade, she worked up the clay into a little bowl, building up the sides against the stick, and smoothing the inside with her pebble. But for the larger jars and pipkins she had another way. She took a round basket shaped like a basin and set it before her. Then she took a piece of clay and rolled it with the flat of her hand on the bench until she had made it like a very long, thin, clay sausage. Then she picked this up and began to coil it round from the bottom of the basket, inside, pinching and pressing it with her fingers and the pebble until it was flat and smooth. Then she rolled out another piece and coiled this round as before, gradually building up the sides of the pot and pinching the coils together as she went on. At length, by adding coil to coil, she raised the sides and neck of the pipkin, which she then smoothed and finished off outside with the wooden tool. [Illustration: Making Pottery] All this time Gofa kept turning the pot she was making round and round upon the stone. “Why do you keep on turning it round and round, mother?” Tig asked. “So that I can see what I am doing,” said his mother. “The pot would be very ugly if one side bulged out more than the other, wouldn’t it? I turn it round and round so that I can keep it even and right.” “Who taught you how to make pots, mother?” Tig asked. “My mother taught me. She was a famous potter. People used to come to watch her when she was at work, but they could not make pots like hers; she had a rare hand in turning. I cannot turn them as she could.” “I think you turn yours beautifully, mother,” said Tig. All the pots alike, before they were baked, had to be decorated. This Gofa did with a bone awl, engraving a pattern of lines and cross-lines and dots upon the soft clay. She had also a little stamp of bone with which the dots could be put on in threes. When Gofa had finished a batch of pots, she and Tig carried them into the hut to dry, and generally on the next day she found that even the larger ones had dried enough in the air to enable her to lift them out of their basket foundations. Then she took each one in turn and scraped and rubbed it outside with a wooden tool, very carefully and lightly.