It is not often, however, that they knowingly deviate from the model lesson given them; they sometimes err too faithfully on the other side by reproducing the European’s mistakes and never improving on them. If you have once taught them a heavy pastry, your pies will always have that same unfortunate crust in spite of a more successful second lesson. They believe absolutely in reverting to original type. However, this is a one-sided view of the little black cooks. Imagine an English lad of twelve serving up a six-course dinner as these little fellows can, after some training; and with such a kitchen range, three bricks or stones and some twigs, and a very limited storeroom. Give a Toro cook a leg of goat and he can turn out a most satisfying meal of varieties—goat soup, goat curry, goat stewed, goat boiled and roast; and then if you want one more course, give him flour, eggs, milk, and a little butter, and he could send you in goat pie and goat pudding, or pancakes, boiled or baked batter, boiled or baked sponge pudding. If you live on poor food in Toro, you must not blame the country or your cook, but yourself, that you did not arm against the future by occasional visits to your English kitchen. That is by far the best way of learning; cookery lectures and cookery books are not much use for a country like this; they generally tell you to “take” something you have not got and cannot get, and on that seems to depend the success of the recipe. Often have I recalled the long, tiring hours spent in learning to knead bread, and then the patience of waiting for it to rise; we should be eating tinned biscuits (like our predecessors) till this day if our bread depended on that method out here. Vegetables form rather an important part in the daily diet; in fact, one is inclined to be a vegetarian where vegetables are so plentiful and meat very tough and tasteless. On some occasions fifteen different kinds have been sent to table at a meal. They are all cooked in one large earthen pot, each vegetable being tied up in a large banana leaf with water—the leaf is waterproof and made soft and pliable by passing it through the fire.