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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 52

Cooliman

Cooliman.

A cooliman is formed by cutting the knob or excrescence from a tree and scooping out the decayed interior, so as to leave the outside shell only. These are of any shape and size—from the size of a teacup upwards.

Very neat water-tight baskets are made by the women from the broad part of the palm leaf; some of these will hold two or three gallons of water.

A very ingenious method of ascertaining the whereabouts of a native bees' nest was occasionally resorted to. A small piece of soft down from a feather was attached to a bee, by means of cither gum from the mimosa or other tree, or wax from the ear. This would not only compel the bee to fly very slowly, which it at once did in the direction of its nest, but enabled the black to keep the insect in sight. The operation was a delicate one and not always successful, the insect being often crushed in the manipulation.

Native honey is now never sought for. The blacks say that the English bee has quite destroyed the native bees and taken possession of their nests.