The ship's cook
had already supplied me with a cup, or rather a tin pot of tea; but as
the growing coolness of the evening, and the example of my neighbours,
rather encouraged my appetite, I resolved to make a second edition of
my evening meal, and accordingly took under my arm the copper canteen
which formed the sum-total of my culinary apparatus--the lid being my
only plate or dish--and furnished with a supply of tea, sugar, cold
meat, and biscuit, made my way to a spot a short distance off, where I
might take my food on the solitary system, according to the custom
that we Englishmen most delight in. When I had lighted the fire, and
put the water on to boil, I cast myself on the ground, and
complacently puffing away at my pipe, gazed at the wild but
picturesque scene before me. The position of the river was marked out
by a semicircle of some fifty or sixty fires, before which dark and
ill-defined figures were ever and anon flitting like phantoms; while,
in the midst, the funnel of the steam-boat loomed tall and black above
the veil of smoke that hung around--like some dark and horrid object
Of heathen idolatry surrounded by its sacrificial fires.
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