Unofficial letters of an official's wife [by] Edith Moses.

AN OFFICIAL'S WIFE

were gushing out of the bank, sending down a
stream of hot water that ran parallel with the cold
river water for some distance, and then, uniting
with it, formed the curious phenomenon of a river
with a hot side and a cold side. We sent the doctor
upstream to hunt a bathing place, and began our
preparations for a bath. Each selected the temperature most pleasing to her. This was not easy, for
the water was either too hot or too cold, generally
the former. Finally, however, each found a pool to
her liking, and found the water extremely soothing
to various insect bites, the inevitable result of sleeping on the floor in a bamboo shack. The chapter of
accidents attending our emergence from the sulphur
pool, changing from wet to dry clothes, and gathering together of our various garments from dry
rocks in distant parts of the stream, cannot be set
down here.
This afternoon a storm came down the mountain,
and it is pouring now. We had much difficulty in
getting our dinner, as the wood was wet, and there
were too many cooks. Our head hunter also showed
a too rapid progress in civilization. When we gave
him a pail to fetch water from the stream, he demanded by signs a lantern and the doctor's rain coat.
As he was already quite wet to his skin in consequence of his total lack of clothing, we could only
attribute his desire for a rain coat to a reprehensible
love of finery, which we felt it necessary to repress,
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