Beauty Salon in the Bush Cold Cream that Wasn't!

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 708, 6 July 1929, Page 2

Beauty Salon in the Bush Cold Cream that Wasn't!

JpEMININB vanity dies hard. Under stress of circumstances it may lie dormant for a while, but sooner or later it will reassert itself—even in the wilds.

It was a day of sullen heat in the heart of the West African bush; a day, too, when a minor catastrophe of porterage had brought my little safari to a standstill.

My boys and I had not spent it in idleness. We had repaired the camp gear, repacked the stores, we had washed our bedding and our clothes, we had caught fikh for supper (writes Lady Dorothy Mills, famous for her travels In wild lands).

I had pipeclayed my topee till it glistened like a snowdrift, and then I sat wondering how I could still further improve the shining hour.

My face! Suddenly I realised that it did me no credit. It was hard and leathery, with the sickly yellow tan of the West Coast; it had peeled in patches and was crossed by two l'ed weals where a thornbush had caught it. The more I looked at it the less I liked it, and I decided that I would give it a share in the general springcleaning. In other words, I would give it a beauty treatment. My sleepy mind remembered what it could of the methods of Bond Street; a steaming, an application of “skin-food,” another of “astringent,” and an "ice-pack” to finish up with. The first part seemed easy. “Boy!” I shouted. “Pass small-small can hot water one time. Hot too much.” In something over half an hour he appeared, my canvas bath filled to

the brim with a brownish tepid fluid, in which disported themselves a number of small, active, unnamable "beasties.”

“Him hot too much,” the boy asserted. authoritatively. “Liar too much,” I retorted, as I busied myself boiling up my "Tommy’s Cooker,” till, at the end of ten minutes, my face, cruelly smarting, had steamed itself to a deep, rich purple. Much rummaging among my boots produced a small jar of cold cream, but, alas! the African climate and the African fauna had been too much for it. No longer was it pink, and sweetsmelling, and delicately consistent, and apparently on some previous occasion I had left the lid off; for it had melted to a rancid, viscid fluid in which a score of large ants had drowned themselves.

As I picked out the ants, a native woman, naked except for a loin-cloth, poked her head into my tent. Her eyes glistened longingly at sigh'; of the cold cream, and she pointed to her baby’s face, covered with sores. I shook my head, but she was persistent. Her great, black, dog-like eyes weakened me, and I handed her the cold cream. My beauty treatment was’nt progressing very fast! There remained the ice-pack. Of course, I had no ice, but si canvas water-cooler, by some mysterious process of evaporation, will make water almost uncannily cold even in the hottest weather. “Boy, pass water-cooler,” I called, drowsily. I took it from him. suddenly realising that I was tired after ray day’s exertions and, moreover, that [ was excessively thirsty. A moment’s hesitation, while memories of Bond Street whimpered within me—and I emptied the water-cooler in long, thirsty gulps. Then I leant my head against a pack-ing-case, and drifted gently asleep!