a thousand or fifteen hundred feet up the mountain side, acres of golden crops will be growing in the warm and happy seclusion of some sheltered hollow.
At the turn of the winding track, bordered by the paddy-fields or acres of golden barley, oats and tobacco, lies a village. It is but a cluster of some dozen straw-thatched hovels, dirty and unprepossessing, but infinitely quaint and picturesque. The walls of the houses are crumbling and stayed up with beams and massive timbers; the latticed windows are papered, the doorways low. A hole in the wall serves the purposes of a chimney; a dog is sleeping in the porch; a pig squeaks, secured with a cord through the ears to a peg in the wall. Cocks and hens are anywhere and everywhere, the family latrine—an open trough, foul and nauseous, used without disgust by all members of the family save the older women-folk, stands upon the verandah. Somewhere, near the outer limits of the small settlement, an erection of poles and straw matting distinguishes the village cesspool, the contents of which are spread over the fields in the proper season.
A glimpse into a house, as one rides through the village shows a man combing his long hair, a woman beating her husband's clothes or ironing with a bowl heated with charcoal; many naked children, the progeny of child-wives, scarce out of their teens. For the moment the village seems devoid of life. As the clatter of the cavalcade resounds, a child, feeding itself from a basin of rice, emerges from a window; a man tumbles to his feet yawning noisily. Women, with infants hanging at their breasts or bearing children strapped to their backs in dirty clothes, the usual naked band of well-developed breast and unwashed back showing, crowd into the streets. All eye the newcomers
