Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
checked shirt and red sash of a Mediterranean sailor, bawling orders from the end of the jetty in a stentorian voice. A fellow in a thousand!
The material apparatus of perfected civilization which obliterates the individuality of old towns under the stereotyped conveniences of modern life had not intruded as yet; but over the worn-out antiquity of Sulaco, so characteristic with its stuccoed houses and barred windows, with the great yellowy-white walls of abandoned convents behind the rows of sombre green cypresses, that fact—very modern in its spirit—the San Tomé mine had already thrown its subtle influence. It had altered, too, the outward character of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before the open portal of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos with a green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tomé miners. They had also adopted white hats with green cord and braid—articles of good quality, which could be obtained in the store-house of the administration for very little money. A peaceable Chulo wearing these colors (unusual in Costaguana) was somehow very seldom beaten to within an inch of his life on a charge of disrespect to the town police; neither ran he much risk of being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting-party of lanceros—a method of voluntary-enlistment looked upon as almost legal in the republic. Whole villages were known to have volunteered for the army in that way; but, as Don Pépé would say with a hopeless shrug to Mrs. Gould, "What would you! Poor people! Pobrecitos. Pobrecitos! But the state must have its soldiers."
107
