Mountains were wild and barren, with nothing in them to enable one to
forget in natural beauty the fatigues of a toilsome ascent. Villages
came now and again in sight, stretched out at the extremity of the plain
before my eyes, with their white gables, red walls, and black tiled
roofs, but during the day we passed through two only. The first was a
little place where decay would have been absolute had it not been for
the likin[AR] flag, which enables "squeezes" to be extorted ruthlessly
from the muleteer and conveyed to the pockets of the prospering customs
agent. It boasted only ten or twelve tumbling lean-to tenements, where
my sympathy went out to the half-dozen physical wrecks of men who came
slowly and stared long, and wondered at the commonest article of my
meager impedimenta. They seemed poorer and lower down the human scale
than any I had yet seen. On one of the ragged garments worn by a man of
about twenty-five I counted no less than thirty-four patches of
different shapes, sizes and materials, hieroglyphically and skillessly
thrown together to hide his sore-strewn back; but still his brown
unwashed flesh was visible in many places.
Looking upon them, one did not like to think that these beings were men,
men with passions like to one's own, for all the interests, real and
imaginary, all the topics which should expand the mind of man, and
connect him in sympathy with general existence, were crushed in the
absorbing considerations of how rice was to be procured for their
families of diseaseful brats.
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