Pigs here are conspicuously absent. People feed on poultry and beef. I
rested in this city some month or so after my first overland trip whilst
my man went to convert silver into cash, a trying ordeal always. Whilst
I sipped my tea and ate a couple of rice cakes, I was impressed, as I
seldom have been in my wanderings, with the remarkable number of people,
from the six hundred odd houses the town possesses, who during that
half-hour found nothing whatever to do to benefit themselves or the
community, as members of which they passed monotonous lives, but to
stare aimlessly at the resting foreigner. The report spread like
wildfire, and they ran to the scene with haste, pulling on their coats,
wiping food from their mouths, scratching their heads _en route_, one
trouser-leg up and the other down, all anxious to get a seat near the
stage. A river flows down the center of the street, and into this a
sleepy fellow got tipped bodily in the crush, sat down in the water,
seemingly in no hurry to move until he had finished his vigorous
bullying of the man who pushed him in. Those who could not get standing
room near my table went out into the street and shaded the sun from
their eyes, in order that they might catch even a glimpse of the
traveler who sat on in uncompromising indifference.
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