The Orient and Its People (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt: ...red or blue, that in the vast crowd add greatly to the picturesqueness of the scene. Village women go in little companies, singing songs which a native teacher once refused to translate for a white woman, for, said he, "They are not fit for a lady to know." The women usually wear dark blue or red cotton skirts, and large veils, or pieces of muslin, thrown over their heads, and nearly enveloping their entire persons. These are generally white, or dark blue, and sometimes heavily trimmed with tiny mirrors. The yellow-robed pilgrims, traveling to some famous shrine, often make it in their way to stop a day or two at one of these melas. As they march along, five or six of them in Indian file, the leader occasionally calls out, "Bom, Bom " shout, shout, and the rest answer, "Gunga ji ki jai " Victory to the Ganges. The only baggage of these pilgrims, for a five hundred or thousand mile journey, is a gourd or water jar, and two or three dishes for cooking. Two broad streets or bazars, crossing at right angles, are usually laid out on the mela ground, by the police, by order of the English Government. On either side, the principal merchants spread their wares upon the sand. The money-changer covers a low, square box, with a red cloth, places on it a few coins, and squats behind it. To the poor coolie, who would buy a handful of parched rice for his dinner, he gives a hundred cowrie shells for a copper coin of less than a cent's valuation; for the merchant, whose silver gains have grown bulky, he finds among the thick folds of his turban or waist-band some gold coins. The jeweler spreads a cloth on the ground, and upon that arranges his sparkling display of shellac, pewter, glass, silver, and gold ornaments. The cloth merchant and the ...