the painful sight which presented itself, for the people were
pressing one upon another, fathers and mothers holding naked
children covered with skin-disease, or with scald-head, or
ringworm, daughters leading mothers nearly blind, men exhibiting
painful sores, children blinking with eyes infested by flies and
nearly closed with ophthalmia; and all, sick and well, in truly
"vile raiment," lamentably dirty and swarming with vermin, the sick
asking for medicine, and the well either bringing the sick or
gratifying an apathetic curiosity. Sadly I told them that I did
not understand their manifold "diseases and torments," and that, if
I did, I had no stock of medicines, and that in my own country the
constant washing of clothes, and the constant application of water
to the skin, accompanied by friction with clean cloths, would be
much relied upon by doctors for the cure and prevention of similar
cutaneous diseases. To pacify them I made some ointment of animal
fat and flowers of sulphur, extracted with difficulty from some
man's hoard, and told them how to apply it to some of the worst
cases. The horse, being unused to a girth, became fidgety as it
was being saddled, creating a STAMPEDE among the crowd, and the
mago would not touch it again. They are as much afraid of their
gentle mares as if they were panthers. All the children followed
me for a considerable distance, and a good many of the adults made
an excuse for going in the same direction.

These people wear no linen, and their clothes, which are seldom
washed, are constantly worn, night and day, as long as they will
hold together. They seal up their houses as hermetically as they
can at night, and herd together in numbers in one sleeping-room,
with its atmosphere vitiated, to begin with, by charcoal and
tobacco fumes, huddled up in their dirty garments in wadded quilts,