thousand men and boys, gaunt, weather-beaten, their tight trousers
collections of rents and patchwork in many colors, sandals of a soft
piece of leather showing a foot cracked, blackened, tough as a hoof, as
incrusted with filth as a dead foot picked up on a garbage heap, the
toes always squirting with mud, the feet not merely never washed but the
sandal never removed until it wears off and drops of its self. Above
this a collarless shirt, blouse or short jacket, ragged, patched, of
many faded colors, yet still showing half the body. Then a dull,
uncomplaining, take-things-as-they-come face, unwashed, never
shaved--the pure Indian grows a sort of dark down on his cheeks and the
point of the chin, the half-breeds a slight beard--all topped by the
enormous hat, never missing, though often full of holes, black with
dirt, weather-beaten beyond expression.

Then there were fully as many women and girls, even less fortunate, for
they had not even sandals, but splashed along barefoot among the small
cold cobblestones. Their dress seemed gleaned from a rag-heap and their
heads were bare, their black hair combed or plastered flat. Children of
both sexes were exact miniatures of their elders. All these wretches
were here to sell. Yet what was for sale could easily have been tended
by twenty persons. Instead, every man, woman, and child had his own
stand, or bit of cloth or cobblestone on which to spread a few scanty,
bedraggled wares. Such a mass of silly, useless, pathetic articles, toy
jars, old bottles, anything that could be found in all the dump-heaps of
Christendom. The covered market housed only a very small percentage of
the whole. There was a constant, multicolored going and coming, with
many laden asses and miserable, gaunt creatures bent nearly double under
enormous loads on head or shoulders. Every radiating narrow mud-dripping
street for a quarter-mile was covered in all but the slight passageway
in the center with these displays. Bedraggled women sat on the cobbles