Page:Following the Equator (Mark Twain).djvu/646

638 but nobody but an expert can tell it from summer. However, I am tired of summer; we have had it unbroken for eleven months. We spent the afternoon on shore, Delagoa Bay. A small town—no sights. No carriages. Three ’rickshas, but we couldn’t get them—apparently private. These Portuguese are a rich brown, like some of the Indians. Some of the blacks have the long horse heads and very long chins of the negroes of the picture books; but most of them are exactly like the negroes of our Southern States—round faces, flat noses, good-natured, and easy laughers.

Flocks of black women passed along, carrying outrageously heavy bags of freight on their heads—the quiver of their leg as the foot was planted and the strain exhibited by their bodies showed what a tax upon their strength the load was. They were stevedores, and doing full stevedore’s work. They were very erect when unladen—from carrying weights on their heads—just like the Indian women. It gives them a proud, fine carriage.

Sometimes one saw a woman carrying on her head a laden and top-heavy basket the shape of an inverted pyramid—its top the size of a soup-plate, its base the diameter of a teacup. It required nice balancing—and got it.

No bright colors; yet there were a good many Hindoos.