Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/96

76 by Englishmen or by East Indians, (as persons of mixed blood are commonly called,) and are filled with goods of every description.

But, as new-comers, we found far more to interest us in the crowds walking, riding, and driving over the hard red surface of the road. Single coolies, with boxes on their heads, or baskets heaped with fruits and greens for the markets, or three in company pulling, like horses, a heavy, awkward, two-wheeled cart, meet you, with the perspiration streaming down their black bodies and limbs. Foot-passengers walk in groups, joking, laughing, gossiping, or puffing their segars. Countrymen and travellers from neighbouring towns go gazing at every new sight; their wives, with bundles on their heads, following after, with little boys holding to their skirts. The poor women and girls of the city are gathering dung from the road into baskets, to be mixed with straw and dried for fuel. The grass-cutters (usually women) are coming in from the country, each with a bundle of grass on her head, one day's labour giving one day's food to the horse she tends. The letter-carrier next trots by, with his mailbag hung over his shoulder on a staff jingling with pieces of iron to frighten beasts of prey