Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/671

Rh larger cities, are palatial in contrast to the shattered and filthy condition of a like class of tenements in many of the cities of Christian countries.

In traveling through the country the absence of a middle class, as indicated by the dwellings, is painfully apparent. It is true that you



pass, now and then, large comfortable houses with their broad thatched roofs, showing evidences of wealth and abundance in the numerous kura and out-buildings surrounding them; but, where you find one of these, you pass hundreds which are barely more than shelters for their



inmates, and, within the few necessary articles render the evidences of poverty all the more apparent.

Though the people that inhabit such shelters are very poor, they appear contented and cheerful notwithstanding their poverty. Other