Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/246

 jewelry of gold and silver. One woman we saw had a silver bracelet on each wrist, and the bracelets were certainly four inches wide. On the front porches of the poorest houses sat workers in gold and silver, and all of them were very skillful. When there was a brief let-up in the rain, we left the rickshas, and entered these interesting workshops and stores Then we went to the Hindu market where vegetables, fruits, meat, etc., are sold. The market is an enormous place, occupying the greater part of a block. In addition to food, jewelry and fancy goods are also sold at this market, and we saw one stall devoted to the sale of Hindu books; copies of the Indian paper printed in Durban were also displayed. We were the only whites in the place; all the others in the crowd were natives of India. The vegetables were small, and many of the fruits we did not recognize. The stall-keepers knew we were visitors, and not buyers, and were very polite Adjoining the Hindu market, and almost as large, was the native or negro market. Two-thirds of this place was devoted to an enormous negro restaurant. The negroes did not seem to have much for sale, except rice and curry, and this was sold in the restaurant, at so much per bowl. I am certain I saw four or five hundred men eating in this native restaurant; and how they talked and laughed! We frequently stopped and listened to the roar, which reminded us of a women's reception, magnified twenty or thirty times. The white market-master told me that the blacks had acquired the habit of buying their supplies of the Hindus, and that the Hindus next door occasionally repaid the favor by buying meals in the negro