A considerable number of people were gathered
to observe us, not in a crowd, but in little family groups which
collected separately at the gates of the gardens.
For the most part these consisted of a man and one or more wives,
finely formed and handsome women. Sometimes they had children with
them, but these were very few; the most I saw with any one family was
three, and many seemed to possess none at all. Both the women and the
children, like the men, were decently clothed in long, white garments,
another peculiarity which showed that these natives were no ordinary
African savages.
Oh! I can see Rica Town now after all these many years: the wide
street swept and garnished, the brown-roofed, white-walled huts in
their fertile, irrigated gardens, the tall, silent folk, the smoke
from the cooking fires rising straight as a line in the still air, the
graceful palms and other tropical trees, and at the head of the
street, far away to the north, the rounded, towering shape of the
forest-clad mountain that was called House of the Gods.
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