Not all the people were at
prayer within; irregular files of them attended our progress to give us
the opportunity of doing charity. The beggars were of every sort, sex,
and age, and some, from the hands they held out, with fingers reduced to
their last joints, looked as if they might be lepers, but I do not say
they were. What I am sure of is that the faces of the worshippers--men,
women, and children--when they came out of the church were of a
gentleness which, if it was not innocence and goodness, might well have
passed for those virtues. They had kind eyes, which seemed as often blue
as black, and if they had no great beauty they were seldom quite ugly. I
wish I could think we strangers, as they gazed curiously, timorously at
us, struck them as favorably.
An involuntary ferocity from the famine which we began to feel may have
glared from our visages, for we had eaten nothing for three hours, which
was long for saloon passengers. At the first restaurant which we found,
and in which we all but sat down at table, our coupons were not good,
but this was not wholly loss, for we recouped ourselves in the beauties
of the walk on which we wandered along the mountain-side to the right of
the restaurant.
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