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236 DAYS IN THE SUN
on with their: “Mossiu, Madame—a little gift, please!
I am dying of hunger!” But we are already able to
distinguish them in spite of their filth and pock-marks
and we drive them away; and the others who have not
succeeded in getting anything from us help us in this
work.
Finally the whole crowd disappears one by one,
uttering words of abuse and contumely over these
“stranger dogs.” A few fair-sized rocks roll down by
our feet as their parting greeting.
We look through the cactus and follow the paths
upward from level to level. Everywhere there is the
odor of human excrement. The caves themselves are
not so disorderly, some even show traces of prosperity,
and the most poorly furnished contain collections of
highly polished old copper and brass utensils to arouse
the collector’s envy. The poorest caves have a single
room, ceilings and walls being formed by the rough
conglomerate rock; but for the most part there are
two rooms: a living-room, which obtains light from the
entrance and—in particularly aristocratic cases—from
two glassless windows one on each side of the en-
trance, and a bedroom behind the living-room, with
an entrance through the rear wall of the latter. In
this rear room the ceilings and walls are not without
adornment and are painted white; sometimes there is
even a bricked ceiling vault.
We choose a newly blazed trail which winds up the
hill. Ahead of us walks an old gypsy woman with a
great jug of water on her shoulder; these mountaineers
have leg-muscles of steel and we admire the old woman
who moves along so straight and easily under her
burden, while we drag our weight uphill with so much
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