On the corner of the market square, sat a Coolie woman, about thirty years of age, of diminutive form. In her native costume of many bright-hued silk handkerchiefs draped around her limbs, neck, and head, with the gold ring hanging from the nose, the earrings surrounding the entire outer edge of the ear, bracelets, anklets, and armlets, she presented a perfect type of this semi-barbaric country.
Sitting there beside her basket of oranges and melons, she fitted like a mosaic into the strange scene before them.
A little farther on was a trader’s wagon, about fourteen feet long, and four and a half feet wide, piled high with skins of the leopard, silver jackal, tiger, hyena, and rare black fox. These skins, or karosses, as they are called, were as soft to the touch as a velvet robe, and had none of that hard thickness which characterise the cured skins of our wild animals. The natives are experts in the curing of these skins, and deliver them to the traders sewed together as neatly as a Parisian kid-glove, with thread made from the sinews of wild animals.
As they strolled along, the next objects which attracted their attention were the large-sized oxen with their enormously long and graceful horns.
These animals are the especial pride of the Boer farmer, who cares more for his span of sixteen handsomely-matched oxen than for any other object, animate or inanimate, on his farm. The particular cattle which attracted their notice were beautifully spotted black and white, with hides shining like satin. As Kate approached one of them, and reached out her hand, she could not touch the line of his back-bone, even when standing on tip-toe.
They stood there, huge creatures, with their horns towering in the air.
They would have made a fortune for the brush of a Bonheur.
It can hardly excite wonder that such animals gain so much affection. The trader’s wagon to which they were yoked was loaded with ivory tusks, valuable furs, ostrich feathers, and other rich and singular merchandise. One feather, a yard long and half a yard wide from tip to tip, passed into Kate’s possession. It was a plume no less beautiful than rare.
“These feathers,” said Kate, regarding the gift with admiration, “do not look like the flossy, saucy, flirty things which appear on ladies’ hats, strewing coquettish shadows over the face. They resemble those ugly awkward trailing bits of vanity which weep from their hats after a heavy rain, when they have neglected to carry that everyday English article of dress, an umbrella! They are as ugly as the bird from which they are plucked, until some unconscionable merchant brings the tempting merchandise to town, and places it in the hands of the milliner. Then the great play of ‘My Milliner’s Bill’ is enacted, husbands and fathers are ruined by its representation, while the women, pretty pieces of vanity, get free tickets to the show.”