Page 117 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

checked shirt and red sash of a Mediterranean sailor, bawl-
ing orders from the end of the jetty in a stentorian voice. A
fellow in a thousand!
The material apparatus of perfected civilization which
obliterates the individuality of old towns under the stereo-
typed conveniences of modern life had not intruded as yet;
but over the worn-out antiquity of Sulaco, so characteris-
tic with its stuccoed houses and barred windows, with the
great yellowy-white walls of abandoned convents behind
the rows of sombre green cypresses, that fact—very mod-
ern in its spirit—the San Tome mine had already thrown
its subtle influence. It had altered, too, the outward charac-
ter of the crowds on feast days on the plaza before the open
portal of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos
with a green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tome
miners. They had also adopted white hats with green cord
and braid—articles of good quality, which could be ob-
tained in the storehouse of the administration for very little
money. A peaceable Cholo wearing these colours (unusual
in Costaguana) was somehow very seldom beaten to with-
in an inch of his life on a charge of disrespect to the town
police; neither ran he much risk of being suddenly lassoed
on the road by a recruiting party of lanceros—a method
of voluntary enlistment looked upon as almost legal in the
Republic. Whole villages were known to have volunteered
for the army in that way; but, as Don Pepe would say with
a hopeless shrug to Mrs. Gould, ‘What would you! Poor
people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But the State must have its
soldiers.’

11 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard