Slow Signal Fade ebooks

The family were mamelucos, and seemed to be an
average sample of the poorer class of cacao growers. All were
loosely dressed and bare-footed. A broad verandah extended along
one side of the house, the floor of which was simply the well-
trodden earth; and here hammocks were slung between the bare
upright supports, a large rush mat being spread on the ground,
upon which the stout matron-like mistress, with a tame parrot
perched upon her shoulder, sat sewing with two pretty little
mulatto girls. The master, coolly clad in shirt and drawers, the
former loose about the neck, lay in his hammock smoking a long
gaudily-painted wooden pipe. The household utensils, earthenware
jars, water-pots and saucepans lay at one end, near which was a
wood fire, with the ever-ready coffee-pot simmering on the top of
a clay tripod. A large shed stood a short distance off, embowered
in a grove of banana, papaw, and mango trees; and under it were
the ovens, troughs, sieves, and all other apparatus for the
preparation of mandioca.


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