Ali-Baba-like vats, agape and half-buried in the mire.
The suggestion is one of some infernal kraal.
Making my way through this outer barrier, whose
oily filth is far from inviting, I find myself within the
inner circle, set round with lofty sheds which face
inwards, like the . seats of an amphitheatre. The
platforms of the sheds are crowded with the
strenuous naked figures of men employed in pouring
oil from jars into iron reservoirs. The oil pours in a
green, glutinous stream ; the sun glints on the polished
muscles of the toilers; above in long rows on the
topmost tiers sit the Indian supervisors and tally-clerks,
in white robes, silent and taciturn. The stairs of the
platforms are slippery with oil, and all the arena is
alive with the moving figures of the oil-bearers,
hastening up with their quota. They look like demons
from some under-world, rather than human beings;
they look least of all like the happy people of the soil
who elsewhere go to and fro in silken skirts to worship
at some golden pagoda, lifted high above a world of
beauty. Some strange metamorphosis has overtaken
them here. And as I look I am reminded of the
pictures that prophetic writers draw of the Industrial
Future.
For here are the debased workers, unhuman in
appearance; supervisors over them of another race,
silent but ready to intervene should a scuffle or riot
take place among them ; and over all the shadow of
the Colossus of Capital, into whose maw the toil of
the under-workers runs. They are made to sell here
YENAN-GYAUNG FROM THE R IV ER