Mogok
roadside. If mud,
the digger in the
pit fills it with a
spade and lets it
run up to the man
overhead, who
empties it with a
jerk of his wrist
on to an adjoining
mud-heap. When
this heap has grown
big -enough it is
washed, and the
rubies survive.
At a corner,
in the d a z z l i n g
sun, a sma l l
child stoops, scraping
the y e l l ow
earth from a dry
heap into a shallow
basket. A child
FILLING TH E "BASKET W IT H STONES . at play it WOuld
seem. But when
the little basket is laden, she carries it away to where
a woman is at work—a comely woman, in a dark blue
kilt, close to her figure as she sits, a pale yellow coat,
and pink silk bound about her coils of black hair. Her
wide sleeves lift as she works, revealing her slender arms.
And her business in life—so much at least as she
779