No Amusements ISI 
utter absence of aim or effort in the people, that are most 
distressing to a foreigner used to the bustle, business, and 
diversions of European cities. A few women washing in the 
river, or making tortillas or cigars in the houses, was all I saw 
going on in the way of work. The men, as usual, lolled about 
in hammocks, smoking incessantly. A few houses were in 
process of building, or, rather, were standing half finished. 
Now and then, a little is done to them; and so they take 
months and years to finish; and men will show you, with the 
greatest complacency, a half-built house on which nothing 
NATIVE STILL 
has been done for two years, telling you they are so busy 
with it that they cannot undertake anything else. There 
are no libraries, theatres, nor concert-rooms: no public 
meetings nor lectures. Newspapers do not circulate amongst 
the people, nor books of any kind. I never saw a native 
reading, in the central provinces, excepting the lawyers 
turning over their law books, or some of the functionaries 
in the towns looking up the government gazette, or children 
at their lessons. Night sets in at six o’clock. A single dim 
dip candle is then lighted, in the better houses, set up high, 
so as to shed a weak, flickering light over the whole room, 
not sufficient to read by. The natives sit about and gossip 
till between eight and nine, then lie down to sleep. 
A single billiard-table, in a dimly-lighted room, at which 
