THE PEOPLE 163 
"Yes." 
"Well, if you can give me a dinner, why can't I 
give you a chicken?" 
The unsanitary condition of the poorer homes 
which so excites the genteel visitor, although bad 
enough, is less important than it seems to those ac- 
customed to sewer-drained cities; for natural causes 
here — the hot sun, the free winds, the wide spaces, 
and the scattered population — prevent the conse- 
quences that follow similar habits in crowded and 
shut-in places. The people are fairly healthy, though, 
as a rule with exceptions, not long-lived, and while 
they are young their mode of life is not felt by them 
as a hardship, the burden of it falling upon the sick 
and aged. 
The most frequent disorder among them is dys- 
pepsia, for which the pale-green, or saffron-yellow, 
brown-spotted, ring-streaked and speckled luxury 
known as "soda biscuits" undoubtedly bears a 
heavy burden of blame. These wonders of the culi- 
nary art are freely eaten by all who can afford to 
buy white flour, and their odorous presence is often 
discernible from afar as you approach a house at 
mealtime. Typhoid fever is another frequent vis- 
itant, though the "mountain fever," as it is here 
called, appears in a light form that seldom results 
fatally. 
When looking at the average highlander with his 
bent back, his narrow shoulders and lean frame, one 
suspects that back of everything the people are 
starving — not so much physically as mentally and 
