[A] During
the summer of 1908 no less than twenty-eight foreigners succumbed to
cholera, and the native deaths were numberless.
The people were suffering very much from the cold, and it struck me as
one of the unaccountable phenomena of their civilization that in their
ingenuity in using the gifts of Nature they have never learned to weave
wool, and to employ it in clothing--that is, in a general sense. There
are a few exceptions in the empire. The nation is almost entirely
dependent upon cotton for clothing, which in winter is padded with a
cheap wadding to an abnormal thickness. The common people wear no
underclothing whatever. When they sleep they strip to the skin, and wrap
themselves in a single wadded blanket, sleeping the sleep of the tired
people their excessive labor makes them. And, although their clothes
might be the height of discomfort, they show their famous indifference
to comfort by never complaining. These burdensome clothes hang around
them like so many bags, with the wide gaps here and there where the wind
whistles to the flesh. It is a national characteristic that they are
immune to personal inconveniences, a philosophy which I found to be
universal, from the highest to the lowest.
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