ughs stretching waist high from wall to
wall, hundreds of negroes stood ceaselessly stripping the dry leaves
from the stems; and above the soft golden brown piles of tobacco, the
blur of colour separated into distinct and vivid splashes of red, blue,
and orange. Back and forth in the obscurity these brilliantly coloured
turbans nodded like savage flowers amid a crowd of black faces, in which
the eyes alone, very large, wide open, and with gleaming white circles
around the pupils, appeared to me to be really alive and human. They
were singing as we entered, and the sound did not stop while the manager
crossed the floor and paused for an instant beside the nearest worker, a
brawny, coal-black negro, with a red shirt open at his throat, on which
I saw a strange, jagged scar, running from ear to chest, like the
enigmatical symbol of some savage rite I could not understand. Without
turning his head at the manager's approach, he picked up a great leaf
and stripped it from the stem at a single stroke, while his tremendous
bass voice rolled like the music of an organ over the deep piles of
tobacco before which he stood. Above this rich volume of sound fluted
the piercing thin sopranos of the women, piping higher, higher, until
the ancient hymn resolved itself into something that was neither human
nor animal, but so elemental, so primeval, that it was like a voice
imprisoned in the soil--a dumb and inarticulate music, rooted deep, and
without consciousness, in the passionate earth. Over the mass of dark
faces, as they rocked back and forth, I saw light shadows tremble, as
faint and swift as the shadows of passing clouds, while here and there a
bright red or yellow head-dress rose slightly higher than its
neighbours, and floated above the rippling mass like a flower on a
stream. And it seemed to me as I stood there, half terrified by the
close, hot smells and the savage colours, that something within me
stirred and awakened like a secret that I had carried shut up in myself
since birth. The music grew louder in my ears, as if I, too, were a part
of it, and for the first time I heard clearly the words:--

"Christ totes de young lambs in his bosom, bosom,
Christ totes de young lambs in his bosom, bosom,
Christ totes de young lambs in his bosom, bosom,
Fa-ther, de ye-ar-ur Ju-bi-le-e!"

Bob, the manager, picked up a leaf from the nearest trough, examined it
carefully, and tossed it aside. The great black negro turne