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He lived at peace in his city of Maenseyth, hard by the Sullêh, where the foreign traders brought their ships to anchor sometimes from Tyre itself, oftener from the Tyrian colonies down the Spanish coast; and he ruled over a peaceful nation of tinners, herdsmen, and charcoal-burners.
Each village has its smelting-house, its charcoal-burners, and blacksmiths. They make good axes, spears, needles, arrowheads, bracelets and anklets, which, considering the entire absence of machinery, are sold at surprisingly low rates; a hoe over two pounds in weight is exchanged for calico of about the value of fourpence.
There were charcoal-burners up on the hill-side; there were women washing clothes in the stream which rushed along, far below in the valley; the miller was in his mill, niched in the hollow beside the waterfall; and there might still be inmates in the convent which stood just below the firs, on the knoll to the left of the road.
He halted for some ten minutes at the corner of a narrow road black with soot, near to some charcoal-burners' huts in the forest of Sainte-Genevieve, which touches on the road from Epinay to Corbeil, to tell me that the murderer had certainly passed that way, before entering the grounds and concealing himself in the little clump of trees.
Many of them are good charcoal-burners, and indeed their principal occupation is supplying the adjacent villages with charcoal and firewood. They use small narrow-edged axes for felling, but for lopping they invariably use the Nepaulese national weapon the kookree. This is a heavy, curved knife, with a broad blade, the edge very sharp, and the back thick and heavy.
Some of them were baptized Christians living in the settlements of Baibai and Minondoc, on the other side of the river, opposite the city. The majority of them were fishermen, stonecutters, charcoal-burners, porters, masons, and day-laborers.
"That it is one thing," interrupted Sir Boemund, "to nurse worthy wood-cutters, gamekeepers, fishermen, and charcoal-burners, who, when wounded and ill, look up to their gracious mistress as if she were an angel of deliverance, and quite a different matter to mingle with the miserable rabble yonder.
The recollection that it was his dagger that now confined them dispelled the chill which the irate philosopher had thrown over his glowing excitement; he submissively proposed a return to potatoes, piling up famine and wheat over the one little thought that diffused such a delicious warmth through his breast; as charcoal-burners heap dead ashes over their fire, to hide it from the rough intrusion of chilling winds.
"They are those of the charcoal-burners, mon maitre!" said Antonio; "we will not go near them, however, for they are savage people, and half bandits. Many is the traveller whom they have robbed and murdered in these horrid wildernesses."
Our mules begin to flag as we toil up the steep ascent; but the conductor rattles the stones in his black bag, and as the ominous sound reaches their ears, they start off again with renewed vigour. We pass San Mateo, a village of charcoal-burners, where a large and splendid stone church, with its tall dark cypresses, stands among the huts of reeds and pine-shingles that form the village.
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