coolie-loads

Updated: July 17, 2026

Little naked children, offspring of parents themselves covered with merest hanging rags, groped round me and treated me with courteous curiosity; goats smelt round the coolie-loads of men who rested on low forms and smoked their rank tobacco; smoke from the green wood fires issued from the mud grates, where receptacles were filled with boiling water ready for the traveler, constantly re-filled by a woman whose child, hung over her back, moaned piteously for the milk its mother was too busy to give to it.

Edwin John Dingle - Across China on Foot