The cabmen he met and their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for new houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked at him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: Ah, there he is!
This proved one of the most momentous steps taken in the history of South Africa, for the Indian population rapidly increased, the " free " Indians becoming market gardeners, farmers, hawkers, traders, and in time serious competitors with the whites.
(In the isolated south-eastern counties they continued through 1856-1858, mainly to the advantage of the " jay-hawkers " of free-state Kansas and to the terror of Missouri.) The struggle now passed into another phase, in which questions of state predominate.
Even at ten o'clock, when the Rostovs got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot sunshine were all full of that summer languor, that content and discontent with the present, which is most strongly felt on a bright, hot day in town.
But there were no dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers to enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of female purchasers--but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though without muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently making their way out through its passages with bundles.
