Their costumes were various but scant, their colors all shades of brown up to the deepest black.

Their faces were all in a grin of amusement.

The noise of talking and laughing was immense.

All were squatted upon the ground, in front of each was a large keg labelled "pork." Among them moved two or three commissariat officers in gray uniforms.

At the order, "Now then, off with you," the negroes would rise, take off their cloths, wrap them into pads, lift the barrels on to their heads, and go off at a brisk pace; the officer perhaps smartening up the last to leave with a cut with his stick, which would call forth a scream of laughter from all the others.
When all the men had gone, the turn of the women came, and of these two or three hundred, who had been seated chattering and laughing against the walls, would now come forward and stoop to pick up the bags of biscuit laid out for them.