Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct/most appropriate options.

But these were no common men and women, no riff-raff from some community, always poor and easily starving in a flood time. No, these were men and women of which any nation might have been proud. It could be seen they were all from one region, for they wore garments woven out of the same dark blue cotton stuff, plain and cut in an old-fashioned way, the sleeves long and the coats long and full. The men wore smocked aprons, the smocking done in curious, intricate, beautiful designs. The women had bands of the same plain blue stuff wrapped like kerchiefs about their heads. Both men and women were tall and strong in frame, although the women's feet were bound. There were a few lads in the throng, a few children sitting in baskets slung upon a pole across the shoulders of their fathers, but there were no young girls, no young infants, every man and every lad bore a burden on his shoulder. This burden was always bedding, quilts made of the blue cotton stuff padded. Clothing and bedding were clean and strongly made. On top of every folded quilt, with a bit of mat between, was an iron cauldron. These cauldrons had doubtless been taken from the earthen ovens of the village when the people saw the time had come when they must move. But in no basket was there a vestige of food, nor was there a trace of food having been cooked in them recently.