United States or Zambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The labour is almost entirely manual, and men, women, and children all take part in the work. Fruit is abundant in Japan, but it is for the most part of an inferior quality. Grapes, apples, pears, plums, peaches, chestnuts, persimmons, oranges, figs, lemons, citrons, melons, and wild strawberries are all grown, but except as regards the grapes I cannot speak in laudatory terms of Japanese fruit.
"In everything but melons, and criticism of your neighbor, eh?" said Demorest, pouring out a glass of the liquor. "I hev my convictions," said Ezekiel with affected meekness. "And I have mine," said Demorest, tossing off the fiery liquor at a draft, "and it's that this is devilish good stuff. Sorry you can't take some. I'm afraid I'll have to get you to excuse me for a while.
At Tortona, the next post, a great market was being held; the town was filled with country people selling their produce, and with venders of wares of all kinds. Fruit was very abundant grapes, ripe figs, peaches and melons were abundant, and for a trifle one could purchase a sumptuous banquet.
From the latter plant the natives make the pulque, mezcal and agua-diente; and the petahaya or cereus, produces a fruit from which is made a very pleasant preserve. At the Pimo and Maricopa villages are found wheat, corn, tobaco, and cotton, besides melons, pumpkins, beans, etc.
I dreamt I was lunching at a fashionable seaside resort with Polly at my side, and An kept bringing us melons, which grew so monstrous every time a knife was put into them that poor Polly screamed aloud.
Beyond Melons, of whom all this is purely introductory, there was little to interest the most sanguine and hopeful nature. In common with all such localities, a great deal of washing was done, in comparison with the visible results. There was always something whisking on the line, and always something whisking through the court, that looked as if it ought to be there.
Every kind of fruit known in the finest climates is here produced in perfection. Grapes and figs are in profuse abundance; melons and peaches are no less plentiful, and bananas and plantains seem to rejoice in the climate as their own. The town has a never-failing supply of fresh water from a chain of swamps at the back, and the wells fed by them are never dry.
They are overfed, self-indulgent, steeped in the wisdom of a corrupt and licentious experience. I cannot feel that anyone should like them, except as curiosities of a past century. Heavy swags of fruit, searching for larger things, changed to pumpkins, melons, in the gross fashion of enlarged designs for borders. Almost they fell of their own weight.
The melons here are delicious, and we have had buckwheat cakes, and rice cakes, and sweet potatoes, and blueberries. The living here is very good, and nothing can be more comfortable than we are; but the flies are sometimes an annoyance, and the darkness of the rooms which are kept dark to prevent their getting in.
With this noble resolution, she brought out her crayons and colours, sketched views of the gulf, and did the portrait of a sunburnt peasant, who sold melons, like any market-gardener on the Continent, but who wore a long white beard, and looked the fiercest rascal that had ever been seen.
Word Of The Day