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If we meet it in the shape of a blade of wheat piercing the furrow; a bird brooding on its nest; a poor wounded beast, recovering itself, rising and continuing its way; a peasant ploughing and sowing a field that has been ravaged by flood or hail; a nation slowly repairing its losses and healing its wounds under whatever guise of humanity or suffering it appears to us, let us salute it!
In the beginning he refused worldly gifts from others although his church was honoured and patronised by neighbouring kings and chieftains who offered him lands and cattle and money and many other things. Mochuda kept his monks employed in hard labour and in ploughing the ground for he wanted them to be always humble.
The aviator is in the same plight as a mariner who is compelled from circumstances to rely upon his compass alone, and who is debarred by inclement weather from deciding his precise position by taking the sun. A ship ploughing the waters has to contend against the action of cross currents, the speed of which varies considerably, as well as adverse winds.
The ploughing and other farm labour is done by bullocks. A staff of these, varying of course with the amount of land under cultivation, is kept at each factory. For their support a certain amount of sugar-cane is planted, and in the cold weather carrots are sown, and gennara, a kind of millet, and maize. Both maize and gennara have broad green leaves, and long juicy succulent stalks.
On the day which was to decide the important question, Peter had been ploughing in a part of his father's land called the High Field. All the rest lay level on the plain round about the farm, but this one field was on the shoulder of the downs, so that from it you looked far over the distant valley, with its little clusters of villages dotted here and there.
He had the sailors lowering jolly-boats in a jiffy; and off seven of us went, round the ice-pans, ploughing, cutting, portaging a way till we had crossed the obstruction and were pulling for the French fort with the spars of three Company boats far in the offing.
Those behind followed at heel. Dillon flung his horse down into the ravine in the headlong fashion he had learned from months of hill riding. He cantered along it, splashing through shallow pools and ploughing into tangled brush. When he came within sight of the river the cattle were emerging from it upon a sandy bar that formed an island in midstream.
No task continues very long: everything changes infinitely with the seasons. Processes are not repetitive but creative. Nature hates monotony, is ever changing and restless, brings up a storm to drive the haymakers from their hurried work in the fields, sends rain to stop the ploughing, or a frost to hurry the apple harvest. Everything is full of adventure and vicissitude!
Among the products of agriculture I of course intended to include the farmer's stock, and I must here bear my tribute of admiration to the fine display which has been made of horned cattle; particularly of work oxen, remarkable for their size, their adaptation to the purposes for which they are kept and the docility and yet the unflagging spirit which they manifested in the trials of strength and of deep ploughing.
The "ok," which poor Joe thought was the proper singular of "oxes," as he would have called a pair of them, was a meek-looking little creature, harnessed to an old two-wheeled cart by a perfect tangle of ropes and chains. He was so small that even Frank, accustomed as he was to the ways of the country, almost smiled at the idea of its "ploughing splendid."
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