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Their circumference of radiation was almost or quite a circle, for they preferred the ricefields for their daily hunting. Here the great birds, snowy white, with flowing aigrettes, and long, curving necks, settled with dignity, and here they slept and sat on their rough nests of sticks.
Now the pheasants have for centuries existed in enormous numbers in the endless ricefields of China, without doing any damage to the crops. In fact they could not be present in such numbers without being an important factor in keeping down insect and other enemies of the grain.
"Because we should then be traveling over those ricefields, señora," replied the imperturbable captain, pursing his lips to indicate the cultivated fields and indulging in two circumspect winks. This Doña Victorina was well known in the country for her caprices and extravagances.
As the average monthly temperature does not vary more than two degrees all the year round in Java, the process of preparing the ground, sowing, and reaping go on simultaneously in the ricefields. Every now and then we come across a queer little Noah's-ark cottage in the midst of bananas and bamboos, with a tall palm or two waving overhead. Salak remains long in sight.
Were his thoughts with his heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific? among the ricefields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of remembered mountain peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange forest trees unknown to climes like ours?
But it was not to the distant prospect that the king's eyes naturally turned at this crisis of his fate. His attention was arrested by a spectacle nearer at hand. For all the plain below was alive with troops, their banners waving gaily in the sun, the white tents of their many camps standing sharply out against the green and gold of the ricefields.
The plain was low and damp and the paths and roads lay deep in mud. They had a long toilsome walk between the ricefields until they came to the first village of these barbarians of the plain. It was very much like a Chinese village, dirty, noisy, and swarming with wild-looking children and wolfish dogs. The visitors were received with the utmost disdain.
While the land rent continued to be calculated as before, on a basis of the produce of ricefields, the value of the sugar crop was so much greater than that of the rice, which it partially displaced, that the money received for it amounted on the average to twice the sum paid to Government for land rent on the whole of the village land.
The river now became exceedingly picturesque, the ground on each side being partially cleared for ricefields, affording a good view of the country.
While I was wondering why he stopped, he coolly took out my luggage and planted it in the middle of the road in front of the sadoe. After this very broad hint, I got out too. I said. For answer he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to the mountain. Meanwhile a cooly, who had been summoned from the ricefields, appeared upon the scene and took up my Gladstone bag.
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