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We soon left the dry rice-fields behind, and for some distance passed over a wide uninteresting plain of tall grass, dotted about with a few trees. After going some distance our two buffaloes were unyoked and allowed to soak in a small pond.
Farther down were stretches of grass and groves of lovely feathery bamboo. And between these groves stretched what seemed to be little silvery lakes, with the reflection of the great mountains in them. They were really the famous rice-fields of Formosa, at this time of the year all under water. There were no fences round their little lake-fields.
Out of this a certain percentage goes to the chiefs and majors, and the remainder is divided among the inhabitants. This system works very well, and I believe is at present far better for the people than free-trade would be. There are also large rice-fields, and in this little village of seventy houses, I was informed that a hundred pounds' worth of rice was sold annually.
As to the latter conjecture; the fall of fish during showers, even were it not so problematical in theory, is too rare an event to account for the punctual appearance of those found in the rice-fields, at stated periods of the year.
Here to the north, where rice-fields and small huddled villages stretched out as far as the eye could see, a band of hard, white light still rested on the horizon, throwing back among the hillside graves a pale, metallic sheen. Each shaft of granite was thus divided, one upright half, blue shadow, the other a gray-green gleam. All looked of equal height.
Rice, however, is the elephant's choice above all other esculents, and sometimes a small herd will devastate a whole plantation in a single night. The planters generally build a bamboo fence about their rice-fields in the districts liable to be visited by these animals.
"The Dyak women are generally well treated; but they have to work very hard, and much that you would think the men ought to do is done by them. The lords of creation here are inclined to be lazy, while their wives and daughters are engaged in the rice-fields, though their husbands and brothers are driven to labor.
The name of Italy is my nightingale: I feel that somebody lives that I love, and is ill-treated shamefully, crying out to me for help. My father had to run away to save his life. He was fifteen days lying in the rice-fields to escape from the soldiers which makes me hate a white coat.
Half turning her face toward us, she continued in a clear, soft voice: "That man they call Ramero down in Santy Fee I knowed him when he was just Fred Ramer back in the rice-fields country. His father, old man Ramer, tried to kill me once, 'cause he said I knowed too much. I helped him into kingdom come right then and saved a lot of misery.
Travel and observation were the influences which developed this art; it was never a growth of studios. But the land was what it is to-day. There were the same forests of cedar and of pine, the same groves of bamboo, the same peaked villages with roofs of thatch, the same terraced rice-fields dotted with the great yellow straw hats of peasants bending in the slime.
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