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Updated: May 3, 2025
When the Shweydagon was lost in the evening mist, and the steamer had made her way slowly down the sluggish stream with the rice-fields on either side, Hayle went aft and took his last look at the land to which he was saying good-bye.
There must be twenty-five thousand citizens, men, women, and children, in Savannah, that must also be fed, and how he is to feed them beyond a few days I cannot imagine. I know that his requisitions for corn on the interior counties were not filled, and we are in possession of the rice-fields and mills, which could alone be of service to him in this neighborhood.
Mechanically, as in a dreadful dream, they followed Ned's guidance, stumbling across little watercourses, tramping through marshy rice-fields, climbing into and out of deep nullahs, now pausing to listen to the barking of a village dog, now making their way through a thick clump of trees, and at last tramping for hours that seemed ages along the dead flat of the highroad.
Although the drills at ordinary times did not occur more frequently than for a day or two every fortnight, much time was taken up in passing to and from the exercises, especially in the case of those who lived at a distance, and thus found it almost impossible to cultivate their own rice-fields. Frequently, also, the officers would not allow the men to return home without a money bribe.
One can imagine missionary life among the genial Japs as being very pleasant. Saturday and Sunday pass pleasantly away, and, with happy memories of the little missionary colony, I wheel away from Oko-yama on Monday morning, passing through a country of rich rice-fields and numerous villages for some miles.
On and on he trudged through nothing but rice-fields, the day growing hotter and hotter, and his sense of desolation increasing. Two or three natives passed him, who looked at him, he thought, with sinister eyes. He had eaten no breakfast, and was not likely to have any lunch. He grew sick and faint, but there was no refuge: he must walk, walk until he fell and could walk no more!
It was harvest-time the second harvest of the year and the little rice-fields were no longer like mirrors, but were filled with high rustling grain ready for the sickle. The water had been drained off and the reaper and thrasher were going through the fields before dawn. There was no machinery like that used at home.
It has now fallen into much the same dismantled state as its old rival, while it looked much more picturesque, standing as it does on a commanding eminence, terraced with rich rice-fields. The Durbar is a fine old building, characteristic of the architecture of the country, and the town contains many ancient Newar buildings of much interest.
'Ho-Tei, you tell me; 'god of increase, god of the corn-fields and rice-fields, patron of all little children in Japan a blend of Dionysus and Santa Claus. So? Then his look belies him. He is far too fat to care for humanity, too gross to be divine. I suspect he is but some self-centred sage, whom Hokusai beheld with his own eyes in a devious corner of Yedo.
Already a multitude of gardens, more spacious and more beautiful than mine, have been converted into rice-fields or bamboo groves; and the quaint Izumo city, touched at last by some long-projected railway line perhaps even within the present decade will swell, and change, and grow commonplace, and demand these grounds for the building of factories and mills.
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