ONE:I dont see why. You and he are such friends. I shall write to him and suggest it, or you might; perhaps that would be best: he can but say he cannot manage it, though for my part I should be very much surprised if he did not accept.At noon they had gone twenty-five miles through a country which abounded in villages and gardens, and had a great many fields of wheat, millet, cotton, and other products of China; the fields were not unlike those they had seen on their voyage up the Yang-tse; and as for the villages, they were exactly alike, especially in the items of dirt and general repulsiveness. The modes of performing field labor were more interesting than the villages; the most of the fields were watered artificially, and the process of pumping water attracted the attention of the boys. An endless chain, with floats on it, was propelled through an inclined box by a couple of men who kept up a steady walk on a sort of treadmill. There were spokes in a horizontal shaft, and on the ends of the spokes there were little pieces of board, with just sufficient space for a man's foot to rest. The men walked on these spokes, and steadied themselves on a horizontal pole which was held between a couple of upright posts. Labor is so cheap in China that there is no occasion for employing steam or wind machinery; it was said that a pump coolie was able to earn from[Pg 359] five to ten cents a day in the season when the fields needed irrigation, and he had nothing to do at other times.
TWO:The light breakfast was taken, and the adventurers moved on. At each step the way grew more and more difficult. Every mile was steeper than its predecessor, and in many instances it was rougher. The rarefaction of the air increased, and rendered the work of breathing more and more severe. The travellers panted like frightened deer, and their lungs seemed to gain little relief from the rest that the Doctor and his young friends were compelled to take at frequent intervals. The last of the huts of refuge was passed, and it seemed only a short distance to the summit. But it required more than an hour's effort to accomplish this final stage. The boys refused all offers of assistance, and struggled manfully on; but Doctor Branson was less confident of his powers, and was glad of the aid of the strong-limbed and strong-handed yamabooshees. All were glad enough to stand on the summit and gaze into the deep gulf of the crater, while their brows were cooled by the clear breezes from the Pacific. They were at the top of Fusiyama, 14,000 feet above the level of the ocean that lay so far below them, eighty miles from their starting-point at Yokohama, and their vision swept an area of the surface of the earth nearly two hundred miles in diameter. East and south lay the broad ocean. West and north was the wondrous land of Japan, a carpet of billowy green, roughened here and there with wooded hills and small mountains, indented with bays and with silver threads of rivers meandering through it. It was a picture of marvellous beauty which no pen can describe."Deserters, I don't doubt!" was my comment to the ladies. Tongue revenge is poor, but it is something.
FORE:"Oh--getting on, getting on," he replied. Doctors think patients are fools.
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