THREE:FIRING DOWN THE HATCHWAY. FIRING DOWN THE HATCHWAY.The train started promptly on the advertised time, and the boys found that there were half a dozen trains each way daily, some of them running through, like express trains in other countries, while others were slower, and halted at every station. The line ran through a succession of fields and villages, the former bearing evidence of careful cultivation, while the latter were thickly populated, and gave indications of a good deal of taste in their arrangement. Shade-trees were numerous, and Frank readily accepted as correct the statement he had somewhere read, that a Japanese would rather move his house than cut down a tree in case the one interfered with the other. The rice harvest was nearly at hand, and the fields were thickly burdened with the waving rice-plants. Men were working in the fields, and moving slowly to and fro, and everywhere there was an activity that did not betoken a lazy people. The Doctor explained that if they had been there a month earlier, they would have witnessed the process of hoeing the rice-plants to keep down the weeds, but that now the hoeing was over, and there was little to do beyond keeping the fields properly flooded with water, so that the ripening plants should have the[Pg 104] necessary nourishment. He pointed out an irrigating-machine, which was in operation close to the railway, and the boys looked at it with much interest. A wheel was so fixed in a small trough that when it was turned the water was raised from a little pool, and flowed over the land it was desirable to irrigate. The turning process was performed by a man who stood above the wheel, and stepped from one float to another. The machinery was very simple, and had the merit of cheapness, as its cost could not have been large at the price of labor in Japan.
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