The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

THE BUY TRAVELLERS.
and only missed his mark by a conple of inches. Yon see that tiie dumb
animals were not disposed to welcome us l)ospitably. They were evidently
put np to their conduct by their masters, who do not like the strangers
any more than the dogs and cats do, and are only prevented from sliowing
their spite by the fear that the foreigners will blow their towns out of ex-
istence if any of them are injured.
"We bought some things in the shops, but they did not amount to
much either in cost or cpiality. Fred found a pair of Chinese spectacles
CHINKSE SPECTACLES.
with a smoky tint so as to reduce the glare of the sun.
which he paid half a dollar for;
they were big round things, with
glasses nearly as large as a silver
dollar, and looked ver}- comical
when put on. But I am told
that they are very comfortaljle
to the eyes, and that tlie foreign-
ers wlio live in China, and have
occasion to wear spectacles, gen-
erall}' prefer those made by tiie
Cliinese opticians. A pair of
really tine pebbles will cost from
ten to twenty dollars. The glass-
es that Fred bought were only the
commonest kind of stuff, colored
" We went outside the town, and found ourselves suddenly in the
country. It was a complete change. Going through a gate in a wall took
us from the streets to the fields, and going back through the gate took us
to the streets again. We saw a man ploughing with a plough that liad
only one handle, and made a furrow in the ground about as large as if he
had dragged a pickaxe through it. The plough was pulled by a Chinese
buffalo about as large as a two-year-old steer, and he was guided by means
of a cord drawn through the cartilage of his nose. It was a poor outfit
for a farmer ; but the man who had it appeared perfectly contented, and
did not once turn his eyes from his work to look at us.
" A little way off from this ploughman there was a man threshing
grain on some slats ;
they looked like a small ladder placed on an incline,
and the way he did the work was to take a handful of grain and thresli it
against the slats till he liad knocked out all the kernels and left nothing
liut the straw. Such a tiling as a threshing-machine would astonish them
ycrj much, I should think, and I don't believe they would allow it to run.