Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/346

 of the Inland Sea. On these vast alluvial flats rice is still the main crop, and the saké made from it is considered the best in the empire. All over this emerald plain the farmers could be seen at work, their wide hats showing like so many big mushrooms when the wearers, sunk deep in the muck of the paddy fields, bent over their work. On the prairie-like level of the plain the irrigating system is simple and ingenious. Everywhere the farmers were plastering up the little dikes that keep the water within its limit and pattern the plain with a gigantic check-work of narrow black lines and serve as foot-walks from field to field. No fences or high barriers break the even level, and those strange contrivances, the primitive Persian water-wheels, may be seen every few rods. This Persian wheel, with its row of hanging boxes, is put in motion by a man who climbs it in treadmill fashion, the boxes scooping up the water from the lower level and discharging their burden into a trough at the top, whence the stream flows from field to field by almost imperceptible changes of level. The wheelman wears only the loin-cloth prescribed by law and a wisp of blue towel knotted about his head. Occasionally he fastens a big paper umbrella to a long bamboo pole, and plants it where it will cast a small shadow on him, but usually he tramps his uncomplaining round in the blaze of the tropical sun, a solitary and pathetic, but highly picturesque figure, isolated thus on the vast green plain. More Oriental, even, are the groups at the wells, shaded by straw mats or umbrellas on long poles, while they work the same long well-sweeps as the shadoofs of the Nile.

Far off, like an island in this sea of green, rise the castle towers and the pagoda-tops of Osaka, and for hours we hardly seemed to gain upon the vision, but the runners, saving themselves for a last effort and taking a sip of tea in the suburbs, raced down through the streets and over the bridges at a gait never before equalled. 330