Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/235

 the manner of their cultivation. The plants grew, not on the level ground, but on ridges of about four feet in height, and sloping each way at an angle of sixty degrees. By this means, not only was a greater surface obtained, but also, by varying the direction of the ridges, the different varieties could be suited with almost any amount of exposure to, or aversion from, the beams of the morning and mid-day sun. We gathered also a small dish of cherries, more for their beauty than from any notion of their ability to cope in flavor with the other fruit we had gathered. These cherries, I may remark, grew on dwarf-trees, or, rather, bushes, not more than six feet in height.

We were returning to the house, when Hulmar met us with the intelligence that his visitor had departed, and that he had just heard through the telephone that the books ordered a few hours before were already on their way from the railway station.

Nor was it long until the wagon came in sight. The books, contained in several cases, were soon deposited on the floor of the veranda. With easy good-breeding, the zerdar who had brought them acceded to Hulmar's invitation to rest for a while under the shade. While admiring the basket of fruit, which Reva placed at his disposal, and eating a few of the cherries, he amused us with an account of the ingenious expedients to which they were obliged to resort at home in order to raise such fruits as these, and told of the excellence of their mangoes.

His native place, it appeared, was in the neighborhood of where Timbuctoo now stands. In complexion and build I should have taken him for a Spaniard. Hulmar was able to inform me afterwards, that, from his name,