IIIFカラー高解像度
国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
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| IIIFカラー高解像度 |
| Overland to India : vol.2 | |
| インドへの陸路 : vol.2 |
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引用情報
338 OVERLAND TO INDIA
CHAP.
night a farewell visit from gnats. I wrapped my head in a soft cloth to protect my face, but I had to leave my nose and mouth free to breathe in the heat, and the gnats concentrated their energies on my lips. But what did it matter ? I was glad when I awoke on Sunday, May 13, that it was my last day on this endless road through Baluchistan.
We now travel through fine pleasant country past picturesque hills and stately tamarisks, and the only depressing sight is the wheatfields, thin, drooping, and with broken stalks, the work of the grasshoppers. While the natives with their wives and half-naked children try to save all they can, these detestable insects sit whirring and gnawing and devouring the poor crop. In their joy of existence they fill the air with their monotonous rattle ; fortunately they appear in such quantities only in certain years. It is vain to fight against them. They are heard rustling everywhere among the yellow bitten blades, and whole patches lie on the ground as though a scythe had passed through the grain. Sometimes a small corner of a field has still escaped their ravages.
No huts or tents are visible, but donkeys are heard braying and dogs barking. The telegraph line follows us closely with eighteen posts to a mile. In the shadow of a tamarisk we take our last breakfast in the open air, the usual simple repast of tepid water and cakes. There is a breeze from the west, and the temperature rises to 106.5°, the highest reading on this journey.
The village Amed-wal (3212 feet) consists of huts of boughs, twigs, straw-matting, and clay. The whole population is engaged in hastily harvesting their wheat to anticipate the grasshoppers, though some of the fields are still quite green. They cut the grain with small sickles, which is loaded in sheaves on oxen, and hurriedly carried away for
safety. It was touching to see even small children
dragging the straw to the rick and striving to rescue the valuable crop.
We stayed several hours at Amed-wal. I took a bath in my tent, rested, supped, and late in the evening mounted my tall dromedary again. And then we plunged into the
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