The Ploughing of the Earth.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 1, Issue 5, 20 January 1911, Page 9

The Ploughing of the Earth.

(From " The Octopus," by Frank Norris.)

The day was fine. Since the first rain of the season, there had been no other. Now the sky was without a cloud—pale-blue, delicate, luminous, scintillating with morning. The great broAvn earth turned a huge flank to it, exhaling the moisture of the early dew. The atmosphere, washed clean of dust and mist, Avas translucent as crystal. Far off to the east, the hills on the other side of Broderson Creek stood out against the pallid saffron of the horizon as flat and as shapely outlined as if pasted on the sky. The campanile of the ancient Mission of San Juan seemed as fine as frost work. All about between the horizon, the carpet of the land unrolled itself to infinity. But now it was no longer parched Avith heat, cracked and Avarped by a merciless sun, poAvdered Avith dust. The rain had done its Avork; not a clod that was not SAvollen with fertility, not a fissure that did not exhale the sense of fecundity. One could not take a dozen steps upon the ranches Avithout the brusque sensation that underfoot the land was alive— roused at last from its sleep, palpitating with the desire of reproduction. Deep down there in the recesses of the soil, the great heart throbbed once more, thrilling with passion, vibrating with desire, offering itself to the caress of the plough, insistent, eager, imperious. Dimly one felt the deepseated trouble of the earth, the uneasy agitation of its members, the hidden tumult of its womb, demanding to be made fruitful, to reproduce, disengage the eternal renascent germ of life that stirred and struggled in its loins. The ploughs, thirty-five in number, each draAvn by its team of ten, stretched in an interminable line, nearly a quarter of a mile in length, behind and ahead of Vanamee. They Avere arranged, as it were, en echelon, not in file—not one directly behind the other, but each succeeding plough its own width farther in the field than the one in front of it. Each of these ploughs held five shears, so that when the entire company was in motion, one hundred and seventy-five furrows were made at the same instant. At a distance, the ploughs resembled a great column of field artillery. Each driver was in his place, his glance alternating betAveen his horses and the foreman nearest at hand. Other foremen, in their buggies or buckboards, were at intervals along the line, like battery lieutenants. Annixter himself, on horseback, in boots and campaign hat, a cigar in his teeth, overlooked the scene. The division superintendent, on the opposite side of the line, galloped past to a position at the head. For a long moment there was a silence. A sense of preparedness ran from end to end of the column. All things Avere ready, each man in his place. The day's work was about to begin. Suddenly, from a distance at the head of the line came the shrill trilling of a whistle. At once the foreman nearest Vanamee repeated it, at the same time turning down the line, and Avaving one arm. The signal Avas repeated, Avhistle answering AA'histle, till the sounds lost themselves in the distance. At once the line of ploughs lost its immobility, moving forward, getting slowly under Avay, the horses straining in their traces. A prolonged movement rippled from team to team, disengaging in its passage a multitude of sounds—the click of buckles, the creak of straining leather, the subdued clash of machinery, the cracking of whips, the deep breathing of nearly four hundred horses, the abrupt commands and cries of the drivers, and, last of all, the prolonged, soothing murmur of the thick broAvn earth turning steadily from the multitude of advancing shears. The ploughing thus commenced, continued. The sun rose higher. Steadily the hundred iron hand kneaded and furrmved and stroked the brown, humid earth, the hundred iron teeth bit deep into the Titan's flesh. Perched on his seat, the moist living reins slipping and tugging in his hands, Vanamee, in the midst of this steady confusion of constantly-varying sensation, sight interrupted by sound, sound mingling with sight, on this swaying, vibrating seat, quivering with the prolonged thrill of the earth, lapsed to a sort of pleasing numbness, in a sense hypnotized by the AAeaving maze of things in Avhich he found himself invofved. To keep his team at an even, regular gait, maintaining the precise interval ; to run his furroAvs as closely as possible to those already made by the plough in front—this for the moment was the entire sum of his

duties. But while one part of his brain, alert and Avatchful, took cognizance of these matters, all the greater part was lulled and stupefied with the long monotony of the affair. The ploughing, noAv in full swing, enveloped him in a vague, slow-mov-ing Avhirl of things. Underneath him was the jarring, jolting, trembling machine; not a clod was turned, not an obstacle encountered, that he did not receive the SAvift impression of it through all his body; the very friction of the damp soil, sliding incessantly from the shiny surface of the shears, seemed to reproduce itself in his finger-tips and along the back of his head. He heard the horse-hoofs by the myriads crushing down easily, deeply into the loam, the prolonged clinking of trace-chains, the working of the smooth broAvn flanks in the harness, the clatter of wooden hames, the champing of bits, the click of iron shoes against pebbles, the brittle stubble of the surface ground cracking and snapping as the furrows turned, the sonorous, steady breaths wrenched from the deep, labouring chests, strap-bound, shining with SAveat, and all along the line the voices of the men talking to the horses. Everywhere there were visions of glossy broAvn backs, straining, heaving, SAvollen with muscle; harness streaked Avith specks of froth; broad, cup-shaped hoofs, heavy with broAvn loam; men's faces red with tan; blue overalls spotted with axle-grease; muscled hand, the knuckles AA-hitened in their grip on the reins ; and through it all the ammoniacal smell of the horses, the bitter reek of perspiration of beast and men, the aroma of A\-arm leather, the scent of dead stubble; and stronger and more penetrating than everything else, the heavy, enervating odour of the upturned, living earth. At intervals, from the tops of one of the rare, low swells of the land, Vanamee OA'erlooked a Avider horizon. On the other divisions of Quien Sabe the same work was in progress. Occasionally he could see another column of ploughs in the adjoining division— sometimes so close at hand that the subdued murmur of its movements reached his ear; sometimes so distant that it resolved itself into a long, broAvn streak upon the grey of the ground. Farther off to the west on the Osterman ranch other columns came and went; and once, from the crest of the highest SAvell on his division, Vanamee caught a distant glimpse of the Broderson ranch. There, too, moving specks indicated that the ploughing AA r as under way. And farther away still, far off there beyond the fine line of the horizons, over the cun'e of the globe, the shoulder of the earth, he kneAA r were other ranches, and beyond these others, and beyond these still others, the immensities multiplying to infinity. Everywhere throughout the great San Joaquin, unseen and unheard, a thousand ploughs upstirred the land, tens of thousands of shears clutched deep into the warm, moist soil. It Avas the long stroking caress— vigorous, male, powerful—for which the Earth seemed panting; the heroic embrace of a multitude of iron hands, gripping deep into the brown, warm flesh of the land that quivered responsive and passionate under this rude advance, so robust as to be almost an assault, so violent as to be veritably brutal. There, under the sun and under the speckless sheen of the sky, the Avooing of the Titan began, the vast primal passion, the two world-forces, the elemental Male and Female, locked in a colossal embrace, at grapples in the throes of an infinite desire, at once terrible and Divine, knowing no law, untamed, savage, natural, sublime. From time to time the gang in Avhich Vanamee worked halted on the signal from foreman or overseer. The horses came to a standstill, the vague clamour of the work lapsed away. Then the minutes passed. The whole work hung suspended. All up and doAA r n the line one demanded what had happened. The division superintendent galloped past, perplexed and anxious. For the moment, one of the ploughs was out of order; a bolt had slipped, a lever refused to work, or a machine had become immobilized in heavy ground, or a horse had lamed himself. Once even, toward noon, an entire plough was taken out of the line, so out of gear that a messenger had to be sent to the division forge to summon the machinist. Annixter had disappeared. He had ridden farther on to the other divisions of his ranch, to Avatch the work in progress there. At twelve o'clock, according to his orders, all the division superintendents put themselves in communication Avith him by means of the telephone Avires that connected each of the diA'ision houses, reporting the condition of the Avork, the number of acres covered, the prospects of each plough traversing its daily average of tAventy miles

At half-past twelve Vanamee and the rest of the drivers ate their lunch in the field, the tin buckets having been distributed to them that morning after breakfast. But in the evening the routine of the previous day was repeated, and Vanamee, unharnessing his team, riding one horse and leading the others, returned to the division barns and bunk-house. It was betAveen six and seven o'clock when the half hundred men of the gang threw themselves upon the supper the cooks had set out.