character of the soil and the power of the wind and rain have
combined not only to excavate these long passages, but to cast
up innumerable mounds and hills, often of such fantastic shapes
that one is reminded of the quaint and curious formations in
the Bad Lands of the Missouri, though the loess hillocks lack
the brilliant colouring of the American formations.

Throughout the province as a whole, almost every possible
square rod of ground is carefully cultivated by the industrious
people, so that in the summer time the whole country appears
to be continuous gardens and farms dotted with innumerable
villages. Wheat appears to be the chief crop and, as in the
Dakotas, the entire landscape seems to be one splendid field of
waving, yellowing grain. But early in June the wheat disappears
as if by magic, for the whole population apparently, men,
women and children, turn out and harvest it with amazing
quickness in spite of the fact that everything is done by hand.
Men and donkeys carry the grain to smooth, hard ground
spaces, where it is threshed by a heavy roller stone drawn by a
donkey or an ox or by men, and several times I saw it drawn
by women. Then it is winnowed by being pitched into the
air for the wind to drive out the feathery chaff. The methods
vividly illustrate the first Psalm and other Bible references--
gleaning, muzzling ``the ox when he treadeth out the corn,''
the threshing floor and ``the chaff which the wind driveth
away.''

One might suppose that after the wheat harvest, stubble
fields would be much in evidence. But they are not, for the
millet promptly appears. It is hardly noticeable when the