The vines, tough and fibrous, supply the best and strongest cordage used in Mars.  For this purpose they are dried, stripped, combed, and put through an elaborate process of manufacture, which, without weakening the fibres, renders them smooth, and removes the, knots in which they naturally abound.  The twisted cord of the nut-vine is almost as strong as a metallic wire rope of half its measurement.  There is another purpose for which these fibres in their natural state are employed.  Simply dried and twisted, they form a scourge as terrible as the Russian knout or African cowhide, though of a different character—­a scourge which, even in its lightest form, reduces the wildest herd to instant order; and which, as employed on criminals, is hardly less dreaded than that electric rack whereby Martial science inflicts on every nerve a graduated torture such as even ecclesiastical malignity has not invented on Earth—­such as I certainly will not place in the hands of Terrestrial rulers.

All these crops are raised with marvellously little human labour, the whole work of ploughing and sowing being done by machinery, that of weeding and harvesting chiefly by the carvee.  The ambau climb the trees and pick the fruit from the ends of the branches, which they are also taught to pinch in, so that none grow so long as to break with the weight of these creatures, as clever and agile as the smaller monkeys, but almost as large as an ordinary baboon.  It must always be remembered that, size for size, and caeteris paribus, all bodies, animate and inanimate, on Mars weigh less than half as much as they would on Earth.  Eunane’s blunder about the carcara was not explained by any subsequent errors of the ambau or carvee, which always selected the ripe fruit with faultless skill, leaving the immature untouched, and throwing aside in small heaps to manure the ground the few that had been allowed to grow too ripe for use.  The sums paid from time to time into my hands, received from the sales of produce, were far greater than I could possibly spend in gratifying any taste of my own; and, as I presently found, the idea that the surplus might indulge those of the ladies never entered their minds.

Before we had been settled in our home for three days Eveena had made two requests which I was well pleased to grant.  First, she entreated that I would teach her one at least of the languages with which I was familiar—­a task of whose extreme difficulty she had little idea.  Compared with her native tongue, the complication and irregularities of the simplest language spoken on Earth are far more arbitrary and provoking than seems the most difficult of ancient or Oriental tongues to a Frenchman or Italian.  In order to fulfil my promise that she should assist me in recording my observations and writing out my notes, I chose Latin.  Unhappily for her, I found myself as impatient and unsuccessful as I was inexperienced in teaching; and nothing but her exquisite gentleness