Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after the fashion prevalent in the time of Methuselah.

There is not a wheelbarrow in the land--they carry everything on their heads, or on donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of wood and whose axles turn with the wheel.

There is not a modern plow in the islands or a threshing machine.

All attempts to introduce them have failed.

The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before him.