So we pressed forward joyfully to meet our fate, whatever it might be.
For many hours our road ran deviously through cultivated land, where the peasants at their labour laid down their tools and gathered into knots to watch us pass, and quaint, flat-roofed villages, whence the women snatched up their children and fled at the sight of us.

They believed us to be lords from the court who came to work them some harm in person or in property, and their terror told _us_ how the country smarted beneath the rod of the oppressor.

By mid-day, although the peak seemed to be but little nearer, the character of the land had changed.

Now it sloped gently upwards, and therefore could not be irrigated.
Evidently all this great district was dependent on the fall of timely rains, which had not come that spring.

Therefore, although the population was still dense and every rod of the land was under the plough or spade, the crops were failing.