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.