| caption: |
Chapter Twenty-seven. Return to Nagaland |
| caption: |
watching the cutting of rice |
| text: |
At Shoupa's field a large crowd of workers were already busy. The centre of the activities was the threshing hut with its accompanying shelters. On the slopes above and below groups of men and boys, and a few girls of Shoupa's family were cutting the rice with small sickles. The reapers worked in lines of semi-circles shouting as they proceeded with surprising speed. The effect was almost that of a machine, and plots of waving rice-plants were suddenly reduced to bare ground where only the large leaves of taro-plants emerged from heaps of cut rice-stalks. |
