it was wheat,fit for the grindstones as it lay.they manoeuvred the fore-hatch of that steamer directly under an elevator--a house of red tin a hundred and fifty feet high.then they let down into that fore-hatch a trunk as if it had been the trunk of an elephant,but stiff,because it was a pipe of iron-champed wood.and the trunk had a steel-shod nose to it,and contained an endless chain of steel buckets.
then the captain swore,raising his eyes to heaven,and a gruff voice answered him from the place he swore at,and certain machinery,also in the firmament,began to clack,and the glittering,steel-shod nose of that trunk burrowed into the wheat,and the wheat quivered and sunk upon the instant as water sinks when the siphon sucks,because the steel buckets within the trunk were flying upon their endless round,carrying away each its appointed morsel of wheat.
the elevator was a persian well wheel--a wheel squashed out thin and cased in a pipe,a wheel driven not by bullocks,but by much horse-power,licking up the grain at the rate of thou-sands of bushels the hour.and the wheat sunk into the fore-hatch while a man looked--sunk till the brown timbers of the bulkheads ed bare,and men leaped down through clouds of golden dust and shovelled the wheat furiously round the nose of the trunk,and got a steam-shovel of glittering steel and made that shovel also,till there remained of the grain not more than a horse leaves in the fold of his nose-bag.
in this manner do they handle wheat at buffalo.on one side of the elevator is the steamer,on the other the railway track;and the wheat is loaded into the cars in bulk.wah!wah!god is great,and i do not think he ever intended gar sahai or luckman narain to supply england with her wheat.india can cut in not without profit to herself when her harvest is good and the ameri-can yield poor;but this very big country can,upon the average,supply the earth with all the beef and bread that is required.