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THREE:They opened the windows and looked out. Sure enough, the plain[Pg 43] was covered, away to the south, with a dark expanse like a forest, but, unlike a forest, it appeared to be in motion. Very soon it was apparent that what seemed to be a forest was a herd of animals.

THREE:

THREE:"Lieutenant," I began eagerly as he was drawing away, "is--?"

THREE:

THREE:Hundreds of pigeons were circling around the temple, or walking among the people that thronged the street. Nobody showed the slightest intention of harming them, and the consequence was they were very tame. Several stands were devoted to the sale of grain for the birds; and the sharp-eyed pigeons knew, when they saw the three strangers halt in front of one of the stands, that there was good prospect of a free breakfast. The Doctor bought a quart or more of the grain and threw it out upon the ground. Instantly there was a whirring of wings in the air, and in less time than it takes to say so the grain was devoured. The birds were rather shy of the visitors, and possibly it had been whispered to them that the foreigner likes his pigeons broiled or served up in pies. But they did not display any such timidity when the natives approached them. Some of the Japanese temples are the homes of a great number of pigeons, and in this respect they resemble the mosques at Constantinople and other Moslem cities. "The decline in Portuguese trade with China was accompanied with a corresponding decline in the language, but it left its impress upon the more recent pidgin English, which contains many Portuguese words. Pidgin English is a language by itself, with very little inflection either in noun, pronoun, or verb, and with a few words doing duty for many. The Chinese learn it readily, as they have no grammatical giants to wrestle with in mastering it, and the foreigners are quite ready to meet them on the road and adapt their phraseology to its requirements. The Chinese has only to commit to memory a few hundred words and know their meaning; the foreigner (if he be English-speaking) has less than a hundred foreign words to learn, together with the peculiar construction of phrases. The Chinese have printed vocabularies in which the foreign word and its meaning are set forth in Chinese characters, and thus they have no occasion to trouble themselves with the alphabet of the stranger. These books are specially intended for the use of compradores and servants in foreign employ, and are so small that they can be readily carried in the pocket.