MacNair and Iola were engaged with their classes an average of two hours a day, and we ordinarily spent our leisure and recreation time together. Our home was also District Headquarters, and here we were continually meeting with representatives from every home in the district, and our acquaintance was rapidly extended. We often visited other homes, sometimes by electric carriage or airship, and sometimes we would walk for miles. When tired, we could always hail a car or carriage. Thus, we were by our associations continually improving in the use of the language, while we were adding to our fund of knowledge concerning the country, by observation and conversation with the people.
I carefully studied the economy of the home in which we lived, being assured that this was a sample of a multitude of others. The same thing was true of the district. So in a general way, we were making a study of the entire concave by having a sample submitted to our inspection. At least, I could get a very clear idea of agriculture, the great basic industry that sustains the race, and hence, I am condensing into this chapter the results of a long and careful investigation under exceptionally favorable conditions.
During our attendance at school Iola and MacNair frequently took us for a sail in their airship. This gave us an opportunity to study its mechanism, and at the same time obtain a bird's eye view of the country, and if anything especially attracted our attention, all we had to do was to ask for an explanation. As we had first approached the continent we were struck by the large residences, storage buildings, and the long rectilinear fields, but now that we examined the scene at leisure we began to take in the details, and were impressed by the general sameness of the picture.
These magnificent buildings were strikingly similar to each other and the same thing was true of the long rectilinear fields and the arrangement of the crops. The residence buildings were apparently situated at alternate section corners and hence about two miles apart each way. Midway between these were large warehouses, elevators, mills, factories, etc.
To the east and west these long rows of buildings were connected by surface, electric roads, and north and south by elevated roads. These roads, both passenger and freight, all passed through these buildings. This general arrangement of everything into squares, gave the entire district, from the cabin of the airships, the appearance of an immense checkerboard.