INTRODUCTORY FABLE
shrieking noise startled them. Before them stretched in long lines a railway in course of construction, and from among the hills came toward them, at what seemed immense speed, a construction train.
"It is an avalanche!" cried Pedro.
"It is the very thing that I was dreaming of!" said Luis.
The train stopped. A gang of labourers emerged from it and began working on the road-bed, while the locomotive engineer answered the boys' questions and explained the mechanism of his engine. The boys discussed this later wonder as they wended their way homeward.
"Could it be adapted to the river men might become lords of the water as of the land," said Luis. "It would be only necessary to devise wheels capable of taking hold of the water. Fix them to a great frame like that waggon body and the steam-engine could propel it along the surface of the river!"
"Now you talk folly," exclaimed Pedro. "Does a fish float on the surface? In the water we must travel as the fish does—in it, not over it! Your waggon body, being filled with light air, would upset at your first movement. And your wheels—
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