Word: swarmming
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Among the mountain climbers who swarm into Nepal each year to see what heights they may surmount, there is one rule of thumb about the hiring of native porters. For climbs under 18,000 ft., the mountaineers usually pick their men from among the 5,000 Sherpa families living in the Nepalese area of Solo Khumbu. But for high-altitude work, the most able Sherpas are those who live in Darjeeling, across the border in India. Most of these men come from families who emigrated from Nepal in 1921 and got their rugged training in the Indian and Tibetan Himalayas...
...salaries and taxes are still computed in bags of rice, and on this basis a worker earns 300 bags a year, while his counterpart in non-Communist South Viet Nam gets the currency equivalent of 1,500. In Hanoi, rice is still rationed, and beggars, though forbidden by law, swarm the streets. The dong has sunk so low-7,000 to the dollar-that it may well be the worst currency in the world. Even sister Communist countries refuse to accept it, and North Viet Nam's trade with them is through barter. Last week at long last, Minister...
...carrier and soar to a height of 23 miles (120,000 ft.). Below it will dangle an aluminum cylinder containing 600 specially designed photographic plates in a stack 2 ft. high and 21 in. wide. The balloon is expected to stay up for 48 hours. When it descends, a swarm of airplanes and ships will track it and rescue the cylinder...
...city, or farther into the jungle, or to escape a nagging wife. The crocodiles got the rest, said the natives glibly. After all, in a region where the muddy Congo stretches more than a mile from bank to bank and is dotted with marshes and islands, crocodiles swarm, seizing the careless child, grasping by the foot the woman who washes clothes in the river. But other informants whispered of bodies found in the river strangely mutilated, without hands, heart, liver or sexual organs. These were swiftly buried and forgotten...
...Dawn's Early Light. On the even days, when the Reds do not shell the island (to prove that they can control its destiny at will even if they cannot seize it), supplies pour into the beaches from Formosa. Farmers swarm into the fields. But having learned to distrust the promises of Peking, they pack two days' work into the five morning hours, furiously irri gating, hoeing the weeds, planting winter crops. Some, like wizened Tun Men-tse, venture out before dawn even on the odd days, crouching in the dark to get in a couple of hours...