The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope, and was operated by human or animal power.

'Straight along at the back of the huts, past our threshing floors, my dear and then through the hemp field. There's a path.'

They all came from behind the wattle fence of an apiary, and flying across the hemp field disappeared in the direction of the marsh.

Still invisible in the absence of the sun, the dew on the tall scented hemp, from which the male plants had already been weeded out, wetted Levin's legs and his blouse to above his belt.