almost hanging over the edge of the knife-like ridge of the pass of
Kuruma, on which it is situated. It is the only yadoya I have been
at from which there has been any view. The villages are nearly
always in the valleys, and the best rooms are at the back, and have
their prospects limited by the paling of the conventional garden.
If it were not for the fleas, which are here in legions, I should
stay longer, for the view of the Aidzu snow is delicious, and, as
there are only two other houses, one can ramble without being
mobbed.

In one a child two and a half years old swallowed a fish-bone last
night, and has been suffering and crying all day, and the grief of
the mother so won Ito's sympathy that he took me to see her. She
had walked up and down with it for eighteen hours, but never
thought of looking into its throat, and was very unwilling that I
should do so. The bone was visible, and easily removed with a
crochet needle. An hour later the mother sent a tray with a
quantity of cakes and coarse confectionery upon it as a present,
with the piece of dried seaweed which always accompanies a gift.
Before night seven people with sore legs applied for "advice." The
sores were all superficial and all alike, and their owners said
that they had been produced by the incessant rubbing of the bites
of ants.

On this summer day the country looks as prosperous as it is
beautiful, and one would not think that acute poverty could exist
in the steep-roofed village of Nojiri, which nestles at the foot of
the hill; but two hempen ropes dangling from a cryptomeria just
below tell the sad tale of an elderly man who hanged himself two
days ago, because he was too poor to provide for a large family;