heard of America. She knows of Russia as a great power, and, of
course, of China, but there her knowledge ends, though she has been
at Tokiyo and Kiyoto.

July 1.--I was just falling asleep last night, in spite of
mosquitoes and fleas, when I was roused by much talking and loud
outcries of poultry; and Ito, carrying a screaming, refractory hen,
and a man and woman whom he had with difficulty bribed to part with
it, appeared by my bed. I feebly said I would have it boiled for
breakfast, but when Ito called me this morning he told me with a
most rueful face that just as he was going to kill it it had
escaped to the woods! In order to understand my feelings you must
have experienced what it is not to have tasted fish, flesh, or
fowl, for ten days! The alternative was eggs and some of the paste
which the man was treading yesterday on the mat cut into strips and
boiled! It was coarse flour and buckwheat, so, you see, I have
learned not to be particular!

I. L. B.



LETTER XIV



An Infamous Road--Monotonous Greenery--Abysmal Dirt--Low Lives--The
Tsugawa Yadoya--Politeness--A Shipping Port--A Barbarian Devil.

TSUGAWA, July 2.