A severe day of mountain travelling brought us into another region.
We left Ichinono early on a fine morning, with three pack-cows, one
of which I rode [and their calves], very comely kine, with small
noses, short horns, straight spines, and deep bodies. I thought
that I might get some fresh milk, but the idea of anything but a
calf milking a cow was so new to the people that there was a
universal laugh, and Ito told me that they thought it "most
disgusting," and that the Japanese think it "most disgusting" in
foreigners to put anything "with such a strong smell and taste"
into their tea! All the cows had cotton cloths, printed with blue
dragons, suspended under their bodies to keep them from mud and
insects, and they wear straw shoes and cords through the cartilages
of their noses. The day being fine, a great deal of rice and sake
was on the move, and we met hundreds of pack-cows, all of the same
comely breed, in strings of four.

We crossed the Sakuratoge, from which the view is beautiful, got
horses at the mountain village of Shirakasawa, crossed more passes,
and in the afternoon reached the village of Tenoko. There, as
usual, I sat under the verandah of the Transport Office, and waited
for the one horse which was available. It was a large shop, but
contained not a single article of European make. In the one room a
group of women and children sat round the fire, and the agent sat
as usual with a number of ledgers at a table a foot high, on which
his grandchild was lying on a cushion. Here Ito dined on seven
dishes of horrors, and they brought me sake, tea, rice, and black
beans. The last are very good. We had some talk about the
country, and the man asked me to write his name in English
characters, and to write my own in a book. Meanwhile a crowd