flower-gardens under trellised vines, and privacy secured by high,
closely-clipped screens of pomegranate and cryptomeria. Besides
the villages of Yoshida, Semoshima, Kurokawa, Takayama, and
Takataki, through or near which we passed, I counted over fifty on
the plain with their brown, sweeping barn roofs looking out from
the woodland. I cannot see any differences in the style of
cultivation. Yoshida is rich and prosperous-looking, Numa poor and
wretched-looking; but the scanty acres of Numa, rescued from the
mountain-sides, are as exquisitely trim and neat, as perfectly
cultivated, and yield as abundantly of the crops which suit the
climate, as the broad acres of the sunny plain of Yonezawa, and
this is the case everywhere. "The field of the sluggard" has no
existence in Japan.

We rode for four hours through these beautiful villages on a road
four feet wide, and then, to my surprise, after ferrying a river,
emerged at Tsukuno upon what appears on the map as a secondary
road, but which is in reality a main road 25 feet wide, well kept,
trenched on both sides, and with a line of telegraph poles along
it. It was a new world at once. The road for many miles was
thronged with well-dressed foot-passengers, kurumas, pack-horses,
and waggons either with solid wheels, or wheels with spokes but no
tires. It is a capital carriage-road, but without carriages. In
such civilised circumstances it was curious to see two or four
brown skinned men pulling the carts, and quite often a man and his
wife--the man unclothed, and the woman unclothed to her waist--
doing the same. Also it struck me as incongruous to see telegraph
wires above, and below, men whose only clothing consisted of a sun-
hat and fan; while children with books and slates were returning
from school, conning their lessons.