Ito has secured a chicken for the first time since leaving Nikko!

I find it impossible in this damp climate, and in my present poor
health, to travel with any comfort for more than two or three days
at a time, and it is difficult to find pretty, quiet, and wholesome
places for a halt of two nights. Freedom from fleas and mosquitoes
one can never hope for, though the last vary in number, and I have
found a way of "dodging" the first by laying down a piece of oiled
paper six feet square upon the mat, dusting along its edges a band
of Persian insect powder, and setting my chair in the middle. I am
then insulated, and, though myriads of fleas jump on the paper, the
powder stupefies them, and they are easily killed. I have been
obliged to rest here at any rate, because I have been stung on my
left hand both by a hornet and a gadfly, and it is badly inflamed.
In some places the hornets are in hundreds, and make the horses
wild. I am also suffering from inflammation produced by the bites
of "horse ants," which attack one in walking. The Japanese suffer
very much from these, and a neglected bite often produces an
intractable ulcer. Besides these, there is a fly, as harmless in
appearance as our house-fly, which bites as badly as a mosquito.
These are some of the drawbacks of Japanese travelling in summer,
but worse than these is the lack of such food as one can eat when
one finishes a hard day's journey without appetite, in an
exhausting atmosphere.

July 18.--I have had so much pain and fever from stings and bites
that last night I was glad to consult a Japanese doctor from
Shinjo. Ito, who looks twice as big as usual when he has to do any
"grand" interpreting, and always puts on silk hakama in honour of
it, came in with a middle-aged man dressed entirely in silk, who