neighbor. But as the houses were not of the same size, and the
ground sloped, the roofs of the porticos varied in level. A similar
terracing held good of the floors. The result was rather a
federation than a strict union of interests. Indeed, the object in
view was communal. For the arcades were snow galleries, I was told,
to enable the inhabitants in winter to pass from one end of the
village to the other, no inconsiderable distance. They visored both
sides of the way, showing that then in these parts even a crossing of
the street is a thing to be avoided. Indeed, by all report the
drifts here in the depth of winter must be worth seeing. Even at
this moment, May the 6th, there was still neve on some of the lowest
foothills, and we passed more than one patch of dirt-grimed snow
buttressing the highway bank. The bangles on the axles now began to
have a meaning, a thing they had hitherto seemed to lack. With the
snow arcades by way of introduction they spoke for themselves.
Evidently they were first cousins of our sleighbells. Here, then,
as cordially as with us man abhors an acoustic vacuum, and when Nature
has put her icy bell-glass over the noises of the field, he must
needs invent some jingle to wile his ears withal.

Once past the houses we came upon a strip of paddyfields that bordered
the mountain slope to the very verge of the tide. Some of these
stood in spots where the tilt of the land would have seemed to have
precluded even the thought of such cultivation. For a paddyfield
must be perfectly level, that it may be kept under water at certain
seasons of the year. On a slope, therefore, a thing a paddyfield
never hesitates to scale, they rise in terraces, skyward. Here the
drop was so great that the terraces made bastions that towered
proudly on the very knife-edge of decision between the seaweed and
the cliffs. A runnel tamed to a bamboo duct did them Ganymede service.