bows of small girls and boys who range themselves in threes and fours
to perform their act of courtesy. I was told that the children are
taught at school to bow to foreigners. I remember that in the remoter
villages of Holland the stranger also received the bows of young
people.

On the house of the headman of one village were displayed charms for
protection from fire, theft and epidemic. We spoke of weather signs,
and he quoted a proverb, "Never rely on the glory of the morning or on
the smile of your mother-in-law."

We had before us a week's travel by _kuruma_. Otherwise we should have
liked to have brought away specimens of the wooden utensils of some of
the villages. The travelling woodworker whom we often encountered--he
has to travel about in order to reach new sources of wood supply--has
been despised because of his unsettled habits, but I was told that
there was a special deity to look after him. In the town we had left
there was delightful woodwork, but most of the draper's stuff was
pitiful trash made after what was supposed to be foreign fashions. I
may also mention the large collection of blood-and-thunder stories
upon Western models which were piled up in the stationers' shops.

As we walked up into the hills--the _kuruma_ men were sent by an
easier route--we passed plenty of sweet chestnuts and saw large
masses of blue single hydrangea and white and pink spirea. We came on
the ruined huts of those who had burnt a bit of hillside and taken
from it a few crops of buckwheat. The charred trunks of trees stood up
among the green undergrowth that had invaded the patches. There was a
great deal of plantain and a _kurumaya_ mentioned that sometimes when
children found a dead frog they buried it in leaves of that plant.