except a porter or a _kurumaya_, the cash or notes are wrapped in
paper.

On the journey from the city of Nagano to Matsumoto, wonderful views
were unfolded of terraced rice fields, and, above these, of terraced
fields of mulberry. How many hundred feet high the terraces rose as
the train climbed the hills I do not know, but I have had no more
vivid impression of the triumphs of agricultural hydraulic
engineering. We were seven minutes in passing through one tunnel at a
high elevation.

I spoke in the train with a man who had a dozen _chō_ under grapes, 20
per cent. being European varieties and 80 per cent. American. He said
that some of the people in his district were "very poor." Some farmers
had made money in sericulture too quickly for it to do them good. He
volunteered the opinion, in contrast with the statement made to me
during our journey to Niigata, that the people of the plains were
morally superior to the people of the mountains. The reason he gave
was that "there are many recreations in the plains whereas in the
mountains there is only one." In most of the mountain villages he knew
three-quarters of the young men had relations with women, mostly with
the girls of the village or the adjoining village. He would not make
the same charge against more than ten per cent. of the young men of
the plains, and "it is after all with teahouse girls." He thought that
there were "too many temples and too many sects, so the priests are
starved."

An itinerant agricultural instructor in sericulture who joined in our
conversation was not much concerned by the plight of the priests. "The
causes of goodness in our people," he said, "are family tradition and