possible time. The married women look as if they had never known
youth, and their skin is apt to be like tanned leather. At
Kayashima I asked the house-master's wife, who looked about fifty,
how old she was (a polite question in Japan), and she replied
twenty-two--one of many similar surprises. Her boy was five years
old, and was still unweaned.

This digression disposes of one aspect of the population. {11}



LETTER XII--(Concluded)



A Japanese Ferry--A Corrugated Road--The Pass of Sanno--Various
Vegetation--An Unattractive Undergrowth--Preponderance of Men.

We changed horses at Tajima, formerly a daimiyo's residence, and,
for a Japanese town, rather picturesque. It makes and exports
clogs, coarse pottery, coarse lacquer, and coarse baskets.

After travelling through rice-fields varying from thirty yards
square to a quarter of an acre, with the tops of the dykes utilised
by planting dwarf beans along them, we came to a large river, the
Arakai, along whose affluents we had been tramping for two days,
and, after passing through several filthy villages, thronged with
filthy and industrious inhabitants, crossed it in a scow. High
forks planted securely in the bank on either side sustained a rope
formed of several strands of the wistaria knotted together. One