mile in three hours by 200 men each, numbers of men with levers
assisting the heavy wheels out of the mud-holes. This matsuri,
which, like an English fair, feast, or revel, has lost its original
religious significance, goes on for three days and nights, and this
was its third and greatest day.

We left on mild-tempered horses, quite unlike the fierce fellows of
Yamagata ken. Between Minato and Kado there is a very curious
lagoon on the left, about 17 miles long by 16 broad, connected with
the sea by a narrow channel, guarded by two high hills called
Shinzan and Honzan. Two Dutch engineers are now engaged in
reporting on its capacities, and if its outlet could be deepened
without enormous cost it would give north-western Japan the harbour
it so greatly needs. Extensive rice-fields and many villages lie
along the road, which is an avenue of deep sand and ancient pines
much contorted and gnarled. Down the pine avenue hundreds of
people on horseback and on foot were trooping into Minato from all
the farming villages, glad in the glorious sunshine which succeeded
four days of rain. There were hundreds of horses, wonderful-
looking animals in bravery of scarlet cloth and lacquer and fringed
nets of leather, and many straw wisps and ropes, with Gothic roofs
for saddles, and dependent panniers on each side, carrying two
grave and stately-looking children in each, and sometimes a father
or a fifth child on the top of the pack-saddle.

I was so far from well that I was obliged to sleep at the wretched
village of Abukawa, in a loft alive with fleas, where the rice was
too dirty to be eaten, and where the house-master's wife, who sat
for an hour on my floor, was sorely afflicted with skin disease.
The clay houses have disappeared and the villages are now built of