wood, but Abukawa is an antiquated, ramshackle place, propped up
with posts and slanting beams projecting into the roadway for the
entanglement of unwary passengers.

The village smith was opposite, but he was not a man of ponderous
strength, nor were there those wondrous flights and scintillations
of sparks which were the joy of our childhood in the Tattenhall
forge. A fire of powdered charcoal on the floor, always being
trimmed and replenished by a lean and grimy satellite, a man still
leaner and grimier, clothed in goggles and a girdle, always sitting
in front of it, heating and hammering iron bars with his hands,
with a clink which went on late into the night, and blowing his
bellows with his toes; bars and pieces of rusty iron pinned on the
smoky walls, and a group of idle men watching his skilful
manipulation, were the sights of the Abukawa smithy, and kept me
thralled in the balcony, though the whole clothesless population
stood for the whole evening in front of the house with a silent,
open-mouthed stare.

Early in the morning the same melancholy crowd appeared in the
dismal drizzle, which turned into a tremendous torrent, which has
lasted for sixteen hours. Low hills, broad rice valleys in which
people are puddling the rice a second time to kill the weeds, bad
roads, pretty villages, much indigo, few passengers, were the
features of the day's journey. At Morioka and several other
villages in this region I noticed that if you see one large, high,
well-built house, standing in enclosed grounds, with a look of
wealth about it, it is always that of the sake brewer. A bush
denotes the manufacture as well as the sale of sake, and these are
of all sorts, from the mangy bit of fir which has seen long service