We have had a very severe journey from Toyoka. That day the rain
was ceaseless, and in the driving mists one could see little but
low hills looming on the horizon, pine barrens, scrub, and flooded
rice-fields; varied by villages standing along roads which were
quagmires a foot deep, and where the clothing was specially ragged
and dirty. Hinokiyama, a village of samurai, on a beautiful slope,
was an exception, with its fine detached houses, pretty gardens,
deep-roofed gateways, grass and stone-faced terraces, and look of
refined, quiet comfort. Everywhere there was a quantity of indigo,
as is necessary, for nearly all the clothing of the lower classes
is blue. Near a large village we were riding on a causeway through
the rice-fields, Ito on the pack-horse in front, when we met a
number of children returning from school, who, on getting near us,
turned, ran away, and even jumped into the ditches, screaming as
they ran. The mago ran after them, caught the hindmost boy, and
dragged him back--the boy scared and struggling, the man laughing.
The boy said that they thought that Ito was a monkey-player, i.e.
the keeper of a monkey theatre, I a big ape, and the poles of my
bed the scaffolding of the stage!

Splashing through mire and water we found that the people of Tubine
wished to detain us, saying that all the ferries were stopped in
consequence of the rise in the rivers; but I had been so often
misled by false reports that I took fresh horses and went on by a
track along a very pretty hillside, overlooking the Yonetsurugawa,
a large and swollen river, which nearer the sea had spread itself
over the whole country. Torrents of rain were still falling, and
all out-of-doors industries were suspended. Straw rain-cloaks
hanging to dry dripped under all the eaves, our paper cloaks were
sodden, our dripping horses steamed, and thus we slid down a steep