FUJIHARA, June 24.

Ito's informants were right. Comfort was left behind at Nikko!

A little woman brought two depressed-looking mares at six this
morning; my saddle and bridle were put on one, and Ito and the
baggage on the other; my hosts and I exchanged cordial good wishes
and obeisances, and, with the women dragging my sorry mare by a
rope round her nose, we left the glorious shrines and solemn
cryptomeria groves of Nikko behind, passed down its long, clean
street, and where the In Memoriam avenue is densest and darkest
turned off to the left by a path like the bed of a brook, which
afterwards, as a most atrocious trail, wound about among the rough
boulders of the Daiya, which it crosses often on temporary bridges
of timbers covered with branches and soil. After crossing one of
the low spurs of the Nikkosan mountains, we wound among ravines
whose steep sides are clothed with maple, oak, magnolia, elm, pine,
and cryptomeria, linked together by festoons of the redundant
Wistaria chinensis, and brightened by azalea and syringa clusters.
Every vista was blocked by some grand mountain, waterfalls
thundered, bright streams glanced through the trees, and in the
glorious sunshine of June the country looked most beautiful.

We travelled less than a ri an hour, as it was a mere flounder
either among rocks or in deep mud, the woman in her girt-up dress
and straw sandals trudging bravely along, till she suddenly flung
away the rope, cried out, and ran backwards, perfectly scared by a
big grey snake, with red spots, much embarrassed by a large frog
which he would not let go, though, like most of his kind, he was
alarmed by human approach, and made desperate efforts to swallow