back like a shield. Up and down, over rocks and through deep mud,
she trudged with a steady stride, turning her kind, ugly face at
intervals to see if the girls were following. I like the firm
hardy gait which this unbecoming costume permits better than the
painful shuffle imposed upon the more civilised women by their
tight skirts and high clogs.

From Kohiaku the road passed through an irregular grassy valley
between densely-wooded hills, the valley itself timbered with park-
like clumps of pine and Spanish chestnuts; but on leaving Kisagoi
the scenery changed. A steep rocky tract brought us to the
Kinugawa, a clear rushing river, which has cut its way deeply
through coloured rock, and is crossed at a considerable height by a
bridge with an alarmingly steep curve, from which there is a fine
view of high mountains, and among them Futarayama, to which some of
the most ancient Shinto legends are attached. We rode for some
time within hearing of the Kinugawa, catching magnificent glimpses
of it frequently--turbulent and locked in by walls of porphyry, or
widening and calming and spreading its aquamarine waters over great
slabs of pink and green rock, lighted fitfully by the sun, or
spanned by rainbows, or pausing to rest in deep shady pools, but
always beautiful. The mountains through which it forces its way on
the other side are precipitous and wooded to their summits with
coniferae, while the less abrupt side, along which the tract is
carried, curves into green knolls in its lower slopes, sprinkled
with grand Spanish chestnuts scarcely yet in blossom, with maples
which have not yet lost the scarlet which they wear in spring as
well as autumn, and with many flowering trees and shrubs which are
new to me, and with an undergrowth of red azaleas, syringa, blue
hydrangea--the very blue of heaven--yellow raspberries, ferns,