I was early asti, and while professedly engrossed in the work of shaving, followed with much curiosity the actions of. the grey-headed innkeeper, who kept turning with slow steps from one point to another of the house and courtyard, clapping h's hands to signal the unseen' povrers, and muttering like an old wizard.
Tt was a fresh cloudy morning. Climbing out of Takamori I met a Japanese, strad-died on a pack horse, descending the slope, and looking so blue with cold that I felt glad I had elected to walk. Northward across the back of Aso-san a broad scarf of cloud was slowly dragging itself; further east: another. summit of the same mountain-cha sy ridges with deep furrows between them. A breeze set the cliood dancing in my veins, On the summits it would murmur musically through a tuft of pines, waking so many thoughts as hold me fast in a pleasant, trance til my party had long disappeared from view. Down in the warm dells were hamlets cosily embowered, Towards noon we passed through a tract of singularly tumbled hills, and presently went down precipitous slopes to a river, on the other side ut which woodman were felling the cryptomerias that rose.in two giant screens ayainst the sky. At a little hut beside the bridge we halted for luncheon. The pony-boy drew. out of his idle " box containing a little mess of rice. heard him demand his bill for chop sticks and tea, and the answer "Ichi sen-de gowrimasu!" and when we left he had as polite a bow to his share as any duke could wish. We mounted through the cryptomonas, and the sound of the stream died away.
Thenceforward it was a wildly broken, day Thad not seen the cryptomeria in its wonderfully picturesque country. Till to-
perfect unajesty. Where it stands apart rom its fellows and finds space and air for its lower boughs, the royal tree swells out in the shape of a candle flame or a lotus bud, and tapers to a softly rounded point that may be a hundred feet above the ground. Straight as a cathedral spire, solemn as night, it stand: aloft, and the green is so rich and dark that a pine looks grey against it. Very often the older peasants we encountered wear their hair in the old-fashioned gun-hammer top-knot, brought forward over a shaven crown, a sign how little modern changes have influenced this isolated mountain-region.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.