JAPAN REFERENCE LIBRARY NEW YORK Coordsnator cf bifr;matioy^ LIB RAH Y ^^ /6 - /f^^ WEST AND BY EAST BY LEONARD EATON SMITH ^ Ube ftnicFserboc^er iptess 1900 JAPAN REFERENCE LIBRARY NEW YORK FILIUS LIBELLUM QUOD PATRI DEDICARE SPERABAM NUNC PATRIS MEMORIAE DEDICO CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Outwards i II. The Pacific . • 19 III. Yokohama • 30 IV. A Japanese Street 41 V. Kamakura and Eynoshima 46 VI. NiKKO ._ . . . 61 VII. TOKIO .... 80 VIII. Matsuda Entertains . • 95 IX. MiYANOSHITA 103 X. Kioto .... 122 XI. Homewards . • I4S WEST AND BY EAST. CHAPTER I. OUTWARDS. IN June, 1897, I came down from Oxford, and my long-cherished desire to travel could be granted. For various reasons the complete grand tour was impracticable, but a visit to the United States was easily— almost necessarily — extended into a trip to Japan. My outward route was to be from Liverpool direct to Quebec or Montreal by sea, overland to Vancouver, and thence to Yokohama, returning by Hawaii to San Francisco, so to New York and home. I left Liverpool on Thursday, August 19th, in the Labrador, She carried about one hundred and fifty first-class passengers, a larger number than she had ever before had on board. I had applied very late for a berth, and at first thought I could not get one, but at the last moment a 2 West and by East berth was given up in one of the best rooms in the ship, and I tumbled into it. The pressure was due partly to the number of Canadians return- ing from the Jubilee, partly to the crowd of doc- tors, thirty-four or thereabouts, going out to the Medical Congress in Montreal. The weather as we left the Landing-stage was brilliant, and later on the sunset over the Welsh hills was very beautiful, and we were therefore rather disgusted on coming on deck the following morning in Lough Foyle to find a boisterous wind and the hills draped in long trails of mist. We lay at anchor for some time till the tug arrived bearing the mails and the most distinguished of our passengers. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his party. Soon we were past the long spit of sand which protects the mouth of the lough and diving into the long westerly swell. As our ship was light it did not take much to make her pitch, and before night many of the passengers were unable to en- joy the rugged outlines of the mountains of the Irish coast. Later in the afternoon we passed between the mainland and Tory Island, a rocky, desolate island against which the waves were dashing high in the bright sunshine, and whose white-walled lighthouse seemed a strangely for- saken outpost of civilisation. Our course lay far to the north, coming within two hundred miles of Greenland, and the weather Outwards 3 was uncomfortable, cold, rainy, windy, though for the most part not technically bad. But the passengers were a very sociable community, the doctors especially being in very high spirits, as befitted a holiday trip, slightly tempered by the prospect of technical papers and discussions. On Tuesday we sighted several icebergs of respect- able size. The weather was then cold and clear, and the sun bright, and as we steamed past we could see deep blue shadows in the clefts of the ice exactly similar to those that lie in the crevasses of a glacier. On Wednesday night we crept cautiously through the Straits ot Belle Isle, and early on Thursday morning were well in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Before evening we were wrapped in the fog that haunts all this region, — the evening of all others that was fixed for the inevitable con- cert. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who had been more or less incapacitated all the voyage by sea-sickness — (** And a very good thing for him too,'* said all the doctors, '* after all the banquets and din- ners he has had to attend ") — took the chair. The constantly recurring blasts of the fog-horn marred what was otherwise a good average steamer concert. On Friday morning a long line of low wooded hills lay close on our port side, and then the Labrador coast to the north could be made out 4 West and by East gradually drawing closer, so that by night we were fairly in the River St. Lawrence. We had all day been so near to the shore that we could make out the houses. They were at first few and far between, then they became more fre- quent, till as night fell they formed one almost continuous line. Soon after dark we stopped off Rimouski, where the mails go ashore. As we lay there the scent of the land came down the great river very sweet and grateful. Away to the south bonfires were blazing, rockets and Roman candles soaring in honour of Laurier*s re- turn, but we were now so far from the shore that it took us some time to make out just what were these queer little moving lights in the dis- tance. Then a tug came out of the darkness, laden with a deputation of welcome, the saloon was filled with an enthusiastic crowd, and there followed much speechifying in French. On Saturday I woke to find that we were just approaching Quebec, getting up steam after Laurier's departure in a tender. His formal welcome home was not yet, and so he must not take the edge off it by landing at the public quay. A few minutes afterwards we were moored along- side the wharf, and had one hour and a half to see what we could of the fascinating city. For myself, I took a calbche, a one-horse vehicle with a gig body and a hood, hung on C springs and Outwards 5 straps between two very high wheels. The body holds two people, and the driver sits on a little seat on top of what should be the dashboard. The horses are strong and excellent, and it is well they are for the hills are something to marvel at. The motion is distinctly buoyant and erratic, but very enjoyable. I went up to the citadel and saw the antiquated guns mounted there, and the superb view of the city clinging to the slopes of the hill, of the broad river sweeping away in a mag- nificent curve, and of the opposite island and hills. I had at first intended to land at Quebec and go up to Montreal by rail, but during the voyage changed my mind. I am very glad I did, as the sail up the river to Montreal is beautiful. We left Quebec at about 10.30 A.M., and went on till dusk, anchoring for the night at Three Rivers. The banks are not very high, and on either side there is an almost continuous row of strangely foreign-looking houses, interspersed with churches whose bulbous spires seemed thousands of miles away from their real home. In one place the river expands into a broad lake, where the chan- nel is marked at night by the quaintest little light-vessels. The channel is in the day marked all the way up by a row of fir trees tied to posts on the one side and a row of plain posts on the other. In some places it is very narrow and the current swift, and it was in one such place we 6 West and by East met the Scotsman of the same line, homeward bound. We seemed to sweep past one another at a tremendous speed. Both the Labrador and the Scotsman have since been cast away, the former off the coast of Scotland, the latter in the Straits of Belle Isle, not far from Labrador. The night was memorable from the splendour of the stars, enhanced by the faint flickering of the Northern Lights. Sunday morning, the 29th, found us at Mon- treal. It seemed to be almost always my fate to reach places by steamer in the early morning, and generally my first impressions of a port were as- sociated with a hasty packing and a scrambled breakfast at eight o'clock at the latest. Owing to the Medical Congress, the Windsor Hotel was very full, and the only room I could get was, I trust, the worst one in the house — and that only for one night. However, owing to the kindness of some steamer friends, I was taken to lunch at the St. James's Club and then to dine at the Forest and Stream Club, a country club some miles from the city. There we dined in an upper room whose open windows looked over the St. Lawrence, at this point broadened out into a lake. The waiters were dressed in white duck, and altogether the contrast with the hot and noisy hotel was very refreshing. The next day I went to visit some cousins Outwards 7 who lived not far from Ottawa. Their house lay twelve miles from the railway near some phos- phate mines which had originally brought my uncle, a mining engineer, to the spot. It seemed a very out-of-the-world place. There I was for two nights, and then taking the morning train to Ottawa caught the Pacific Express. My next stopping-place was to be Rat Portage, a mining town at the head of the Lake of the Woods, about five hours east of Winnipeg. The journey took about forty-eight hours and was not very interesting. The scenery was monotonous. There was mile after mile of young forest grow- ing up round the charred and unsightly remnants of an older one, which fire had destroyed. The rock seemed always near the surface and cropped out constantly. The whole aspect was desolate, but with a redeeming feature — the numerous and impressive rivers and lakes. For one afternoon we skirted the northern shore of Lake Superior. It is a fine bluff coast running out into many peninsulas and fringed with islands. It is hard to realize that it is the shore of a lake only, as the water stretches away in front and on either hand to an unbroken hori- zon. The railway line imitates the curves of the shore, following the little creeks up to a point where a bridge can be easily thrown across , and then turning lakewards again. 8 West and by East We reached Rat Portage at about half-past nine on Friday morning. Here I expected to meet my uncle, who was opening up a mine in the neighbourhood. I had both written and telegraphed to him. I was therefore rather sur- prised on my arrival to find neither him nor any word from him. At the hotel where he put up they only knew that he had gone up the lake to the mine a day or two ago, that he might not be back for some days, that it was forty miles to the mine by water, but that a boat might come down from there during the day if I would wait. There was nothing else to do, as his office was locked up. There was only one through train each way a day and I had engaged a berth on Monday's train as far as Banff. The attractions of the place were soon exhausted. The town was very new and raw-looking, with raised wooden sidewalks lined with all manner of drinking places and '* lunch-rooms open all night.'* There were several respectable-looking churches, the most impressive being the Roman Catholic. There was electric light everywhere and telephone, but unpaved streets; an opera house, a little wharf, and various assay offices. The weather had been fine ever since landing, but now it became un- pleasantly hot, 90° in the shade, though it was the 4th of September. The hotel was preten- tious but comfortless. The large entrance hall Outwards 9 or office was furnished with many rocking-chairs and spittoons and flies innumerable. Behind the desk stood the proprietor (also the epony- mous hero of the hotel according to custom in these parts), a prosperous-looking Hungar- ian. People strolled in and out all day, sat and rocked and smoked for a little, and generally retired down-stairs for a moment with the pro- prietor to reappear shortly wiping their mous- taches. There was nothing to do but to sit there waiting for somebody or something to turn up, afraid to go away lest the opportunity should come and be lost, watching the legions of flies buzzing on the windows, and the sunshine blazing down on the patch of road visible under the awnings. The situation remained unchanged all day, and when a hot night succeeded to the hot day I went early to bed. An hour or two after, while the heat still kept me awake, there came a knock at the door and a note fluttered in through the tran- som. Then matters were explained. The launch belonging to the mine was undergoing repairs so that they had been unable for some days to send in to the town and had thus not received either my letter or telegram. But as it was necessary to get more stores they had borrowed a boat and in it had come my uncle's man of business with a letter to me in case I had arrived. My uncle lo West and by East expected me about this time but was uncertain to a few days. On Saturday about one o^clock, after waiting some hours for the supplies, we started in the Norahy a dumpy little steamer like a small white tug. At the last moment we took on board a couple of prospectors with a canoe and a fine set- ter. They were going our way and as boats are so rare on the lake this system of free passages is quite usual. I found my companion was an old naval man and full of excellent yarns which served to wile away the journey — a journey unduly pro- tracted by the fact that the Norah had a bearing which at intervals became heated and forced us to stop. The lake is filled with innumerable islands and the shore curves away in all manner of fantastic peninsulas so that sometimes the actual water route between two points must be twice as long as the distance in a straight line. It is never possible to see very far owing to the many islands, and they all look so much alike that it would be very easy to get hopelessly lost. The land seems everywhere very rocky, the islands rising rather sharply from the water covered with a scrubby growth of trees. We saw hardly a sign of life when we had once got a few miles from Rat Portage and away from the summer villas of well-to-do Winnipeg folk that dot the near-by islands. In one place we passed Outwards 1 1 a couple of houses surrounded by farm lands all cleared and tilled by a couple of Danish families. We saw a few deserted wigwams, a kingfisher, and a few other birds, otherwise we might have been in a land completely lifeless. Toward sun- set we wriggled through a very tortuous and shallow channel into one of the great bays — Shoal Bay, — and before long the camp came in sight, and we made fast to the little wharf. I had had visions of sleeping in the open round a camp-fire, and here I found a couple of large sub- stantial log buildings, one for the men and the other for my uncle and his assistants. Here the walls were lined with cartridge paper ; there were a stove, civilised beds, chairs, drawing-tables, in fact, luxury. I was, however, given a bunk, a wooden shelf, and it certainly was the hardest bed I have slept upon. They thought it would add a touch of local colour to my remembrances of the place. I could only stay the one night, so the next morning we spent in looking at the workings which were just begun, and soon after a midday dinner the naval man and I started back for the high civilisation of Rat Portage. I could have spent several days at the camp very pleasantly if it had not been for the food, and it would have taken many days for me to get used to that. We took our meals in the men's dining-room when they had finished. The tables 12 West and by East were covered with American cloth and at each place was laid a tin plate upside down with the knife and fork neatly crossed on top. The menu, largely made up of canned things, was varied, but the general greasiness was terrible. The taste and feel of melted butter pervaded everything, the food, the plates, the tables, finally one's per- son, and melted butter so universally used is palling. To add to this, for one meal, the cook made a juicy apple pie in a perforated iron dish, and the result when the under-crust was cut must have come up to his more ample humorous expectations. The return journey was faster than the outward one as the bearing had been attended to, but it was late when we reached Rat Portage and a full moon was shining. As we cut through the dark, still water we could see the clouds re- flected so clearly that we appeared to be sailing in the air miles above them, and it seemed neces- sary to use great caution in approaching the side, lest instead of falling two feet into the water we might fall into space forever. Next morning, being Monday, I '* boarded '' the Pacific Express (to use the technical phrase of this continent) and bade farewell to the Lake-of- the-Woods and its gold mines. My next resting-place was to be Banff, nearly forty-eight hours farther on. We stopped for an hour and a half at Winnipeg which is the C. Outwards 13 P. R. half-way house. It happened to be Labour Day and therefore all the shops were shut. There is one broad street with many stone and brick buildings, notably the City Hall and Post-Office, and nearer the river are many pleasant little villas and the Provincial Parliament Houses — a large, low white building rather like a foreign hotel. After Winnipeg the scenery changed, and from there to the Rockies there was nothing but prairie. The soil where it was turned up shewed black and rich, but soon all signs of cultivation died away. At intervals we stopped at a little station, from which a double line of wooden houses ran away at right angles to the track, a town with no visible raison d' etre on the prairie which encircled it on every side. Between these stations we saw no sign of life but the little gophers who sat up and begged till the train was almost past them, and then disappeared with a flirt of their tufted tails. Sometimes a badger trotted past with a pre- occupied expression, or a gaunt wolf skulked away from our intruding presence, while over- head soared and wheeled great fish-hawks which only repeated admonition from the learned could prevent our ignorance from calling eagles. Once for many miles we ran alongside of the old emigrant trail, a broad and many-rutted track. The low rolling hills of the prairie were crossed and seamed in all directions by little paths like 14 West and by East sheep - tracks and pitted with small hollows. These are the old tracks and '* wallows " of the buffaloes, and with the bones and skulls piled up at some of the stations are now their only relics on these prairies. Yet another relic of the old state of things we saw in the few disreputable Indians hanging round the stations offering for sale mar- vellous arrangements of horns. You felt when you were again on the train after alighting at one of the wayside stations that you had returned to civilisation, and that the train was your only link with contemporary affairs and your only assurance that the world was not all prairie. It was the same feeling, though the con- trast was not quite so sharp, as on a great steamer when some stormy night you leave the flying spray, the rushing wind, and the general turmoil on deck and go down to the imperturbable hotel- life, the lights, and the luxuries below. We reached Banff about seven o'clock on Wed- nesday morning, having climbed during the night through the lower spurs of the Rockies. Here there is an excellent C. P. R. hotel, set at the crossing of two valleys so as to command fine views in every direction of the hills, to which a light fall of snow in the night had given a fic- titious grandeur. The region is covered with pine forests and is laid out as a natural park, and a couple of days passed away there very Outwards 15 pleasantly and easily. On Friday morning early we had to go down to catch the train, which in- considerately kept us waiting an hour in the frost before the sun got down into the valley. From Banff to the coast the scenery is grand beyond description. First we crossed the great divide and with most elaborate precaution slid down the western slope of the Rockies. Then we toiled at some twelve miles an hour up the Selkirks, the track keeping at one stiff, relentless gradient so that at starting it always seemed even odds whether the engines would start us upward or the weight of the cars, now the brakes were released, would drag us down. The slopes of the hills were covered with magnificent conifers, each of which at home would have been a much-prized treasure, and at this high altitude the undergrowth was already showing autumn colouring. The line finally reached a little level place at the top of the pass between two towering snow peaks, Sir Donald and the Hermit — a pause before it plunged down again. The view hereabouts was always liable to be ruthlessly interrupted by the massive snow-sheds which cover many miles of the track. The scenery was as fine as that of Switzerland and of much the same character; the mountains rose one behind the other in splendid masses, and then some sudden turn opened a long valley leading straight up to a great snow peak or the 1 6 West and by East gleaming glacier of the Selkirks. As the line climbed to cross the Selkirks the turbulent river at the bottom of the valley grew smaller and smaller, and the tributary streams were spanned by bridges whose height grew steadily taller till at last it was tremendous. This seemed so espe- cially where the old wooden trestles had not been replaced by iron girders, and looking out of the car window you saw no sign of a bridge but only the great drop. The line was a marvel of en- gineering; sometimes we could see it ahead of us on two or three different levels. It wound and doubled, turned in the shortest of curves, and crossed many high and creaking wooden trestles, and finally took to the narrow gorge of the Fraser River. Here in the muddy water we could see the red backs of the salmon huddling in scores behind every rock, and all the side streams where there was not enough water to cover their fins were alive with them. Finally a few hours before we reached Van- couver we ran into a plain country with broad, smooth-flowing rivers, while as a background rose the white-capped wall of the Selkirks as the Alps guard Lombardy. About one o'clock on Saturday the train came to a standstill on a wharf beside which lay several ocean steamers. A beautiful harbour surrounded by hills and apparently without an exit lay to Outwards 17 our right. We had reached Vancouver and the Pacific. The C. P. R. , which had brought us so far, could not in point of splendour or elaborate equipment challenge competition with some of the lines in the United States and their advertisement trains. But they certainly made us comfortable. Their object was evidently to encourage the tourist traffic, and they sometimes went rather out of their way to do so. For instance, no dining-car was taken over the mountains, but instead meals were provided at little chalets at certain intervals. These chalets were prettily built, set among trim lawns, gay flower-beds, and fountains. A certain time was allowed for the meal, but if any passen- ger was dilatory the train would wait for him. The schedule pace was so slow as to allow of such liberties. The mountain hotels, too, were very good, in spite of the great distances from which all stores had to be transported. Then the C. P. R. time-table was excellent, giving, besides the dry bones of starting and arrival times, a concise description of the country traversed, the whole making a respectable pamphlet. Here at Vancouver was another C. P. R. hotel, also good. The town is interesting for its queer contrasts. In some ways it seems quite English, especially because of the fences round the well- cared-for gardens. But then the mild climate 1 8 West and by East allows many things to grow not seen at home. The streets have the look of any new town of rapid growth in Canada or the United States, while the many Chinamen remind you that you are on the Pacific slope. Victoria, the elderly and stately rival of Vancouver, is said to be more English than England. Certainly Vancouver is more English than many Canadian towns farther east. I was taken to Stanley Park, the public park of the town, lying on a promontory in the harbour. Here the original forest has as far as possible been left undisturbed. There are a few carriage roads and some paths cut through the undergrowth be- tween the enormous Douglas firs which are the pride of the town. I called at various houses and was initiated into the virtues and vices of the Chinese ** boy " or servant. I went to the Club and saw the Empress of China, in which I was to sail, lying apparently at the foot of the lawn. I could hear all over the town the hours struck on her bell, and had no chance to forget her presence and the fact that she sailed on Monday morning. CHAPTER II THE PACIFIC MONDAY morning, therefore, the 13th of September, found me and my traps on board the Empress ready to go still farther westwards, forty-two hundred miles, to the fas- cinating islands of Japan. The Empress of China, like her sister Empresses, has the lines of a yacht, two funnels and four masts, a white hull with yellow upper works, twin screws, and a nominal speed of nineteen knots. As a matter of fact, the Empresses usually go only some fourteen and a half or fifteen knots, and even so cross the Pacific in a couple of days less than any other line. This method allows them to run up to time with the certainty of a railway train.- The officers and all the deck-hands of the Empress of China are R. N. R. men and English, the stewards and firemen Chinese. The saloon is on the upper deck, and so far forward that it is rather given to dancing, a tendency still more marked in the library, which is im.mediately above it. Most of the cabins are on the main deck 19 20 West and by East below the saloon, but there is also a row on either side on the saloon deck opening into alleyways covered in forward and at the side but open aft. On the starboard side these cabins are occupied by officers, on the port side by the single men among the passengers. I was in one of the latter. In hot weather they would probably be cool, as in cool weather they are distinctly cold, and my cabin companion was an enthusiast for fresh air. In wet and dirty weather, too, any chance water there might be on the promenade or boat decks found its way into the scuppers of our alleyway, to form a brawling brook whose music did not bring sleep. However, she is a fine boat, with a pleasant spaciousness in her passages and state- rooms. The weather was splendid when we went aboard and the hill -locked harbour looked beautiful. The deck was alive with children, principally be- longing to missionaries. At one gang-plank an officer superintended the arrival of the cabin passengers and their baggage; at another, the Chinese steerage, of whom we had some four hundred, were hustled on board with the cere- mony and commotion customary in embarking pigs. About two o'clock we cast loose, and with a leadsman in the chains on either side felt our way down to Victoria between many beautiful The Pacific 21 headlands into the heart of a gorgeous sunset. At Victoria some further passengers joined us, and by eight o'clock we were fairly started on the voyage. One sea voyage in northern latitudes is very much like another, and in spite of names one ocean is very much like another. The Northern Pacific seemed just as cold and grey and stormy as the North Atlantic. Experts indeed declare that though the seas in the Pacific are larger they yet run more true, so there does not seem much to choose. The chief impression the Pacific gives is one of loneliness ; in all the thirteen days of our voyage we saw only one ship — a sealing schooner. If the weather had been more propitious we should have run far enough north to sight the Aleutian Islands, but as it was we gave them a forty-mile berth. Some small albatross— called commonly Toots — followed us all the way; a few flying-fish were seen the day before we reached Japan, and that is about the list of the sights. Considering that we had chosen to cross just at the time of the equinox, our weather was very fair. Some days were beautiful, but as it was the north wind which brought the clear weather the fine days were also the cold days. There was a small blow three days out which, made the ship do a good deal of ** cinder-shifting'* or cork- screw motion. As we were going westward our 22 West and by East days were of twenty-four and a half hours each, and then on crossing longitude i8o° we had to omit one entire day. We leapt from Sunday night, the 19th of September, to Tuesday, the 2ist, from moderate weather into what the chief- engineer in a very unguarded moment called a gale of wind — so be sure it was. Some wag said, ** Yesterday was worse than this, so they left it out.'* It was a magnificent sight to see the great seas go swinging past under the blue sky and bright sun, the wind cutting their crests off and whisking them away in hissing spray. But even such grand sights pall when there is no means of getting away from them. The constant plunging of the ship, the incessant wear and strain and creak, the perfect impossibility of finding a quiet corner anywhere grew wearisome in time, and we were all glad when the weather moderated in the evening; all, that is, except a few enthusiasts whom we eyed with suspicion and pity. The month of September is the month when typhoons are most to be feared on the coast of Japan. Personally I am quite willing to take my experiences of them at second hand, judging of their terrors from the respectful way in which naval men and seafaring men generally on the Pacific coast speak of them, especially those who happen ever to have met with one. All the voy- age we felt that a typhoon just one or two days The Pacific ^ 23 from Yokohama might be reserved for us as a finale. Happily we did not actually encounter one, but we only just missed it. Three days be- fore the end of the voyage we waked to find the horizon clouded with mist and the whole ship clammy with moisture. The air was warm and enervating, and though there was hardly any wind a big sea was running from the S.W., making the ship roll and pitch at the same time. About noon we ran into a fog-bank, and for form's sake blew our whistle a couple of times, though there was not much fear of meeting any- thing on that desolate ocean. This brought us out from the smoking-room to see what was the matter and to witness a sudden transformation scene. The smoke, which had been hanging over the starboard quarter, veered suddenly to the port quarter and we ran into bright sun and blue sea, already beginning to whiten under a stiff N. E. breeze. The fog-bank lay like a dark curtain behind us. The meaning of all this was that we had come near a typhoon. Happily the captain had noticed its approach in time, and by altering our course a little in the night had let the centre pass, so that we came in for the extreme fringe only. That night it was blowing a gale from the N.E. This was the night fixed for the concert, for which a lengthy programme had been pre- pared. The weather, however, put a great many 24 West and by East of the intending performers hors-de-combat and sadly thinned the ranks of the audience. In spite of this it was a very enjoyable function, and rather above the average of such concerts. There were two instrumental trios, one for strings by the second steward and two sailors, one for two flutes and a mandolin by two passengers and the purser. The doctor, who was principally respon- sible for the getting up of the concert, sang an excellent comic song in costume. The antics of the ship made it very difficult for the singers both to sing and to keep their balance and to find breath for both these things at the same time. In the middle of the concert there was a present- ation of prizesgained in the deck sports and in vari- ous tournaments at whist, chess, and other games. These sports had been the principal event of the voyage and had served to kill a great deal of time. I happened to be one of the committee of management. The other members were a mis- sionary, who hardly ever turned up at the meet- ings, being generally hors-de-co7nbat ; a gentleman from Montreal, of whom I shall have much to say, and whom, on the analogy of the Scotch fashion, I propose to call Mr. Montreal ; a young M.P., whose name is known everywhere in con- nection with a necessary laundry article, and whom we elected chairman; the ship*s doctor; and the third officer, a man of great experience The Pacific 25 in such matters. The meetings of the committee were numerous and very welcome as filling up several days of dreary weather. We flattered ourselves that we managed the sports very well, and certainly they went without a hitch. The actual sports occupied two afternoons. The events were rather such as to amuse the audience than to test the athletic power of the competitors. This could not be said, however, of the obstacle race, for which the chief officer set a distinctly stiff course involving a good deal of rope-climbing. Beside the ordinary potato race, three-legged race, cock-fighting, and tug-of-war, there were some less common events. In one of these each man had to uncork and drink a bottle of aerated ivater, pick up a cigarette, and run down the deck to a lady who had to light it. The man first back with his cigarette alight was victor, sharing the prize with his lady lighter. Another amusing race was the post-office race, in which a number of men were placed at one end of the deck and at the other end a like number of parcels. Each parcel contained some garment, and each man must run to a parcel, open it, and run round the deckhouse, arriving with the garment on and properly fastened. In the final heat we put a complete costume in each parcel. Perhaps the best result was afforded by the man who ran second in the final, a solemn little man with black beard and gold spectacles. JAPAN REFZREMCE LIBRARY NEW YORK 26 West and by East He came in in an old opera hat and dress coat, holding up the skirts of a petticoat — a sight for gods and men. The prizes were rather a puzzle to us, because people going to Japan do not have all manner of the little trinkets which the home-going tourist carries, and which could have been requisitioned. Finally we had to present the successful competitors with money. Owing to the exceptional circumstances we thought they would not thus lose their amateur status, and the understanding was strict that such money should be invested in a souvenir instantly on arrival in Japan. But for some of the events the doctor had contrived humorous and appropriate rewards, and these were presented at the concert amid great applause. I might add that the committee celebrated the conclusion of its labours by a din- ner given by the M.P. in the doctor's cabin. When the whole committee was at dinner the cabin was so full that the Chinese boys in waiting had to stand in the alleyway and hand the dishes through the door and windows. Except for the great diversion of the sports and the various tournaments in chess, etc., the voyage was not very lively. This was partly owing to the weather, which was dull, and made the smoking-room the best place in the ship, where were revealed to me the possibilities of the despised game of dominoes. It was also partly due to the fact that out of 120 The Pacific 27 passengers forty or more were missionaries and their children, who rather kept themselves to themselves, so that the whole company did not properly coalesce. Among the other passengers were a number of European residents in Japan and Shanghai returning to work after visits home, sev- eral men of business who had travelled the world over more than once and had strange tales to tell — one was from Boston on his way to see about some paper mills in Japan, fat and jolly, with a wonderful ring on his little finger. There were, too, a good many globe-trotters like myself. My cabin companion was an eccentric person. He had taken his degree at Cambridge and then been called to the Bar, but, I was told, had never prac- tised owing to conscientious scruples. Though probably under thirty he had let his hair and beard grow wild so as to almost hide a face of consider- able charm. His clothes, too, were frayed and fringed in a picturesque way which made all the ladies anxious to get at him with a darning-needle. Though very kind-hearted and well-meaning his conversation was almost nil, and his habits ec- centric and slovenly. But as he was always in bed before eleven and up at six it was not necessary to see much of him. He had been living at Victoria, and was there picked up by a lady going to join her husband in Japan, as tutor for her two boys. They were very sturdy-looking young rascals, 28 West and by East about the last sort of pupils for such a tutor, as I think all parties soon found out. The only other events of note were the fire- and boat-drills and the inspection of the crew after morning service on Sunday. On one side of the deck stood the European sailors in R. N. R. uniform, and the Chinese firemen with pig- tails twisted round their heads, loose black jackets and trousers, and immaculate white socks and low shoes. On the other side was a row of stewards with pigtails hanging free, caps with coloured top- knots, frogged jackets, and trousers tied tight at the ankle, and again the immaculate white socks and low shoes. The long lines of spotless white socks had a very curious effect. The captain then led a glittering line of officers round to inspect the crew, while the long lines swayed to and fro as one man to the roll of the ship — for it always rolled on these occasions. On the evening of Sunday the 26th we picked up a light on the Japanese coast — one of the most pleasant sights one can see. During the night I woke to find the ship stopped, the wind rising, and the rain coming down in torrents, filling the ship with noise. It was very hot and sleep for a long time impossible. I heard after- wards — I do not know how true it was — that we had stopped because the rain was so blinding that we could not make the harbour. The Pacific 29 Next morning about eight I came on deck to find a dull, misty morning, and the Empress pass- ing the breakwater on her way to her anchorage in Yokohama harbour. CHAPTER III YOKOHAMA YOKOHAMA lies about an hour's steaming up the Bay of Tokio. Where we lay low hills surrounded us in a fine sweep, but the larger hills behind were hidden by mist. The first view of Japan was not a very cheerful one, for the weather was threatening rain, which later in the day fell copiously. Off on the port side lay the town of low, tile-roofed buildings, with the trees and European houses on the bluff down the bay, and masses of shipping higher up. Almost op- posite us when I first came on deck the long breakwater which protects the anchorage on the south and east ran out. The port was full of ships, including several men-of-war of different nations, a French mail boat looking herself very like a man- of-war, a P. & O. boat, and many steamers flying the Japanese flag. There were also several fine sailing ships, some of which had brought out oil from America, and innumerable Japanese sailing craft. All around us as we moved slowly up the harbour the water was alive with steam launches 30 Yokohama 31 and sampans. These latter are the ordinary small boats of the country. They seem to be flat- bottomed and in shape a long isosceles triangle, the stern forming a narrow base. They look as though the bows of a much larger boat had by some sort of fissiparous process broken off and started in life independently. Sometimes they are sailed with one lateen sail, but more often propelled with one or two long sweeps. These sweeps are made of pieces of wood spliced to- gether and look as though compounded of several short oars. They work in loops, and to prevent the inboard end swinging too far it is fastened by a cord-and-block arrangement similar to that on a horse's manger. One man works each oar stand- ing up facing the bow. The oar is never taken out of the water, but twisted from side to side as in sculling from the stern of a boat. As soon as we came to an anchor all these float- ing atoms came rushing to our sides, and soon the deck was alive with officials, friends, and bowing coolies. The Grand Hotel, to which most of us were going, had sent its launch to meet the steamer, and its porter, an American. To him we gave our keys and a description of our respective lug- gage, which turned up at the hotel a couple of hours later, having, nominally at least, been throucrh the Customs-House. I was landed in 32 West and by East another launch belonging to a steamer friend who was in business in Yokohama. And was this really Japan which I had come ten thousand miles to see ? This sad-looking country with wharves and steamers, European buildings, and rain lying in puddles on a well- made road ? But then appeared an exaggerated go-cart drawn by a coolie in mushroom-shaped hat, bare legs, and a mackintosh cape. Into this rickshaw I climbed, and we splashed off down the bund to the hotel. The bund runs for about a mile along the edge of the harbour. On one side are large houses, most of them nowadays offices, though in one case at least the old fashion is still adhered to of manager's house, office, and godown all under the same roof. Several of them have large gardens in which they lie almost hidden. Here, too, are the principal hotel and the Club. On the other side of the road are a row of pines and a low retaining wall, and then the sea. Somehow at first it did not seem so strange to be in Japan, but rather as though I had ridden in a rickshaw all my life, watching the bobbing head before me and hearing the thud-thud of the sandalled feet. But these small pine trees with their fantastic curves and scanty branches brought the truth home to me. They were the pine trees of a Japanese fan, only actually growing. At the extreme end of the bund lies the Grand Yokohama 33 Hotel, a large building of three stories, the newer part of stone, the older of brick, with deep ver- andas. It forms three sides of a square with the open side facing inland, and the courtyard thus formed is alive all day with rickshaws coming and going and at night with their flitting lanterns. The rooms and passages are large, so that the hotel does not accommodate as many people as its exterior would seem to promise. The two main rooms are the dining-room and the billiard-room. The latter contains half a dozen tables, and down one end runs a glittering bar, well patronised all day by people staying in the hotel and those from outside. The cooking is excellent, except the breakfasts, — which seem a weak point in Japan generally, — but most excellent is the curry. At all the hotels where I stayed in Japan which were run on European or semi-European lines the cooking was good, certainly much better than one had any right to expect, but almost everywhere the break- fast varied only from fish and steak to fish and chop, to fish and sausage, and back again to steak. On the other hand, the tiffins were always very good. To return from a gastronomic digression to the Grand Hotel, the manager is a Swiss — and is always in great form at meal-times, circulating from table to table, cracking little jokes with the ladies, asking if the dinner is satisfactory, and in case of complaint sharply rebuking the nearest 34 West and by East waiter. The waiters wear white jackets, tight blue trousers, and sandals, and are very nimble, intelligent, and quiet. Though ** Grand Hotel charges ** are considered high in Yokohama, to the inexperienced person they seem cheap, five yen — or, at the present ex- change, about ten shillings — a day for full board, and that very good. The hot^l is run by a com- pany, and I believe pays a princely dividend. I have mentioned the manager, called ** Louis" by his intimates. He is small, of comfortable figure, always trimly dressed, and always, even when he appears at dinner-time in evening dress, with a skull-cap on his head. His whole souljs in the hotel, with the result that the management is excellent. I might tell one incident here to illustrate this, although it is quite out of place as regards time. My brother had stayed at the Grand Hotel some time before — I thought it was eighteen months before, on further reflection I found it to be twenty-seven — and on his depart- ure had left behind a large Cingalese brass tray. When I was about to leave home he asked me, if I was at the Grand Hotel, Yokohama, to inquire for the tray. He did not give me a very accurate idea of the tray nor of the box containing it. I thought it a hopeless inquiry to make, and so did not say anything on the subject till almost my last day in Japan. ** Louis " at once replied that Yokohama 35 if it had been left at the hotel it must still be there. He accordingly sent a boy to the baggage- room, who returned with a large flat box. It was not quite the sort of box I had been led to expect, but on both sides was my brother's name, evidently in his handwriting. '' Louis " was sat- isfied of my honesty, and did not even ask me to open the box, which I sent to be forwarded home with my own things, and on arrival at home it was found to contain the much-travelled and patiently waiting brass tray. On my first arrival I was deposited at the door of the hotel opening on the bund. Getting out of a rickshaw is easier than getting in. The coolie simply lets down the shafts till they rest on the ground, giving the seat a very decided tilt forward, so that it is only with considerable difficulty that one can avoid getting out. I was given a large room facing the sea, in a gable, with windows on three sides, and two small beds. One window opened on to a small balcony, and afforded a fine view of the dreary, misty harbour and its shipping, with great hawks wheeling ceaselessly overhead. The other windows com- manded fine views of the hotel roof. My first visitor arrived very soon in the shape of a Chinese tailor, and when the first , had gone there came a second and a third. Each time I came back to Yokohama the ceremony was 36 West and by East repeated. Each tailor carried a large bundle of samples of cloth. Each would commence by tell- ing me his name, — Chang Chow, Ah Sing, etc., as the case might be, — and proceed to offer me a suit very cheap, and, if this was denied, at least beg a suit ** for pleasure." This was what it sounded like to me from one man's lips, and puzzled me a good deal, till I realised that all he wanted was the favour of cleaning and pressing the clothes I had worn on shipboard. If everything else failed at least you must take his card, on which were displayed in more or less correct English his qualifications as tailor or dress- maker. This giving of cards is universal in Japan. Every shopkeeper whose store the tourist enters, every curio dealer vv^ho spreads his wares on the verandas or in the sitting-rooms of a hotel, has a pack of cards, one of which he thrusts on his actual or potential customer. And in the larger shops, in case of a deal taking place, this ceremony IS invariably followed by another ^ — the signature of a book; I suppose for the encouragement of future victims. My luggage turned up soon after I had got rid of the Chinese tailors, and then with Mr. Mon- treal I went to the British Consulate. There we produced our passports and applied for Japanese ones. Without a passport a traveller cannot leave the treaty ports to spend a night outside Yokohama 37 their limits, nor 'buy a railway ticket for any length of journey, nor stay at a hotel outside a treaty town. Formerly it was necessary to define the proposed route and length of stay when ask- ing for a passport ; now they are issued generally for the whole island for six months. Our appli- cations were forwarded to Tokio, and next day the passports arrived, and we were made free of the island/ Then back to tiffin, which tasted specially good after thirteen days of ship's cooking, and after tiffin to the telegraph office to send a cable home to announce my arrival. It is perhaps interesting to mention that the directions on the telegraph forms are printed in two languages — Japanese and English. The streets of the settlement are not particu- larly interesting, because they are smooth and broad and lined with buildings partly or wholly European in style. Most of the buildings are only two stories high, because of the frequent earthquakes. In many of the shops all manner of European wares are to be got, though, of course, there is a substantial addition to the price to pay for the carriage. There are several large curio shops, but they seem to cater too much for the European market, with the result that most ^ Passports are now, I believe, unnecessary (igoo). — L. E, S. 38 West and by East of their goods are not very beautiful nor the best specimens of Japanese art. A number of small offices in the main street are occupied by money- changers, invariably Chinese. The Chinese in- deed are a good deal in evidence in Yokohama, and though in the war masses of Japanese beat masses of Chinese, yet the individual Chinaman seems a good match for the individual Japanese. At least this struck us when we saw some fat and prosperous Chinaman dragged in a rickshaw by a little perspiring coolie. In the banks, too, the tellers are Chinamen. This is probably partly due to the superior commercial honesty which in the Far East the Chinaman is as a rule acknow- ledged to possess as compared with the Japanese. These tellers do their reckoning with beads on wires in the primitive way, but are wonderfully expert, rattling the beads up and down at a pro- digious pace. During this slight digression I had got back to the hotel and joined a party to go up the Bluff, the hill on which most of the Europeans live. The pull up is steep, and we had to have two men to each rickshaw. They made the most of their exertions, grunting and groaning in chorus, so that we, quite new to this mode of travel, felt very sorry for them. On the Bluff are many pleasant, wide-spreading houses hidden in large gardens, fine, well-kept roads, and the public Yokohama 39 Bluff gardens, prettily laid out and containing many beautiful conifers. On our way down by a different road from that by which we had climbed up we passed a temple where a funeral service was in progress. We went in to see what we could, but I do not recol- lect much about it except that there were two priests in gorgeous robes, chanting sadly, and that both by their vestments and their singing they strongly reminded me of some Roman Catholic ceremony. We passed through the native quarter on our way back. It is quite modern, as before 1854 Yokohama was an in- significant fishing village, and though it interested us greatly because of its novelty, it is not a very good specimen of a Japanese town. Before dinner we went off to the Empress, which was still lying in the harbour, to say good-bye to those friends who were still on board. But our touch of dry land had completely destroyed any lingering desire we might have had to voyage farther for the present, and I for one was very glad to let the Empress slip away after nightfall without me. Perhaps I have lingered too long over the first day in Japan, but of the first day there must al- ways be so much to tell. If many of the details seem trivial it is because the main facts can always be got up at home from books, but one only 40 West and by East learns the details by actually going to the country, and therefore they are novel and interesting; and so this account will be largely a chronicle of such small beer of my own brew, and in no sense an account of Japan in general. CHAPTER IV A JAPANESE STREET NO description, however minute, can ever give an adequate idea of the streets of a foreign city to those who have never trod them. To do so would require a series of photographs, supple- mented by a phonograph and by some delicate instrument, not yet invented, to reproduce the smells of ^he place. For the smell is what gives the character to the place, and a faint whiff of some resembling odour can at once transport the possessor of a well-travelled nose to scenes thou- sands of miles distant. The average Japanese street is long, straight, and narrow, lined by houses of wood or stucco, which rise abruptly two or three stories from the earthen roadway. In Tokio, modern civilisation has thrust back the houses in the main thorough- fares so far as to leave a broad, uninteresting street studded with telegraph poles and scored with tram lines. The lower stories of the houses are open, with little eaves of ridge-and-furrow tiles projecting 41 42 West and by East over the opening to divert any drops which the upper eaves let fall. The floors within are raised some eighteen inches from the ground. They extend far backwards, expanses of speckless mat- ting, criss-crossed by the shining beams in which the sliding partitions run, but unincumbered with furniture. A few flat cushions and a vase of flowers are usually all the plenishings to be seen in addition to the ever-present brazier. This last is of metal or wood. It is filled with ashes, in the midst of which a few live charcoals smoulder. It serves as a kitchen range, a light-bearer for pipes, and a nucleus for family life. The vase of flowers is almost equally inevitable, and even in the poorest homes you can see some spray of flowers or leaves arranged with excellent taste in some holder selected to suit its particular curve and ** habit.'' Sometimes if the back of the house be open the view is closed by a glimpse of a little formal garden of tiny trees, boulders, and stone lanterns. But it is only dwelling-houses of the larger sort that present to the view such gleaming vistas. Generally the open house»front is filled in with some kind of shutter. A dwelling- house has sliding partitions of little square panes of paper framed in wood, and these at night are covered with solid wooden shutters. Other houses have sliding wooden lattices, and the workshops of carpenters and other craftsmen A Japanese Street 43 have hanging curtains of split bamboo, behind which the men work in the scantiest of costumes. In the shops the wares are piled up from floor to ceiling in a semicircle, leaving just room for the tradesman to sit in the middle with his brazier and vase of flowers. In front of each shop swings a long sign, gen- erally of black with gold decorations, and in Kioto there is before every house a great paper lantern, three feet long, of the kind we call ** Chinese." Between the rows of houses ebbs and flows a constant stream of foot-passengers. Horses are rare comparatively, though occasionally a cart passes drawn by a little high-crested pony just such as appears on the fans. Much more fre- quent are little carts pulled and pushed by men and women, heavy laden with merchandise. To an accompaniment of much shouting and grunt- ing the rickshaws thread their way in and out. A string of them passes containing a party of tourists and their guide; or a fat and command- ing-looking Chinaman is dragged by a little Jap- anese — a revenge for the late unpleasantness. In Tokio sometimes a double rickshaw is met with; these are rather for Japanese than Euro- peans however. The coolie will take papa^ mama, et bebd, if Japanese, who would look as- kance if asked to drag more than one European. 44 West and by East The crowd is quiet, save for the shuffling of the pattens along the ground and the low murmur of voices. The general colour is a subdued one, as men and women wear chiefly dark greys and blues. Both men and women of the upper classes wear the kimono and a girdle. The women's girdle, the obi, is very broad, and expands be- hind into a preposterously big bow. Men, and women too, wear socks with a special place for the great toe, and the straps of the sandals or pattens pass one over the great toe and the other over the rest. The women still dress their hair in the old fashion with many pins and puffs, and rely upon a paper umbrella alone to ward off rain and sun. The men now wear their hair cut short, and often wear soft or hard felt hats to complete their Japanese costume at one extremity, as they use European socks and boots to clothe their feet, and the effect is not beautiful. The coolies* costume is a most excellent one to set off their fine figures. It consists of a short tunic folding over in front, tightly belted, and bare legs, or in winter long blue tights. The tunic is generally blue with a round, white design between the shoulders and some white ornaments round the skirt. The round figure is, I believe, the crest of the coolie's employer. One day j overtook in Yokohama an ox-cart beside which there strolled a coolie on whose back was the A Japanese Street 45 device of an European firm of carriers, and round the skirt of his tunic, with unintended irony, in large white letters, the word *' Express." In and out among the crowd run numbers of children, reduced copies of their elders, only clothed in gay colours, and in the less progressive towns with heads partially shaved. There are few animals or birds to be seen, though some- times a couple of great hawks wheel and soar overhead. As night comes on lights gleam softly through the paper windows or from the hanging paper lanterns. In the more advanced towns gas and electricity supplement the older and more roman- tic form of_ lighting. The rickshaws flit about, each carrying a dangling paper lantern. A mournful flute-like piping tells that the old blind men who act as shampooers are ready and seek- ing for employment. Prudent citizens protect their frail paper windows with solid wooden shut- ters, and the town sinks to quietness and sleep. CHAPTER V KAMAKURA AND EYNOSHIMA THE next day, Tuesday, was fine, and we de- termined to take advantage of such good fortune to make a short excursion by way of occupation while deciding how to begin to really see Japan. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Montreal and a lady travelling with them, whom I shall call Miss Brantford, and myself. With these same people I travelled for almost all the rest of my stay in Japan, and to their company is largely owing my enjoyment of my visit. Another very important person there was who also became a permanent member of our party. This was Matsuda, the guide. In Japan there is a guild of guides with regularly licensed mem- bers. The members are distributed among the principal tourist towns, and a list of the available guides appears in each hotel, and a guide may be engaged through the hotel-keeper. When once a guide is engaged he will travel anywhere with his party, because the guides in the different towns are members all of one guild and not of 46 Kamakura and Eynoshima 47 rival associations. There is a regular tariff per day according to the size of the party, the em- ployer paying the guide's travelling expenses, but not his hotel bills. The guide combines the functions of guide proper, interpreter, and courier. He takes the railway tickets, engages the rooms, and bullies the rickshaw men. He accompanies the callow foreigner on his shopping excursions, the common impression being that on the one hand the guide prevents his charge being too badly pillaged, while on the other he receives from the shopkeeper a commission for introducing custom. I don't know how true the story of the commission is, though it sounds probable; I am sure it is cheaper in the end to go shopping with a guide. Matsuda was a perfect paragon of guides. To begin with, he was the best-dressed person in the party ; in the daytime attired in European style, sometimes with one or two changes of raiment, and in the evening in native, and in both styles looking equally v\^ell dressed, which is more than can be said of most Japanese. He was a good- looking man, probably at least thirty-five, but looking younger, small and slim, with beauti- ful hands. His face generally wore a smile, of welcome in the morning, of satisfaction when he thought our praise intelligent, of dignified depre- cation at questions which betrayed our foreign 48 West and by East barbarism, of good-humoured bewilderment when his EngHsh and ours could not be reconciled. Not that his English was not on the whole pretty good, but some days it was worse than others, and then he became too fluent and pronounced wildly. He had begun life, as far as I can remember, as a Buddhist, and then had been successively a Shinto worshipper, a Protestant, a Roman Catho- lic, and when we met him was a sort of Shinto- Buddhist, which I fancy meant very little. Most of the ceremonies and beliefs which he was called upon to describe when we visited a temple he deprecated as '' ver' ol'-fashioned," but yet dis- played a lurking hope that we would not speak of them lightly. His many virtues and accomplishments will appear incidentally, so here I need not enumerate them further. The first part of our expedition was to be by train — to Kamakura, a journey of some fifty minutes. The Yokohama railway station was much like an English one except that there were no advertisements, and all directions were in Japanese as well as English. The officials wore a sort of military uniform, and everything was drawn to Japanese scale, the engines undersized, — some built in England and some in the United States, — the carriages small and four-wheeled Kamakura and Eynoshima 49 The first-class ones are like English saloons with seats round three sides and a lavatory on the fourth, the seats divided by arms and unpleasantly narrow for more than a short journey. The third-class are like the old-fashioned English ones of the same class, with no divisions above the back of the seats. The second- and third-class carriages were always crowded with Japanese, and it was a constant source of wonder to us where they were all going and why. On the arrival of a train one is almost distracted by the clatter of their innumerable wooden clogs on the concrete platform. The country we passed through on this short journey was fairly typical of all we saw. The line wound among low green hills, green to the top, covered now with pine trees, now with azalea bushes. The valleys were parcelled out into little fields, terraced in places half-way up the hillside, and yellow many of them with the fast- ripening rice. We followed the course of the Tokaido, one of the ancient highways, and there- fore passed frequent villages, sometimes a strag- gling street, sometimes a handful of little low houses, tile-roofed or thatched, and often grow- ing a crop of grass on the thatch. Through the open house-sides we often caught glimpses of the internal economy, but generally a bamboo fence or a clump of growing bamboo prevented this. 50 West and by East It is the great feathery plumes of the bamboo that give to this landscape its character as much as do the dark, straight lines of the cypress to that of Tuscany. At Kamakura we took rickshaws and were trundled down the straggling street which is all that is left of the ancient capital of Japan, to the temple of Hachiman, the god of war. The temple is set on the top of many steps rising from an ample courtyard in which is a magnificent maiden-hair tree. The building is not particu- larly large or magnificent, though there is a fine museum of old weapons and gifts from successive Mikados. There is a striking view from the temple of the road running straight from the foot of the steps to the sea, spanned at intervals by a torii. A torii is an erection of beams like a Greek capital n set up at the entrance to a temple or before shrines. It is rather a triumphal arch than a gateway, as there are never any gates nor, as a rule, any wall. They are said to have been originally hen-roosts, and the projecting arms were for the accommodation of the hens, but for this I do not vouch. Immediately behind the temple of Hachiman is a little hill on which is the Daibutsu, or Great Buddha. This is a hollow bronze image of Buddha, forty-two feet high, seated cross-legged in the usual posture. Our opinions were divided Kamakura and Eynoshima 51 as to whether the expression was cruel and malig- nant or almost benevolent ; we agreed that it was calm and contemplative. It is possible to ascend some distance inside the figure, where there is a small shrine, but no longer right into the head. Daibutsu is now in the open air, but all around can still be seen the bases on which once rested the pillars of the enclosing temple. It was de- molished by a tidal wave about four hundred years ago. Formerly tourists used to be photo- graphed standing or sitting on the crossed hands of Buddha so as to accentuate their respective sizes, but this is now happily forbidden because the Japanese considered it irreverent — a feeling Matsuda evidently shared. The next piece of riding was rather long and lay through the street of a village where some religious festival was about to take place. At either end of the street a pair of long and narrow banners was set up, of white cloth painted with great black letters. They were fastened to tall bamboos decorated with streamers, and could be seen from far away over the low houses and waving rice-fields. The eaves on either side the street were festooned with round paper lanterns and little pieces of white paper. The whole village was full of children in gay festival dress, and the excitement culminated about half-way up the street, where there was a gaily decorated 52 West and by East erection on wheels. It was perhaps eight feet square and fifteen high, and had three stories. The top one was occupied by a gorgeously dressed lay-figure and the lower two swarmed over by a mass of bare-legged boys playing a ceaseless, dole- ful tattoo on a big drum. Later in the day this vehicle was to be dragged in procession through the village. Struggling past this we reached the temple of Kwannon, also on the side of a hill. Kwannon is the goddess of mercy, and there is an image of her here thirty feet high. It is of dull gilt, but so closely shut in by the walls of the shrine that it is only by means of lanterns that it can be seen at all, and then only by sec- tions as the attendant raises and lowers the light by a rope and pulley. Perhaps it is this touch of mystery that makes it more impressive than the Great Buddha. We were again impressed in this temple by the great resemblance which the images bear in general shape and colour to those in Roman Catholic churches. Passing back through the village street with its swaying lanterns and fluttering banners and the incessant throb of the drum, a short trot brought us to a hotel much patronised by Europeans from Yokohama in the summer months, and to an ex- cellent lunch. Then a long trot, mostly close to the seashore, brought us to Eynoshima. This is a rocky island connected with the mainland at Kamakura and Eynoshima 53 low water by a long foot-bridge. We left our rickshaws and walked across, to find a steep, dirty street lined with tea-houses and shops selling shell ornaments. The caves, which are the chief attraction, we had not time to see, and as it was we only just regained our rickshaws without hav- ing to wade. We saw some fishermen hauling in their nets, and the method seemed to us ingenious. The net was near the shore, and from either end a rope was carried on to the beach. Each man (there were some twenty, men and boys) had a short piece of cord with which he hitched himself on to the rope, facing the sea. The first man was quite near the water's edge, the rest at regular intervals behind. They then all leant their weight against their tackles and walked backwards. As each man in turn came to a certain point of the shore he unhitched himself and ran down to take his place at the bottom. By this means a steady pull was kept up with apparently no great exer- tion. We were sorry we could not wait to see what the net contained as a reward for all this hauling. Before starting off again we made our first ac- quaintance with Japanese tea at the little tea- house where we had left the rickshaws. We found it wonderfully refreshing and not unpleas- ant, though afterwards we had it much better. As a rule we stopped for tea once or twice on 54 West and by East each excursion. The teapot, the little cups, or rather bowls, and the saucers (when there were any, in which case they were oval and of bronze or pewter) were always dainty and artistic how- ever poor the house. The tea was straw-coloured and aromatic in taste (our first specimen also tasted of oil), and a good deal stronger than it looked, but then a Japanese cupful is only about an English tablespoonful. There was never any sugar or cream, but generally some kind of small cake was brought, perhaps sponge cakes, or large peppermints or biscuits; but as a rule the cakes were made of bean flour and sugar pressed into the shape of chrysanthemums or other flowers, and tasting of sand and sugar. Half an hour's run brought us to Fujisawa station, a couple of stations beyond Kamakura. We passed several villages, dirty and dismal^ — for in Japan the large towns are far ahead of the vil- lages, especially the fishing villages, in cleanliness and apparent comfort. In front of most of the houses were mats covered with little fishes drying and blackening in the sun, and giving out a pun- gent smell. They are used as a relish for curry. At Fujisawa we had a little while to wait, which we spent in drinking tea and watching a woman dressing her neighbour's hair, an operation de- manding great skill and taking an hour every three days or so. Kamakura and Eynoshima 55 We got back to Yokohama about a quarter to seven, so I had only just time to dress, jump into a rickshaw, — this is the ideal way to go out to dinner on a warm evening, — and get up to the Bluff by dinner-time. The house where I was dining was long, low, and spacious, hidden among its trees and gardens, but the furniture was strictly English, for my host said he liked to have every- thing about him as English as possible, that he might forget how far he was from home. Ex- cept for the servants in their Japanese dress it w^ould have been hard to suppose oneself ten thousand miles from home. I had a very delight- ful evening. My ride down from the Bluff after- wards was in fine weather, but in the night there came on a terrific storm of wind and rain which seemed as though it would sweep my room away. It did wash away a bridge on the main line to Kobe, so that railway traffic was disorganised for the next fortnight. There was also a slight earth- quake, but I missed it by being asleep. All Wednesday it rained pitilessly, but our ardour would not let us rest. So in the morning we did some shopping and also went to the tea- firing house of a large European firm to see the process of firing or drying. But as it was the slack season we saw only a little tea drying, the leaves spread on large, flat baskets over little charcoal fires. We then went into the office to 56 West and by East be instructed in the mysteries of tasting by the compradore, or head-man, a most stately China- man with flowing robes and exquisite hands. He selected four teas of qualities differing as widely as possible, and from each tea brewed a tiny pot, and from each pot poured a little cupful. Then we, with a spoon, took from each cup in turn a mouthful, which — according to our orders — we merely rolled round the mouth and ejected into a great tin funnel placed handy. Even our un- trained palates could distinguish very great differ- ence in the flavours. Many varieties of tea were shown us, the most curious being the '' spider- leg,** in which the leaf is tightly rolled and about an inch long. It commands a fancy price, and is bought principally by the foreign men-of-war. From there I paddled through the rain to tiffin at hospitable No. i The Bund, one of the old- fashioned houses built when space was no object, and accordingly very airy and large. There were eight or ten at tiffin, one topic of conversation being the earthquake of the previous night, which to my chagrin I had missed. I found out then, what everyone I met afterwards also confessed, that the more earthquakes a man feels the less he likes them. We as newcomers looked forward to experiencing one at least, but the residents knew them too well to like them. It is impossible to tell just when an earthquake may occuf, just Kamakura and Eynoshima 57 how violent it will be when it comes, and whether it will be your last, and this idea seems to get on the nerves. After tiffin I rejoined my party, and with the M.P. we went to see a cloisonne factory. It lay some distance away, at the end of a dismal ride through deep mud and huge puddles. We saw the different processes of the work: first the smooth copper vase, then the pattern drawn on it with a brush, then the pattern outlined with thin, flat wire set on edge, then the compartments thus formed filled in with different coloured enamels, and so on through sundry firings, polishings, and repetitions to the finished article. That night I dined at the United Club, for which my host of the previous night, who was its president, had put me up. It stands a little back from the road half-way along the bund, with a broad veranda in front where the members lie in long chairs and look over the beautiful harbour or examine the shipping through the telescope. It is well equipped in every way, but notably as to bar and billiard-room. The cooking, espe- cially the curry, the work of a Chinese artist, is excellent and absurdly cheap. The *' boys,** all Japanese, of course, looked picturesque in white duck suits with brass buttons, knickerbockers, red stockings, and buckle shoes. Just before I left Japan the white duck changed to blue cloth. 58 West and by East Thursday we spent in getting to Nikko, a wearisome railway journey with several changes and tiresome waits. Matsuda, however, shone out in a new r61e, and so lent some brightness to a dull day. When he considered the right mo- ment was come he appeared from the second-class carriage where he travelled with a tiffin basket — his own, with '* Matsuda *' on all the crockery, and many ingenious devices to save space. From this he produced paper napkins and all other re- quisite implements, and then an excellent cold tiffin of several courses, washed down with claret and mineral water. He served the meal with the skill of a corps of trained servants, repacked his traps, and effaced himself. At every station of importance venders of tea and edibles paraded the platforms, crying their wares in lugubrious sing-song tones. The edibles, in neat wooden boxes, were freely bought by the Japanese passengers, and as some of them looked like tempting cakes I bought a box. But I was grievously disappointed, for what looked like sections of jam-roll in the uncertain light of the station lamps turned out to be clammy prepara- tions of rice and fish, scarcely, if at all, cooked. However, Matsuda was not too proud to take them — out of the carriage at all events. These boxes of food are a great institution on Japanese railways, and are all on one pattern. They are Kamakura and Eynoshima 59 oblong boxes, perhaps 9 inches by 6 inches and I J inches deep, of thin wood, smoothed but not painted, and lightly glued together. The lid, merely a flat piece of wood, is kept on by a wisp of straw string tied round the box. The interior is divided into compartments to keep the rice and fish and vegetables — or whatever the different kinds of food may be — separate. Under the string is generally slipped a paper napkin and a pair of chop-sticks. Sometimes the chop-sticks are made of one piece of plain white wood split but not completely severed. The buyer when he breaks the sticks apart can thus be sure that they have never been used before. Add that from be- tween the chop-sticks so separated generally falls a wooden toothpick, and it will be seen that every contingency is provided for; at a cost so small that the whole apparatus is thrown away when once used, with the result that the railway em- bankments are littered everywhere with little white boxes. When it was not raining it was threatening to rain, so that the views were moist and monoton- ous. The principal thing of interest was the fine river which we crossed, the Tonegawa, broader than normal because of the heavy rains. It was dark when we reached Nikko, and as we were trundled up the long straggling street, on each side huge cryptomeria loomed ghostlike 6o West and by East out of the darkness, and through open doors we caught occasional glimpses of families lying round their braziers or in the circle of light cast by a hanging American lamp. The road ended with a sudden very steep, but short, hill, and our panting coolies set us down at the door of the Kanaya Hotel. CHAPTER VI NIKKO THE hotel is kept by a Japanese, but is run on European lines, and is clean and airy, the rooms large, and opening on to broad verandas. Being set on a hill it commands a fine view of the brawling stream at the bottom of the valley and of the opposite hill where the great mausolea lie hid- den among tall cryptomeria. These giant conifers grow to an enormous size about Nikko, forming excellent backgrounds for the brightly coloured temples, and lining the great post road with a superb avenue. In the morning we set out to see the sights, crossing the river by a plain wooden bridge. Just above this bridge is another very graceful one of dull red paint or lacquer. But this is sacred to the feet of gods alone, and though the Mikado — himself a god upon earth — was on one occasion asked by the priests to cross it, he modestly refused and thus earned himself a glorious name. This is a story of Matsuda's. Mat- suda would not give any direct answers to our questions about the Mikado and how he was 6i 62 West and by East regarded by the bulk of the people. The only- thing he would say was that once at a review the Mikado noticed a soldier limping, and on inquiry found it was due to bad boots; he de- manded to see a pair of military boots, at once condemned them, and ordered a new kind to be provided. *' Oh, yes, he is ver' good," Matsuda concluded. Above the bridges the river runs between hills which on one side come down steep and wooded to the water's edge and on the other leave room for a strip of cultivated land, a few houses, and a broad, well-kept road. The red bridge in the foreground completes a beautiful picture. The road, by the way, is equipped with telegraph poles and wires and a narrow-gauge tramway, by which the copper is brought from the mines higher up the valley. Across the road a broad ascent, half path and half a flight of very shallow steps winding between great cryptomeria, brought us to the first of the temples, the Sambutsu-do, or Hall of the Three Buddhas. Nikko is the Mecca of Japan, and the whole hillside is a sacred enclosure, in which, besides the two great mausolea, — of leyasu and lemitsu, — there are several smaller temples and a great number of subordinate buildings. All this enclosure is laid out as a park, and Nikko 63 forms a very beautiful setting for the famous shrines. Long, straight gravel walks lead up to the principal buildings, and are in some cases very broad, with a stream of clear water flowing down a paved channel in the middle. On either side are walls of ancient lichen-spotted stone to about the height of a man, topped by red wooden palings, whose colour has been brought by sun and rain into harmony with the grey stones and the great green trees behind. The charm of Nikko lies in this combination of rather sombre natural beauties and a gay, almost gaudy, arch- itecture, and in the quietness and dignity brood- ing over all. The first temple we came to, that of the Three Buddhas, is not particularly interesting, because quite modern. It owes its origin to the revolu- tion of 1868. Prior to that time the indigenous Shinto religion and the exotic Buddhism had be- come closely interwoven, so that many symbols and images peculiar to Buddhism had appeared in Shinto temples. But at the revolution, or re- storation, pure Shintoism became the established religion of the awakened monarchy, and to obtain this purity all the Shinto temples were purged of anything savouring of Buddhism. It was to shelter three Buddhas thus rendered homeless that this temple of Sambutsu was erected. From here we had a little distance to walk to 64 West and by East the mausoleum of lemitsu, stopping occasionally (or, as it seemed to the rest of us, often) to let Mr. Montreal snap a view which struck him as likely to make a good lantern-slide. I have neither the intention nor the power to describe these mausolea in detail. That has been often done, but can never be done ade- quately. Nor have I any fresh facts to offer as to leyasu and lemitsu. leyasu, the founder of the great Tokugawa line of Shoguns, died in 1616, and his son erected at Nikko — already famous for its monastery — this memorial chapel and tomb. lemitsu was his grandson, also a Shogun, who died in 165 1. To him, too, a magnificent chapel and tomb were built. lem- itsu's chapel is Buddhist; that in memory of leyasu is Shinto. With the view of keeping the best to the end we went to the temple of lemitsu first. Outside its outer gate are rows of stalls where the faithful may buy tiny wooden idols as souvenirs of their pilgrimage to Nikko. Within this gate we turned sharp to the left and climbed a broad flight of steps leading, with many turns and twists, up a wooded hill. The steps and balustrades are all of grey lichen-spotted stone. The latter are massive, with uprights, bases, and copings, all of hewn stone and all about seven inches square, but at first sight not remarkable. But Matsuda Nikko 65 pointed out that the balustrade is made in lengths of four or five feet — simply great solid blocks hewn and pierced to resemble masonry. This was done by the Shogun building the shrine with the de- liberate intention of impoverishing the daimios who were contributing the balustrades. The Shogun was an overgrown commander-in-chief who had managed to perpetuate his dynasty, and the daimios his armed retainers, who grew into a turbulent nobility, ready, if allowed any power, each to play the Shogun in his own sphere. These great temples at Nikko are distinguished rather by their ornaments than their architecture. In general plan they are similar to the ordinary type of temple. This consists mainly of an ob- long building with a high pitched roof often supported by one or two rows of columns. The whole of one long side is generally open or closed only with movable blinds. On the oppos- ite side a smaller building projects at right angles. This smaller building contains the shrine or the image, while the larger one is for the worshipper. The temple stands in a courtyard bounded by a high wall or a sort of cloister, and is approached by a short flight of steps. The gate in this wall is placed opposite the main entrance of the temple and is sometimes connected with it by a covered way. Sometimes there is another outer courtyard and another gate. These gates 66 West and by East are always tall and imposing erections. There are, as a rule, numerous subordinate buildings grouped round the main buildings, especially if there is a monastery attached to the tem- ple. The exterior of the temple may be compara- tively plain, but a wealth of ornament is lav- ished on the interior and on the great entrance gate and the courtyard wall. Only the found- ations, as a rule, are stone, while the buildings themselves are of wood lacquered in various colours, with gilded metal clamps and bolts. The roofs and their enormous flaring eaves are covered with fluted tiles. The wall of the courtyard also has a similar broad-eaved roof to keep the weather from its elaborately carved panels. The courtyard wall of the temple of lemitsu is comparatively plain. It has lattice-work panels in the middle and only a narrow band of carved work at the top and bottom. Passing through the gate we came to the steps of the temple itself. Here we had to take off our boots. This is gen- erally necessary, the alternative being to put a sort of bag of cloth over boots and all. It is rather a nuisance, but even if it were not the rule, I think one would be disposed to do it of one's own accord. The floors of the temple and the steps are all of polished lacquer, though occasion- ally matted, and one feels as if one had by some Nikko 67 Alice-in-Wonderland process shrunk to a size fit to enter a Japanese cabinet. The interior is most beautiful. The decora- tion, though daring and elaborate, is all in good taste, evidently good of its kind, and moreover toned by time into harmony. The flat ceiling is supported all round by columns. On three sides the spaces between the pillars are filled with lattice screens which can easily be opened and on one side always are open. On the fourth side, in which is the entrance to the shrine, these spaces are closed by wooden screens lacquered with huge lions on a dull gold background. The pillars, too, are a dull gold ; above them runs a broad frieze of gold set with panels of flowers and birds carved in high relief and painted in the natural colours. The ceiling is panelled, the beams black and gold, the panels blue with gold dragons. The little furni- ture there is consists principally of a row of small tables, each supporting a large box containing the priests' service-books. These, too, are lacquer. From the description this may seem gaudy, in reality it was not so ; the gold was dull so as to produce the effect of subdued sunshine; also, the room was large and well proportioned, and there was very little in it to interfere with the harmony of walls and ceiling. I can give no idea of the wealth and perfection of detail, which is per- haps almost more noticeable on the plain exterior. 68 West and by East There the brass fastenings were almost the only ornament, but these were all in graceful shapes and all engraved with some tasteful pattern. By the ordinary tourist a Japanese temple is a sight which can be soon seen, though the student of Japanese art may require weeks. On this oc- casion we were ordinary tourists, for we did not linger very long at leyasu's temple, but, if I must tell the truth, went back to tiffin. In the afternoon we crossed the river and went a little way up the valley, and then recrossed to the Hundred Buddhas. We had tea in a summer- house overlooking the turbulent stream opposite a large, smooth rock rising sheer from the water, on which the eyes of the faithful can read mira- culous writing. This tea was another triumph for Matsuda. There is a superstition that no two people can count the row of Buddhas alike. Miss Brantford and I tried, and in the first portion one of us counted twenty-seven, the other twenty-eight, nor could several attempts make any difference. We felt quite pleased with our success. The images are each about five feet high as they sit, about a yard apart, and very much alike. More- over, the path between them and the river bank was full of large puddles, needing a great deal of attention, a consideration which, I think, may account for the discrepancy. Nikko 69 All this day the weather was threatening, but on Saturday it was fine, an opportunity Mr. Montreal and I determined to seize to ride up some eight miles and twenty-three hundred feet to Chuzenji, and if possible a further eight miles and seven hundred feet to Yumoto. As Nikko it- self stands two thousand feet above sea level this would bring us by easy stages to five thousand feet. There were four possible methods of progres- sion open to us: to walk, but for this we were disinclined ; to be dragged in rickshaws, but we were too heavy to make this pleasant for ourselves or the coolies; to be carried in a kago. Now a kago is a small, square seat suspended from a big bamboo carried on coolies' shoulders. The occu- pant must sit in a very cramped position, which only a Japanese can do for any length of time, even if the kagos were not all made to Japanese measure. The fourth method, to ride, was left us, and early in the morning two small, rough ponies made their appearance. They were not beautiful to look at, but we found them very willing to go, though their trot was too short to be comfortable. With each pony was a coolie, one a mere boy. They trotted along beside us all day, apparently quite happy, though carrying the lunch-basket and camera for at least half the distance. Our way lay up the valley for a little and then 70 West and by East turned sharp to the right along the side of a tributary stream. The path rose rapidly and its quality as rapidly declined. We stopped at a tea-house to breathe the men and horses, and after this the climb really began. The hills on each side were steeper and higher, in some places coming sheer down into the stream, so that the path had to be carried on a flimsy-looking scaf- folding covered with sticks and earth hanging over the river. Crossing the river the road ran in zigzags up through a wood of fine chestnuts, beeches, and maples, in some cases turning crim- son or scarlet. We had left the pines below us. The glimpses between the trees down into the valley were magnificent. The hills on both sides were thickly wooded to the tops except where just opposite us a great cliff stood out too abrupt for any tree to find root-hold. It struck me as re- sembling but glorifying the pass of Killiecrankie. The path continued steep till we were quite close to Chuzenji, where we turned aside to see the fine waterfall by which the river leaves the lake. Then a short ride on the flat brought us to the village. Chuzenji is for a few days in the year thronged with pilgrims, but for the rest presents a deserted appearance, as most of the houses lining its one broad street are closed except when required for pilgrims' lodgings. We went by Matsuda's Nikko 71 instructions — for he himself had stayed with the ladies at Nikko — to a new hotel kept by a Japan- ese, but to some extent European in its furniture. We lunched in a broad veranda on the upper story carpeted with clean matting, ceiled and walled with wood smoothed but unvarnished. The sliding paper shutters were open, and we looked right down into the water. On either hand stretched the quaint wooden houses of the village set on substantial stone foundations which rose straight out of the lake. Before us lay the beautiful lake, about two miles across, backed by lofty green hills. There were magnificent clouds about, whose shadows a bright sun cast on the hills and the quiet lake, where one or two boats were fishing. The salmon-trout, fresh from the lake and excellently cooked, was good, the cold meats and things with which the thoughtful Matsuda had supplied us were good, and so was the appetite we had acquired riding. Altogether there was every reason for enjoying and remem- bering a delightful meal. But we could not linger long, for we decided to try and get up to Yumoto and back if possible the same night; usually people, if not in a hurry, spend one night at Chuzenji or Yumoto. For some time the road wound along the edge of the lake through woods where we saw hydran- geas six and seven feet high covered with their 72 West and by Hast blue flowers. Then we climbed up through the woods to a broad grassy plateau studded with occasional trees. Whereas at Nikko the maples were only just turning colour, up here the colours were magnificent, whole trees glowing bright scarlet or crimson in every leaf. Then these few trees ceased, and there was nothing to be seen but tall grass and a German steamer acquaintance whom we overtook in a rickshaw with three coolies and his guide behind in another, and whom we accordingly rallied on his luxurious habits. On the other side of this plateau were more woods and a couple more waterfalls, very pretty but not tremendous, which our coolies compelled us to visit, and then the lake and village of Yumoto. The lake is a great deal smaller than that of Chuzenji, and the village, which is famous for its hot sulphur springs, con- sists almost entirely of inns and bath-houses. These latter are very primitive, — simply large swimming - baths roofed over and enclosed on three sides, but left open towards the road, so that the bathers — men, women, and children — are in full view of the public. But then the Japanese idea of decency is radically different from ours, and this state of things is to them by no means strange, though it appeared doubly so to us be- cause of the veneer of Western civilisation so many of them now assume. Nikko I7y We went up to the actual spring where the water comes up very hot, and found half a dozen men in a small tank lying soaking with just their heads and toes visible. This they will do once or twice a day for two or three hours at a stretch. The Japanese are much troubled with diseases of the skin, and hence their affection for these hot sulphur baths. We could not stay long at Yumoto but hurried back to Chuzenji, leading our ponies down some pretty steep places by way of short cuts. At Chuzenji we picked up the lunch-baskets, and gave the coolies some saki. I don*t know whether they were really tired, but they looked so, and gladly accepted any refreshment. At- tendance on horses seems thirsty work in any climate. Soon after we left Chuzenji darkness fell on us, and then rain. One of the coolies borrowed a large paper lantern to light the way and two large paper umbrellas to keep us dry. The road was very rough and muddy, cut through thick woods with many awkward corners, and we also remembered the flimsy scaffoldings we had crossed in the morning, so for an hour or so we preferred to walk. It was a queer-looking pro- cession, — the two rough ponies, each led by a coolie in tightly fitting garments, we two foreign- ers with our big umbrellas, now for the first time found to be more than mere ornaments, and the 74 West and by East lantern swaying in the leading cooly's hand and casting weird shadows on rocks and trees. When we mounted at the bottom of the steep part I was riding last, and the light held by Mr. Montreal's coolie showed me a queer figure strid- ing before me. All I could see was a great umbrella, then the trailing skirts of an overcoat, and beneath the pony's hind legs and tail, so that it seemed as if some monstrous beast of the centaur tribe were stalking ahead of me. But even with such company the road seemed end- less, though it was only eight o'clock when we reached the hotel. As we were neither of us in good riding condition, the seven hours we had been in the saddle made us feel pretty stiff, but a Japanese hot bath soon corrected that and made us very ready for our dinner and to recommend the expedition to a large party of Empress friends who arrived at the hotel that night. The next day was by the calendar Sunday, the 3d, but there was, of course, nothing to indicate the fact, which impressed me considerably, — though quite unreasonably, — as it was the first Sunday I had ever spent in a non-Christian coun- try. To say nothing indicates the fact is, by the way, inaccurate, as the schools are closed on Sunday to give the children one day's holiday in the week. In the morning we went some four or five miles Nikko 75 to a Httle tea-house set on top of a hill near Kiri- furi-no-taki, or the Mist Falling Cascade. The ladies went in carrying chairs, and Mr. Montreal, Matsuda, and I rode. Matsuda showed himself a great horseman in his way, which meant prin- cipally going at a fast trot or canter wherever the road could by any means allow of it. The path in places seemed quite impossible for horses, but the little Jap ponies took us safely up flights of rocky steps and through mud over their knees. From the tea-house hill we had a beautiful view of the circle of larger hills in which it lay, steep- sided green hills dotted with low, green azalea bushes. In the afternoon Mr. Montreal and I went to see the other great temple, that of leyasu, which the ladies had seen the day before while we were at Chuzenji. This is a Shinto temple, but other- wise very similar to the temple of lemitsu, though larger, more elaborate, and even more beautiful. At its entrance stands a pagoda — one of the few in Japan. It is square and five-storied, one hund- red feet high. Among the subordinate buildings we passed on the way to the temple was the stable of the sacred pony. We did not see the animal, but believe it to be white. His stable is interesting because of the three monkeys carved over the doors. One is covering his eyes with his hands, another his ears, and the third his 76 West and by East mouth, and they are called the blind, deaf, and dumb monkeys who respectively see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. They are a very favourite subject in Japanese art, appearing again and again in wood, ivory, or bronze. In an- other building with wide-open doors was seated an elderly and preternaturally solemn priestess. When we threw a small coin on to the mat in front of her she rose and performed what was called a dance, but it seems too frivolous a name for tTie ceremony. With long, flowing robes and a towering head-dress she solemnly revolved, ad- vanced, retreated, bowed, marking the time with a fan in one hand and a cluster of little bells in the other. In time she stopped and resumed her seat as noiselessly and automatically as she had begun. The whole dance, which is some kind of a sacred function, reminded me strongly of the penny-in-the-slot toys of seaside places — to com- pare great things with small. The chief glory of this temple is the entrance gate and wall of the great courtyard. The gate is two storied with flaring tile roof. It is a mass of fantastic carving and gorgeous colouring, per- haps too gorgeous and fantastic, but on the whole beautiful. So beautiful was it considered that it was thought wise that one of the dozen pillars on which it stands should be placed upside down. So in this pillar the points of the diaper orna- Nikko n mentation point down instead of up, and though the difference would escape anyone whose atten- tion was not particularly called to it, it is enough to avert the wrath the gods might have evinced against a perfect building. On each side of this gate on a stone foundation is the matchless wooden wall. It is topped by broad tiled eaves, and is a miracle of carving and carpentry. There are two rows of panels, large and small, the larger ones above. They are filled with groups of birds and flowers, the lower ones confined to water birds. The carving is in full relief, though, as we afterwards found, this effect is helped by judicious piecing as regards some of the most prominent parts. The carving is all coloured proper, and no two panels are quite alike, and each is worth studying separately. In almost startling contrast to this magnificence IS the actual tomb. As in the case of the tomb of lemitsu and also of some of the tombs at Tokio, leyasu's tomb is a little behind the temple and in the open. It is surrounded by a simple stone balustrade, and before it on a low stone table are a great bronze stork, a bronze incense burner, and a bronze vase full of artificial lotus flowers and leaves. The tomb is a great bell- shaped bronze casting with a spreading square top shaped like a pagoda roof, and stands on half a dozen stone steps, so that the whole structure 78 West and by East may be some fifteen feet high. It is almost in- nocent of ornament, and most dignified. After seeing the temple we climbed innumer- able flights of grey stone steps, still among giant cryptomeria, to some minor temples and shrines at the top of the hill. A priest in flowing yellow robes climbing in front of us lent a final touch of colour to the scene. Monday morning we devoted to seeing another waterfall, the Urami-ga-taki, or Back View Cas- cade, so called because there is a path right behind and under it. In the afternoon we did some shopping. Shopping may be taken as forming a running accompaniment to all our other doings, and did not necessarily involve much, or any, buying. In the evening we had an earthquake, not violent but rather long. As it was our first we remarked, '* This is an earthquake," and sat listening to the rattle of the shutters and watching the furniture quake. Probably our one hundredth would not have found us so calm. On Tuesday we left for Tokio. We had thought of going by rickshaw down the Nikko Kaido, a twenty-mile avenue of cryptomeria, to Utsunomiya, and joining the train there ; but the rain fell in torrents, and we had to give up this plan and go all the way by rail. It rained all day, and was raining when we reached Tokio after dark. Tokio is a city of magnificent Nikko 79 distances, and as we rode to the Imperial Hotel through endless broad streets we saw others stretching away interminably in all directions, their countless lights reflected in innumerable puddles. CHAPTER VII TOKIO THE Imperial Hotel is a most imposing build- ing (for Japan), stucco, with a mansard roof. Originally, I believe, opened and run by a Frenchman, it retains distinct traces of France in its furniture. Now it is run by a Japanese, and is not quite so good as its exterior seems to promise. The rooms and corridors are big and bare, and some of the walls scarred with great earthquake cracks. Sightseeing in Tokio is no mere pleasure ex- cursion, as we found on Wednesday when we began upon it. The points of interest all seem to lie towards the circumference of the great city, and it is easy to waste several hours a day in just getting about. It is a very extraordinary city. To begin with, it has some million and a half inhabitants, and is popularly supposed to measure ten miles in either direction. On the native Japanese civilisation has been forcibly engrafted the exotic system of the West. At one moment you would say that the two civilisations were flourishing side by side, 80 Tokio 8 1 and the next it would appear that the new ideas were about to replace altogether the ancient. In the government quarter most of the buildings are of brick and stucco, in a debased European style. There are, for instance, large brick government ofifices, and stucco mansions with mansard roofs where great nobles live, and one where the Nobles' Club is housed, which last, by the way, was suf- fering severely from the effects of earthquake when I was in Tokio. These buildings stand gaunt and bare in the midst of great areas of waste land intersected by straight, immensely broad, new roads. In other quarters of the town the principal sign of change is the breadth of the main streets. The surface is still lumpy from the disturbances necessary to lay a new system of water pipes. Down the centre run little ram- shackle tram-cars drawn by miserable horses, and on either side stand posts carrying innumerable telegraph and telephone wires. But the houses themselves, on either side, are still of native arch- itecture with very few exceptions. The costume of the people remains in all essentials Japanese. This is invariably the case with the women one sees in the streets, for the few ladies who wear European dress are of the higher ranks, who are very rarely seen in public. Postmen, sol- diers, and officials generally wear a European- looking uniform, and merchants and others whose 82 West and by East business brings them into constant contact with Europeans also wear ** foreign " clothes or some modification of them. But this leaves the great mass of the people untouched, except often in the way of head- and foot-coverings, the points in which Japanese costume is least satisfactory. I believe the years since the Chinese war have witnessed a decided reaction in favour of things Japanese, by enlarging the nation's idea of its own importance, so that it no longer feels inclined to imitate so freely; for instance, the latest coin- age has no English words or writing on it, as had all the recent coins before it. Gas is generally used to light the streets, but there is a good deal of electric light in the larger buildings, and a hanging American lamp often finds great favour in private houses. In fact, such a lamp and a cheap American clock seem the ** foreign*' furniture principally favoured by the bulk of the people. One characteristic of Tokio is the triple ring of moats or canals flowing through the city. The two outer rings are bridged at frequent intervals and the ramparts behind them cut by public thoroughfares; but within the innermost is the Emperor's Palace, where formerly stood the Sho- gun's, and into this charmed circle few may pene- trate. The moats are broad and well filled, and on the inner side rise tall ramparts of great poly- Tokio 83 gonal stones, often capped with drooping trees. That the city is built on several hills and distinctly steep ones is soon apparent to anyone riding any distance in a rickshaw, and if the rider does not himself notice it, the coolie takes measures to bring the fact before him. Another characteristic of the streets, as com- pared with those of other Japanese cities, is the number of soldiers about. They are small, rather slovenly, and are dressed in blue tunic, red trous- ers, and a kepi, with a star on their collar like that worn in the Italian army. They may be seen marching in bodies to and from barracks or wandering singly round the streets; so much so that it looks as though the Japanese aimed at founding a military monarchy of the modern European type. We spent the morning in Shiba Park, where six Shoguns are buried. The tombs themselves are very plain and dignified, of bronze or stone. They are in the open and of a similar shape to those at Nikko. There is one exception, the tomb of the second Shogun, which is an immense cylinder of gold lacquer encrusted with enamels and crystals, standing in a small octagonal hall. In connection with the tombs are three mortuary temples. They resemble the Nikko temples in general plan and in the general features of decora- tion. But externally at least they are not so 84 West and by East brilliant. This is partly because they are covered with black boards to preserve them from the weather. But where no boards have been put up — as in the case of the carved work of the courtyard wall — no attempt seems to have been made to repair the ravages of time and wind and rain. The colouring has vanished from the flowers and birds, and in many cases a tail or wing has come off, revealing the fact that the panel was a marvel of carpentry no less than of carving. I believe the reason is that these temples belong to the Shogun who was deposed in 1868, and who is still alive. He himself either will not or cannot keep them in repair, and he will not allow anyone else to do it for him. But, even as it is, the carvings are exquisite, and the sobriety of tone is perhaps an added beauty, for the Nikko temples certainly come rather near to garishness. This at least is where a captious critic would attack them. But if the exteriors are solemn, the in- teriors are magnificent. The decoration is prin- cipally in lacquer of different sorts and colours — gold, and black, and red, and red gold-pow- dered. The effect is gorgeous and beautiful at the first glance, but only after a while does the full meaning of it all dawn on the foreigner so that he realises the endless patience necessary for the comparatively simple result and the almost price- less value that the shrines represent. Tokio 85 We had just had tiffin at the hotel when a Japanese friend of mine came to call. He had been at Balliol with me, where he had lived and behaved in every way as an Englishman. It had struck me therefore as rather interesting that in the letter of welcome he had kindly written me he had excused himself from offering to put me up because he lived in ** pure native style.** But when he called on me he was in European dress, even though he seemed to have lost some of the extreme neatness for which at Oxford he was noticeable. He belonged to one of the great noble families, and his uncle had been at Balliol before him. I found him now a husband and father and a baron. (A baron indeed he had been at Balliol, but had not used the title, ** as we were all students together.'*) Not only so, but he was an elective member of the House of Peers. The two highest orders of nobility, the princes and the marquises, sit by right in the upper house, but of the counts, viscounts, and barons, a certain number — about one fifth of the whole — is elected to sit for seven years. This call resulted in my accepting his invita- tion to tiffin for the next day. On his departure we sallied forth, and after wast- ing some time in fruitless discussion with curio dealers found ourselves at the Meiji-za, where we had engaged seats by telephone. This is one of the 86 West and by East leading theatres in Tokio, but although quite new and equipped with electric light and telephone all its main features are purely Japanese. The audi- torium was nearly square, with a flat ceiling. The proscenium opening, long, low, and oblong, occupied almost one entire side. Round the other three sides was a gallery. The floor was flat in the centre, rising a little under the gal- leries. It was innocent of seats, but covered with cushions and cut up by very low wooden divisions into square boxes capable of holding three Japanese, or four at a pinch. Narrow gangways crossed the floor at intervals to enable people to reach their seats, but the boxes under the gallery could be entered direct from the ex- ternal corridor. A few chairs were kept in odd corners for any wandering Europeans, and on these we were installed in a corner under the gal- lery. Just before us ran a broad gangway three or four feet from the floor — that is, just above the ordinary line of sight of the audience — stretching from the stage to the back of the theatre. This represented a road, and was therefore useful for processions or entrances from the distant country. Sometimes the actor paused half-way on this road to soliloquise, while all the audience turned to face him. At one side of the stage an orches- tra was concealed which kept up a continuous maddening drumming and twanging. On the Tokio 87 opposite side in a kind of balcony sat two men, one of whom played a sort of guitar while the other sang the thoughts which were supposed to crowd through the mind of the actor as he paced the stage alone at some critical situation. This singing was also rather tiring. It was all recita- tive without any melody, sung with tremendous tremolo and often falsetto. As soon as we were seated, Matsuda provided us with tea and cake. One play occupies the whole of a day, and therefore arrangements are made with a neighbouring tea-house by which any and all meals can be served not only in the theatre but in one's own box. A Japanese will accordingly send or take his wife and family to the theatre in the morning, and there they will remain all day. In the evening a bill is presented — so much for seats, so much for programmes, so much for food, so much for tea, and so much for fire, that is, live coals in a brazier supplied for the use of smokers. Both men and women smoke, and smoke continuously. This bill is — at this particular theatre at any rate — large enough to make the day's entertainment of the nature of a luxury. The audience was mainly composed of women, apparently of the upper classes, and children with gay clothes and the most demure and perfect manners. There was much calling and returning 88 West and by East of calls from box to box, and we were greatly- taken with the pretty little ways of the small ladies. There were profuse bows and smiles, a little talk, a little tea, perhaps a little pipe, more bows and smiles, and then the visitor departed ; sometimes, if very tiny, with the judicious assist- ance of the theatre attendants. We had come specially to Meiji-za to see Danjeiro act. Danjeiro is rather a dynastic than a personal name, and the name and prestige de- scend from theatrical generation to generation, so that Danjeiro is always among the first, if not the first, of Japanese actors. Unhappily for us, we had come too late to see his early appearance, and though we stayed as long as possible he did not come on again before we left. But even without Danjeiro we enjoyed the play. The actors were all male, as men and women do not act together in Japan, but the female parts were very creditably filled considering. The scenery was effective and pretty, though there was no at- tempt at landscapes and no painted scenes. It was all carpenter's work, house-fronts, interiors, etc., the upper part of the back of the stage being filled in with hanging drapery. The whole stage was arranged so as to revolve. Therefore while one scene was in progress in front another was being set behind, and at the proper moment the whole affair revolved, carrying off the old scene Tokio 89 (and sometimes the actors as well), and revealing a fresh one. Often the stage hands had to crawl in to give some finishing touch. They wore black hoods and cloaks and, I believe, are considered invisible. Though Matsuda supplied a running explana- tion of the play, I cannot say much as to its story. The scene was laid in old Japan — i, e.^ Japan before 1868 — and the actors wore old- fashioned clothes and coiffures. In one scene, representing an entertainment before a daimio, an extraordinary figure appeared, dressed in white, with a thick mass of bright-red hair falling right to the ground. This figure danced, and when by great exertion it succeeded in jerking this mass of hair from back to front and then again to back, the delight of the audience was unbounded. In another scene the daimio arrives at home with a gaily equipped train of followers. Among them is a servant whose duty it is to carry a heavy ornamental spear. This drudgery is distasteful to him, and at night he breaks into the armoury, hews the spear in two, and flies. His wife and daughter following in search of him take situations as waitresses in a saki shop. To this shop the husband comes one day with some boon companions, and a very animated scene fol- lows as bottle after bottle of saki is consumed. The daughter suddenly recognises her father, 90 West and by East and in her surprise drops the tray she carries, and brings down on herself the anger of the manageress. When the man leaves the shop, a good deal the worse for saki, his womankind follow him, and an interview takes place, evidently of an affecting nature. Not only did the actors weep, but the audience which had followed the play carefully, taking up all the jokes, was now dissolved in tears. There was hardly a woman in the theatre but had her handkerchief to her eyes, and the house was full of the sound of weeping. After this I forget the drift of the story — perhaps that was where we left. The curtain does not fall ; it is drawn across from one side to the other by a man running, holding the end. Some of these curtains are decorated in fine, bold designs, and are presents to a favourite actor, and so go on tour with him from place to place. We thought the acting was excellent, and, though of course understanding not a word, could generally make out what was happening — at least with Matsuda's help. The hotel this evening was quite lively: the billiard-room was full of middies from a British man-of-war, and they were not noiseless ; a South American Consulate had its headquarters in the hotel, and the ladies of the Consul's family and their friends filled the rooms with gaiety ; in an- Tokio 91 other room a Japanese conjuror performed some tricks, which were preceded by endless attitudes and swaggering, accompanied by an intolerable twanging and drumming from behind a curtain, and fell rather flat in the end. On Thursday morning we commenced with the tombs of the forty-seven Ronins. These are heroes of Japanese legend, famous because of their fidelity to their dead leader and the venge- ance they finally took on his murderer. They all lie in a little shady graveyard, each with a small tombstone. As a matter of fact, there are forty-eight such tombstones, and this we pointed out to Matsuda. He was astonished, but could give no expFanation, nor can I offer one. From here a long trot took us to Ueno Park, celebrated for its cherry-blossoms in the spring, and for the fine view of the city it commands all the year round. Here for the first time since landing were we made aware of our foreign nationality by the crowd of small children follow- ing and staring. In this park is the Government Museum, a large brick building, light, airy, and well arranged. The rooms devoted to lacquer are especially interesting, of which certain speci- mens are of very great beauty. I had a long ride from Ueno Park to my friend's house, winding and twisting through many narrow streets till I began to think my 92 West and by East coolie had intentionally or unintentionally lost his way. However, at length we turned into a small courtyard before a house which, for Japan, was quite large. I found my host — clad in native dress, which he wears at home because of its com- fort — waiting at the threshold. He furnished me with felt slippers to wear instead of boots, and then took me in and introduced me to his brother, who was also in Japanese dress and who spoke hardly any English, and to a young professor of the Tokio University, wearing European clothes. I discovered afterwards that he was M.A., Oxon. ; M.A., Ph.D., Leipsic. Madame la Baronne I never saw, either because she spoke no English, or because some traces of the semi-Oriental seclusion of one's womenkind still survived in the household. Though the house itself was thoroughly Japanese, the three downstairs rooms contained a good deal of European furniture. There were sofas and tables and chairs, and book- cases full of English books, side by side with Japanese bronzes, kakemonos, and brocades. Framed photographs of Oxford groups hung on the paper walls. The tiffin was excellent, even elaborate. The servants were the only thing that recalled one to Japan. I had wondered on my way to the house if the cooking would be Japan- ese, and had half hoped it would. As I learnt afterwards, it was as well for me it was not, or Tokio 93 the hearty appetite I arrived with would have also departed with me unabated. After tiffin I was shown some photos which my host's brother had taken — principally of the Baron in every variety of costume. He evidently was an expert photographer. Before I left my friend showed me his garden — the joy of his heart, but very small according to our ideas — and the upper part of the house. I then saw to what the ex- pression, ** pure native style," referred, for the bedrooms were furnished with little else than a vase of flowers. The rest of the afternoon I spent with Mr. Montreal in Naka-dori, a street full of small curio shops. We strolled from one shop to another with the patient Matsuda at our elbow, the rick- shaws following, and a great accompanying train of children. At each shop we entered through the open front and took our seat upon the floor, which is raised about eighteen inches above the pavement. The proprietor sat in a clear space surrounded by a circle of his wares reaching from floor to ceiling — like a spider in his web. If we fancied anything he reached it down for our in- spection, and if he thought we really meant business he sent his boy to the back regions, where in Japanese shops the best things always lie hidden. The boy presently returned with his arms full of neat wooden boxes. From the boxes 94 West and by East came rolls and bags of brocade and silk, and from them the choice treasures of the establishment. Then ensued endless chaffering, ending in nine cases out of ten in no business done. The crowd of children watched all these pro- ceedings with keen interest. For their benefit Mr. Montreal did some simple tricks of sleight- of-hand. The apparent swallowing of a coin was too much for one small boy who was carrying on his back another not much smaller. He turned and fled precipitately, evidently convinced that we were more, or less, than human. Friday was a day of pouring rain. The moats ran swift and turbid under the bridges and threat- ened to overflow their banks. The rickshawmen paddled about ankle-deep in mud and water. We ventured out to see the workshops of a famous bronze-worker, but saw little for our pains. The Baron came to tiffin with us at the hotel, this time in a frock coat, and in the after- noon we took the train for Yokohama, which seemed to us now an old familiar friend. CHAPTER VIII MATSUDA EISITERTAINS WE had now returned to our base of supplies, and spent Saturday in shopping, visiting the bank, inquiring for letters, and paying calls. On Sunday I went up the Bluff for what was called tiffin, but was really the regulation middle- day English Sunday dinner. There was the English dining-room and the roast beef, and a contingent of little boys in sailor suits, full of the idea of going Home where they had never been. Even the Japanese boy and the curry after the beef could hardly persuade me for a time that I was not back in England. When I rejoined my party at the hotel we went first to secure berths at the steamship office on a steamer leaving the next day for Kob6, as the railway was still broken. Matsuda was very anxious that we should then come to his house for tea. He accordingly slipped off down a side street after instructing our coolies to take us by a roundabout route, and was by this manoeuvre able to be waiting on his own threshold wreathed 95 96 West and by East in smiles to welcome us. The house was a two- storied one, of a fair size, as such things go in Japan. Extreme simplicity and refinement were everywhere noticeable. A couple of painted scrolls on the walls, a vase of flowers in a recess, a frieze between the rooms of cryptomeria wood so long buried that the softer parts had rotted away, leaving a sort of natural fretwork, — these were almost the only decorations, or, indeed, furniture, of the lower floor. Matsuda intro- duced us to his wife, a lady of uncertain age and subdued demeanour, his daughter, a pretty girl of about sixteen, and a small son who, I fancy, was virtual, if not titular, head of the household. He showed us his garden behind, a plot of ground probably not more than ten feet by twenty, backed by a high wall. Yet in it was room found for an elaborate arrangement of stepping-stones, several pine trees, one or two large boulders, and a stone lantern — these are the main constituents of the average Japanese gar- den, with, if possible, water and goldfish added. At one end of the garden the house projected a tiny room — the ** tea-ceremony " room. Now to have a ** tea-ceremony '* room seems in Japan to confer a social distinction such as the posses- sion of a haunted room might give in England. In all Yokohama there are but three. Just what the ** tea-ceremony " is it is difficult to ascertain. Matsuda Entertains 97 It appears to include the whole code of good manners and household management. Its rules govern the arrangement of flowers — no casual matter, as each month has its own flower, and each flower a vase appropriate in size, shape, and material. It teaches the graceful way to kneel down or to get up. Every action of a well-bred Japanese is governed by elaborate rules of eti- quette founded on immemorial custom, but the end and aim of them all is a refined simplicity. So perfectly is this object attained that it takes some time to find out that this simplicity is highly artificial, and not spontaneous. This Japanese characteristic is strikingly illus- trated in the ** tea-ceremony.'' This is the actual ceremonial drinking of tea from which the whole system takes its name. Matsuda's daughter performed some parts of it for us. I think the full course of study required to become perfect in all points is five years, and she had been but three. Matsuda often told us as the ceremony progressed how she had laid herself open to the ridicule of the initiated by some trifling error of omission or commission. Prob- ably to us the action had seemed quite accidental and unimportant. The size and shape of the room are fixed within certain limits; at the best it is a tiny room. Part of the ceiling is flat and part sloping. The sloping 98 West and by East part IS of bamboo, and on the under side the bamboos, instead of lying horizontal and parallel, run together in apparent confusion. But once a Shogun on his travels stopped at a house where he expressed a desire for a cup of tea with all the due ceremony. For so exalted a personage a new room had to be built, and as the request was apparently unexpected, the carpenters in their haste fastened the bamboos awry. Luckily, the effect pleased the great man, so that ever since all tea-roonas, if properly built, imitate it. The floor, of course, is matted, and destitute of furniture. There are three doors, one from the house used by the tea-maker, a very low one from the garden for the host, and beside it a larger one for his honoured guests. The way to it is by the stepping-stones, which, taken in a cer- tain order, lead first to a boulder with a hollow in it full of water where the guest may wash his hands, and then to the tea-room. We were allowed to use the honourable doorway, though, as a matter of fact, owing to the limited size of the room, Mr. Montreal and I never got more than half- way in. The ceremony is lengthy, and varies with the time of the year, each of the four seasons requir- ing a different equipage of kettles, cups, etc. To describe it all accurately would need an ex- pert, but the outlines are these : The brazier of Matsuda Entertains 99 live coals is ready in the room, but almost all the other things have to be brought in one by one. The fire is stirred and the kettle put on to boil. The kettle is lifted by rings which fit into hooks at either side, and when not in use are laid in their particular place. The cups are not at all like the common ideal of Japanese teacups. They are really fair-sized bowls of glazed earthen- ware, not quite round, but moulded so as to fit easily the drinker's encircling hands. The tea is in a tiny jar shaped like the oil jars in the story of the Forty Thieves. It is wrapped in a little silk bag with a silk cord, and is stopped with a tiny lid. These adjuncts are brought in while the water is being heated, and when the water is hot a little tea is taken from the jar and put into the bowl by a slender bamboo spoon, as nothing of metal may touch it. The tea itself — the centre and cause of all this ritual — is a fine, light- brown powder. The hot water is poured on to the tea in the bowl direct, and then the mixture is beaten up with a bamboo implement like a shaving-brush. The tea is then ready to drink, and the bowl passes round the circle. Each per- son in turn drinks from it. If more than one cup of tea is needed another bowl will be used, but each bowl goes the full round. Matsuda's wife was kind enough to show us the proper way to hold the cup, the proper way to drink, and the loo West and by East proper bows to make. Before the tea is ready each person is provided with a paper napkin and a small, sweet rice-cake. If he feels disposed to eat his cake he does so when the tea is served ; if not, he keeps it wrapped in his paper napkin. But to refuse one altogether is accounted rude. When the tea is drunk the maker takes away, one by one, the implements with the same pomp with which they entered, but some at least are left for a while that the company may examine them and comment on their beauty. This is expected of one's politeness, and it must be a relief to have the chance of saying anything after the solemn silence in which the whole ceremony must be watched. These bare facts may make the whole thing appear stupid. As a matter of fact it is most dainty and charming. To begin with, it was per- formed by a pretty Japanese girl, there was no noise and no haste, and all the movements were graceful. So many steps must be taken at each entrance, and then kneel down ; so many steps at each exit. Each thing must come in in proper order. Each thing must be wiped before and after using with a little square of red silk, and this itself must be stretched and then folded in just the exact way after each use, and then tucked into the girdle. Perhaps it casts a kind of spell over the spectator, the charm ** of woven paces and of waving hands." Drinking of tea Matsuda Entertains loi with all this ceremony is a form of hospitality in Japan, and could only be tolerated in such a country, where everyone is artistic and no one values time. When we had seen parts of the ceremony ap- propriate to various seasons we returned to the house, and there to our surprise found an ortho- dox afternoon tea awaiting us — painted cups with handles, silver spoons, each topped with a model of an ancient statue, the gift of a former employer, sponge cake, and tea in a teapot. The table was only about eight inches high, and we sat around it on cushions on the floor. After a while lights were brought in, in paper lanterns standing about three feet high. Matsuda brought out for our inspection his choice treasures of lac- quer and pottery. Like a true Japanese, he kept them in their boxes and silk wrappings, piled in a closet whence they only emerged on great oc- casions. His daughter added to our obligations towards her by playing on the koto, a sort of zither, perhaps five feet long, with twelve or thirteen strings. The player wears ivory shields on the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand and with these strikes the strings, stopping with the left hand. The sound is very melod- ious, though we could not follow the tune. We found the whole visit so fascinating that we could hardly persuade ourselves to come I02 West and by East away. Matsuma thus added to his repertoire another role — the charming host. All through our visit he treated us not as employers but as personal friends, but with no familiarity, with perfect politeness but no trace of obsequiousness. But when we met next day he was again our guide but not our host. Surely the Japanese manners are perfect. CHAPTER IX MIYANOSHITA I WAS now beginning to be rather pressed for time, so that instead of waiting for the Gaelic or the Japanese mail boat, both of which left on Tuesday for Kob6, we had engaged berths on a Japanese boat sailing on Monday. Matsuda as- sured us she was new, just out from England, and officered by Europeans. On the latter point we were rather particular because Japanese sailors have not a good name as regards their obedience to officers of their own race. On the Sunday we had secured berths very easily, wondering rather at the very low sum asked. Our suspicions were further aroused when Matsuda told us that the steamship people had asked him whether we would want European or Japanese food. It showed that this boat did not very often take Europeans. But Monday morning found us and our belong- ings on board the hotel launch, threading our way in brilliant weather through the shipping of the harbour. There seemed every chance of 103 I04 West and by East a pleasant passage. Its duration varies from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, according to the speed of the boat. But we passed one by one all the steamers with any claim to respectability, and finally came alongside of a dirty little steamer of some one thousand tons, a regular cargo tramp in appearance. She was still receiving cargo, but, with only half an hour left till sailing time, showed half her propeller above water, — in itself no very encouraging sign, for the voyage to Kobe (like the Channel crossing) is proverbially choppy. The main-deck was horribly dirty, covered with scraps of matting from the wrappings of the cargo, and with half-naked coolies. Amidships was a small upper deck, and under it a deck- house in the middle of the ship, an alleyway on each side, and then two narrow houses coming flush with the bulwarks. In the starboard slip of deck-house were our cabins. There were two of them, and two berths in each. I suppose there were two similar rooms on the port side, so her full complement of first-class passengers would seem to be eight. The berths were very narrow shelves fixed to the side of the ship. The rooms were filled with a horrible mixture of smells from the engines, the galley, and elsewhere, and were intolerably hot. We took one glance at the dis- reputable oil-lamp, at the bill of fare pinned up behind the door and beginning Pea-soup, at the Miyanoshita 105 upper deck, where a wilderness of boats and ven- tilating cowls left only just room for a couple of wicker chairs. Then we decided that as we were travelling for pleasure even the joy of a new ex- perience would not detain us longer on the ship. In about five minutes after we had boarded her we went over the side again into the launch, which was still waiting. Just as we were leaving we did see one European officer — the others we had seen were Japanese. This one was probably an engineer, and was by no means prepossessing. Our luggage speedily followed us and a crest- fallen guide. We heard afterwards that she was really a cargo boat, and that people had felt sur- prise at our going in her, but that it was not etiquette to interfere with a guide's arrangements. Alas, that even a licensed member of the Guides' Association should not be infallible! But we did not feel our expedition across the harbour altogether lost time, because our escape from such dirt, confusion, and smells, and from a day and night of extreme discomfort, seemed to throw a glamour over all the rest of the day. More- over, the steamship people returned us our money in full without showing the slightest surprise — per- haps our reappearance was not wholly unexpected* Instead of going to Kob^ we decided — as we were all packed up — to go to Miyanoshita. This village lies about thirty-five miles from Yoko- ]o6 West and by East hama, and is a favourite resort of the foreign residents because of its fine hotel, its natural warm baths, beautiful scenery, and comparative proximity to Fuji — that coy mountain supposed to be visible from Yokohama, but of which we had not had a glimpse. After lunch we started along the same route as we had taken to Kamakura — the Tokaido Railway. But now there was bright sunshine, so that the country looked much prettier. An hour and a half in the train brought us to Kozu, where we changed into little two-horse trams, and jogged off for another hour. The road was a well-made one, crossing from side to side of a valley which narrowed rapidly as we steadily as- cended. Sometimes we passed long straggling villages, in one of which we changed horses. At Yumoto of Hakone, not Nikko, where the tram- line ended, we took to rickshaws. We had to walk some little distance to find them, because a recent landslip had carried away a bridge, and the tempo- rary way of crossing the stream was not practicable for rickshaws. The other members of the party were soon put into their traps and trundled off, but I thought I should never get mine. The remain- ing coolies apparently considered themselves en- gaged to some people who were following us, and it was only after a tremendous argument, which I thought at times would come to blows, that Miyanoshita 107 Matsuda carried the day and I won my seat. The road was almost all uphill and often very rough, so that each rickshaw had three coolies, who lifted it bodily over the inequalities. The country was hilly and rather wild, but darkness came down before we reached the hotel. Owing to the complicated nature of the journey it takes some four and a half hours to cover the thirty- five miles. The hotel Fuji-ya, kept by a Japanese but on European lines, is set on the side of a hill. It is often said to be the best hotel in Japan. Its architecture is a happy mixture of Western and native styles, and its success has prompted it to send two long, low wings curling and twisting down the hillside till they almost meet. So that my room in the extreme end of one wing was perhaps seventy-five yards from the billiard-room in the end of the other wing if I went across the garden, but two hundred by way of the house. All the doors and windows opened out into en- circling corridors, a device which made the rooms rather dark, but cool in summer. The way from my room to the dining-room lay through the kitchen, which seemed to no one but myself in the least odd. The sights of Miyanoshita are natural and not architectural, and the first of them which we visited was Lake Hakone. The south end of the io8 West and by East lake, where the village of Hakone lies, is some five or six miles from Miyanoshita. It was a pretty walk among the hills, but not very memora- ble, except that at one place there is a colossal Buddha cut in low relief in the solid rock, and at another a splendid view in the direction of Tokio can be obtained. In fact, your guides do not allow you to proceed till you have obtained it. The ladies went in carrying chairs, each with four coolies. These are regular armchairs slung on two poles, and are more practicable than kagos for Europeans. I tried one for a little, but found the motion very quick and jolty. Mr. Montreal and I tied straw sandals under our boots and found them excellent in preventing slipping. Matsuda had a kago, but at starting walked ahead of it, though when the pull came uphill he rode ; walking was not one of his accomplishments. The path climbed steadily till we came sud- denly in view of the lake lying far below us. But the hills were covered with threatening clouds, and Fuji, the chief glory of the view, absolutely invisible. Then we descended abruptly to the level of the lake, through the broad, straggling village street and past a summer palace of the Emperor's. It is built on a peninsula in the lake, looks like an overgrown shooting-box, and has been disused for years. A short walk along the \ Miyanoshita 109 old Tokaido road, where the glory of the crypto- meria overhead atoned for the very indifferent surface underfoot, brought us to a tea-house on the edge of the lake, and tiffin. We, of course, had had to stop once or twice at tea-houses en route, but this was inevitable on every expedition. As at Chuzenji, this was a picnic lunch of pro- visions we had brought with us, eaten in a veranda upstairs commanding a view of the lake and of the clouds, behind which Fuji lay hidden. In spite of Matsuda's protests that the path was a very bad one, w^e decided to sail down the lake — about four miles — and then to walk back by way of Ojigoku, or ** Big Hell." Accordingly, after tiffin, two sampans were brought round. Into one the ladies were put with their chairs, while Mr. Montreal and I lay on mats athwartships, and owing to the breadth of the beam were quite comfortable. In the other boat were the chair coolies. We had two rowers and a lateen sail. The sampan has a soothing, swaying motion like a gondola's, and the hour's sail would have been very pleasant if it had not come on to rain fiercely when we were about half-way across, which sent us creeping under wraps and mats. At the land- ing was a tumble-down hut full of smoke from a blazing fire, where we waited a little to see if the rain would hold up, but as it showed no signs of doing so we started off again. The path was I lo West and by East good, running between fields and rising gently till we came to the little bathing village of Ubago. Then it degenerated sadly. It became narrow and steep, closely overhung on either side with dripping bushes. The rain had washed away the centre of the path, leaving a deep furrow with sides of sloping, slimy mud, so that even with straw sandals and the help of friendly stones it was difificult to always stand upright. How the coolies managed to carry the ladies up without a spill I do not know, but they did it. When we reached the broad, flat top of the little pass the rain had ceased. It is here that the sulphur springs begin from which the pass takes its un- holy name. We all had to walk, and as Matsuda told us fearful tales of how people who had wandered ever so little from the right path had been scalded to death, we dogged his footsteps closely. The scene was uncanny, but not as tremendous as its name would imply. Clouds of white steam rose from the side of the hill, which was covered with slippery white mud. Tiny rills pf hot water bubbled up from little cauldrons, flowed across our path and down to join the main stream running through the valley. The real ex- citement was in keeping one's footing on the side of the hill on the treacherous mud. After this the path again came back to the upper world of fields and farms. When we got back to the hotel, Miyanoshita 1 1 1 as I felt a little stiff, I indulged in one of the hot baths for which Miyanoshita is famous. The water is naturally warm, and, though medicinal, is so little so that one can bathe in it without doctor's orders. The manner of bathing is very comfortable. The bath-rooms are little wooden cubicles, lit by electricity, and divided into two parts. The outer part is a dressing-room, and from it a doorway leads into the bath part, which is on a slightly lower level. The bath is a tank, about six feet by three, by two feet six, sunk flush with the floor, and full to the brim of warm water, so that when one gets in the water flows out over the floor, which is specially sloped to allow it to drain off. The size of the tank makes the per- formance very luxurious, and there seems to be no time limit on occupancy. On Wednesday morning we went a short walk up the main road and across a bridge, and then Matsuda, proudly pointing to a small knob of a hill appearing over the nearer ranges, exclaimed, ** That is Fuji.'' We returned contented that we had come so far and really seen the peerless mountain ; but yet our joy was rather a chastened one. On our way to this glorious view we stopped at a tea-house — the day was warm and sunny — and wandered into a picturesque little garden, all stone lanterns and tiny lakes. In the pools were many fat carp, some golden and some silver. 112 West and by East They were very tame, and crowded together to feed on slices of dry bread. They rushed frantic- ally after the floating dainty, driving it before them with their noses, jostling and ousting one another till the bit of bread was the rapidly moving centre of a wild mass of gaping mouths, swishing tails, and gleaming sides, like the earth in the centre of the Leonids. It is a picture of this garden that appears as a frontispiece to this book. It is from a photograph by Mr. Montreal, and some of the gleams in the water are supposed to be the backs of the contending carp. In the afternoon a flag was flying before a tea- house on top of a hill near the hotel to indicate that Fuji was then visible from there. So Mr. Montreal and I climbed up by a zigzag path, but though the view of the valley was beautiful the view of Fuji was hardly better than the one we had had in the morning. Later on we did some shopping, and I was so engaged in bargaining for some saki-cups that I was totally unaware of an earthquake. The most characteristic things in the Miyanoshita shops are various wooden ar- ticles, such as picture-frames, inlaid roughly but very effectively with different coloured woods. The weather seemed settled down now to a beautiful sort of Indian summer, and Miyano- shita was a pleasant place to linger in. But the Miyanoshita 113 day I had fixed for sailing was rapidly approach- ing, and I had still to see Kioto. The main line from Yokohama south runs in the Hakone district in a semicircle of which Miyanoshita is the centre, Kozu, where we had left the railway, at one end of the diameter, and Gotemba at the other. It was between these two stations that the line was broken. It was possible, therefore, to go from Miyanoshita over the Otome-Toge pass and drop down on the rail- way at Gotemba, and so avoid the break alto- gether. Trains were being run from Yokohama to one side of the break and their passengers and baggage transshipped to other trains on the far side, and so -sent through to Kioto, but with much delay and discomfort. I would thus be able to get to Kioto by train, but I did not know how long I might have to wait at Gotemba. There was a train timed to leave at 9.30 A.M., and this I decided I would take on Thursday morning. I did not expect it would actually leave before 11.30, still, in order to reach the station some- where near the advertised time, I arranged to leave Miyanoshita at 5.30. As there is a fine view of Fuji obtainable from the top of the Otome-Toge pass, Mr. Montreal agreed to come so far with me. So at 4.30 o'clock we were called, and at 5 we breakfasted. By the time we were ready to start darkness was giving place to 8 114 West and by East twilight, and a glorious sunrise was preparing. Our ponies were brought round — my luggage had gone on ahead — and we three mounted and started ; Matsuda was to come with me to Go- temba and see me safely into the train. After a mile or two we turned out of the high road up a path which climbed gently along the right-hand side of the valley. For the most part it was good, but liable to sudden fits of degenera- tion, and the ponies had to scramble up among great boulders with the saddle at a surprising angle. Happily, they were very sure-footed, and having no dignity to maintain did not expect a well-made road but took anything that came. It was a beautiful ride; the morning fresh, cool, and still. The sun as it rose cleared the sky of the few dappled clouds which had gathered in the east, and shone first on the rounded tops of the green hills; then, driving the shadows slowly down the hillside, shone on our backs and glistened in the tall, dew-laden grass and wild flowers on either side of the path, and flashed at length in the noisy stream at the bottom of the valley. We passed a few scattered houses, where sleepy Japanese, well wrapped up, were beginning to stir on the verandas. At the inevitable tea- house grass sandals were tied on the ponies' fore feet, a necessary precaution, as the steepest parts of the path were often of slippery wet clay. Just Miyanoshita 1 1 5 after this tea-house we crossed a broad grass plain, where, Matsuda said, the finest horses and cattle in Japan are reared ; according to my observation this does not imply anything very wonderful. Then came a steep pull of half a mile or so with many sharp zigzags. Except in Japan one would never dream of riding up such a place, and as a matter of fact we walked, as much to salve our conscience as to relieve the ponies, for mine at least seemed quite happy under me. We met several pack-horses with their drivers, and kept a pretty sharp lookout for them so that we were able to see them in time and give warning, and then one of the parties could draw aside where the path happened to be a little broader. Other- wise we stood a good chance of being swept by the great swinging packs off the path into the woods and rocks of the hillside. Suddenly we came out from some scrubby woods on to the tiny plateau at the top, face to face with a view which we felt should be enough not only to bring any man out of his bed at half-past four in the morn- ing but across ten thousand miles of land and sea. Behind us was a tumbled country of grass- covered hills, — among them on the left Lake Hakone, — with a silver strip of sea in the dis- tance, and the land near Eynoshima like a cloud on the horizon. Sloping down from our feet and stretching far away on either hand lay a broad 1x6 West and by East valley, cut up into tiny fields, dotted with in- numerable trees and houses, and backed by dis- tant broken hills. Directly opposite us Fuji, the ** peerless mountain," rose in a glorious sweep sheer from the valley. In shape it was exactly the truncated cone of Japanese art. The beauti- ful curves of the sides were unbroken save where on the left slope a little hillock projected — a new crater thrown up by one of the later eruptions. Only a tiny thread or two of snow were left on the summit. The sun pouring down from a clear sky brought out every detail. There was noth- ing to mar the outline, except where a chain of tiny clouds lay like a girdle midway between the base and summit of the mountain, and served to accentuate the height. Exactly above the crater hung the full moon, very large, but cold and grey, as it neared its setting. It looked like some huge projectile just thrown up from the mouth of the volcano. Fuji, the coy and capricious, no longer wrapped in a mantle of clouds, stood revealed to us — a glorious sight and a deathless memory. But long as I could have lingered in admiration I had to press on in case my train should be reasonably on time. So I said good-bye to Mr. Montreal. He went home to Miyanoshita and breakfast, while Matsuda and I began to drop down on Gotemba, which lay, as it seemed, at Miyanoshita 1 1 7 our feet. But the farther we went the farther there seemed to be to go. On the way down we saw hardly any signs of Hfe, except a cavalry officer and his orderly, apparently out on a recon- naissance. When we arrived on the flat we found there was still a considerable distance to go through the fields. After passing a village with its wrestling-ring we heard an engine whistle, but we thought nothing much about it except that it showed we were near the railway. What then was our amazement to find on reaching the station at 9.40 that the whistle had belonged to our own train! The authorities had not waited for any connection from Yokohama way, but had started the train afresh from Gotemba if anything a little before its time. Time one way or the other is no object in Japan. The train I had missed would have got me to Kioto about midnight. But as it was I had two alternatives left : to stay wasting time in a little village where no one spoke English (Matsuda must of course go back to Miyanoshita), and there was nothing to do, till the next through train in the evening, which would land me in Kioto next morning; or else to go on at about 11.30 by a train which took me as far as Nagoya that night, where — Matsuda said — there was a decent semi-European inn at which foreigners were in the habit of stopping, and then by getting ii8 West and by East up early arrive in Kioto about eleven the next day. The latter plan seemed to waste least time and afford more amusement, so I decided on it. Till the train should arrive we adjourned to the tea-house, and Matsuda prepared me a tiffin. The food had come from the hotel in the usual little wooden boxes. Matsuda obtained an an- tique knife and fork and a dingy tumbler, and cut up my meat for me. The tea-house would not part with its only knife, but the fork they would lend me. I carefully cherished it in a fragment of newspaper till (according to Mat- suda's instructions) I left it at the Grand Hotel, Yokohama, with orders for it to be given him, when he would return it to its owner; it might have been a Crown jewel. The dingy tumbler I left — I preferred to drink from the bottle. Have I mentioned that there is a most excellent sort of lager-beer brewed in Yokohama and found all over Japan ? The chief brewer, I believe, is German, and the dividends fabulous. While we were thus engaged a number of soldiers passed us, coming in from exercise. Ac- cording to Matsuda, they were part of the troops stationed at Tokio, and were practising for the autumn manoeuvres. There were, iiiter alia, sev- eral field batteries, a mule battery, and, I think, a field telegraph corps. The men were tall for Japanese, but lacked smartness. A minute or Miyanoshita 119 two afterwards an officer entered the tea-house. It was interesting to see him kick off his boots before climbing the steep stairs. Evidently his European uniform had not altered his native habits or manners. Then as the mass of men just dismissed poured into the house we trans- ferred ourselves to the peace of the station. When the train arrived Matsuda put me in, and I left him on the platform wreathed in smiles and bowing profusely. I was the only European and the only first-class passenger in the train, and continued so all day. I did see a few Europeans in a north-bound train, but felt on the whole that I had suddenly severed my connection with the Western hemisphere and all its works. I was quite an object of interest, and at every station a little crowd clattered up to gaze at me. The journey was interesting, though at last it became wearisome. The train ran sometimes among hills terraced for tea culture, sometimes through broad straths where the rice harvest could be seen in every stage. In some cases the fields were still covered with the heavy-eared crop, in others lines of shorn roots showed through a sea of mud. There was rice in cocks, rice under the flail, rice straw drying on high frames or being drawn through a sort of large-toothed saw to clean it. At one time we skirted the seashore, popping in and out of numberless little tunnels. Between I20 West and by East the tunnels we got glimpses of fishing villages, where the whole population seemed to be swarm- ing round the sampans drawn high up on the beach. As the sun set we crossed the mouth of a great lagoon on a long wooden bridge, and it was then I lost sight of Fuji. Japanese trains travel slowly, and Japanese railways twist and turn, and the day had kept very clear, so that Fuji had remained a constant background to every view, appearing first on one hand and then on the other. Matsuda had telegraphed to the hotel at Na- goya for someone to meet me who spoke Eng- lish. I could not help wondering what I should do if none such appeared, as this was my first journey in Japan by myself. However, I need not have worried, for when the train reached Nagoya, at about 8.30, there was a man to meet me. So I was put into one rickshaw and my luggage into another, and was trundled off down a fine broad street full of the most appalling smells. The hotel was small, but fairly clean and comfortable, and a party of three Americans came in while I was at dinner. The dining-room windows commanded a fine view of the hotel bath-house, a curious reminder in the middle of my European dinner that I was still in Japan. Several curio dealers invaded the room before I had finished my meal, and with them I spent a Miyanoshita 121 pleasant and, to them, more or less profitable evening. I had to give up my passport that it might be submitted to the police, and felt doubt- ful if it would be returned in time for me to catch the early train in the morning. But to my relief next morning, at my half-past-four breakfast, I found it had come back, and not long afterwards I returned in two rickshaws down the broad street with the appalling smells. My acquaintance with Nagoya is therefore very limited. I saw this one street once at night and once in the early dawn. I felt very proud of myself when I asked for a first-class ticket to Kioto in Japanese and actually got the right ticket in return. In spite of the early hour — the train left at 5.25 A.M. — the station was crowded with Japanese travellers. As we pulled out of the station I caught a glimpse against the growing light in the sky of the queer pagoda-like castle of Nagoya, capped with two golden dolphins, one of which went to the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, and on its return was shipwrecked, but after a long immersion fished up and restored to its old place. The journey to Kioto was much like that of the previous day, except that the weather was dreary, and we had some pretty glimpses of Lake Biwa. I reached Kioto about 11 A.M., Friday, October 15th. CHAPTER X KIOTO KIOTO, the western capital of Japan, was, until 1868, the seat of the Mikado's court. It remains much more old-fashioned than its younger rival, Tokio, the eastern capital. There are no tram-cars, and though electric light is used it is not very general, and outside each house is hung a long paper lantern decorated with great characters, which both lights the street and tells the number of the house. Begging priests may be seen in the streets, under huge, bowl- shaped hats that hide their faces, jingling little bells as they go from house to house for money. The children's heads are still for the most part shaved — a custom dying out in Tokio — and also, it must be added, often covered with loathsome eruptions. My hotel lay on the far side of the town across the river — a small one — which divides the city. Part of my way lay parallel to a canal which runs from Lake Biwa through the city and so to Osaka. It does not seem to be locked, but has a slio-ht Kioto 123 fall, a rapid current, and only a few inches of depth. The heavy-laden barges are towed up against the stream by the boatmen, a most powerful-looking set of men. But they have all their work to make any headway even at the slowest pace. All day this slow procession goes on through the heart of the city. I suppose the barges come down some way and some time, but I only saw them go up. The Ya-ami Hotel stands on the side of the hills which bound on the north the valley in which Kioto lies. It is a queer, rambling place, built on many levels with many additions, all connected by broad covered verandas and bridges, by which device nearly all the rooms are in front, commanding fine views of Kioto. From my windows to the opposite hills, behind which the sun set, there stretched the city; in the daytime a vast expanse of red-tiled roofs, at night a maze of twinkling lights. One tall chimney rose from the middle of the red-tiled roofs as a sign of pro- gress. It belonged to the electric generating house. At night it poured out a dense cloud of black smoke which trailed right across the sky. There was just such another chimney and trail of smoke at Yokohama. At this hotel I saw for the first time any considerable number of foreigners other than those we had brought on the Empress of China, Among the guests at the hotel were 124 West and by East two German families, — apparently come from Kob6 for the Sunday, — who indulged in some birthday-dinner festivities just as though still in the Fatherland. At the hotel I found two steamer acquaint- ances, two men from Natal, who were seeing the world with great thoroughness. They had arranged for a Japanese dinner and dance for the evening of this day, and were willing that I should come too. To occupy the afternoon we visited some of the shops for which Kioto is famous, and saw gorgeous silks and embroideries, pictures in cut velvet, and beautiful damascened work at Komai's. But the curio shops of Kioto should be visited at the beginning of a trip and not towards the end when the available money is almost gone. We also saw a religious procession. There were many gorgeous palanquins and num- bers of men carrying gaily decorated poles under whose weight they staggered. But the effect was marred by a lack of organisation and by the fact that, though the men wore a sort of old- fashioned uniform, they nearly all wore the ordinary '* bowler " hat. Before going out to our dinner at the tea-house we took the precaution to make a good dinner at our hotel, and we put on evening dress because the guide said it created a better impression. We were glad to have an opportunity of seeing Kioto 125 what a Japanese dinner was like, but in any case it is almost impossible to have a dance without a dinner, because the dancing is considered an integral part of the meal. The entertainment was in a tea-house near the hotel, and when we had taken off our shoes we were shown up to a brightly lit room on the top story. The room was practically empty except for four little tables six or eight inches high, and four flat cushions. We each sat down (the guide had come with us) at a table with our backs to the windows, leaving the greater part of the floor clear for the geishas. Each table was crowded with little dishes and bowls, for almost the whole dinner is served at once. There was a lacquered bowl full of a soup in which bits of fish and chicken floated — this was called foreign soup ; a plate of split salt fish, saucers of chicken and mushrooms, of boiled fish and string-beans, a pile of little omelettes and rice-cakes, and a bowl of rice. A second soup — bean soup — appeared a little later. The list of dishes does not sound unattractive, but the reality was terrible. Every- thing had to be cooked till it was soft enough to be pulled to pieces with chop-sticks — the only instruments we were given — and everything ex- cept the rice was tainted with some pungent, pervasive flavour which I could not recognise, but which — at least in my opinion — reduced every 126 West and by East dish to a common level of nauseousness. We m.anaged our chop-sticks vrith m.ore or less dexter- ity, picking nrst a little r.sh and then a mush- room, a tid bit from the soup to disguise the flavour of the mjushroom. and some rice to neu- tralise the soup. This vras the way vre were instructed to proceed. Our drinks^ were tea and saki. The saki was served warm, and tasted like very bad sherry and water. After a little, two solemn vromen. v/ho looked about nfty but were more likely twenty-n\'e, came in. and took their seats. They formed the orchestra, p'aying m.ourniul tunes on the samisen, an instrument shaped something like a banjo, but whose strings are struck with a very large plec- trum. To this accompaniment they sang inter- minable .ugubrious sr^ngs. The four geishas who entered shortly after the orchestra were little girls of tvrelve to fifteen years of age. They v/ere gorgeously dressed in kimonos, which trailed on the ground so that even when the girls danced their feet could hardly ever be seen. Their obis, too. v.-ere beautiful. ^ ■ 1 ana tneir nair was cec^ea witn a:! m.anner ot gay combs and artificial flovrers. Their faces and lips were thickly painted. Till the time came for them to dance they sat down beside us. They were very dainty and polite and willing to be Kioto 127 agreeable. But the barrier of language reduced conversation almost entirely to nods and smiles. They were always at hand to help us pityingly at some awkward crisis in the management of our chop-sticks or to point out some dainty there seemed a fear we might neglect. By this time we were confining ourselves almost exclusively to the innocuous rice. Then after we had put from us the desire for food and drink we lit Japanese pipes by way of experiment, and very shortly after- wards cigarettes for enjoyment, and the dancing began. Some of the dances were for one girl only, some for two, and some for all four. Each dance tells some complicated story, which the guide explained to us. One represented a lion playing with a peony — the king of beasts with the king of flowers; another a destitute girl journeying home to her parents, who must dance to pay her way. One of the pas-de-quatre was a dance of triumph over the Chinese, and another portrayed the flowers of the four seasons. The finale was called a ** foreign dance,'' and was chiefly a kind of ** grand chain," with a refrain of '* Go-ood-a- Bye, Go-ood-a-Bye '' sung by dancers and mu- sicians. All the dancing was slow and graceful, — posturing, gesticulating, stamping, — but it was monotonous to our untrained eyes, and soon palled. The performers took it in deadly earnest, 128 West and by East except the last dance, which, as a burlesque of Western methods, afforded them great amuse- ment, so that their merry giggling almost over- came them. We were decidedly stiff by the time the enter- tainment was over, for we must have been sitting on the floor between two and three hours. As the rickshaw took me back to the hotel I decided that the Western adaptation of ** The Geisha" was an improvement on the original, and that one Japan- ese dinner was good as an experience, but more would be suicide. The very limited time I had in Kioto only allowed me to take a hasty look at a few of the more famous sights. I saw the two great temples, Nishi Hongwanji and Higashi Hongwanji. The former is an ancient temple and monastery famous for its painted walls and doors. Generally a whole room is decorated with a single flower or bird or some flower and bird together. There is, for in- stance, one room of peacocks and cherry trees, another of bamboos, another of wild geese. The background is always gold, and the colours are faded with age, but the decorative effect is excel- lent. Here, too, are famous gardens — very small to European eyes — where are ponds full of greedy carp who struggled madly for a bit of bread. Higashi Hongwanji is also very large but quite new, built with the offerings in money or kind of Kioto 129 the peasants. Beyond its fine proportions it was not interesting, except that — for Japan — it was crowded with worshippers. Perhaps this was another sign of the *' old-fashionedness '* of Kioto. Elsewhere there is a Daibutsu, a huge head and shoulders of the god in wood, measur- ing fifty-eight feet from the ground, whence the shoulders spring, to the crown of the head, and its principal merit is its size. It stands under a little temple built to shelter it. Just outside is a huge bell, fourteen feet high, weighing — it is said — sixty-three tons. It is hung in a belfry, and has a fine booming sound. The method of striking (as is the case with all big bells in Japan) is by a log of wood suspended horizontally so as just not to touch the rim. The ringer seizes a rope hanging from the log, leans all his weight backwards, and then lets go, and the log crashes against the bell. The merit of the system is that if the log is not too big or the ringer too small, he can control the force of the blow and conse- quently the volume of sound. There is a similar but smaller, bell at Nikko, on which the hours are struck for all the neighbourhood. The most impressive place in Kioto is San-ju- san-gen-do, the temple of the 33,333 images of Kwannon, the goddess of mercy. Of these one thousand are nearly life-size — five feet high, to be exact. The full tale is made up of the tiny I30 West and by East figures on the hands, heads, and halos of the large ones. The figures are a dull gold, and stand in ten tiers rising to the roof. The building is long and narrow, so that there is only a little strip of floor left in front of the images. When I was there the place was in semi-darkness and prac- tically empty, and the dimly seen lines of figures stretching away down the vast hall had quite an eerie effect. On Saturday afternoon I was lucky enough to see some wrestling bouts, which, according to my rickshaw man, were funeral games, but whether in honour of a man just dead or of some long- departed hero I could not quite make out. In the middle of a large courtyard was a ring of soft earth, perhaps five yards in diameter, with a slightly raised rim. Over it was stretched an awning, and all around the audience, principally of men and boys, sat and stood, or clustered on any roof or wall which commanded a good view. On one side of the courtyard was a small altar, and just round the edge of the ring the wrestlers squatted to wait their turn. The master of cere- monies was a young man in an old-fashioned costume with great projecting epaulettes, and in his hand a sort of fan which was used as a start- ing signal. I saw a number of bouts wrestled. Like the evacuation of Crete, the preliminaries took so Kioto 131 long and were so wearisome that the event itself passed almost unnoticed in the twinkling of an eye. In each bout one combatant came from each side of the ring. They wore only a loin cloth with a broad belt from which hung a long fringe. The more noted of them wore their hair in the old fashion, grown long and then tied in a queue which was fastened on top of the head, the general effect being very ladylike. Some were very scraggy, but the majority fat, and one enor- mously so. For Japanese they were distinctly tall. They always wasted a great deal of time in a kind of stately prancing to show their muscles and test their suppleness. Then a mouthful of rice or water, and then more strutting. Perhaps then they were ready to take position in the middle of the ring within arm's length of each other, stooping forward ready to spring. Then suddenly they again stood upright, and the whole programme was repeated, and at the second attempt they would get as far as gripping, then smiling and disengaging. As a rule there were three or four false starts in each bout, and when they really got to grips, holding on to each other's belt, the fall generally came in a few seconds. One or two rounds lasted longer and were really exciting, evoking great applause. In one case a man simply bustled his opponent out of the ring with his open hands without ever coming to grips, 132 West and by East and this counted as a victory. When one set of competitors was finished the altar was brought into the ring and all the wrestlers appeared in magnificent aprons which fell stiff with gold em- broidery to the ground. They made obeisance and danced a short and solemn dance ; then, in order of merit, beginning with the man so far the victor, they advanced one by one to the altar, bowed low, and retired. When the last man had so done the altar was removed and the wrestling began again. How long it continued I do not know; they seemed no nearer finishing when I left than when I arrived. On Sunday the four of us went by rickshaw to Lake Bivva. It was about eight or ten miles distant, the way lying along the Tokaido, one of the ancient highways. It was a fine broad road, though rather bumpy as to surface ; thronged with foot-passengers and heavy-laden little two-wheeled carts pushed or pulled by de- graded-looking coolies— men, boys, and women. We trotted through several villages straggling along the roadside, and finally a long descent through Otsu brought us to the level of the lake. Here we left our rickshaws and climbed up to a temple with a terrace whence we got a fine view of the lake, and then down by flights of grey stone steps through giant cryptomeria to a gate where the rickshaws met us. We jogged along Kioto 133 for another couple of miles down a straight, flat, white road through fields where, among other things, we saw cotton growing, to Karasaki with its pine tree, which is said to be the largest in the world. It certainly is not the tallest, though perhaps it may be the largest in length of limb or cubic content. It grows right on the edge of the lake, guarded by a semicircular retaining-wall. It is getting decrepit, but is elaborately cared for, its spreading branches being upheld by a multi- tude of poles, so that from a distance there seems to be not one tree but a grove. Over one deli- cate spot a little roof is built. These precautions, I suppose, are necessary, but they hide the pro- portions of the tree and spoil the effect of its size. We were a good deal bothered here by begging children, a fact I mention because so far, except- ing by a few miserable old women or women with children, we had been treated as distin- guished strangers and not as possible benefactors. We hired a sampan to while away the time till tiffin, and were rowed a little way down the lake. The blue waters of the lake and the surrounding low, green hills were bathed in brilliant sunshine, but I think as the sampan swayed gently on its way the view grew dim before our eyes. When hunger drove us back to land we found the tiffin we had brought with us ready in the upper room of a tea-house near the great tree. 134 West and by East All around were fields of rice or corn, ripe, or nearly so. To scare the birds from the crops, long cords radiated from the tea-house in all directions. They were carried through loops fastened to bamboo poles, and ended each in a bunch of wooden clappers; so that if the owner of the tea-house saw any corner of his fields par- ticularly infested with birds he could pull the cord which commanded that special district, cause the clappers to sound, and drive the rob- bers to another feeding-ground. This perform- ance occurred several times during tiffin. On our way back, as we were bowling merrily down-hill with two coolies to each rickshaw, the axle of the rickshaw just before mine, carrying one of the men from Natal, snapped suddenly. The rickshaw made a couple of wild bounds, ploughing up the road with the broken stump, and finally deposited the man from Natal and the rickshaw-coolie in the dust. Happily the dust was deep and soft, and neither of them was hurt in spite of the extreme suddenness of the stop- page. A new rickshaw was soon obtained in the village, and so we came to Kioto before sundown. I had tried to get a permit to see the Imperial Palace at Kioto, but in vain. The people at the Consulate at Yokohama had expressed their in- ability and referred us to the Legation at Tokio. Thither Mr. Montreal and I had gone. But we Kioto 135 were told that the minister would not ask for these permits except for personal friends, travel- lers bringing letters of introduction to him, or distinguished strangers. As we could not bring ourselves under any of these three heads we had to retire from the Legation unsatisfied. My Japanese friend, whose uncle occupied a high position at court, next made an attempt on my behalf, but he was told that at that season of the year permission was given to foreign royalties only. In the present enlightened condition of Japan it seemed useless to try to bring ourselves under this head, and we abandoned the attempt, consoling ourselves with the reflection that, after all, the palace might not be worth seeing. On the other hand the fact remains that two young American fellow-passengers secured permits by merely going to the United States Consulate at Yokohama, which forwarded their request to Tokio. On Monday morning I rode round the tall white tile-roofed walls of the palace gardens, a melan- choly substitute for a sight of the interior glories which Murray describes. I also went to the tem- ple of Kiomizu, which lies on the hillside at the other end of the city, far from the palace. A very steep and narrow street winds up to it, lined with booths crammed and overflowing with all manner of tiny china toys, people, animals. 136 West and by East and reptiles, especially frogs made to float in water. There is at the top one of the few Japanese pagodas. A steep and rather cranky staircase leads to the roof, from which there is a fine view of the far-stretching city. The temple itself is built on the extreme edge of a wooded ravine, in fact partly over the edge, supported on trestle-work built out on the hillside. It is not remarkable except for its exceeding plainness and solidity, due either to its age or to an affected archaism. The floor is bare, and the huge round wooden pillars innocent of paint or lacquer. The interior is hung with rather gaudy framed pictures — votive offerings I believe. At the entrance are the tables of the money-changers, where you may get your sens changed for rins — little coins with square holes, which run ten to the sen or twenty to the penny, nominally. By their means the worshipper can throw a contribution into the col- lecting-box — whose yawning mouth is always well in the forefront of a temple — without serious inconvenience. At half-past two, or a little later, for we had to wait till some Japanese prince and suite had de- trained, the two men from Natal and myself started for the north. They only went as far as Nagoya, which we reached about sunset. I went on to Yokohama, arriving there at eight o'clock in the morning — 310 miles in something over seventeen Kioto 137 hours. It was an uncomfortable journey, for the Japanese railways have no sleeping-carriages. I would not think of mentioning this except that Japan has progressed so amazingly that one is led to expect too much. The ordinary carriage was so crowded that I could not put my feet up, and the light was too dim to read by. In the early morn- ing we caught uncertain glimpses of Fuji through its wrappings of grey cloud. Soon after this we crossed at a foot pace the temporary bridge erected in place of the one the freshet of some weeks before had destroyed. It was a matter of peculiar relief to me to get over it in safety, be- cause I had feared that some untoward circum- stance might have again blocked the line. I had not taken very much money to Kioto. The shops had charmed from me more than I had reckoned on, and as there was no bank my letter of credit was useless. So I found myself in very shallow water, and any delay on the way back to the base of supplies would have been serious. As I had no guide I could not use the vernacular to help me, and with little money that universal language also would have failed. As the bridge happily stood firm I arrived at the familiar Grand Hotel on Tuesday morning, and after paying my rickshawmen was still the proud possessor of one yen. After a bath, breakfast, and a visit to the bank. 138 West and by East I caught a train about eleven to Tokio, where I had a few last things to do. Going to the Im- perial Hotel for lunch, I found there an Oxford man who had crossed by the Empress of China, and had since been travelling by rickshaw along one of the great roads, sleeping in tea-houses, and generally lost to the world, under the charge of an autocratic guide. After tiffin we went first to the shop of Nami- kawa, a famous maker of cloisonne. His ware is quite different from those of other makers, and is, I think, much more beautiful. As a rule his pieces are small, the background a soft grey, and the decoration confined to a spray of flowers or a few birds, drawn and coloured most naturally and most daintily. The wiring is almost invisible, and in some parts of the designs Namikawa, by some method of his own, dispenses with wires altogether. I bought a little flat box with a couple of sprays of white flowers and green leaves and a cloudy full moon on a background of grey. In this the pattern is outlined in wire except the moon and the w^hite flowers. As every piece is signed by Namikawa, and as he will not repeat himself, it will be easily seen that, as generally happens, this severe simplicity is really the height of luxury. When I was in Tokio before I had looked and longed, but with unusual prud- ence refrained from buying. Now I thought I Kioto 139 might indulge my fancy, and thereby hangs a tale of a fur coat which never was constructed. When I was in Nikko I was much attracted by the furs sold there, and hardly anywhere else in Japan. The prices asked — or, rather, the prices that would be accepted — were very cheap, and I thought that by buying the furs there and having the coat made by a Chinamian at Yokohama I might get a cheap coat and also a fairly good one, v/hich would be very useful in America and Canada, and on the North Atlantic. So I invested in otter skins for the outside trimmings and grey mountain beaver for the lining, and carried them to Yokohama in triumph. But there the trouble began. First the tailor said six or seven more skins were absolutely necessary. Then Mr. Mont- real, who was of course a connoisseur in fur coats, looked askance at the tailor's cloth and patterns. And finally the residents at Yokohama told me that probably the skins were not properly cured, and that certainly I would not venture to wear Yokohama tailoring outside of Yokohama. So my visions of posing as a Russian prince lost 'their glamour, and in disgust I sold the skins to the Chinese tailor at an alarming sacrifice, but yet for enough to buy a piece of Namikawa's work. Thus the skins were changed for clois- onne, and we all were happy, especially the tailor. I40 West and by East From Namikawa's we went a weary distance to Asakusa, one of the suburbs of Tokio, where there are a popular temple and still more popular public gardens. It is a favourite holiday resort, and I fancy there are generally some people holi- day-making there. The gardens show all the in- genuity for which Japanese gardeners are famous. Not only were there numbers of dwarfed trees, but the chrysanthemums, with which the florists' stalls were just beginning to light up the city streets, were here trained into all manner of fan- tastic forms. The plants were grown on frames in the shapes of men and women, to which carved and painted heads, hands, and feet were added. They were of the small, close-flowering variety, so that when the flowers were all out the mani- kins were clothed in complete suits of purple, white, or yellow blossoms. Sometimes two plants were trained over the same frame so that the figure might have a purple upper garment and white skirts. The figures thus clothed Avere dis- posed in appropriate attitudes with appropriate scenery so as to represent an episode from some Japanese story. Though the plants were actually growing, yet the stem was always so ingeniously hidden that it was quite possible to forget the fact and to think the figures clothed in some new sort of manufactured material. This, I suppose, was the impression the gardener hoped to convey. Kioto 141 He is certainly much more successful in the art whose highest aim is to conceal nature than his English predecessor who cut yew trees into pea- cocks, but perhaps equally misguided. One of these groups represented a gigantic figure stand- ing before a painted bridge and with a huge sword slashing at a much smaller figure, which was suspended in the top corner of the scene in the act of leaping the horizontal sweep of the weapon. It is an episode from the Japanese ver- sion of '*Jack the Giant Killer," and represents the first moment when the giant's power is foiled by the ingenuity and activity of Jack — the beginning of the colossus's end. But besides the legitimate attractions of a garden these grounds are full of innumerable other delights, such as theatres and acrobats. We went to see the latter perform, and were disappointed to find it on the whole an inferior copy of similar European shows. In one corner a brass band, in a burlesque imitation of an English uniform, played The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, I would rather not further recall that part of the entertainment. The only performance that was new to me then was one which I have since seen elsewhere, when it was called the *' bamboo shoulder perch act." A very miserable-looking little boy climbed up a bamboo pole, some eight feet high, using both hands and feet like a monkey. The pole was 142 West and by East then slowly raised and the lower end placed on the shoulder of a young girl, and for some ten minutes or so the small boy performed all manner of gymnastics on the top of the pole thus bal- anced. He was helped by a loop of cord tied a couple of feet from the top. From the acrobats I went to say good-bye to my Japanese friend, and as the distance was long and time short I took a second man to my rick- shaw. The speed we made was extraordinary, and I was quite surprised to arrive in safety at the house without either being myself upset at some corner or having knocked down a harmless way- farer. As my friend was expecting me, he had ready a very acceptable afternoon tea, but I could not stay long, as I had to catch my train for Yokohama. In the same carriage with me on the way back was an Australian who had come to buy Japanese toys, fans, and what not for his home market. He beguiled the journey with lurid tales of Japanese commercial morality and of a recent typhoon. Arrived at Yokohama, I had just time to dress and rush up to the Bluff, very late for dinner. The dinner was very kindly got up in my honour, so I was informed, but I was by this time too tired and sleepy to enjoy it fully. The two points of greatest interest were a man who sang Hawaiian ditties most sweetly, and the Kioto 143 extraordinary number and variety of drinks which my host — an American — pressed upon me. The next day, Wednesday, October 30th, was my last day in Japan, and appears now as con- fused as the landscape seen from an express-train window. There was a lengthy visit to the photo- grapher's, where I went through his many albums and purchased a great number of beautifully coloured photographs for a very moderate sum. Then I went to a shop in the native quarter and returned like a needle in a bundle of hay, so hid- den was I by a grass rain-cloak and sundry great straw hats. There were many other last purchases to make and calls to pay, and all the evening and part of the next morning were consumed in pack- ing and in sorting out my curios. Most of these I sent to a forwarding agent, who packed and shipped them direct home for me, a convenient and safe way of sending them, if a very slow one. Perhaps an earthquake that occurred this morning may have added to my feeling of confusion. It was the most violent I felt. My room was on the second floor of the hotel, — the top floor, — and the window, whence I had just obtained the first view of Fuji that I had had in Yokohama, al- though the mountain is supposed always to be visible from there, looked on to the roof of a two- storied wing of the hotel. There came suddenly a violent jolt, and I thought a heavy box had 144 West and by East been dropped outside my door. But looking out of the window I saw the roof outside straining and swaying, and realised that there had been an earthquake. The feeling was very similar to that experienced when an especially big head sea strikes a labouring ship on a stormy night so that she is brought up with a sudden shock and then lies for a moment quivering. On Thursday, about two o'clock, I embarked on the launch, and was put aboard the Coptic, a White Star steamer under charter to the Oriental & Occidental S. S. Co. Some little delay was caused by waiting for the mails, and then we started down the bay in beautiful weather. At the mouth of the bay we met the City of Pekin entering harbour, bringing for some of us letters which we thus missed by a few hours and must now wait weeks for. Before the sun set Japan had sunk behind us in the west, and we had fairly started for Honolulu and San Francisco. CHAPTER XI HOMEWARDS THE voyage to San Francisco took seventeen days; that is, ten days to Honolulu, where we stopped for twelve hours, and then seven days on. For the greater part of the time we had the north-east trades, and indeed the log showed no wind that was westerly or southerly. The Coptic carried square-sails on the fore and main masts, and these would be set for days at a time without any alteration. The passenger-list was small, about forty peo- ple in all, but then she only can carry about fifty. To make up for this we carried a large number of Japanese and Chinese steerage, the former mostly bound for Honolulu. It was an experiment tried for the first time since the war to carry Japanese and Chinese together, but it seemed to work amicably. Among the passengers were several tea mer- chants, most of whom cross the Pacific yearly, and are therefore old travellersand excellent company, so that our company, if small, was very sociable, lo 145 146 West and by East Though we did enter the tropics the weather kept cloudy and fairly cool ; too cool for the swim- ming-tank on deck but not too hot for cricket. We reached Honolulu early on Saturday morn- ing. I had a letter to the American Minister, and he was on the lookout for me. Under his direction I drove up to the Punchbowl, a hill be- hind the town. From there you get a fine view of the little harbour, which is largely an artificial one, of the town lying almost hidden among its trees, and of the bare hills behind. I afterwards lunched with him. All the French windows in his house were wide open, so that the ever-blow- ing trade-winds could sweep through and keep it cool. He gave me strange things to eat, — Hawaiian mullet, poi, and breadfruit, — and then procured a surf boat for me. This is a long and narrow canoe, with a log rigged about four feet out on one side to prevent capsizing. Ac- cording to instructions, I wore a bathing-suit, and a hat to keep the sun off; the water temper- ature was about 76°, and that of the air a few degrees more. Although the sea looked perfectly calm, breakers were rolling up on to the sand, slowly and apparently causelessly. They were not very big, probably some four or five feet high. I got into the canoe, with a native at the bow and one in the stern, each of whom was armed with a long-handled, leaf-shaped paddle. Homewards i47 Paddling gently out we took each roller with a heave up and a sudden drop down until we had gone about a quarter of a mile and had reached quiet water. Here we turned, and the boatmen watched till they saw approaching the little swell which their practised eye told them would be- come a roller larger than its fellows. Then they set off for shore at top speed, and a moment after the roller, now fully formed, caught us up. The paddling ceased ; the forward man urged the canoe on by wild jerks of his body while the man in the stern steered her with his paddle. The boat tilted at a sharp angle, her bow dug into the water and sent up a constant fountain of spray. On either hand stretched interminably the roaring, foaming slope of the breaker. The whole performance was most exhilarating and the speed great, but too soon the breaker grew feebler and feebler and then receded, letting us fall gently on to the sandy beach, when the whole performance must be repeated. After this I was driven about the city. It struck me as like an American country town ex- cept for the luxuriant tropical vegetation and for one or two fine buildings. My visit was under President Dole's rdgimey but the more important buildings dated from the time of the native monarchy. There was an imposing palace on one side of the public square, vis-a-vis an 148 West and by East equally imposing block of government buildings, with a statue of one of the native kings in the middle of the square. Altogether it was very unlike what one used to associate with the Sand- wich Islands. The beautiful gardens, full of what at home are always considered hothouse plants, — crotons, allamandas, bougainvillas, — the luxu- riant hedges of hibiscus, the palm trees, and ba- nanas, were to me a great source of pleasure and delight, for this was my first glimpse of the tropics. Finally my host took me down to the steamer, and at the dock-gates bought for me sweet-smell- ing garlands of flowers, and with these hanging about my neck, according to the custom of the country, I returned to the ship. On the following Saturday, the 6th of Novem- ber, — for we made up the seventeenth day by repeating a day as we crossed longitude 180°, — we woke to find ourselves in the harbour of San Francisco, and a few hours after we had passed the much -dreaded customs inspection without any trouble, and were at the Palace Hotel, Here there is a most imposing courtyard, with en- circling galleries on each story, and a restaurant which, to us just come down from the high seas, seemed of a superlative merit. The next day I went out to the Cliff House, where you can look clear out across the Pacific. Close to the shore was the Seal Rock, covered with Homewards 149 brown seals barking like a pack of hounds. A French man-of-war had just passed the Golden Gate, and as we watched we saw her begin to pitch clumsily to the swell, although from where we stood the sea looked perfectly calm. I had enjoyed my trip to Japan immensely, but yet I had no desire to go westwards with her across the ocean from which I had come. From San Francisco I went for a night to the Del Monte Hotel with its wonderful gardens and park, then to Los Angeles, and thence directly to Chicago, a hot, dusty journey through El Paso, Fort Worth, and St. Louis, although the train, the ** Sunset Limited,'' was sumptuous. After a few days in Chicago, where I was hos- pitably entertained, I left for New York in a yet more sumptuous train, the ** Pennsylvania Limited," which carried besides the more usual dining- and sleeping-cars a library, a bath, a barber's shop, an observation - car, a lady's maid, and a stenographer. On November 19th I reached New York, which became my head- quarters, whence I made short trips to Boston, Baltimore, and other nearer places, and where in the intervals I was nearly killed with kind- ness. On January 20, 1898, I arrived back at Liver- pool, in the Teutonic, five months and a day from the time I sailed. I50 West and by East So ended my voyaging. Whether it was right to go so far, to return so quickly, and then to write this may seem doubtful. My journey was no Odyssey, for adventures, like big game, seem now to shun the beaten track ; nor are the gods and goddesses still as vindictive as of yore. It was no Gulliver's travels into remote parts of the earth, because the public is nowadays too scien- tific. It was simply a pleasure trip, and of such a trip this book aims to be a reflection and a remembrance. EXPLICIT. ^ * UBRARY OF CONGRESS 020 120 952 3 iPi;Ti.-tb