It Is Keeping Festival; There Are Lanterns And Flags On Every House, And Crowds Are Thronging The Temple Grounds, Of Which There Are Several On The Hills Above.

It is a clean, dry place, with beautiful yadoyas on the heights, and pleasant houses with gardens, and plenty of walks over the hills. The people say that it is one of the driest places in Japan.

If it were within reach of foreigners, they would find it a wholesome health resort, with picturesque excursions in many directions.

This is one of the great routes of Japanese travel, and it is interesting to see watering-places with their habits, amusements, and civilisation quite complete, but borrowing nothing from Europe. The hot springs here contain iron, and are strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen. I tried the temperature of three, and found them 100 degrees, 105 degrees, and 107 degrees. They are supposed to be very valuable in rheumatism, and they attract visitors from great distances. The police, who are my frequent informants, tell me that there are nearly 600 people now staying here for the benefit of the baths, of which six daily are usually taken. I think that in rheumatism, as in some other maladies, the old-fashioned Japanese doctors pay little attention to diet and habits, and much to drugs and external applications. The benefit of these and other medicinal waters would be much increased if vigorous friction replaced the dabbing with soft towels.

This is a large yadoya, very full of strangers, and the house- mistress, a buxom and most prepossessing widow, has a truly exquisite hotel for bathers higher up the hill. She has eleven children, two or three of whom are tall, handsome, and graceful girls. One blushed deeply at my evident admiration, but was not displeased, and took me up the hill to see the temples, baths, and yadoyas of this very attractive place. I am much delighted with her grace and savoir faire. I asked the widow how long she had kept the inn, and she proudly answered, "Three hundred years," not an uncommon instance of the heredity of occupations.

My accommodation is unique - a kura, or godown, in a large conventional garden, in which is a bath-house, which receives a hot spring at a temperature of 105 degrees, in which I luxuriate. Last night the mosquitoes were awful. If the widow and her handsome girls had not fanned me perseveringly for an hour, I should not have been able to write a line. My new mosquito net succeeds admirably, and, when I am once within it, I rather enjoy the disappointment of the hundreds of drumming blood-thirsty wretches outside.

The widow tells me that house-masters pay 2 yen once for all for the sign, and an annual tax of 2 yen on a first-class yadoya, 1 yen for a second, and 50 cents for a third, with 5 yen for the license to sell sake.

These "godowns" (from the Malay word gadong), or fire-proof store- houses, are one of the most marked features of Japanese towns, both because they are white where all else is grey, and because they are solid where all else is perishable.

I am lodged in the lower part, but the iron doors are open, and in their place at night is a paper screen. A few things are kept in my room. Two handsome shrines from which the unemotional faces of two Buddhas looked out all night, a fine figure of the goddess Kwan-non, and a venerable one of the god of longevity, suggested curious dreams.

I. L. B.

LETTER XIX

Prosperity - Convict Labour - A New Bridge - Yamagata - Intoxicating Forgeries - The Government Buildings - Bad Manners - Snow Mountains - A Wretched Town.

KANAYAMA, July 16.

Three days of travelling on the same excellent road have brought me nearly 60 miles. Yamagata ken impresses me as being singularly prosperous, progressive, and go-ahead; the plain of Yamagata, which I entered soon after leaving Kaminoyama, is populous and highly cultivated, and the broad road, with its enormous traffic, looks wealthy and civilised. It is being improved by convicts in dull red kimonos printed with Chinese characters, who correspond with our ticket-of-leave men, as they are working for wages in the employment of contractors and farmers, and are under no other restriction than that of always wearing the prison dress.

At the Sakamoki river I was delighted to come upon the only thoroughly solid piece of modern Japanese work that I have met with - a remarkably handsome stone bridge nearly finished - the first I have seen. I introduced myself to the engineer, Okuno Chiuzo, a very gentlemanly, agreeable Japanese, who showed me the plans, took a great deal of trouble to explain them, and courteously gave me tea and sweetmeats.

Yamagata, a thriving town of 21,000 people and the capital of the ken, is well situated on a slight eminence, and this and the dominant position of the kencho at the top of the main street give it an emphasis unusual in Japanese towns. The outskirts of all the cities are very mean, and the appearance of the lofty white buildings of the new Government Offices above the low grey houses was much of a surprise. The streets of Yamagata are broad and clean, and it has good shops, among which are long rows selling nothing but ornamental iron kettles and ornamental brasswork. So far in the interior I was annoyed to find several shops almost exclusively for the sale of villainous forgeries of European eatables and drinkables, specially the latter. The Japanese, from the Mikado downwards, have acquired a love of foreign intoxicants, which would be hurtful enough to them if the intoxicants were genuine, but is far worse when they are compounds of vitriol, fusel oil, bad vinegar, and I know not what. I saw two shops in Yamagata which sold champagne of the best brands, Martel's cognac, Bass' ale, Medoc, St. Julian, and Scotch whisky, at about one-fifth of their cost price - all poisonous compounds, the sale of which ought to be interdicted.

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