II.

A RIDE ON THE TŌKAIDŌ.

January 2d, 1871.-A frosty morning. Air keen, bracing, razorlike. Sky stainlessly clear. The Bay of Yedo glinting with unnumbered sunbeams. Blue sky, blue water, blue mountains, white Fuji.

The Yankee has invaded the Land of the Gods. He jostles the processions of the lords of the land. He runs a coach on the great highway, so sacred to daimiōs and two-sworded samurai. Here on the Bund stands the stage that will carry a man to the capital for two Mexican dollars. Of the regulation Yankee pattern, it is yet small, and, though seating three persons besides the driver, can crowd in five when comfort is not the object in view. A pair of native ponies on which oats are never wasted make the team. A bettō (running footman and hostler), whose business is to harness the animals, yell at the people on the road, and be sworn at, perches, like a meditative chicken, by one foot on the iron step. As for the driver, an Australian, who is recommended as "a very devil of a whip," he impresses me at once as being thoroughly qualified to find the bottom of a tumblerful of brandy without breathing.

He is not only an expert at driving and drinking, but such an adept in the theology of the bar-room is he, and so well versed in orthodox profanity, that the heathen bettō regards his master as a safe guide, and imitates him with conscientious accuracy. The driver converts the pagan better than he knows. Indeed, it is astonishing what progress his pupil has made in both theology and the English language. He has already at his tongue's end the names and attributes of the entire Trinity.

Crack goes the whip, and we rattle along the Bund, past the Clubhouse, around the English consulate, past the Perry treaty grounds, and down Benten dōri, through the native town. The shops are just opening, and the shop-boys are looping up the short curtains that hang before each front. The bath-houses begin business early. The door of one is shunted aside, spite of the lowness of the thermometer and

decency. Out steps a man into the street as naked as when he stepped out into the world. His native copper hue, like a lobster's, is intensified by the boiling he has just undergone. He walks in a selfexhaling cloud of auroral vapors, like a god in ambrosia. He deigns not to make his toilet while in sight, but proceeds homeward, clothes in hand. My pocket Fahrenheit marks four degrees below the freezing-point.

Our driver whips up the horses for sheer warmth, and we dash over the "iron bridge." A trifling bit of iron to our foreign eyes, but a triumph of engineering to the natives, who build of wood. We pass it, and then we are on the causeway that connects Yokohama with the great main road of the empire, the Tōkaido. The causeway passed, and with foreign sights behind, real Japan appears. I am in a new world, not the Old. Every thing is novel. I should like to be Argus: not less than a hundred eyes can take in all the sight. I should like to be a poet to express, and an artist to paint all I see. I wish I knew the language, to ask questions.

What a wonderful picture-book! A line of villages are strung along the road, like a great illuminated scroll full of gay, brilliant, merry, sad, disgusting, horrible, curious, funny, delightful pictures.

What pretty children! Chubby, rosy, sparkling-eyed. The cold only made their feet pink, and their cheeks red. How curiously dressed, with coats like long wrappers, and long, wide, square sleeves, which I know serve for pockets, for I just saw a boy buy some rice cracknels, hot from the toasting coals, and put them in his sleeves. A girdle three inches wide binds the coat tight to the waist. The children's heads are shaved in all curious fashions. The way the babies are carried is an improvement upon the Indian fashion. The Japanese ko is the papoose reversed. He rides eyes front, and sees the world over his mother's shoulder.

Japanese babies are lugged pickapack. Baby Gohachi is laid on mamma's back and strapped on, or else he is inclosed in her gar

ment, and only his little shaven noddle protrudes behind his mother's neck. His own neck never gets wrenched off, and often neither head nor tiny toes are covered, though water is freezing. In the picture on the preceding page, the fat-cheeked baby is carried by a young, unmarried girl, as I can tell by the way her hair is dressed. It is probably an elder sister or hired servant. Her bare feet are on wooden clogs.

Here are adults and children running around barefoot. Nobody wears any hats. As for bonnets, a Japanese woman might study a life-time, and go crazy in trying to find out its use. Every one wears cotten clothes, and these of only one or two thicknesses. None of the front doors are shut. All the shops are open. We can see some of the people eating their breakfast-beefsteaks, hot coffee, and hot rolls for warmth No: cold rice, pickled radishes, and vegetable messes of all unknown sorts. These we see. They make their rice hot by pouring tea almost boiling over it. A few can afford only hot water. Some eat millet instead of rice. Do they not understand dietetics or hygiene better? Or is it poverty? Strange people, these Japanese!

Here are large round ovens full of sweet-potatoes being steamed or roasted. A group of urchins are waiting around one shop, grown men around another, for the luxury. Twenty cash, one-fifth of a cent, in iron or copper coin, is the price of a good one. Many of the children, just more than able to walk themselves, are saddled with babies. They look like two-headed children. The fathers of these youngsters are coolies or burden-bearers, who wear a cotten coat of a special pattern, and knot their kerchiefs over their foreheads. These heads of families receive wages of ten cents a day when work is steady. Here stands one with his shoulder-stick (tembimbo) with pendant baskets of plaited rope, like a scale-beam and pans. His shoulder is to be the fulcrum. On his daily string of copper cash he supports a family. The poor man's blessings and the rich man's grief

are the same in every clime. In Japan the quiver of poverty is full, while the man of wealth mourns for an heir. The mother bears the bairns, but the children carry them. Each preceding child, as it grows older, must lug the succeeding baby on its back till able to stand. The rearing of a Japanese poor family is a perpetual game of leap-frog. The houses are small, mostly one story, all of them of wood, except the fire-proof mud-walled store - houses of the merchant. Most are clean inside. The floors are raised a foot above the ground, covered with mats. The wood-work is clean, as if often scrubbed. Yet the Japanese have no word for soap, and have never until these late days used it. Nevertheless, they lead all Asiatics in cleanliness of persons and dwellings. Does not an ancient stanza of theirs declare that "when the houses of a people are kept clean, be certain that the gov ernment is respected and will endure?" Hot water is the detergent, and the normal Japanese gets under it at least once a day. For scrubbing the floor or clothes, alkali, obtained by leeching ashes, is put in the water.

The shop-keeper sits on his hams and heels, and hugs his hibachi (fire-bowl). What shivering memories I have of it! Every Japanese house has one or more. It is a box of brass, wood, or delf. In a bed of ashes are a handful of coals. Ordinarily it holds the ghost of a fire, and radiates heat for a distance of six inches. A thermo-multiplier might detect its influence further on a cold day. With this the Japanese warm their houses, toast their fingers for incredibly long spaces of time, and even have the hardihood to ask you to sit down by it and warm yourself! Nevertheless, when the coals are piled up regardless of expense, a genial warmth may be obtained. The shopkeepers seem to pay much more attention to their braziers than to their customers. What strikes one with the greatest surprise is the baby-house style and dimensions of every thing. The rice-bowls are tea-cups, the tea-cups are thimbles, the tea-pot is a joke. The family sit in a circle at meals. The daughter or house-maid presides at the rice-bucket, and paddles out cupfuls of rice.

We pass through Kanagawa, a flourishing town, and the real treaty port, from which Yokohama has usurped foreign fame and future history. We pass many shops, and learn in a half-hour the staple articles of sale, which we afterward find repeated with little variation in the shops all over the country. They are not groceries, or boots, or jewelry, nor lacquer, bronze, or silk. They are straw-sandals, paper umbrellas, rush hats, bamboo-work of all kinds, matting for coats, flint, steel and

tinder, sulphur splints for matches, oiled paper coats, and grass cloaks, paper for all purposes, wooden clogs for shoes: fish and radish knives, grass-hooks, hoes, scissors with two blades but only one handle, and axes, all of a strange pattern, compose the stock of cutlery. Vegetable and fish shops are plentiful, but there is neither butcher nor baker. Copper and brass

articles are numerous in the braziers' shops.

I

In the cooper shops, the dazzling array of wood-work, so neat, fresh, clean, and fragrant, carries temptation into housekeepers' pockets. know an American lady who never can pass one without buying some useful utensil. There are two coopers pounding lustily away at a great rain-tank, or saké-vat, or soytub. They are more intent on their bamboo hoops, beetles, and wedges than on their clothing, which they have half thrown off. One has his kerchief over his shoulder.

In Japan the carpenter is Coopers hooping a Vat. (By a pupil of Hokusai.) the shoe-maker, for the foot-gear is of wood. The basket-maker weaves the head-dress. Hats and boots are not. The head-covering is called a "roof" or 66 shed." I remember how in America I read of gaudily advertised "Japanese boot-blacking," and "Japanese cornfiles." I now see that the Japanese wear no boots or shoes, hence blacking is not in demand; and as such plagues as corns are next to unknown, there is no need of files for such a purpose. The total value of the stock in many of the shops appears to be about five dollars. Many look as if one clean Mexican" would buy their stock, good-will, and fixtures. I thought, in my innocence, that I should find more splendid stores elsewhere. I kept on for a year or more thinking so, but was finally satisfied of the truth that, if the Japanese are wealthy, they do not show it in their shops. The

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