Fukui and Echizen must decrease that Dai Nippon may increase. People complain that the empire is becoming too much centralized. The capital and ports are absorbing the strength of the whole country. It is best. Only by centralization at this time can true nationality be attained. Make the heart strong, and the blood will flow to all the extremities.

Japan's record of progress for 1871 is noble. The mikado's government is no longer an uncertainty. A national army has been formed; plots and insurrections have been crushed; the press has become one of the motors of civilization; already several newspapers are established in the capital. The old local forms of authority are merged into the national, and taxes and government are equalized throughout the country. Feudalism is dead. An embassy has been sent to Europe, not composed of catspaw officials of low rank to represent the "tycoon," but nobles and cabinet ministers of the mikado's empire, to plead for Japan and the true sovereign. The mikado, casting away old traditions, now appears among his people, requiring no humiliating obeisance. Marriage among all classes is now permitted, and caste is to disappear. The eta and hinin are now citizens, protected by law. The swords of the samurai are laid aside. The peace and order throughout the country appear wonderful. Progress is everywhere the watchword. Is not this the finger of God?

Midnight. It has been snowing steadily for seven days. All the objects five or six feet high are covered up. The landscape is a sea of white. A great many students wish to go with me to Tōkiō, but the sanji have laid an interdict on all for one month. The three students from Higo will, however, accompany me. I rely much on the fertile mind, calm skill, and enthusiastic regard of "Bearded Higo." Sahei, my servant, will attend me, and Inouyé will be my escort. All my baggage is now packed up. It will be carried on men's shoulders over mountain and valley for three hundred and thirty miles to Tōkiō.

In vain croakers and sincere friends have endeavored to dissuade me from this severe winter journey, or frighten me with stories of wolves, robbers, or the dangers of mountain passes, avalanches, or of being lost in the snow. I wish to see a Japanese winter in the highlands, and to tramp over the Tōkaido, and visit Shidzŭöka. God willing, I shall be in Tokio by February 4th. Farewell, Fukui, thou hast been a well of blessing; for in thee I have found some truth.

XVI.

A TRAMP THROUGH JAPAN.

January 22d, 1872.-A pitiless blast. Snow drifting in heaps, and whirling fine dust. Baggage-carriers have gone ahead. Forty students wait to escort me to Morinoshita (Beneath the Grove), three miles distant. On Daimio Avenue a crowd of officials, citizens, and

lads wait to say farewell.

Sayonaras and good wishes are exchanged with mutual regret. The line of march is over New Bridge. In Boat-landing Street snow lies eight feet deep, with constant additions from the house-tops. Out on the plain, past the city, the blast is horizontal, its force overpowering, its sting terrible. It is difficult to keep the path. The cold is inYet the students jest, laugh, and sing lively songs, as though on a summer's day.

tense.

At Morinoshita we halt. The younger students return to Fukui. Our party and six others push on to Takéfu. Here a farewell banquet is given me. Fourteen tables are set. Two hours of fun and The hotel is warm. It seems madness to go out in the storm. Yet I will go.

cozy comfort pass.

We send out for kagos or horses. We can get neither. Not a man will venture, even a ri, for triple the price. in waiting, and at four o'clock set out on foot.

We lose two hours One mile of flounder

ing, and our strength is strained. It is getting dark. The landscape is level white. Even the stone idols are snowed up. No field, watercourse, house, bush, or shrine is in sight. We can not see a hundred feet before us, even where the furious wind allows us to look ahead. We have lost the path. Our case is desperate. To advance or return is alike impossible. Total darkness is imminent. To spend the night here is to freeze. But look! a lantern glimmers in the distance. We shout. The sounds are twisted out of our mouths, and swept into the snow-drift. Slowly the lantern vanishes, and with it our hopes disappear.

Night swoops on us. For another hour we flounder, vainly seeking

the path. We are on the edge of despair. "Bearded Higo," calm and brave, is vigorously punching the snow to find bottom. Eureka! He has struck the path. No pick of miner or drill of engineer ever struck gold or oil with intenser joy. We mount the crest of safety from our white abyss. Our leader keeps the ridge: we follow. We are often blown off or fall out, but his cane is surer than witch-hazel or divining-rod. We wade a mile farther. A shout from "Bearded Higo" announces a village. We peer through the blast. A housegable looms up. Well named is Imadzuku (Now we rest). We crouch under the porch while one hies in quest of an inn. We enter not a palace; but cheery welcome glorifies host and house. We shake off, doff, and sit at the hearth, watching the cookery. Rice, bean-cheese, daikon, mushroom, fish, are served. Then we take up our beds and walk. With feet under kotatsu, come rosy slumbers and dreams of home.

January 23d.-Snow, snow, snow. Inouyé has hired for me eight stalwart men, grasping staves, and shod with snow-shoes of birch boughs, two feet long, one foot wide, and well wattled, who wait at the door. Their leader punches the drifts for a footing, which on the mountains is tolerable, on the plains fearfully bad, often through slush and icy water. I wear straw boots: though wet, they keep the feet warm. After some miles, we tug up a steep pass with a warm name, Yunoö (Hot-water Tail). Chattering girls, in rival inns, give us noisy welcome. We sit down, drink tea, and gossip. A priest on his way to Takéfu last night lost his path, and froze to death. A postman was struck by an avalanche, knocked down, hurt, and nearly smothered.

We resume our march. Many tracks of avalanches, twenty feet wide, are seen. One crashes and tumbles just in front of us. I notice that the clapboard roofs of houses are weighted down by stones, like those on Swiss châlets. The tracks of boar, bear, foxes, and monkeys are numerous. It is the hunter's harvest-time. Dressed carcasses are on sale in every village. I wonder how a Darwinian steak would taste. "No, thank you; no monkey for me!" is my response to an invitation to taste my ancestors. Good people, you need "science" to teach you what cannibals you are.

At 1.30 P.M. we reach Imajō. At the huge fire-place, I warm and smoke myself till I learn how it feels to be a dried herring. Our food is sauced with hunger and hospitality. Verily, it is delightful to meet unspoiled Japanese, who have never encountered civilization or drunken sailors.

At 3.30 I mount a horse who has two legs and no tail. The saddle-a bundle of straw-rests on the man's loins. I bestride him, my legs on his hips, and arms round his neck. I can choke him if I like. I grip him tightly at dangerous places. These mountaineers think nothing of this work of carrying a man of sixteen-stone weight. Each man has a staff to prop me up when he stops to blow and rest. Riding man-back is pleasant, unless the animal (ippiki) is extravagant with pomatum, or his head-kerchief and the wash-tub are strangers. The horse-men carry us one ri. Snow is too deep: I dismount and plod on. Among solemn groves of pine, walls of rocks and hills, darkness falls; but the moon silvers the forest, burnishes the snow, reveals mystic shadows. Our six bearers light four huge torches of rice-straw leaves and twigs, ten feet long and six inches thick. The lurid glare lights up the gorges. Prismatic splendors dance in the red fire-light. Snow crystals and pendant icicles become chandeliers. Intense fatigue can not blind me to the glories of this night-march.

At nine o'clock the path is but a few inches wide. To miss a step is a serious matter. It plunges me to my waist in soft snow. The bearers pull or pry me out. Every step is misery. Another seems an impossibility. Yet none else of the party says a word. Admirable is the spirit of the Japanese in hardship. The last ri is torture to At last a light gleams above us. We file through the village street. Kindly welcome and tender care are mine from all. Sahei undresses me like a child. My limbs no sooner free, I sink, exhausted, asleep.

me.

January 24th.—I am too stiff to stand. I feel like singing the college-song, "Saw my leg off," and with emphasis on the word "short." I hobble about for a few minutes. My joints relax.

Our path lies through glorious valleys charged with vitalizing air. Amidst such scenery I forget my limbs. We hear the shouts of hunters. At ten o'clock we leave Echizen and enter Omi. In the village, at which we dine on wild-pork steaks, omelet, rice, and turnips, snow lies level with the eaves, shields of bamboo making a corridor between snow and houses. Our host, Nakano Kawachi, has speared eight hogs since snow fell. Strings of dried persimmons hang from his rafters like dried apples in an old-time New England kitchen. They look and taste like figs. The small boys are crazy with delight at the strange sight of a foreigner. A feint to scare them scatters the crowd and leaves a dozen sprawling in the snow. At Tsubaë we spend the night. The inns are full. Our rooms are poor. The nomi (Pulex

irritans) bite unusually hard. This is a rare behavior for them in winter.

January 25th.-Breakfast is flavored with fun and bright eyes. An extremely pretty, pearly-teethed, sweet-voiced, and bright-eyed girl waits on us. Her merry laugh and chatter make amends for shabby quarters. An unusually generous fee from the foreigner is on account of her reminding him of bright eyes in the home land. Faces here in Japan recall familiar faces long known, and every phase of character in New York is duplicated here.

We are descending the highlands of Echizen and Omi to the plains of Mino and Owari. Weather grows warmer, villages more numerous, road more regular. We are in a silk region. Plantations of mulberry-trees, cut to grow only six feet high, abound. Lake Biwa lies in the distance, a picture of blue massively framed in mountains. Dining at Kinomoto (Foot of the Tree), we embark in kagos. In these

vehicles I always fall asleep at the wrong end; my head remaining wide awake, while my feet are incorrigibly somnolent. I lie in all shapes, from a coil of rope to a pair of inverted dividers, with head wrapped from the cold and hardly enough face visible to make a monkey. In the fine hotel at Odani, the old lady hostess is very motherly to her first foreign guest, until I settle in kotatsu in the "daimio's chamber," with maps and books on the floor, when she resumes her spectacles and sewing. Round the room hang gilt and lacquered tablets of the lords and nobles who have lodged at this house. My prince's card is among them. The old lady brings me sheets of paper to write my name, poetry, wise saws, etc., upon, as mementoes. After supper, Inouyé "fights his battles o'er." A bullet grazed his fore