Comely Kin.e-Japan.ese Criticism on a Foreign Usage—A Pleasant Halt-Renewed Courtesies—The Plain of Yonezawa—A Curious Mistake—The Mother's Memorial—Arrival at Komatsu—Stately Accommodation—A Vicious Horse—An Asiatic Arcadia—A Fashionable Watering-place—A Belle—“Godowns.”

KAMIMOYAMA.

A SEVERE day of mountain travelling brought us into another region. We left. Ichinono early on a fine morning, with three pack-cows, one of which I rode [and their calves], very comely kine, with small noses, short horns, straight spines, and deep bodies. I thought that I might get some fresh milk, but the idea of anything but a calf milking a cow was so new to the people that there was a universal laugh, and Ito told me that they thought it “most disgusting,” and that the Japanese think it “most disgusting” in foreigners to put anything “ with such a strong smell and taste “ into their tea! All the cows had cotton cloths, printed with blue dragons, suspended under their bodies to keep them from mud and insects, and they wear straw shoes and cords through the cartilages of their noses. The day being fine, a great deal of rice and sake was on the move, and we met hundreds of pack-cows, all of the same comely breed, in strings of four.

We crossed the Sakuratogé from which the view is beautiful, got horses at the mountain village of Shirakasawa, crossed more passes, and in the afternoon reached the village of Tenoko. There, as usual, I sat under the verandah of the Transport. Office, and waited for the one horse which was available. It. was a large shop, but. contained not. a single article of European make. In the one room a group of women and children sat. round the fire, and the agent, sat as usual with a number of ledgers at a table a foot high, on which his grandchild was lying on a cushion. Here Ito dined on seven dishes of horrors, and they brought me saké, tea, rice, and black beans. The last are very good.