for it, so we went off with the strange man, being sculled across the bay in a sampan that threatened to upset with every motion of the oar. It was a grey morning with clouds lying low on the hills. The bay was large and singularly lonely; the only shipping it contained, beside our own never-to-be-forgotten craft, was a junk of fantastic form, with rudder standing out from the stern at right angles, as if, after prolonged bickering, it had come to the conclusion it would have nothing more to do with the ship. This appearance was due to a habit of the Japanese mariner of hauling his rudder up out of the water so as to save wear and tear whilst at anchor.

We anxiously scanned the quay in search of Ito, but he was not among the group gathered there. This began to look serious. It was certain he would be there if he were alive and could walk. Apprehension was increased by the replies of our guide to persistent questions of "Where's Ito?" He invariably pointed to the water with finger downward, which could only mean that Ito was drowned. This was a saddening conviction. What was to become of the poor old "mudder" and her provision for daily prayer when the staff of her life was lying under the dark waters of this gloomy bay?

Our guide on landing led us to a teahouse close by the quay. Here, surely, we should find Ito, if only his body. But there was no sign of him, and nothing could be learned from the crowd that gathered round us at the door. The guide made signs for us to enter the jinrikishas that were waiting, a step we were not inclined to take, not knowing whither it would lead, and anxious above all things to get some clue to Ito's whereabouts. After some delay, and finding explanation hopeless, we thought it best to go on, and were whirled through the narrow and dirty streets for a distance of about a mile. We drew up at another tea-house, and there, arrayed in a miscellaneous costume of borrowed garments, with his teeth visibly and audibly shaking in his head, was the lost guide.

His story was brief but thrilling. The steamer had brought up at her moorings about one o'clock in the morning. Two or three sampans came along to take off passengers who crowded in the gangway, anxious to leave the ship on any terms. Critically surveying the scene, Ito had sagaciously come to the conclusion that the first sampan was dangerously overladen. He awaited the second, into which sixteen people all told managed to pack themselves. There was a big swell on in the bay,

a legacy of the gale of the previous night. The stern of the sampan was driven under the lower step of the gangway. There was a violent shove, a loud shriek, and in an instant the sixteen passengers were floundering in the water.

Ito went down under the boat, "and," he added, "I thought I was never coming back again." But he scrambled out, as did thirteen others, for it was bright moonlight, and there were several sampans round. Unhappily, a woman with a baby on her back sank, and her body had not been recovered when we left the village. This sampan, we remembered, was the one we should have gone in had we arranged to go on shore at night.

I do not know whether the passengers were invited to return to the ship and change their clothing before proceeding. What is certain is that the sampan being righted they got in, and, huddled together dripping wet under a bitter cold wind coming down from the mountains, were sculled across the dreary two miles that separated them from the shore. When he reached the quay, Ito had to take a drive in a jinrikisha to the tea-house where we found him, and where he arrived, more dead than alive, at half-past two in the morning. Whilst under the water he lost his pocket-book

containing his reserve cash, and, worse still, the silver watch Miss Bird had given him as a memento of his journeying with her across unbeaten tracks.

But the philosophical mind that had, unruffled, heard of the destruction of his house and the burning out of his "mudder," remained unshaken. Tried by fire and water, Ito came out equally uncomplaining. "It's a bad job," he said, as he turned his garments over the fire, and extracted the last drop of water out of his shoes, "but it can't be helped. The worst of it is this here salt water takes such a long time to dry.'

Ito concluded to finish the drying of his clothes as he went along, and we got under way a little after nine o'clock. The district greatly differed from what we had seen further north. The houses in the village were meaner in appearance; the people were poorer and less light-hearted. Houses were built of a hard wood that turned grey like oak, imparting a dead monotony to the scene. As we got further inland the country improved and the people seemed less depressed. Presently the road began to run by the feet of green hills with every nook carefully cultivated.

We stayed for luncheon at Skeko, a poor little town where the sight of Europeans was

evidently a rarity. As we moved about looking at the shops, the throng at our heels increased till it seemed that all the village had turned out. An old woman was weaving with the assistance of some simple machinery as old as the first shogun. She was pleased with the interest her work excited in the breast of the foreigner, but as we stood and looked on, the heat and pressure of the throng grew insupportable, and we were glad to seek comparative privacy in the tea-house. We had afternoon tea at a place called Tsuchiyama. Just as we were leaving, one of my men's sandals broke. He hardly stopped the procession to pull it off, and was going ahead, evidently intending to run the remaining ten or twelve miles with one bare foot. I insisted upon buying him a pair of sandals, which cost a penny. The next day a man in one of the other jinrikishas lost his shoe, and ran more than twenty miles barefooted without any sense of inconvenience, much less of hardship.

The

In this district tea is largely grown. plant very much resembles an overgrown clump of box. We crossed several rivers by bridges just now many sizes too large for them. But that in due time these bare beds of gravel will be covered with rushing water is plain enough. In some parts where the