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.

In this district tea is largely grown. The 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

road stands high and dry above the bed of the river large slices have been cut away by the rushing tide. This must have happened not later than July. But gaps still stand, making the road impassable for horse or bullock traffic. The jinrikishas can just get past in some places by making a détour, in others profiting by a perilous ridge of roadway that has remained. With the exception of these accidents the road is a good one.

We slept at Tagawa, a pretty hamlet nestling at the foot of a hill. The hills here are very curious, being perfectly bare, brown or red sandstone rocks standing up out of the greenery. They are thoroughly Japanese, of the coolie class, seeming to have got up in the morning and gone out without putting on any superfluous clothing. In the early morning we toiled through the steep pass that winds its way through the hills, and descending at a rapid trot reached Otsu, where we had tiffin within view of Lake Beva. Here we found train for Kioto, and gladly took it, for it had been raining all the morning, and the slow process of drying Ito's clothes had been disastrously interrupted.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAPITAL OF THE MIKADOS.

Of all the towns in Japan accessible to the foreigner Kioto is by far the most interesting. Compared with it, in point of years, Tokio is but a stripling, and Yokohama a puny infant. When, in 1590, Tokio (then known as Yedo) was made the capital of Eastern Japan, Kioto had been miyako, or residence of the sovereign, for eight hundred years. This farreaching antiquity is modified by the fact that Kioto has many times received the baptism of fire. Like all Japanese towns, it has been burnt several times, and what the fire has not destroyed at one time it has attacked at another. The palace itself has been destroyed by fire six times within the last one hundred and eighty years. As for the city, so recently as 1864 it was half burnt, as an episode in the Civil War. Nevertheless, it preserves in unmistakable manner its old-time look. It lies