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All this country (Musashi no Kuni) is rich and well cultivated. The mulberry grows in abundance, as do maize, various cereals, rice, and cotton. Tea is but little produced and is of an inferior quality.
Leaving Kumnagae, an arm of the Todagawa is passed, much diminished in summer, but which, judged by the breadth and rugged appearance of its bed, must be a formidable torrent at certain times of the year. Between the arm of the Todagawa and Honjô, towards a point named Okabé, the traveller leaves the basin of Todagawa to pass into that of the Tonegawa. Crossing a small affluent on the right bank of the latter river, he arrives at Honjô, an important centre of 1000 houses owing its importance less to its commerce than its position, the point at which the Nakasendô branches off to Nikkô. Formerly and at no distant date numerous travellers and pilgrims journeyed from Ôsaka and Kiotô to Nikkô. After leaving Honjô the road to Nikkô takes the special name of Reiheishi Kaidô, trending due north in order to pass the Tonegawa at a distance of about 1 ri, and from thence taking the direction of Nikkô.
The Tonegawa appears to take its rise to the north of Mikuniyama and Otokoyama, among a series of mountains the eastern slopes of which would form the basin of the Chikumagawa (Sea of Japan) and those of the western side would give rise to the various affluents of the Tonegawa (Pacific).
The Tonegawa flows to the N. E. as far as Shimmachi, and afterwards to the E., discharging itself by one branch into the gulf of Yedo, and by another directly into the Pacific to the north of the gulf of Yedo, forming in these two directions a confused delta, after having received numerous affuents from the mountainous countries comprised between Asamayama, Kusatsu and Nikkô. The Tonegawa is crossed by ferry a short distance before Shimmachi; the broad, rough and stony bed of the river shews that this passage can hardly be made without difficulty at certain seasons of the year.
Shimmachi is a place of no great importance; a road
