36
taken to find them. Near the Nakagawa inn there is on excellent one with water at 11°.5 and oven 10°, slightly aperient in its effects, but it may be taken in any quantity with impunity. Earthquakes seem rare and the inhabitants show their indifference to them by building houses of two stories, which recall the châlets of Switzerland. Roofs are at a very open angle and weighted with large stones. This peculiar feature is observable from Sannokura. The inhabitants leave Kusatsu at the end of October and return towards the middle of May. During the winter months a sufficient number of men to guard the house is left. The snow is said not to exceed three feet in thickness, and the inhabitants only move to a distance of 2 or 3 ri, where they find a tolerable climate.
General Aspect of the Warm Springs.
In the centre of the village there is a large rectangular tank whose largest dimensions are from W. to E. Several streams and neighbouring springs are concentrated here. This tank, constructed in ages long past, is a sufficiently remarkable work, for it was necessary to divert the springs and build in water of a high temperature—perhaps from 55° to 70°. It was covered in and divided into many compartments, but the fire of 1872 entirely destroyed this edifice.
The waters towards the East enter by a fall of from 4 to 5 métres and this is used for douches in the lower part of the tank.
These waters fall into a stream of warm water which, issuing from the side of the mountain on the N. E. of the village, flows through the village from the N. W. to the S. E, and having received all the waters from the various springs, joins, after a tortuous course among the surrounding hills, the stream of Naganohara, which, as I said above, carries off all the water to the Tonegawa and from there into the Pacific.
The central tank and all the springs and streams produce constant whitish vapours of a sulphurons odour. The vegetation is in no way tainted by these exhalations, and grass and trees grow to the edge of these streams
