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rapids which render the river unnavigable even for Aino canoes. The Ru-bes-pie, a considerable stream, here joins the Ishi-kari and this increase of volume gives sufficient water to carry a canoe over the rapids which are very numerous and troublesome. The country is heavily timbered, oak, ash, birch, poplar, silver birch and alder abound: the river side is generally fringed with alder or silver birch. For the next fifteen miles the country becomes more open, the hill sides are in places covered with plume grass where not timbered, large patches of walnut appear, and small plains well grassed with good black soil having a subsoil of gravel. Wild grape, hops, asparagus, &c. abound.
The river winds very much and divides in places forming many islets, and shingle banks. The current is very rapid, varying from 12 to 18 miles an hour. There is a fine basaltic cliff on the right bank which shoots up some 300 feet, and is capped by forest, principally yodo or tondo, a sort of white fir; at the base there is much wood where the river does not sweep the rock. For the next twenty miles the width of the stream is about fifty feet, and seven feet deep; in the channel, on the left a fine basaltic hill turns the river at a right angle. This hill timbered at the base and shewing the columnar basalt above, capped as it is by fine yodo trees, presents a grand appearance. Another twenty miles and U-petsū is reached, the river is here very rapid and inclined to split up into several streams, and has much drift-wood of very large size, some of twenty feet girth and sixty feet in length, of the kind named sinkee. The large piles of drift-wood soon change the river bed. Sixty-three rapids are passed and the river has now fairly entered the plain of Kami-kawa through which it winds. This plain is some forty or fifty miles in length by twenty miles in breadth. Bounded on three sides by forest clad mountain ranges, and watered by many streams, this rich alluvial plain when viewed from the summit of the hills, presents a fine appearance. Long stretches of prairie grass relieved by clumps of walnut, oak, elm, &c., or dotted with single
