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forced us in one place to make a considerable detour inland instead of following the usual route along the sea beach. A good deal of the country was wild, but the valleys were cultivated with rice, cotton, tea, and beans; the farmers having good substantial houses and appearing well to do. Pine trees skirted a great part of the regular road.
At three ri we changed horses at the village of Shirono. Thence one ri over a broken country, for a large part pine-wooded, the road being in places cut through the clay rock with gutters on either side, to a small place called Kido. On the beach are sheds in which sea water is evaporated for its salt; a wooden spout running out on the beach to high water mark, into which the water is baled by hand, All about Taira and throughout this part of the country. the nature of the rock admitting of easy excavation, one notices numerous caves which the farming people use as storehouses; some of them having regular doors and locks. These are said, with what truth is uncertain, to have been used as habitations by the aborigines of this part of Japan.
Soon after leaving Kido we found a rapid running good-sized river, having a wier set near the crossing place for catching salmon. Thence over an uncultivated country, partly broken and hilly, and partly in plateaux, the ground being covered with green fern and brush, and sparely wooded with pine. The road is about a mile or so back from the coast. At three ri it reached Tomioka, situated in a valley. Again we got fresh horses and made 312 ri more over much the same kind of country, but more wooded and very little cultivated to Sinzan; passing on the way a village called Kuwa-no-kawa in a tolerably open valley where a good deal of mulberry is cultivated, and a rapid river runs towards the sea. I noticed that the mulberry shrubs were all pollards, and at that time of the year the branches were tied up in a bunch, the intervening ground being used for cereal and other crops. Rice was under process of being cut. From Sinzan we took on the same horses another stage of one and a half ri, passing a considerable valley and several villages; then over a
