203
pine covered ridge, descending from which into a fine valley we crossed a rapid river on its south side, where the bridge had been lately washed away, and took up our quarters for the night at the town of Namiye.
On the north side of this valley we crossed on the following morning by bridge another rapid river of considerable size. We then ascended the uplands by a good road through the finest avenue of pine trees I had yet seen. Onwards over a good deal of broken and wild ground, but wherever there happened to be a valley it was cultivated. When about a mile and a half from the sea I noticed a lagoon about half a mile long separated from the sea by a low neck or spit partly wooded. Passing over more broken country of which the hills ran mostly parallel to one course, that is North and South, we came to Odaka, 212 ri. Forward we traversed much the same kind of country another 212 ri to the town of Hara-no-machi, which lies in a fine plain, the south part of which is entirely clear and open and kept for horse grazing; having the appearance of a common or military exercising ground for which it would be well adapted.
Throughout this part of the country there are many tanks formed by embankments creating dams across the heads of the narrow valleys and ravines, which are furnished with sluices for distributing water to the rice fields in the lower part of valleys. The highway or kaido, often crosses the upper valleys on these embankments, which are strong and substantial. The larger valleys are frequently double as it were; that is to say, a river on either side, and a village and much cultivated land in the middle. Invariably there is a small stream led down the principal street of the village, used for household purposes. I do not consider that these double valleys are natural, but imagine that the tributary streams which make up a river, have been artificially confined and led down the sides of the valley; so that what might have been in former ages an extensive river bottom with large shingle and sand flat, and many waste patches subject to periodical floods and changes of the bed of the
