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course usually topped with vegetable mould the same as the surrounding country. For the mode of their formation we need not look farther than the nearest muddy gutter after heavy rain, or notice the rills of water streaming off a muddy road after a heavy shower; and compare these features with those on a great scale in the valley of a river. Imagine then the termination of the “Glacial period”—admitted by all modern geologists—and the enormous amounts of water from the melting snow and ice, streaming off the then unclothed mountain sides, ripping great rents in them and the lower lands, and washing down an amount of stones and earthy matter sufficient to form beds of great thickness. And thus as the erosion goes on, so are the beds of the rivers, each season, deepening and leaving remains of their flood plains above. In our times, of course, these formations are going on more slowly and by lesser differences of level, but still the beds of rivers in mountainous districts are, where unobstructed by solid rock, generally deepening, and eating their way more and more into the mountain sides. Consequently they leave remains of their flood plains higher and higher above their beds. But to resume the journey.
On the 6th of November we started half an hour or so before daybreak. There was a full moon with clear frosty air. Following the north branch of the Kita-kami, here only a small brook for about three miles, we passed a fork of the road which branches off on the right hand to Hachinohe. The hills then become more wooded, till having passing the temple Mido-o-kanon at the supposed source of the river, we mounted the actual watershed. This position is by barometrical measurements made by Mr. John Blakiston, who was one of Mr. De Long’s party in 1871, about 2,000 feet above the sea level. On the top is a rolling grass-covered country, with a few deep valleys cut in it. The actual road is often avoided in favour of drier paths and better travelling, there being in bad weather many sloughs of black mud. Soon after passing a hamlet known as Nakai-yama, the road strikes the head of a deep valley with steep sides, down which a strong
