e also in the habit of angling for frogs with a
piece of plantain. The frogs seize the plantain and are jerked ashore.

We took our lunch on a hill top. It had been a stiff climb and we
marvelled at the expense to which a poor county must be put for the
maintenance of roads which so often hang on cliff sides or span
torrents. The great piles of wood accumulated at the summit turned the
talk to "silent trade." In "silent trade" people on one side of a hill
traded with people on the other side without meeting. The products
were taken to the hill top and left there, usually in a rough shed
built to protect the goods from rain. The exchange might be on the
principle of barter or of cash payment. But the amount of goods given
in exchange or the cash payment made was left to honour. "Silent
trade" still continues in certain parts of Japan. Sometimes the price
expected for goods is written up in the shed. "Silent trade"
originated because of fears of infectious disease; it survives because
it is more convenient for one who has goods to sell or to buy to
travel up and down one side of a mountain than up and down two sides.

As we proceeded on our way we were once more struck by the
extraordinary wealth of wood. Here is a country where every household
is burning wood and charcoal daily, a country where not only the
houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and
there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder
that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood.
Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting
make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is no
fitting word but jungle.

At the small ramshackle hot-spring inns of the remote hills the
guests are mostly country folk. Many of them carefully bring their own
rice and _miso_, and are put up at a cost of about 10 sen a day. In
the passage ways one finds rough boxes about 4 ft. square full of wood
ash in the centre of which charcoal may be burned and kettles boiled.

We were in a region where there is snow from the middle of November to
the middle of April. For two-thirds of December and January the snow
is never less than 2 ft. deep. The attendance of the children at one
school during the winter was 95 per cent. for boys and 90 per cent.
for girls. (See note, p. 112.)

My _kurumaya_ pointed to a mountain top where, he said, there were
nearly three acres of beautiful flowers.