nly twenty
years, but already the farmers had cultivated the hillsides in the
assiduous fashion of Old Japan.

From Ashigawa we made some excursions in a prim _basha_ to places
which were always several miles farther on than they were supposed to
be and were usually reached by tracks covered with stones from 6 to 9
ins. long and having ruts a foot deep.

We visited a large estate with 350 tenants who were mostly working
2-1/2 _cho_, though some had twice as much. Nearly all of these
tenants appeared to have one or two horses, although the estate
manager had advised them to use oxen or cows as more economical
draught animals. When I remembered the distance the farmers were from
the town and the state of the roads, and noticed the satisfaction
which the men we passed displayed in being able to ride, it was easy
to believe that the possession of a horse might have its value as a
means of social progress. During the last ten years half the tenants
had made enough to enable them to buy farms. The tenants on this
estate had two temples and one shrine.[246]

I visited a fifteen-years-old co-operative alcohol factory with a
capital of 300,000 yen. Of its materials 80 per cent. seemed to be
potato starch waste and 20 per cent. maize. The product was 6,000 or
7,000 _koku_ of alcohol. The dividend was 8 per cent. On the waste a
large number of pigs was fed. The animals were kept in pens with
boarded floors within a small area, and I was not surprised to learn
that three or four died every month. Starch making, which produces the
waste used by the alcohol factory, is managed on quite a small scale.
An outfit may cost no more than 30 or 50 yen. I went over a small
peppermint-making plant. Most of the peppermint raised in Japan--it
reaches a value of 2 million yen--is grown in Hokkaido.

One day in the eastern part of the island I met in a small hotel,
which was run by a man and his wife who had been in America, several
old farmers who had obviously made money. They declared that formerly
only 20 per cent. of the colonists succeeded, but now the proportion
was more than 65 per cent. I imagine that they meant by success that
the colonists did really well, for it was added that it was rare in
that district for people to return to Old Japan. One of the company
said that not more than 5 per cent. returned. "Land is too expensive
at home," he continued; "when a Japanese comes here and gets some, he
works hard." A good man, they said,