rance
ceases to be a surprise. It is a curious fact that this people,
contemporary with Greece and Rome at their zenith, who have only reared
cities of wood and temples of lacquer, have outlived the classic nations
whose half-ruined monuments are our choicest models. The Hellenic and
Latin races have passed away, but Japan still remains without a dynastic
change and with an inviolate country.

One of our excursions carried us to the Hakone Pass. Miyanoshita is a
little hamlet, lost as it were among the hills, yet famous for its
beautiful scenery and natural hot-baths, accessible only by a difficult
mountain-pass which, having become belated, we ascended by torch-light.
It proved to be quite a climb, especially under the adverse
circumstances of a heavy rain, which impeded the narrow path with
miniature torrents; but with the advent of a clear, bright morning which
followed, we looked back upon the long, laborious, and even painful
struggle up the steep and narrow defile, as a mere episode to heighten
after enjoyment, and so it seems now in the memory. Happy the provision
of nature which leads us to recall more vividly the sunshine than the
shadows of our experience!

Miyanoshita is a very lovely spot, a picture of complete isolation and
repose. Here a good hotel, almost American in its excellence and
comfort, is to be found, replete with cleanliness, and surrounded by
ornamental grounds after the Japanese style. There were rockeries, over
which tumbled mountain rivulets; ponds with gigantic gold and silver
fish, which seemed to be always hungry and inclined to breed a famine by
eating any amount of bread; pretty miniature bridges spanned water-ways
and formed foot-paths about the grounds. There were novel flowering
plants, and some remarkable specimens of dwarf trees, over which the
natives expend endless care and labor, together with examples of curious
variegated leaves, one of which had zigzag golden stripes upon a dark
green base. This hotel among the mountains was two stories high, an
unusual thing for a Japanese house; but it had only rice-paper windows,
and thin sliding panels in place of doors or partitions. If desired, a
whole story could be thrown into one apartment, or subdivided at
pleasure into cozy little sleeping-rooms. All material, all food, was
brought hither up that pitiless path on the backs of mountaineers.
People who do not feel able, or who are not inclined to go up the pass
on foot, are carried