rded that, at the age of fifteen, he had been made heir to the
throne, the principle of primogeniture not being then recognized, and
thus the deaths of his brothers did not affect that question. Landing
ultimately at Kumano on the southeast of Kii, the expeditionary force
was stricken by a pestilence, the prince himself not escaping. But at
the behest of the Sun goddess, the Kami of thunder caused a sword of
special virtue to come miraculously into the possession of an
inhabitant of Kii, who carried it to the prince, and at once the
sickness was stayed. When, however, the army attempted to advance
into the interior, no roads were found and precipitous mountains
barred the progress. In this dilemma the Sun goddess sent down the
three-legged crow of the Sun** to act as guide.

*In the Chronicles the two princes are represented as having
deliberately entered the stormy sea, angered that such hardships
should overtake the descendants of the ocean Kami.

**The Yang-wu, or Sun-crow (Japanese Yata-garasu), is a creature of
purely Chinese myth. It is supposed to be red in colour, to have
three legs, and to inhabit the sun.

Thus indiscriminately are the miraculous and the commonplace
intermixed. Following this bird, the invading force pushed on into
Yamato, receiving the allegiance of a body of men who fished with
cormorants in the Yoshino River and who doubtless supplied the army
with food, and the allegiance of fabulous beings with tails, who came
out of wells or through cliffs. It is related that the invaders
forced the elder of two brothers into a gyn which he had prepared for
their destruction; and that on ascending a hill to reconnoitre,
Prince Iware observed an army of women and a force of eighty
"earth-hiders (Tsuchi-gumo) with tails," by which latter epithet is
to be understood bandits or raiders who inhabited caves.

How it fared with the amazons the annals do not say, but the eighty
bandits were invited to a banquet and slaughtered in their cups.
Still the expeditionary force encountered great opposition, the roads
and passes being occupied by numerous hostile bands. An appeal was
accordingly made for divine assistance by organizing a public
festival of worship, the vessels employed--eighty platters and as
many jars--being made by the hands of the prince himself with clay
obtained from Mount Kagu in Yamato.* Several minor arrangements
followed, and finally swords were crossed with the army of Nagasune,
who had i