s, operated by the
ingenious manipulation of the water. In a little hut is a mortar
containing the rice. Attached to a pivot is a long beam having a pestle
at one end and a trough at the other. The pestle is made to fall upon the
rice in the mortar by the filling and automatic emptying of the trough
outside. The trough, filling with water, drops down and empties of its
own weight; this causes the opposite end to fall suddenly. This operation
repeats itself about every two seconds through the day.

The gravelly hills about Ureshino are devoted to the cultivation of tea;
the green tea-gardens, with the undulating, even rows of thick shrubs,
looking very beautiful where they slope to the foot of the bare rocky
cliffs. Ureshino and the baths are some little distance off the main road
to Shimonoseki; so, not caring particularly to go there, I continue on to
the village of Takio, where rainy weather compels a halt of several
hours. Everything is so delightfully superior, as compared with China,
that the Japanese village yadoya seems a veritable paradise during these
first days of my acquaintance with them. Life at a Chinese village hittim
for a week would well-nigh unseat the average Anglo-Saxon's reason,
whereas he might spend the same time very pleasantly in a Japanese
country inn. The region immediately around Takio is not only naturally
lovely, but is embellished by little artificial lakes, islands, grottoes,
and various landscape novelties such as the Japs alone excel in.

An eight-wire telegraph line threads the road from Takio to Ushidzu,
passing through numerous villages that almost form a continuous street
from one town to the other. As one notices such improvements, and sees
the police and telegraph officials in trim European uniforms seated in
their neat offices, an American clock invariably on the wall within, and,
moreover, notes the uniform friendliness of the people, it is difficult
to imagine that thirty years ago one would have been in more danger
travelling through here than through China. Passing through the main
streets of Ushidzu in search of the best yadoya, I am accosted by a
middle-aged woman with, "Hello! you wanchee room? wanchee chow-chow." Her
mother keeps a yadoya, she tells me, and leads the way thither, chatting
gayly in pidgeon English, all the way. She seems very pleased at the
opportunity to exercise her little stock of broken English, and tells me
she learned it at Shanghai, where she once r