have
been brought many a mile down from the mountains, and preserved on
account of some fanciful resemblance to bird, reptile, or animal.
Artificial lakes, islands, waterfalls, bridges, temples, and groves
abound; and at occasional intervals a large figure of the Buddha squats
serenely on a pedestal, smiling in happy contemplation of the peace,
happiness, prosperity, and beauty of everything and everybody around.
Happy people! happy country. Are the Japs acting wisely or are they
acting foolishly in permitting European notions of life to creep in and
revolutionize it all. Who can tell. Time alone will prove. They will get
richer, more powerful, and more enterprising, because of the necessity of
waking themselves up to keep abreast of the times; but wealth and power,
and the buzz and rattle of machinery and commerce do not always mean
happiness.

CHAPTER XX.

THE HOME STRETCH.

During the afternoon the narrow kuruma road merges into a broad, newly
made macadam, as fine a piece of road as I have seen the whole world
round. Wonderful work has been done in grading it from the low-lying
rice-fields, up, up, up, by the most gentle and even gradient, to where
it seemingly terminates, far ahead between high rocky cliffs. The picture
of charming houses and beautiful terraced gardens climbing to the very
upper stories of the mountains here beggars description; one no longer
marvels at what he has seen in the way of terraced mountains in China.

New sensations of astonishment await me as the upper portion of the
smooth boulevard is reached, and I find myself at the entrance to a
tunnel about five hundred yards long and thirty feet wide. The tunnel is
lit up by means of big reflectors in the middle, shining through the
gloom as one enters, like locomotive headlights. It is difficult to
imagine the Japs going to all this trouble and expense for mere
jinrikisha and pedestrian travel; yet such is the case, for no other
vehicular traffic exists in the country. It is the only country in which
I have found a tunnel constructed for the ordinary roadway, although
there may be similar improvements that have not happened to come to my
notice or ear. One would at least expect to find a toll-keeper in such a
place, especially as a person has to be employed to maintain the lights,
but there is nothing of the kind.

A few miles beyond the tunnel the broad road terminates in a good-sized
seaport, whence I encounter some little diffic