l procession that
I found in her streets. You ought to have read about the wailing women
in white who followed the dead man shut up in a wooden sedan chair that
rocked on the shoulders of the bearers, while the bronze-hued Buddhist
priest tramped on ahead, and the little boys ran alongside.

I had prepared in my mind moral reflections, purviews of political
situations, and a complete essay on the future of Japan. Now I have
forgotten everything except O-Toyo in the tea-garden.

From Nagasaki we--the P. and O. Steamer--are going to Kobe by way of the
Inland Sea. That is to say, we have for the last twenty hours been
steaming through a huge lake, studded as far as the eye can reach with
islands of every size, from four miles long and two wide to little
cocked-hat hummocks no bigger than a decent hayrick. Messrs. Cook and
Son charge about one hundred rupees extra for the run through this part
of the world, but they do not know how to farm the beauties of nature.
Under any skies the islands--purple, amber, grey, green, and black--are
worth five times the money asked. I have been sitting for the last
half-hour among a knot of whooping tourists, wondering how I could give
you a notion of them. The tourists, of course, are indescribable. They
say, "Oh my!" at thirty-second intervals, and at the end of five minutes
call one to another: "Sa-ay, don't you think it's vurry much the same
all along?" Then they play cricket with a broomstick till an unusually
fair prospect makes them stop and shout "Oh my!" again. If there were a
few more oaks and pines on the islands, the run would be three hundred
miles of Naini Tal lake. But we are not near Naini Tal; for as the big
ship drives down the alleys of water, I can see the heads of the
breakers flying ten feet up the side of the echoing cliffs, albeit the
sea is dead-still.

Now we have come to a stretch so densely populated with islands that all
looks solid ground. We are running through broken water thrown up by the
race of the tide round an outlying reef, and apparently are going to hit
an acre of solid rock. Somebody on the bridge saves us, and we head out
for another island, and so on, and so on, till the eye wearies of
watching the nose of the ship swinging right and left, and the finite
human soul, which, after all, cannot repeat "Oh my!" through a chilly
evening, goes below. When you come to Japan--it can be done comfortably
in three months, or even ten weeks--sail through thi