photograph of his house or inn. Perhaps this was
done with the same view as that which induces his European
brother-in-trade to advertise at great expense.

[Illustration: JAPANESE KAGO. ]

Between Ikaho and Savavatari, our next resting-place, the road was
so bad that the _jinrikisha_ could no longer be used, we accordingly
had to use the _kago_, a Japanese sedan-chair made of bamboo, of the
appearance of which the accompanying wood-cut gives an idea. It is
exceedingly inconvenient for Europeans, because they cannot like the
Japanese sit with their legs crosswise under them, and in course of
time it becomes tiresome to let them dangle without other support by
the side of the _kago_. Even for the bearers this sedan chair
strikes me as being of inconvenient construction, which is shown
among other things by their halting an instant every two hundred, or
in going up a hill, every hundred paces, in order to shift the
shoulder under the bamboo pole. We went up-hill and down-hill with
considerable speed however, so that we traversed the road between
Ikaho and Savavatari, 6 _ri_ or 23.6 kilometres in length, in ten
hours. The road, which was exceedingly beautiful, ran along flowery
banks of rivulets, overgrown with luxuriant bamboo thickets, and
many different kinds of broad-leaved trees. Only round the old
temples, mostly small and inconsiderable, were to be seen ancient
tall Cryptomeria and Ginko trees. The burying places were commonly
situated, not as at home, in the neighbourhood of the larger
temples, but near the villages. They were not inclosed, but marked
out by stone monuments from a third of a metre to half a metre in
height, on one side of which an image of Buddha was sometimes
sculptured. The recent graves were often adorned with flowers, and
at some of them small foot-high Shinto shrines had been made of
wooden pins.

Savavatari, like Ikaho, is built on the slope of a hill. The streets
between the houses are almost all stairs or steep ascents. Here too
there well up from the volcanic rocks acidulous springs, at which
invalids seek to regain health. The watering-place, however, is of
less repute than Ikaho or Kusatsu.

While we walked about the village in the evening we saw at one place
a crowd of people. This was occasioned by a competition going on
there. Two young men, who wore no other clothes than a narrow girdle
going round the waist and between the legs, wrestled within a circle
two or three metres ac