d drive away the people by a dreadful shouting.
From the mail-coach they also blow the post-horn, not just to the
advantage of the ear-drums of the travellers.

[Illustration: JAPANESE MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE. ]

The scenery by the roadside was exceedingly beautiful. Now it
consisted of wild valleys, filled with luxuriant vegetation which
completely concealed the crystal-clear streams purling in the
bottoms; now of level grassy plains or hill-slopes, thickly studded
with solitary trees, chiefly chestnuts and oaks. The inhabitants
were fully occupied with the chestnut harvest. Before every hut mats
were spread out, on which chestnuts lay drying in thick layers.
Grain and cotton were being dried in the same small way, as it
appeared to us Europeans. On the plains there stood besides in the
neighbourhood of the cabins large mortars, by which the grain was
reduced to groats. On the hills these tramp-stamps are partly
replaced by small mills of an exceedingly simple construction,
introduced by the Dutch.

We passed the 2nd October at Kusatsu, the Aix-la-Chapelle of Japan,
famed like that place for its hot sulphurous springs. Innumerable
invalids here seek an alleviation of their pains. The town lives
upon them, and accordingly consists mainly of baths, inns, and shops
for the visitors.

The inns are of the sort common in Japan, spacious, airy clean,
without furniture, but with good braziers, miniature tea-services,
clean matting, screens ornamented with poetical mottoes, which even
when translated were almost unintelligible to us, friendly hosts,
and numerous female attendants. If the traveller brings his own cook
with him, as we did, he can live very comfortably, as I have before
stated, at such an inn.

[Illustration: INN AT KUSATSU. ]

The hot springs which have conferred on Kusatsu its importance rise
at the foot of a pretty high hill of volcanic origin. The rocks in
the surrounding country consist exclusively of lava and volcanic
tuffs, and a short distance from the town there is an extinct
volcano in whose crater there are layers of sulphur.[382] In the
immediate neighbourhood of the place where the main spring rises
there is a thick solidified lava stream, surrounded by tuffs, which
near the surface is cleft into a number of large vesicular blocks.
From this point the hot water is conducted in long open wooden
channels to the bath-house of the town, and to several evaporating
pools, some by the wayside, others in