656 



THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 



[chap. 



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. 



INN AT KUSATSU. 



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. 



The hot springs which have conferred on Kusatsu its im- 

 portance rise at the foot of a pretty high hill of volcanic origin. 

 The rocks in the surrounding country consist exclusively of lava 



