igo62 Wakanoura 



overhauled the patient fishmongers trotting along 

 with catch too small or too soft to be worth sending 

 to Osaka. Among them were several good things, 

 and we pushed forward with a confidence amply re- 

 warded. The village itself snuggles at the foot of a 

 pine-clad promontoiy fronting a little island with 

 seven long-armed pines symmetrically arranged in 

 typical Japanese fashion, for in that country nature 

 conspires with art. A great double row of straggling 

 pines over which "cranes fly crying" borders the 

 long beach: 



Waka-no-ura ni 

 Shio michi kureba, 

 Kara wo nami 

 Ashibe wo sashite 

 Tazu naki wataru. 



On the little bay of Waka 

 When the tide flows in, 

 Dry land being none, 

 Toward the place of the reeds 

 The cranes fly crying. 



Behind are sharp cliffs — isolated spurs of horn- 

 blende — of which one, Kimiidera, is very sacred, 

 and bears a famous temple with a superb view. To 

 the west the steep and high hills end in an abrupt 

 cape breaking off^ into black rock islets. The little The Bay 

 bay is very blue and clear. Tempered by the Kuro °^ ^""^^ 

 Shio, the life-giving current from the Philippines, it 

 abounds with warm-water life — swarming crab, 

 squid, octopus, shrimp, jellyfish, and all manner of 

 other spoils of the sea. In the course of three days 

 there we got two hundred species, a dozen or so of 

 them new. Nowhere outside the coral reefs of the 

 tropics had I yet found a richer field. 



c 39 :i 



