286 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



provided with two very narrow seats lengthways and one for the 

 driver in front, and whatever space in the well is not taken up hy 

 legs is crammed full of luggage, dogs, and food for the horses. 

 Then given the worst, the ruttiest, most holey and stony road, 

 and as I said before your liver will have a doing over those 

 seventeen miles which it is never likely to forget. 



A start is made from the Hakodate hotel after the driver has 

 produced some very doleful sounds on his horn, a performance of 

 which he is very proud, and which is repeated on every possible 

 occasion, and we slowly roll through an almost interminable 

 street in reality three miles long flanked by low, very poor- 

 looking houses, mostly shops, but flourishing smells from the 

 stagnant and foul open drains which run the whole length im- 

 mediately in front of the doors on either side. It is a curious 

 thing that the most cleanly Jap seems never to mind the worst 

 smells. There is a great deal of traffic here besides trams : 

 wagons with every kind of country produce, others heavily 

 loaded with material for the railway now building in the vicinity; 

 women and men dragging carts or struggling under heavy loads, 

 bringing in vegetables, huge bundles of flowering yellow chry- 

 santhemums, baskets of apples, &c., &c.; children innumerable 

 carrying others on their backs almost as big as themselves, 

 w T rapped in multi-coloured clothing a motley crowd, mostly 

 clad in blue. When at last the street is done with, we jolt and 

 bump along between long stretches of rice-fields, pass several 

 small villages, at one of which the horses receive a feed of 

 chopped maize stalks and corn, and we have some Japanese 

 tea in tiny cups, with Japanese biscuits, of which there are so 

 many kinds ; then on to the hills. Here the road becomes 

 worse and worse, owing to heavy traffic connected with the 

 new railway. The basha having become absolutely impossible 

 without serious risk to our anatomy, we walk up the mountain 

 road, obtaining beautiful views of Hakodate and its mountain 

 so like Gibraltar on the slope of which the town is built of 

 the bay, the ocean and main island beyond. The hills are 

 thickly covered with forest, now most beautiful in its autumn 

 garb, and as we presently cross the crest, the lakes lie before 

 and below us, with the volcano of Koma-ga-take on the further 

 shore of Omuna. After a rapid descent, and violent and 

 triumphant tootlings on the driver's horn, we at last reach 



