98 



In a valley at the farther end of the garden, shut off by the 

 hills from the rest, is the Japanese garden. There is scarcely 

 a foot of level ground in it. There are small ponds with lilies, 

 lotus, and goldfish; crooked pines with their branches spreading 

 horizontally over the water and supported there by props ; cedar 

 trees trimmed into fantastic shapes or trained to cover the rocks ; 

 rustic bridges, and paths running in every direction over the 

 hillsides. ' Japanese children in picturesque garments play 

 solemnly on the paths, or feed the goldfish with cakes which 

 they have bought from an equally picturesque old woman. The 

 place is absolutely un-American in every respect, and there is 

 not a single bed of blooming plants within it. 



The following day, September 29, we left Yokohama for Kobe 

 by rail, a distance of nearly four hundred miles through charming 

 scenery. At close range, nearest the railroad, are the cultivated 

 fields, leading up quite naturally to the villages behind at the foot 

 of the hills, while the mountains form a natural background to 

 the whole scene. 



The mountains rise steeply and abruptly from the edge of 

 the valleys, with rough irregular slopes and a very broken sky- 

 line. They are green from bottom to top, not with the uniform 

 tone of an American forest, but with various shades caused by 

 the light-green bamboo, the emerald green rice, the dark pines, 

 and other plants. Then one reaches a valley and has an instant's 

 glimpse up its course for a mile or so, the hills coming down 

 steeply on each side, and its bottom covered with a narrow curv- 

 ing strip of rice, rising in terrace above terrace up the valley. 

 Usually there is a stream in the valley, with its banks enclosed 

 in masonry and with a huge undershot wheel, half hidden by a 

 bamboo thicket, barely turning in the slow current. 



The railway crosses many rivers on immense bridges, three 

 of them over half a mile long. During September the amount of 

 water in them is small, and sometimes almost hidden bj" fishing 

 boats, but their immense beds, covered with boulder bars, show 

 at once both the great rainfall of southern Japan and the effect 

 of deforestation on the mountains behind. The river beds are 

 always diked in, and so thoroughly that a flood apparently 



