270 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



enough we were to get to the Manager's house and 

 have lunch. 



" After that we went underground and examined a 

 specimen of all their processes. They do their work very 

 well, and I am very glad to have seen this place and to 

 know what they propose doing. All this gives me more 

 faith in Calumet than ever. We were great fools not to 

 own it all, as we might have done. Such a desolate place 

 as the mining village I never saw." 



On his return to the main island, in describing his 

 rikisha trip from the railway to Bandai San, a mountain 

 well up in the northern part, he writes : — 



" The road passes through huge tracts of mulberry 

 orchards, just sprouting with black clusters of the tiny 

 silkworms attached to the young leaves. We passed 

 through a magnificent forest of the Kaika tree, a huge 

 gnarled trunk, resembling old beeches, with a leaf like 

 that of an elm. The villages we passed through were all 

 farmers' villages and very poor-looking compared to 

 those of Central Japan. . . . The mountains of the 

 Central Range have wider and more numerous spurs, 

 having comparatively fewer valleys and places for culti- 

 vation and this, added to the greater northern latitude, 

 tells greatly on the general aspect of the country, which 

 is decidedly northern and sterile. ... At Inawashiro 

 village, which we reached at about four in the after- 

 noon, we found a very dilapidated inn." 



This is the nearest point to Bandai San, a mountain, 

 over 5000 feet high, which had blown up some four 

 years previously, sending more than half its mass in a 



