334 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
new, appears on the other hand to he justified in the meantime. 
But it is unreasonable to demand that a nation should not only 
in a few decades pass through a development for which centuries 
have been required in Europe, but also immediately reach the 
summit of the knowledge of our time so as to he at the same 
time creative. But it would be wonderful, if the natural science, 
literature, and art of the nineteenth century, transplanted among 
a gifted people, with a culture so peculiar and so pervasive, and 
with an art-sense so developed as those of Japan, did not in 
time produce new, splendid, and unexpected fruit. The same 
irresistible necessity which now drives the Japanese to learn all 
that the European and the American know, will, when he has 
reached that goal, spur him on to go further up the Nile river 
of research. 
A short distance beyond Takasaki the road to the volcano to 
which we were on our way, was no longer along Nakasendo, and 
we could therefore no longer continue our journey in carriages 
drawn by horses, but were compelled to content ourselves with 
jinrikishas. In these, on the 29th of September, we traversed 
in five and a half hours the very hilly road to Ikaho, noted for 
its baths, situated at a height of 700 metres above the sea. 
The landscape here assumes a quite different stamp. The road 
which before ran over an unbroken plain, thickly peopled, and 
cultivated like a garden, now begins to pass between steep un¬ 
cultivated hills, overgrown with tall, uncut, withered grass, 
separated by valleys in which run purling rivulets, nearly con¬ 
cealed by exceedingly luxuriant bushy thickets. Ikaho is 
celebrated for the warm, or more correctly hot, springs which 
well up from the volcanic hills which surround the little town, 
which is beautifully situated on a slope. As at the baths of 
Europe, invalids seek here a remedy for their ailments, and the 
town therefore consists almost exclusively of hotels, baths, and 
shops for the visitors. The baths are situated, partly in large 
open wooden sheds, where men and women bathe together 
