The Mountains Through Which It Forces Its Way On
The Other Side Are Precipitous And Wooded To Their Summits With
Coniferae, while the less abrupt side, along which the tract is
carried, curves into green knolls in its lower slopes,
Sprinkled
with grand Spanish chestnuts scarcely yet in blossom, with maples
which have not yet lost the scarlet which they wear in spring as
well as autumn, and with many flowering trees and shrubs which are
new to me, and with an undergrowth of red azaleas, syringa, blue
hydrangea - the very blue of heaven - yellow raspberries, ferns,
clematis, white and yellow lilies, blue irises, and fifty other
trees and shrubs entangled and festooned by the wistaria, whose
beautiful foliage is as common as is that of the bramble with us.
The redundancy of the vegetation was truly tropical, and the
brilliancy and variety of its living greens, dripping with recent
rain, were enhanced by the slant rays of the afternoon sun.
The few hamlets we passed are of farm-houses only, the deep-eaved
roofs covering in one sweep dwelling-house, barn, and stable. In
every barn unclothed people were pursuing various industries. We
met strings of pack-mares, tied head and tail, loaded with rice and
sake, and men and women carrying large creels full of mulberry
leaves. The ravine grew more and more beautiful, and an ascent
through a dark wood of arrowy cryptomeria brought us to this
village exquisitely situated, where a number of miniature ravines,
industriously terraced for rice, come down upon the great chasm of
the Kinugawa.
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