There
Were Mountains Connected By Ridges No Broader Than A Horse's Back,
Others With Great Gray Buttresses, Deep Chasms Cleft By Streams,
Temples With Pagoda Roofs On Heights, Sunny Villages With Deep-
Thatched Roofs Hidden Away Among Blossoming Trees, And Through
Rifts In The Nearer Ranges Glimpses Of Snowy Mountains.
After a rapid run of twelve miles through this enchanting scenery,
the remaining course of the Tsugawa is that of a broad, full stream
winding marvellously through a wooded and tolerably level country,
partially surrounded by snowy mountains.
The river life was very
pretty. Canoes abounded, some loaded with vegetables, some with
wheat, others with boys and girls returning from school. Sampans
with their white puckered sails in flotillas of a dozen at a time
crawled up the deep water, or were towed through the shallows by
crews frolicking and shouting. Then the scene changed to a broad
and deep river, with a peculiar alluvial smell from the quantity of
vegetable matter held in suspension, flowing calmly between densely
wooded, bamboo-fringed banks, just high enough to conceal the
surrounding country. No houses, or nearly none, are to be seen,
but signs of a continuity of population abound. Every hundred
yards almost there is a narrow path to the river through the
jungle, with a canoe moored at its foot. Erections like gallows,
with a swinging bamboo, with a bucket at one end and a stone at the
other, occurring continually, show the vicinity of households
dependent upon the river for their water supply.
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