I Find It Impossible In This Damp Climate, And In My Present Poor
Health, To Travel With Any Comfort For More Than Two Or Three Days
At A Time, And It Is Difficult To Find Pretty, Quiet, And Wholesome
Places For A Halt Of Two Nights.
Freedom from fleas and mosquitoes
one can never hope for, though the last vary in number, and I have
Found a way of "dodging" the first by laying down a piece of oiled
paper six feet square upon the mat, dusting along its edges a band
of Persian insect powder, and setting my chair in the middle. I am
then insulated, and, though myriads of fleas jump on the paper, the
powder stupefies them, and they are easily killed. I have been
obliged to rest here at any rate, because I have been stung on my
left hand both by a hornet and a gadfly, and it is badly inflamed.
In some places the hornets are in hundreds, and make the horses
wild. I am also suffering from inflammation produced by the bites
of "horse ants," which attack one in walking. The Japanese suffer
very much from these, and a neglected bite often produces an
intractable ulcer. Besides these, there is a fly, as harmless in
appearance as our house-fly, which bites as badly as a mosquito.
These are some of the drawbacks of Japanese travelling in summer,
but worse than these is the lack of such food as one can eat when
one finishes a hard day's journey without appetite, in an
exhausting atmosphere.
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