blazing, glaring sands of the dry river bed, and many
naked coolies are needed to push and pull it through the hot sands,
and work it into the boat. In the glaring sun of noon, the broad river
lies motionless, like a sheet of glowing steel. Children bathe in the
river, and the sweating coolies dip their brown bodies in it, and the
sun beats down pitiless. A junk gets loose from its moorings, and
drifts down stream, stern first, on the slow current. Who cares? No
one. It will beach itself presently, on a mud flat, and can be
recovered towards evening. The great heat lies over all the land, and
cholera is in the slowly flowing water, and the fishermen and the
coolies and the children live and work and play by the river bank, and
they have no fear of it, because they are ignorant.

From Nikko to the capital, the road runs through village after
village, endlessly, mile after mile. On each side of the village
street are straw thatched houses, and along the roads coolies bend
under great loads, carried on poles across their shoulders. Black
bulls drag giant loads on two wheeled carts, their masters straining
beside them. The bulls' mouths are open, their tongues hang out, and
saliva drools out in streams. It leaves a wet, irregular wake, in the
dust of the roadside, behind the carts. By and by, the men will stop
for food and drink. They cannot choose what it shall be. They cannot
afford to choose. But the food of the Emperor is carefully selected.
Physicians examine those who handle it, who bring it to the Palace, to
see that they are in good health. They examine the food, disinfect it,
see to its cooking. News of this is in the papers each day, not to
show that the Emperor is afraid, but to set an example to his
subjects.

In the houses along the roadside, little tradesmen are at work, all
naked in the heat. Or else they are bathing. For all along the high
road from Nikko to the capital, following its every bend and turning,
runs a ditch or channel filled with water. Sometimes the water is
clean and rushing, sometimes foul and stagnant and evil smelling. And
all the way along the high road people are bathing in this ditch or
channel, in the foul or running water, as it happens. They stand
naked, knee deep, men and children, while the women wash and bathe
also, but more modestly. Also, besides their bodies, they wash much
else in this long ditch,--clothes, pots, what-not. Very dirty seems
this channel, sewer, bath tub, as