the Japanese pack-horses arises from sheer lack of the exercise
of their eyesight. These unkempt brutes are strangers to curry-combs
and brushes, though a semi-monthly scrubbing in hot water keeps them
tolerably clean. Their shoes are a curiosity: the hoofs are not shod
with iron, but with straw sandals, tied on thrice or oftener daily.
Grass is scarce in Japan, and oats are unknown. The nags live on
beans, barley, and the stalks, leaves and tops of succulent plants,
with only an occasional wisp of hay or grass.

In certain districts horses of one or the other sex, as the law
determines, are kept exclusively. Horses of the gentler sex in Japan
are usually led by women. During part of my journey to the place which
I am about to describe the leader of the mare I bestrode was a maiden
of some forty summers--a neat, spare, vinegar-faced sylph, who had
evidently long since left the matrimonial market, and had devoted
herself to making one horse happy for the rest of her pilgrimage. That
she was neither wife nor widow I discovered, not by asking questions,
but by the manner in which her hair was dressed. Japanese virgins and
wives have each distinct coiffures, by which, apart from the shaven
eyebrows and the teeth dyed black of the married women, the _musume_
or young maiden may be known. The widow who has resolved never to
marry again (always too old or ugly) is distinguished by her smooth
skull, every hair of which is shaved off. A lady of rank may also be
known by her coiffure; and many other distinctions are thus noted.

I waited three-quarters of an hour for my horse and its leader to
appear at the post-relay at which I sat down, and was stared at during
that time by about three hundred pairs of eyes. The populace of
each village turned out _en masse_ to see the foreigner, and they
diligently improved their time in examining him from crown to
boot-sole. Like everything else in the rural districts of Japan, my
guide was not in a hurry, and could not understand why a foreigner
should be. But finally arriving, she bowed very low and invited me
to climb up on the saddle, and off we started for a mountain ride of
eight miles.

A Japanese pack-horse, at his best, seems always swaying between two
opinions: his affection for the bestower of his beans and that for the
repose of the stable mutually attract him. On this occasion the little
woman gently led the horse over the rough places and down the steep
paths with the ejacul