file, haltered one to the other, each
as he stepped put his foot into the prints made, not merely by his
immediate file-leader of the particular gang, but by all others going
and coming for weeks before. The consequence was a succession of
scallops, distributed over long stretches of mud, the consistency of
which just sufficed to hold the shape thus impressed upon it. Japanese
horses are small, and as a class quarrelsome; the one I rode on this
occasion was little larger than a child's pony, and looked as if he
had not been curried for a month. I hesitated to impose upon him my
weight, a scruple which would have been intensified had I known the
character of the pilgrimage through which he was to bear me. With his
feet at the bottom of the scallop, the rounded top rose above his
knee, nearly giving his patient nose the touch which his dejected mood
and drooping head seemed to invite. At the first start he stumbled,
nearly falling on me, but escaped with nostrils and mouth full of
liquid dirt.

A day to go, a day to come, and one intervening to cross the lake and
ascend the volcano, measured our excursion; through the whole of which
we had sunny skies and exhilarating temperature till the last hour of
our return, when a drizzling rain suggested what might have been our
discomfort had the heavens above been as unpropitious as the roads
beneath. Even the crossing of the lake and the ascent were
particularly favored, the sky literally cloudless and water smooth;
whereas the following morning, when we rose to depart, a fog had
settled on the mountain, making movement upon it doubtful and even to
a slight degree dangerous. The lake, some six miles by ten, and
abounding in islets, lay smiling under the bright, wintry sun, its
shores clad with leafless forests mingled with evergreens, save the
barren slopes of the volcano itself; beneath the distant lava stream
of which we were told seventeen hundred people lay, buried by the last
eruption. The scene tempted me more than most to description, for the
brilliant stillness of a clear November day, and the gaunt, bare
trees, were strange to our long experience of verdure in southern
Japan, and smacked strongly of home--Hakodate being in the latitude of
New York; but, as always, the majority have their own vision, their
own memory, of just such conditions and surroundings, more vivid for
them than another's portrayal.

The two nights at the lake we slept in a Japanese tea-house,
s