LETTER XIV

Summary

Fujihara, June 24.

Ito's informants were right. Comfort was left behind at Nikkô!

A little woman brought two depressed-looking mares at 6 this morning; my saddle and bridle were put on one, and Ito and the baggage on the other; my hosts and I exchanged cordial good wishes and obeisances, and with the woman dragging my sorry mare by a rope round her nose, we left the glorious shrines and solemn cryptomeria groves of Nikkô behind, passed down its long, clean street and where the In Memoriam avenue is densest and darkest turned off to the left by a path like the bed of a brook, which afterwards, as a most atrocious trail, wound about among the rough boulders of the Daiya, which it crosses often on temporary bridges of timbers covered with branches and soil. After crossing one of the low spurs of the Nikkôsan mountains, we wound among ravines whose steep sides are clothed with maple, oak, magnolia, elm, pine, and cryptomeria, linked together by festoons of the redundant Wistaria chinensis, and brightened by azalea and syringa clusters. Every vista was blocked by some grand mountain, waterfalls thundered, bright streams glanced through the trees, and in the glorious sunshine of June the country looked most beautiful.