down daily from the firs, are gathered for fuel to supply the want of wood, which is very scarce in some places. Nor doth horses’ dung lie long upon the ground, but is soon taken up by poor country children, and serves to manure the fields. For the same reason care is taken that the filth of travellers be not lost, and there are in several places, near country people’s houses, or in their fields, houses of office built for them. Old shoes of horses and men, which are thrown away as useless, are gathered in the same houses, burnt to ashes, and added to the mixture. Supplies of this composition are kept in large tubs or tuns, buried even with the ground in their villages and fields, and, being not covered, afford full as ungrateful and putrid a smell of radishes (which is the common food of country people) to tender noses, as the neatness and beauty of the road is agreeable to the eyes. “In several parts of the country the roads go over hills and mountains, which are sometimes so steep and high, that travellers are necessitated to get themselves carried over them in kago, such as I have described in the preceding chapter, because they cannot, without great difficulty and danger, pass them on horseback. But even this part of the road, which may be called bad in comparison to others, is green and pleasant, for the abundance of springs of clear water, and green bushes, and this all the year round, but particularly in the spring, when the flower-bearing trees and shrubs being then in their full blossom, prove an additional beauty, affording to the eye a curious view, and filling the nose with agreeable scent. “Several of the rivers we are to cross over, chiefly upon Tōkaidō, run with so impetuous a rapidity towards the sea that they will bear no bridge nor boat, and this by reason partly of the neighboring snow-mountains, where they arise, partly of the frequent great rains, which swell them to such a degree as to make them overflow their banks. These must be forded. Men, horses, and baggage, are delivered up to the care of certain people, bred up to this business, who are well acquainted with the bed of the river, and the places which are the most proper for fording. These people, as they are made answerable for their passenger’s lives, and all accidents that might befall them in the passage, exert all their strength, care, and dexterity, to support them with their arms against the impetuosity of the river, and the stones rolling down from the mountains where the rivers arise. Norimono are carried over by the same people. [Illustration: THE RIVER ŌI From _Official History of Japan_]