By night the sea-shore was again reached, at Odawara, whence two days’ journey took them to Yedo, where they arrived, on account of the delay in the sea voyage, at a period unusually late, but which Thunberg notes as an advantage, since it gave him, both going and returning, a better opportunity to observe the vegetation of the country. During the journey there had been rain sometimes, but not too often, and the cold had been such as occasionally to make fires very comfortable. The Japanese, he observed, bore the cold better than the rain, which did not altogether agree with their bare feet and heads. For the feet they used only slippers of rice straw,[53] left at the door whenever they entered a house, consisting of a sole, without upper leather or hind-piece (kept on by a thong, or strap, held fast between the toes), and soon soaked and spoiled by the rain, on which occasion, indeed, high wooden clogs were sometimes substituted. Ordinarily, even while travelling, no covering for the head was worn, but in hard rains they used an umbrella, a hat of plaited grass, and a cloak of oil-paper, for which the poorer class substituted a piece of straw matting, thrown over their backs. The weather, during a stay of twenty-six days at Yedo, from April 28 to May 25, was often damp, almost every day cloudy, with sometimes drizzling, and sometimes heavy, rain. Several slight shocks of earthquake were felt. Several fires occurred, which were soon extinguished. A great fire, during the Dutch visit of 1772, had burned from noon till eight at night, spreading over a vast space, and making it necessary to remove the Dutch three times. Down to the day of audience, which did not take place till the 18th of May, the Dutch were not suffered to go out. Numbers of persons obtained, however, permission to visit them. The first who called were five physicians and two astronomers, prompted especially by Thunberg’s scientific reputation, which the interpreters had noised abroad, and who were very inquisitive on various points of science. The questions of the astronomers related principally to eclipses, which it appeared they could not calculate to minutes, and frequently not even to hours; but besides the difficulty of carrying on this conversation through interpreters, another arose, from the fact that Thunberg’s astronomy had grown a little rusty, and that neither he nor the Japanese had any books to which they could refer.