In the morning sunlight Miyajima’s granite _torī_ stood knee-deep in the pale blue waves. Its temple roofs were brown against the dark, green pines, and the sacred island, where neither Birth nor Death may come, slept blue-black with shadows in the dawn. And still they glided by, the green islands on the blue water. The sun travelled up the sky; it grew hot--hotter. At mid-day we had reached the narrow channel, where mainland and island are so close that the sea is but a canal between the houses; and the children of the two villages throw stones across the stream. Here, at the end of the passage, a great stone lantern stands deep in the idle water. Then, abruptly, as we turned, the canal was gone; and the wide, blue sea lay shimmering among the green islands in the summer sun. Under the striped awning of our roof-top it was cool, but outside the sun was smiting sea and land, until sea and islands quivered, quivered, losing themselves, colour and outline, in one mist of shimmering, shadowy blue. And the ship and the sun travelled on. * * * * * Five sturdy naval cadets shared our luncheon with us, and knew the number and the tonnage of England’s smallest gunboats, and for all their blue uniform and “foreign” dirk, their _Sayonara_ as they left us were courteous with an old-time courtesy. And the sun grew hot and hotter. The light like a mist wrapt sea and islands round. The continuous quivering hurt. On the other side the deep-dented mountains of the mainland, grown bare and scraped now, caught the sunshine on their rocky patches, and sent it in glittering arrows of light across the still air. And yet in the brown villages, at the mountains’ feet, the blue-tuniced, brown-legged peasants were working in the sun; and at each stopping-place the bareheaded men and women came off in boats to offer their fruit and _saké_ in long-handled fishing-nets, scent-bottles full of _saké_ flavoured with plum-blossom, _saké_ flavoured with chrysanthemum or peach-blossom, white rice, “woman’s” _saké_, _saké_ to ward off old age, or all and any of the nine different kinds of _saké_ for which Tomotsu is famous, and all in scent-bottles, artistically tied up and labelled, and costing, bottle and all, _is-sen_. One old lady was highly indignant when after much excitement we had contrived to haul up in the fishing-net the exact scent-bottle we coveted, and had sent her down one sen in return, for the patois of the district makes _is-sen_ of _jis-sen_ (10 sen = 2½_d._), to the unaccustomed ear. And the ship and the sun travelled on. * * * * *