On one of them, at high tide, a steamer like the ark of Noah plies. It seems to go indifferently stern or bow foremost, and is no larger than a big-sized rowing boat. The one landing-stage to which I traced it was like a pasteboard on two rolling-pins, and stood as the threshold to the back door of a house. A European picture hung above the entrance, bright with greens and blues and reds and yellows, where this resplendent steamer floating amid green waves, showed at alternate windows a head, male, Japanese, dressed “foreign”; a head, female, Japanese, dressed Japanese. A policeman and a soldier both in uniform balanced on the deck at either end. The ark’s ports of call, as its starting-place and destination, remained a mystery. At low tide the canal was an inch of water between two banks of mud, and only at high tide could this toy ark float at all. * * * * * One long, straight street, broken into sections at the bridges, and then reset at different angles, runs from end to end of Tokyo, runs from Shimbashi to Ueno, from the “Mercantile Marine Store,” which sells dried fishes, to the Parcels Office of that delicious “Internal Railway,” otherwise unknown to fame. This is the main street of the town, here is the Ginza, with its red brick sidewalks, its shop-boys who speak English, even its plate glass windows. Here, too, is the goldsmith who advertises: “RINGS, BRONCHITIS, AND OTHER JEWELRY. BEST KINDS ONLY KEPT IN STOCK”; And the residence of that mysterious baker who keeps: “BEARDS, VINE CAKES AND SLOR FOR SALE.” And down it from end to end runs Tokyo’s main tramway. With the river on the east, the moated park upon the west, north and south the broad street runs, and the park of Shiba lies at one end and the park of Ueno at the other. Shiba, where the tombstones of the dead _shōgun_ lie in their sumptuous lacquered temples; Ueno, where the lacquered temples stand bullet-pierced, for the soldiers of the _shōgun_ and the soldiers of the emperor fought their last fight here before the great _Tenshisama_ came back to his own again. Once the closed gardens of Buddhistic monasteries, both parks now are open to the town, bicycles ride through them, nursemaids, their babies on their backs, loiter in them, little girls play classic games of bones, boys catch grasshoppers, while beneath the trees the low red blanketed tables of the _chaya_ offer ¼_d._ teas. The Park of Shiba is green and quiet, smaller than Ueno, for its temples hold so large a space. It is a forest growing in the heart of a town. Ueno is lighter, brighter, fuller of flowers and festivals, with long avenues of cherry-trees, and a lake where the lotus flowers grow thickly.