The wearer inserts the thong between the great toe and its neighbor. When he is barefooted this operation is easily performed; and, in order to accommodate his stockinged feet to the sandal, the Japanese stocking has a separate place for the "thumb-toe," as one of them called the largest of his "foot-fingers." The foot of the Japanese stocking closely resembles the mitten of America, which young women in certain localities are said to present to discarded admirers. [Illustration: A JAPANESE SANDAL.] The road wound among the fields where the rice was growing luxuriantly, and where now and then they found beans and millet, and other products of Japanese agriculture. The cultivation was evidently of the most careful character, as the fields were cut here and there with little channels for irrigation; and there were frequent deposits of fertilizing materials, whose character was apparent to the nose before it was to the eye. In some places, where the laborers were stooping to weed the plants, there was little more of them visible than their broad sun-hats; and it did not require a great stretch of the imagination to believe they were a new kind of mushroom from Brobdingnagian gardens. Hills like sharply rounded cones rose from each side of the narrow valley they were descending; and the dense growth of wood with which the most of them were covered made a marked contrast to the thoroughly cleared fields. The boys saw over, and over, and over again the pictures they had often seen on Japanese fans and boxes and wondered if they were realities. They had already learned that the apparently impossible pictures we find in Japanese art are not only possible, but actual; but they had not yet seen so thorough a confirmation of it as on this day's ride. Several times they came suddenly upon villages, and very often these discoveries were quite unexpected. As they rode along the valley narrowed, and the hills became larger and more densely covered with trees. By-and-by they halted at a wayside tea-house, and were told to leave the little carriages and rest awhile. Frank protested that he was not in need of any rest; but he changed his mind when the Doctor told him that they had reached one of the objects of their journey, and that he would miss an interesting sight if he kept on. They were at the shrine of Dai-Boots. They went up an avenue between two rows of trees, and right before them was the famous statue. It was indeed a grand work of art.