On the Inland Sea, aboard the smart little steamer of the Government Railways, my companion spoke of the extent to which sea-faring men, a conservative class, had abandoned the use of the single square sail which one sees in Japanese prints; the little vessels had been re-rigged in Western fashion. But many superstitions had survived the abolished square sails. The mother of my fellow-traveller once told him that, when she crossed the Inland Sea in an old-style ship and a storm arose, the shipmaster earnestly addressed the passengers in these words, "Somebody here must be unclean; if so, please tell me openly." The title of the book my companion was reading was _The History of the Southern Savage_. Who was the "Southern Savage"? The word is _namban_, the name given to the early Portuguese and Spanish voyagers to Japan. (The Dutch were called _komojin_, red-haired men.) In looking through the official railway guide on the boat I saw that there was a list of specially favourable places for viewing the moon. An M.P. passenger told me that the average cost of getting returned to the Diet was 10,000 yen[174]. The difficulties of communication in Shikoku are so considerable that I was compelled to leave the two prefectures of Tokushima and Kochi unvisited. Kochi is without a yard of railway line. In the prefecture of Ehime most of my journey had to be made by _kuruma_. Communication between the four prefectures of Shikoku--the one in which I landed was Kagawa--is largely conducted by coasting steamers and sailing craft. An interesting thing in Kochi is the area by the sea in which two crops of rice are grown in the year. Tokushima holds a leading place in the production of indigo. At one place in the hills the adventurous have the satisfaction of crossing a river by means of suspension bridges made of vine branches. The streets of Takamatsu, the capital of Kagawa, are many of them so narrow that the shopkeepers on either side have joint sun screens which they draw right across the thoroughfares. Here I found the carts hauled by a smallish breed of cow. The placid animals are handier in a narrow place and less expensive than horses. They are shod, like their drivers, in _waraji_. In Shikoku the cow or ox is generally used in the paddies instead of the horse. "It is slower but strong and can plough deep," one agricultural expert said. "It eats cheaper food than the horse, which moves too fast in a small paddy. Cows and oxen are probably not working for more than seventy-five or eighty days in the year."