In the country we were entering, the horse had taken the place of the ox as the beast of burden. Two men of some authority in the prefecture agreed that it was difficult to think of tracts in the south-west that would be suitable for cattle grazing. There was certainly no "square _ri_ where the price of land was low enough to keep sheep." As to cattle breeding and forestry, one of them must give way. It was necessary to keep immense areas under evergreen wood for the defence of the country against floods. With regard to the areas available for afforestation, for cattle keeping and for cultivation respectively, it was necessary to be on one's guard against "experts" who were disposed to claim all available land for their specialties. When we took to an automobile for the first stage of our long journey through Yamaguchi and Shimane--the railway came no farther than the city of Yamaguchi--I noticed that just as the bridges are often without parapets, the roads winding round the cliffs were, as in Fukushima, unprotected by wall or rail. This was due, no doubt, to considerations of economy, to a widely diffused sense of responsibility which makes people look after their own safety, and also, in some degree, to stout Japanese nerves. That our driver's nerves were sound enough was shown by the speed at which he drove the heavy car round sharp corners and down slippery descents where we should have dropped a few hundred feet had we gone over. At our first stopping-place I saw a photograph showing a Shinshu priest engaged with the girl pupils of a Buddhist school in tree planting. Our talk here was about the low incomes on which people contrive to live. A little more than a quarter of a century ago the family of a friend of mine, now of high rank, was living in a county town on 5 yen a month! There were two adults and three children. Rent was 1.20 yen and rice came to 1.80 yen. Even to-day an ex-Minister may have only 1,500 yen a year. Many ex-Governors are living quietly in villages. We went to call upon one of them who was getting great satisfaction out of his few _tan_. Among other things he told us was that there were five doctors and one midwife in the community. These doctors do not possess a Tokyo qualification. They have qualified by being taught by their fathers or by some other practitioner, and they are entitled to practise in their own village and in, perhaps, a neighbouring one. It was thoughtless of me, after inquiring about the doctors, to ask about the gravedigger. I was told that when there was no member of a "special tribe" available it was the duty of neighbours to dig graves. A community's displeasure was marked by neighbours refraining from helping to dig an unpopular person's grave. (One might have expected to hear that such a grave would be dug with alacrity.) Families which had run counter to public opinion had had to "apologise" before they could get neighbourly help at the burial of their dead.