THE FOOT OF NANTAI-ZAN
walk on to Yumoto, and see the sulphur springs and the wide moorland, Senjō-ga-hara, which lies surrounded by mountain-peaks at a height of nearly five thousand feet above the sea. On the moor the grasses do not grow high enough to conceal the flowers, and I found it gay with purple iris and white meadow-rue. The baths in Yumoto are open to the public; they are large wooden tanks under sheds by the road-side, and as you walk along the street you see the patients, men, women, and children, all sitting together, in a state of nature, up to their necks in the steaming malodorous soup. The clouds were gathering round the mountain-tops as I started to walk back to Chūzenji, and before I had finished a rapid sketch on the moor the rain began again in torrents; the road was a series of small ponds, and my coolie insisted on carrying me, as well as my sketching materials, through them; but he unfortunately stumbled under my weight, and dropped me in the deepest of them, and what with the wet above and below I was well soaked by the time I reached my tea-house. The hibachi seems a very inadequate means of warmth on such occasions; a hot bath and whiskey and dry clothes are more effective, and after dinner a bottle of tamago-sake, a hot compound of whipped egg and sake, soon produces a pleasing drowsiness. Since leaving Chūzenji I have recognized the place in many drawings on screens and fans; the artist always gives its main features—the lake, the cryptomerias, the huge bronze torii, and the steep wooded slope of Nantai-zan—but he combines them in one view as you never can see them in reality. The rain had played havoc with the road back to Nikko; several bridges were down, but temporary ones built of fagots made it possible to cross the streams. All the higher woods near the lake are hung with gray moss, and the flowering shrubs which grow among them are endless—azaleas, climbing and bushy hydrangeas, weigelia, seringa, and wild vine; on the ground I found orange Turk’s-cap lilies, columbines, the big Lilium cordifolium, and ferns of many kinds.
Notwithstanding the advantage of cooler nights, I was glad to leave the green mountains, with their constant rain and mists, and the shut-in valleys, where it was impossible to see more than a few hundred yards away, and get down
THE MOAT OF BENTEN-SHIBA