followed the course of the old road, from which the railway here diverges, as far as Mishima, and then, after crossing the ridge of mountain which forms the backbone of the Idzu Peninsula, descended to Atami on the western coast of Odawara Bay, a favorite watering-place during the winter months. The orange and banana trees testify to the mildness of its climate, and perhaps the geyser, which every fourth hour squirts out mud and boiling water by the village street, helps to keep up the temperature. Vries Island, with its eternally smoke-capped volcano, lies on the horizon away across the sea, and the natives believe that there is a connection between the two, for whenever Vries is particularly active the geyser discharges more violently.
AVENUES OF TORII IN FRONT OF AN INARI TEMPLE, NEAR SHIMIZU
On the 3d of November I started with a friend from Yokohama to walk over the Ten Province Pass (Jikkoku-toge) to Hakone and Miya-no-shita. It was the Emperor’s birthday, and all Atami was gay with flags; the national ensign with a red ball on a white ground fluttered everywhere. We mounted the steep street, and looked back at the village roofs and the deep blue water of Odawara Bay, and then turned into the woods of old camphor-trees surrounding the temple Ki-no-miya. Some of the camphors are enormous, and the largest of them are encircled with ropes of twisted straw and bunches of gohei, which show that they are sacred objects. Beyond the temple the path ascends, first through rice-fields and then up rough grassy hills, until it reaches the long plateau of turf where the Ten Province stone stands. Though so late in the year, there were still plenty of flowers. Down near Atami long sprays of hototogisu (Tricyrtis), with spotty purple flowers, hung out from the sandy banks, and by our path I saw Michaelmas daisies, golden-rod, dark-blue monk’s-hood, sky-blue gentians, magenta-flowered garlic, thistles of various colors, wild chrysanthemums, pink or white with a gold centre, and the beautiful white stars of the grass of Parnassus. The sun was quite hot, and we pulled out some provisions and sat down on the grass near the stone to enjoy them and the marvellous view. To the north the snowy cone of Fuji rose high against the blue sky; between us and it the long crest of down-land was mostly covered with suzuki (Eulalia japonica), a lovely grass with tall plumes of seed which shine like silver gossamer, and the ranges of lower mountains were brilliant with the autumnal colors of maples and other trees; below us on the east lay the little peninsula of Manazura, jutting out into Sagami Bay, with a curve of rice-fields on each side of the narrow neck which connects it with the mainland, and beyond it the long straight line of the Pacific was broken only by Vries Island and its cloud of smoke; a succession of hilly promontories and little bays stretched all down the coast of Idzu to the southward, and returned northward again up the other side of the peninsula, past Joyama, with a lake-like inlet of sea, to Numadzu, where the great sweep of Suruga Bay began, bordered with sands and sunny rice-fields, and ended only at Kuno-zan, far to the westward. Our path went on along the downs,
JIZŌ SAMA, NEAR HAKONE