ON THE SHORE NEAR MAIKO, THE STRAIT OF AKASHI TO THE RIGHT
there is a grove of curiously blown and twisted pine-trees, with the quaint forms which are loved by all artists, especially by the Japanese; and near Suma, wherever the wiry grasses had got a foothold among the sand, the shore was gay with scarlet lilies. The botanic name of this flower, which is really more like an amaryllis than a lily, is Nerine japonica. Its Japanese name is not so easy to determine, for wherever I went it had a different one; some of these names are shiwata-bana, teku-sari, chiridji, and ushino-ninniku (cow-garlic), but I think the commonest is higambana (equinox flower), and the best, for its opening marks the change of the season, the beginning of the end. It is probably because of this that, beautiful as it appears to European eyes, to the Japanese it is a flower of ill omen, associated in their minds with death and decay, and never used in art or in floral arrangements. The children, indeed, gather great armfuls of it; but they never take it inside their homes; the great bunches they have collected are either scattered among the family tombstones or left to wither on the foot-paths. They seem to like picking it because its juicy stem snaps so easily, and often amuse themselves as they sit by the road-side by breaking the stalks half through, leaving them hanging in regular joints, much as our children make dandelion or daisy chains. Near a little graveyard set down among the rice-fields the flowers grew in great profusion, making a gorgeous splash of brilliant color as a foreground to the gray stones, the yellowing grain, and the pale blue distant hills. The rice was ripening fast, and flocks of
LILIES BY THE SHORE, SUMA
rice-birds flew hurriedly across as they were chased from field to field by shouting boys. I wish I had made a sketch of a Japanese scarecrow; there were plenty of them about, and I never saw one without laughing; they were full of quaint humor and invention, and the little birds seemed to enjoy them as much as I did. They recalled the remark of a stranger in a fly-haunted parlor in South Carolina, where a small clock-work windmill revolved in the centre of the table. I asked whether it drove the flies away, and the owner replied,
