One evening, as we were warily picking our way over the stepping-stones across the stream at the edge of the forest--a somewhat difficult matter in the darkness--Chang suddenly stopped short, uttered a low growl, and we distinctly heard the rustle of something in the long grass close by. Peering down with our lanterns, we saw the outline of a large snake, and heard the reptile hiss viciously as it disappeared into the brushwood. In spite of many assurances that these large snakes in Japan were perfectly harmless, and only the little flat-headed ‘mamushi’ deadly, I always chose to consider that, but for Chang’s timely warning, one of us would certainly have been poisoned.
Alas! those happy days in Japan are over now. All things must come to an end, and we, too, at last, had to say good-bye to fair Japonica, with its flowers, its sunshine, its dear, kindly, merry little people, and sail away westward. I look back and see it all again: the quaint little streets; the children flying their kites, with their small brothers and sisters firmly secured on their backs; the never-ceasing murmur of ‘Houdah-huydah,’ as the patient coolies slowly drag their heavy burdens up the hills; and all the countless sights and sounds only to be seen in that delightful land.
Even the earthquakes, the typhoons, and the terrible floods seem to lose half their terrors viewed across that mighty expanse of ever-rolling ocean that separates us now from all things Japanese.
THE LOTUS FLOWER OF JAPAN.
Sometimes, at night, as I lie awake in my Norfolk home and listen to the murmur of the surf breaking against the cliffs far below, I fancy I can hear the whispered Sayonaras, borne on the waves from my friends far away; and as the wind sighs round the house like a soul in trouble, I am reminded of those charming lines from ‘The Light of Asia’:
‘Ye are the voices of the wandering wind,
Who seek for rest, and rest can never find,’
and I wonder if perchance in their restless journeyings they will bear back my answering message: ‘Sayonara! Farewell, farewell!’