Below us, the trees make a delicate pattern of dark, wet lace.
Then the rose-color deepens and dulls, the upper sky becomes colorless; all floats in unreal space, and Kioto disappears from before my eyes: forever, I suppose—as the charm of this scene, which will never come again; as the little maiden whom I met to-day, only for an eternal good-by.
[A JAPANESE DAY.—FROM KIOTO TO GIFU]
Nagoya, September.
Notwithstanding the long parting, which kept us up very late, the same courteous Japanese friends were at the hotel in the morning to bid us a still more final good-by. Oye-San alone remained faithful to his self-intrusted care of us, and determined to see us as far as the land would allow,—that is to say, to the shores of Biwa Lake.
The caravan was smaller now, diminished by our parting with Awoki, the interpreter, and the men necessary to trundle him about. Still we were a goodly company,—nineteen men in all, of whom two were masters, one the servant, and the rest the runners who were to get us and our baggage to Otzu on Biwa Lake long before noon. There was to be no novelty on our road, it being merely the highway from the capital to the lake. It was a lovely morning, the sun long risen, and all the places and buildings now a part of our memories glistening in the shadow and the dew. We turned our backs for the last time on Kiyomidzu, and ran through the great gate of the temple near us; then, bumping down the steep steps under it, skirted the great wall of Dai Butzu and the interminable side of the Sanjiu sangendo (the hall of the thirty-three spaces),[10] along which in old times the archers used to shoot. Then we gradually got out of the city, into the road filled with traffic going both ways. There seemed to be no break between town and country. Here and there the mountain side, covered with trees, descended to the road. But the effect was that of a long street, deep among hills, and continuously spotted with buildings. Long trains of beautiful black bulls, drawing lumber or merchandise, or carrying straw-covered bales, streamed peacefully along. We passed peasant women,—hardy, tall, sometimes handsome, with scarlet undergowns held up; occasionally one riding on a pack-horse, or in her place a child perched on the hump of the wooden saddle. Or, again, peasants bearing loads on their backs, or carriers with weighty merchandise swung between them on poles; priests, young and old, stepping gravely in their white, or yellow, or black dresses—some with umbrellas open, others, whose quicker step meant that they had not far to go (perhaps only to some wayside temple), protecting their shaven heads with outspread fan. Or a kuruma, usually with one runner, taking into town, economically, two women together, one old, one young, and followed by another kuruma carrying some old gentleman, very thin or very fat, the head of a family. Kurumas carrying Japanese tourists or travelers, with hideous billycock hats, or Anglo-Indian helmets, or wide straw hats à la mode de Third Avenue, these abominable head-pieces contrasting with their graceful gowns, as did their luggage, wrapped up in silk handkerchiefs with their European traveling rugs. Or, again, other kurumas carrying unprotected females in pairs, with the usual indifferent or forlorn look; or couples of young girls more gaily dressed, with flowery hairpins, the one evidently a chaperon to the other; then a Government official, all European, with hurrying runners; sometimes, but rarely, the Japanese litter, or kago, or several if for a party, their occupants lying at their ease as to their backs, but twisted into knots as to their feet, and swaying with the movement of the trotting carriers. Bent to one side by the heavy ridgepole, which passes too low to allow the head to lie in the axis of the body, sweet-eyed women's faces, tea-rose or peach-colored, looked up from the bamboo basket of the litter. With proper indifference their lords and masters looked at us obliquely. On the roofs was spread a miscellaneous quantity of luggage.
From time to time troopers or officers, of course in European costume, mounted on Japanese chargers, cantered past. Two hours of this; then the sides of the road, which had risen and fallen with hill and valley, melted away, and the harbor of Otzu and Lake Biwa and blue mountains over the water, and others sketched in the air, were spread before us in the blaze of sunlight seen through the cool shadow of the mountains.
We rode down the hill to a little jetty, marvelously like a North River dock, with big sheds where passengers were waiting, and a little steamer fastened to the wharf. We bade good-by for the last time to Oye-San, who said many things that we appreciated but did not understand the words of, and who pointed to the square Japanese sails glittering in the far-off light, saying, "Fune, Fune!" ("The boats, the boats!") We dismissed kurumas and kurumaya and sailed off with Hakodate (the courier) alone. We stretched ourselves on the upper deck, half in sun, half in shadow, and blinked lazily at the distant blue mountains and the great sea-like lake.