The heat is now upon us, and as I returned on my cycle through the Tokio streets I met gentlemen with fans, schoolboys with fans, errand-boys with big baskets and fans, kuruma men with fans, even the men dragging heavy carts fanned themselves as they struggled along. Yet very few women had fans, only the ladies riding in kurumas.
July 28.—I had to go up to the University and to several places and get ready for my start to-morrow. Fearfully hot.
July 29.—Started for Hakone. After the railway journey there was a tram ride for several miles along the old Tokkaido road; a beautiful avenue of Cryptomerias shaded it most of the way, and on one side gleams of the blue sea shone between the tree trunks. After reaching the foot of the hills there was a four-hours’ walk up the pass, by a steep and very rough path, with beautiful views of a clear river rushing over big rocks, and blue hills rising peak by peak behind the trees.
My luggage was carried by the quaintest human being to whom I have ever spoken—a dwarf. He hardly reached up to my elbow, and had bent legs and long arms, yet he was very strong and very genial, though so hideous. His back view was like this sketch, and his short stick, about 18 inches long, was very thick and used as a walking-stick or a support to prop up the saddle-like luggage-holder when he rested.
Going with him quite alone through the narrow paths in the woods I felt as though I had been transported into the Middle Ages, where damsels were served by strange dwarfs who led them to witches’ haunts and fairies’ palaces. I walked slowly in this dreamland, and he pattered along, half in a run, for his legs were so short that my slow pace was haste for him. But I need not have felt that his burden was too heavy, I met several charcoal-burners carrying six and seven times more than his load. It is wonderful what the natives can carry here.
We passed a mountain hamlet, a double row of houses built along a path. There was a runnel of clear water rushing down the middle of the road, and a tributary stream brought between each of the houses to join it. In its building the village must be very old, and is not so “Japanese” looking as the buildings of the plain. There seemed to be no gardens, but in the space between the houses grew banks of blue hydrangeas, crimson phlox, and great white lilies.
THE QUAINTEST BOW-LEGGED DWARF CARRIED MY LUGGAGE, AND TROTTED ON AHEAD LIKE A BEAR.
After a long and rather weary pull up the hills, where the road was bad and very stony, we crested them, and looked down on the lake of Hakone, girt with Cryptomerias.
In the evening I was housed in an old dwelling where daimios used to sleep when they travelled along the Tokkaido—by the lake whose farther shore was cut off by driving clouds. One could imagine it an ocean, and cool fresh breezes made me forget the stifling heat of Tokio.