Looking over the Bay of 808 Islands
Sunset among the pine-clad rocks
The White Co.
A natural arch
SCENES IN MATSUSHIMA BAY, JAPAN
The land is chiefly mountainous, the ranges running from south-west to north-east, interspersed with smiling valleys, fertile plains, chequered into regular squares by the narrow, raised embankments dividing the rice-fields, with, here and there, wild, desolate moors in places where even the untiring industry and agricultural skill of the people could not induce the stubborn ground to yield sustenance. Where anything useful can possibly be made to grow, the Japanese grow it. Beside plants of utility, they grow, to a greater extent than in any other land, plants intended only for pleasure, for the delight they give the Japanese eye by their beauty.
In no other country are flowers so reverently admired as in Japan; nowhere are they more skilfully grown and tended. Every month has a special blossom, and what may be termed its flower festival, when the people, high and low, rich and poor, go in their tens of thousands to seek happiness in the contemplation of Nature’s most delicate productions. The plum-blossom appears about a month after the New Year, and is followed by the far-famed cherry-flower early in April, when, in many ancient groves and on many hillsides, the lightest of delicate clouds, faintly pink, seem to have settled on the trees.
No words can do justice to the exquisite beauty of Japan in cherry-blossom time; it is then easily to be understood how dear the flower of the cherry is to the Japanese heart. To the people of Great Japan it is the emblem of patriotism and of chivalry, sharing their affections with the chrysanthemum, the badge of the empire. Other flowers grown to wonderful perfection are the peony, symbolical of valour; the graceful wistaria, the glowing azalea, the slim-stalked iris, the convolvulus, or “morning-glory,” in many strange forms, and the lotus, the sacred flower of Buddhism. Besides these and other cultivated flowers, Japan possesses wild blossoms galore that fleck its plains and valleys with colour. The leaves of the maple turn, in November, to hues of crimson and gold, clothing the woods with a glory to be equalled only in Canada.