Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/88

 the horses and mares are carefully kept apart. For two hundred miles on the tokaido, or imperial road, from Osaka to Yeddo, a mare is never seen, and on other portions of the high road horses ere equally scarce. But our driver, while lashing his ponies into a sharp canter along the narrow road, in many places crowded with pedestrians, seemed to take delight in occasionally upsetting the baskets of the street peddlers and trying the cracker of his whip upon the back of an unfortunate beggar, who was not quick enough in petting out of the way. A betto accompanied us, running along side the horses and keeping up a warning cry of “Ah! hay! Ah! hay!” to clear the track, He started with a fair amount of clothing, but gradually threw it off and tossed it to the driver until nearly reduced to first principles, a blue handkerchief tied around his head, and a very narrow girdle around his loins, This undress uniform, however, showed his tattooing to the best advantage, his body being completely covered with blue and red dragons, birds, fishes, and nondescript animals.

Passing through the native town, over a handsome stone bridge which spans the canal, across the narrow causeway connecting Yokohama with the main land, we reached Kanagawa, and turning into the tokaido, we were fairly on the road to the capital, which is a continuous street nearly all the way to Yeddo, lined with shops, tea houses and wayside inns, and swarming with travellers on foot and horseback, peddlers, priests and beggars, in every variety of strange costume. We insisted that Jehu should lesson his speed that we might enjoy the curious scenes, and also for fear of accident to the little half-naked urchins who insisted upon running across the road in front of our horses, to their eminent peril of life and limb. Many of these sights would have been enigmas to me, but for the explanation of a gentleman accompanying us, who had been a resident of Japan for several years.

Here comes a strolling band of musicians, who make up in noise and discord what they lack in music and melody, and we are glad to get past the crowd at their heels and beyond the hearing of their ear-splitting tunes. Now we overtake a blind beggar leaning on a staff. His head is shaved entirely smooth, and shines like a white ball. It seems to me that in this country all the beggars are blind, or else all the blind are beggars. There are no good oculists in