Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/98

 to withstand anything but the fire of heavy artillery. Within this triple tier of walls and moats are extensive pleasure grounds, shrubberies, gardens and dainty little tea houses. In one place the Mikado has caused a road to be constructed between an avenue of trees in imitation of the great high road of the Empire, with exact models of the houses occupied by the peasants, surrounded by rice fields, that he may see how his people live and how rice is produced. Here he takes his daily rides and walks, and occasionally goes to the gardens of the palace by the seashore, and sometimes reviews his troops and ships of war. His life is as yet very secluded, but he is gradually breaking through the holy imprisonment in which his ancestors have lived and died. He is surrounded by men of advanced and liberal ideas, who encourage him in his desire to learn to become an intelligent ruler of an empire of forty millions of people.

Nothing is more striking to the eye of a stranger when passing from the commercial part of the city to the official quarter than the vast dimensions of all the residences of the feudal Daimios. Several hundred of these princes, each with five or ten thousand armed retainers within his houses and grounds, one would think, would be dangerous guests of the government, and under the new order of things the Mikado has wisely changed the law, and they now usually reside on their estates, except such aa hold office under the government. But, perhaps, being less under espionage, they may plot a revolution and be even more mischievous to the powers that be.

From the castle we drive about a mile to Mount Atango, one of the highest points near the center of the city, so-called from the god Atango, whose temple once crowned the summit. A giddy flight of one hundred stone steps, called Otoko Zaka, or men’s steps, leads directly to the top, to which, however, there is an easier flight winding around the side, called Onna Zaka, or Women’s Steps, There is a tradition of a young Japanese prince who, many years ago, was dared by his lady love, as the price of her hand, to ride on horseback up and down this steepest flight, and having safely performed the feat, he claimed and received his bride. It may be a very pretty story, but unless the breed of Japanese horses has very much degenerated since then, I must consider it a legend and a myth. General Putnam’s feat at