Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/99

 capital of Yedo he built a castle on a far grander scale than that of Hideyoshi, though its greater size rendered it less defensible. Around it stretched a triple line of moats, the outermost measuring nine and a half miles in length, the innermost one and a half, their scarps constructed with blocks of granite nearly as colossal as those of the Osaka stronghold, though in the case of the Yedo fortification every stone had to be carried hundreds of miles over sea. The gates, the parapets, the towers, and all the accessories were proportionately as huge as those at Osaka, and the whole structure constituted one of the most stupendous works ever undertaken, not excepting even the pyramids of Egypt. There is not to be found elsewhere a more striking monument of military power, nor can any one considering such a work, as well as its immediate predecessor, the Taikō's stronghold at Osaka, and its numerous contemporaries of lesser but still striking proportions in the principal fiefs, refuse to credit the Japanese with capacity for large conceptions and competence to carry them into practice.

There is another aspect of the Yedo fortress that commands attention. Above the immense masses of masonry rose lofty banks of earth, their slopes turfed with fine Korean grass, and their summits planted with pine-trees, trained, year after year, to stretch evergreen arms towards the spacious moats. These moats varied in width