Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/197

 any requisition in excess of the fixed limit. Further protection was extended to the peasants by enactments in 1625 and subsequently, to the effect that a horse's load must never weigh more than three hundred and twenty-nine pounds—it had previously been three hundred and seventy-five pounds—or a coolie's more than forty-one and two-thirds pounds.

Another effect produced by this greatly increased traffic was the establishment of properly equipped inns along the chief highways. Up to the first quarter of the seventeenth century, there existed only rude hostelries where the traveller was furnished with fuel to cook his meals and with a place to sleep. He carried his own stock of rice and his own bedding, such as it might be. But now the inns undertook to supply rice as well as fuel; and presently they became properly equipped hotels where a wayfarer found every provision for his comfort,—a warm bath, excellent and even dainty food, and bedding of wadded silk. Roadside rests also were erected, where hot tea, mulled wine, and cakes were always procurable. These changes were effected with remarkable rapidity, and almost simultaneously inns in districts where competition prevailed began to adopt a very practical system of advertising, first by sending out male touts along the roads, and afterwards by employing maidservants to lay hands on passers-by and hale them forcibly to the entertainment awaiting them within. Travelling thus became