Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/205

 we came forth arrayed in the garb of civilization, we were heroes.

For weeks after we returned to the plain, the treacherous Fujiyama stood unusually clear and near at hand. “The summer Fuji,” its dark-brown slopes only touched with a fine line or two of snow, is less beautiful than “the winter Fuji,” with its glistening crown; and our Mount Rainier, whose snows are eternal, whose wooded slopes shadow the dark-green waters of Puget Sound, is lovelier still. But though we have the more glorious mountain, the snow, the rocks, the forest, we have not the people instinct with love of poetry and nature; we have not the race-refinement, and the race-traditions, that would make of it another Fuji, invested with the light of dream and legend, dear and near to every heart.

the kago gave way to the jinrikisha, the jinrikisha disappears before the steam-engine, which reduces a ri to a cho, and extends the empire of the commonplace. The first railroads, built by English engineers and equipped with English rolling-stock, have been copied by the Japanese engineers, who have directed the later works. The Tokaido railway line, built from both ends, put Tokio and Kioto within twenty-four hours of each other. The forty miles of railroad between Yokohama and Kodzu were completed in 1887, bringing Miyanoshita, a long day’s journey distant, within three hours of the great sea-port. The long tunnels and difficult country around Fujiyama, and the expensive engineering work at each river 189