Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/348

 plain was a lake. The rivers having been raised artificially above the level of the surrounding country for the irrigation of the rice fields, their banks and levees melted away before the rush of waters, and the plain was scoured by swift currents running eight and fifteen feet deep over the rice fields. Farm-houses and villages disappeared in a day, and the wretched people saved themselves and their few effects by taking to boats and rafts or seeking refuge in trees. After two weeks of high-water and continuing rains, the flood subsided and the wreck was more apparent. A few farmers, by replanting and careful tending, obtained crops that season, but hundreds and hundreds of the homeless and destitute were sheltered and fed in the unused barracks at Osaka castle.

In the city itself only the castle and a few business streets were left above water, and thousands of houses and godowns were ruined; the mud-walls under the heavy tiled roofs collapsing like card-houses in the current. One hundred and forty-six bridges were carried away, and, for a time, boats were the only vehicles and means of communication. The suffering and destitution were terrible, and Osaka’s many industries were paralyzed. But in the shortest time after the subsidence of the waters temporary bridges and ferries were established, embankments patched up, houses rebuilt, and the city returned to its busy ways. Except for the mud-stained walls and the heaps of drift and debris on roof-tops, little reminded one of the disaster as we sped through the stone-paved streets. House-boats went up and down the river each evening with geisha and maiko singing happily, and koto and samisen ringing on the air till midnight. Jiutei’s queer hotel, a foreign inn up-stairs and a Japanese tea-house below stairs, was the scene of as much feasting as ever, and the recuperative power of Osaka’s people surprised one at every turn. 332