Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/365

 perpendicular green mountain-wall with its base sunk in the feathery, spray-like tops of bamboo groves. To us came peddlers and packs with samples of everything the town could offer, and the rooms were soon a bazaar of bamboo wares.

All the afternoon we roamed about Arima, climbing its steep streets and threading its narrow by-ways. In the glaring white sunlight the shops were caves of cool shadow, and we found them filled with everything that bamboo will make, from clothes-baskets to toothpicks, and all selling for a song. Their weight is almost nothing, but, with the most ingenious packing, the space they consume makes the cost of shipment to America equal that of production. Except the necessaries of life, nothing seems to be sold in Arima save bamboo baskets and straw work; and every house is a basket-factory, where father, mother, children, and almost babes, weave baskets or prepare the bamboo. Heredity asserts itself again, and these descendants of generations of basket-makers work with a dexterity equalling sleight-of-hand tricksters. Arima’s industrial life is a fine study in political economy.

The hill-side is musical with the boom of Buddhist bells and echoing clang of Shinto gongs; but more strangers toil upward for a drink from the sparkling, ice-cold soda spring beside one temple, than to pray at its door-way. For centuries Arima’s hot-springs have wrought their cures, and sufferers from rheumatism and skin diseases have flocked to its pools. The Government has charge of the springs, and the waters are conducted to a large bath-house in the heart of the village, where free baths in the common pool are open to every one, and where private baths may be obtained at a trifling charge. 349