Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/51

 decorative. Meditative oxen, drawing a primitive plough made of a pointed stick, loosen the soil for the new planting, and tiny green wheat-shoots, first of the three regular crops of the year, wait for the warm winter sun that opens the plum-blossoms.

Above and beyond Sugita is Minë, a temple on a mountain-top, with a background of dense pine forest, a foreground of bamboos, and an old priest, whose successful use of the moxa brings sufferers from long distances for treatment. A bridle-path follows for several miles the knife-edge of a ridge commanding noble views of sea and shore, of the blue Hakone range, its great sentinel Oyama, and Fuji beyond. The high ridge of Minë is the backbone of a great promontory running out into the sea, the Bay of Yeddo on one side and Odawara Bay on the other. Square sails of unnumbered fishing-boats fleck the blue horizon, and the view seaward is unbroken. Over an old race-course and archery-range of feudal days the path leads, till at a sudden turn it strikes into a pine forest, where the horses’ hoofs fall noiseless on thick carpets of dry pine-needles, and the cave-like twilight, coolness, and stillness seem as solemn as in that wood where Virgil and Dante walked, before they visited the circles of the other world.

A steep plunge down a slippery, clayey trail takes the rider from the melancholy darkness to a solitary forest clearing, with low temple buildings on one side. Here, massed against feathery fronds of giant bamboos, blaze boughs of fine-leafed maples, all vivid crimson to the tips. While the priests bring saké tubs, and the amado, or outside shutters of their house, to make a table, and improvise benches with various temple and domestic properties, visitors may wander through the forest to open spaces, whence all the coasts of the two bays and every valley of the province lie visible, and a column of 35