Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/52

 smoke proclaims the living volcano on Oshima’s island, far down the coast.

Groups of cheery pilgrims come chattering down from the forest, untie their sandals, wash their feet, and disappear within the temple; where the old priest writes sacred characters on their bared backs to indicate where his attendant shall place the lumps of sticky moxa dough. Another attendant goes down the line of victims and touches a light to these cones, which burn with a slow, red glow, and hiss and smoke upon the flesh for agonizing seconds. The priest reads pious books and casts up accounts, while the patients endure without a groan tortures compared with which the searing with the white-hot irons of Parisian moxa treatment is comfortable. The Minë priest has some secret of composition for his moxa dough which has kept it in favor for many years, and almost the only revenue of the temple is derived from this source. Rheumatism, lumbago, and paralysis yield to the moxa treatment, and the Japanese resort to it for all their aches and ills, the coolies’ backs and legs being often finely patterned with its scars.

The prospect from Minë’s promontory is rivalled by that at Kanozau, directly across the Bay, one of the highest points on the long tongue of separating land. Here are splendid old temples, almost un visited by foreigners, but the glory of the place is the view of the ninety-nine valleys, of Yeddo Bay, the ocean, and the ever-dominant Fujiyama. Every Japanese knows the famous landscapes of his country, and the mention of these ninety-nine valleys and the thousand pine-clad islands of Matsuyama brings a light to his eyes.

At Yokosuka, fifteen miles below Yokohama, are the Government arsenal, navy-yard, and dry docks, with their fleets of war-ships that put to shame the American squadron in Asiatic waters. The Japanese Government has both constructed and bought a navy; some vessels 36