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388 checkered with rice fields and lotus ponds, but in one minute more the hills have closed in, leaving only room for the track. At 10:37 we are running along a narrow valley with its terraced rice paddies where many of the hills show naked soil among the bamboo, scattering pine and other small trees; then we are out among garden patches thickly mulched with straw. At 10:38 we are between higher hills with but narrow areas for rice stretching close along the track, but in two minutes these are passed and we are among low hills with terraced dry fields. At 10:42 we are spinning along the level valley with its rice, but are quickly out again among hills with naked soil where erosion was marked. This is just before passing Funkai where we are following the course of a stream some sixty feet wide with but little cultivated land in small areas. At 10:47 we are again passing narrow rice fields near the track where the people are busy weeding with their hands, half knee-deep in water. At 10:53 we enter a broader valley stretching far to the south and seaward, but we had crossed it

Fig. 223.—Public highway in Japan.