Page:In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908).djvu/27

 school patronized by the Hamaguchi family; and having accepted his invitation, in the name of the entire region, to visit them and speak to the school and to the teachers of the Prefecture, the cordial greeting, hospitable entertainment, and the surpassingly beautiful scenery, afforded a rich reward for the three or four days of time required. For, as to the scenery, not the drive around the Bay of Naples or along the Bosphorus excels in natural beauty the jinrikisha ride that surmounts the cliffs, or clings to their sides, above the bay of Shimidzu ("Clear Water"); while for a certain picturesqueness of human interest it surpasses them both. On the way back to Wakayama——for Hiro Mura is more than twenty miles from the nearest railway station——three men to each jinrikisha, running with scarcely a pause and at a rate that would have gained credit for any horse as a fairly good roadster, brought us to the well-situated tea—house at Wakeno—ura. For centuries the most celebrated of Japanese poets have sung the praises of the scenery of this region——the boats with the women gathering seaweed at low tide, the fishermen in the offing, the storks standing on one leg in the water, or flying above the rushes of the salt marsh. Here we were met for tiffin by the Governor of the Prefecture and the mayor of the city, and immediately after escorted to the city hall of Wakayama, where an audience of some eight hundred, officials and teachers, had already assembled. While in the waiting room of this hall, a telegram from Mr. Yokoi was handed to me, announcing that Marquis Ito had already left Oiso and would reach Kyoto that very evening and arrange to see me the next day.

It was now necessary to change the plan of sight-seeing in the interesting castle-town of Wakayama for an immediate return to Kyoto. Thus we were taken directly from the Hall to the railway station and, on reaching Osaka, hurried across the city in time to catch an evening train; an hour