Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/239

Rh emphasis is laid on the well and the water-basin, and they, as the newspapers and the theatrical slang of America would put it, are ‘featured.’ But in practically every garden this idea of the life-giving element must be found.

Among the pictures in this book several water gardens are shown. The little gem of a miniature lake view facing this page we discovered in a garden at Ashinoyu, up in the sulphurous hills above Miyanoshita. I had dragged our artist and another painter friend up there, to do a garden with which I had fallen in love shortly before, when taking sulphur baths at the daintiest of private houses in the village. On finding the house let to a Japanese admiral, and therefore inaccessible, we had to justify our tramp in some way. The whole population of the village interested themselves in our quest, as is the friendly Japanese habit, and they let us investigate every garden whose gates we liked the look of, until, in a hopeless embarrassment of riches, we settled on this one. The water which fed the pond came bubbling from a spring in the centre, but a tiny trickle of a waterfall helped too—dripping from the rocks below the lantern. There was a great group of Lilies, which were no longer in flower, and it was certainly not their fragrance that lingered there still, for this little lake of Paradise smelled like the infernal regions. However, the goldfish did not seem to mind it, but flashed