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266 means of the Pæony which decorates the lantern set out to welcome its return.

I have seen the festival of the Bon a number of times, but never in so perfect a way as I did a year ago at Hakone. We had travelled from Yokohama in burning heat on the 16th of August, and had had an interminable ride, on rough-gaited Japanese horses, up the pass from Yumoto, past Miyanoshita, to our village beside the lake. We had been on the go all day, and I was so tired that I could hardly sit up in the saddle; while the poor horses, after ten or twelve miles of rough, uphill work, stumbled along dully. It was pitch dark at the top of the mountain pass when we began to descend, and just then—when we first caught sight of the lake—a fairy pageant passed before our eyes. A fleet of tiny, sparkling lights—for it seemed as if each one sent out the prescribed number of a hundred and eight welcoming fires—set in spirit ships (shoryobune) swept in a long line across the lake. Faintly, weirdly floated upwards the sound of music—wild and curious music, a march of the dead—from a lighted boat that followed. In an unbroken line the ships of souls, launched to return the ancestor spirits to the under world, glided out across the dark water, lay still, and then, one by one, the lights went out. Of all the hundreds, three, bravely burning, alone were left; and