Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/210

178, but indulged a secret hope that one robbery balanced another, and that in the end the spoils of war were equally divided. Commercial habit does breed an instinct of distrust, which many tourists would find discomforting; but this instinct was so agreeably modified in my fellow-countryman by generosity and justice, that on the whole we made as many friends as enemies. If a landlord tried to cheat us, we told him so with reprehensible directness; if he treated us well, we gave him a handsome present, and were as pleased as Diogenes would have been had he pursued his famous quest by the light of a Japanese lantern.

Men, honest or dishonest, interested us but little that day, so absorbingly magnificent was the scenery. At Akakura we should be in sight of the Sea of Japan, while Tōkyō faces the Pacific, so that our route ran north-west at an angle of about forty-five degrees, very nearly from coast to coast of the main island. The train would have to climb to a height of 3080 feet, crossing by means of the Usui Pass the volcanic backbone of mountains which culminates in Asama-yama (8280 feet), the largest active volcano in the country. As we steamed slowly up the steep gradient to the grassy levels of New and Old Karuizawa, a series of twenty-six tunnels, bored at such short distances from each other as to resemble the disjointed sockets of a gigantic telescope, provided intermittent glimpses of jagged cliffs and terrific gorges. Far below lay green valleys and plains, threaded by silver rivulets and dotted with infinitesimal chalets; beside us, densely-wooded slopes; to left and right, on the horizon, Myyōgi San and the Kōtsuke peaks rose frowning to the sky. Many passengers descended at Karuizawa,