Page:TASJ-1-1-2.djvu/324

 the world. An incredulous Prince of Mito is said to have dug down for six days around it without finding the end. From Kashima to Katori is a distance of 3$1⁄2$ ri by boat, and with a favourable wind the journey takes only a couple of hours. You descend the Nishiura lake until it joins the Tonegawa, which river you reascend for about a ri as far as the village of Tsunomiya. The shrine is 18 chô from this village and is situated in a grove of immense cryptomeria. It is larger than that of Kashima and in better repair. The god is called Futsunushi no mikoto, and the shrine is so called from the department of Shimôsa in which it is situated. According to the legend the ancestor of this god was a large heap of stones formed by the blood which dripped from Isanagi no Mikoto’s sword after slaying Kagutsuchi. Futsunushi is also worshipped at the temple of Kasuga near Nara. The temple is said to have been founded during the divine age.

From Tsunomiya is a walk of 10 ri along the right bank of the Tonegawa to Chôshi. By the river it is 9 ri. Chôshi is a large town of over 3,000 houses. It is a prosperous fishing place, but the harbour is a very bad one: on either side of the mouth of the river are rocks. The number of fish caught here is enormous; one tempô will buy from 12 to 20 Iwashi or sardines. In Chôshi and in the villages on the coast of Shimôsa and Kadzusa, the sardines are boiled in huge cauldrons and the oil is drawn off and used as lamp oil, the residue is dried in the sun and used as manure. The stench from this process is overpowering and renders Chôshi and the villages near the sea-shore unbearable. There are several roads from Chôshi to Yedo. The most direct is by Tsunomiya, another one follows the coast. Near Chôshi are high cliffs which end abruptly at the edge of the sea, but the road soon becomes flat and uninteresting. It crosses several rivers the largest of which is the Kuriyamagawa, the boundary between Shimôsa and Kadzusa. At Ichinomiya, a large place on a river of the same name, 21 ri from Chôshi, there are once more cliffs close to the sea. One ri beyond