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 there was no more saké to drink. They accordingly embarked, and proceeded on their voyage.

On the 29th, they had got no further than Ominato, a harbour only a few miles distant from their starting-point. Here they were detained for ten days waiting for a fair wind. Presents of eatables and drinkables still came in, but more sparingly, and Tsurayuki records regretfully the fate of a bottle of saké, which he had stuck in the roof of the cabin, but which was displaced by the rolling of the junk and fell overboard. One of these presents was a pheasant, which according to the old Japanese custom was attached to a flowering branch of plum. Some brought verses with their gifts. Here is a specimen.

“Louder than the clamour of the white surges on your onward path will be the cry of me weeping that I am left behind.”

Tsurayuki remarks that if that were really so, he must have a very loud voice. On the 9th of the second month, they at last sailed from Ominato. As they passed Matsubara, they admired a large grove of ancient firs which grew by the sea-shore. Tsurayuki mentions the pleasure with which they watched the storks flying about among their tops, and gives us this verse composed on the occasion.

“Casting my glance over the sea; on each fir-tree top a stork has his dwelling. They have been comrades for a thousand years.”

It became dark before they reached their next stopping-place, for like most Japanese vessels even at the present day, the idea of pursuing their voyage all night long does not seem to have occurred to them. Besides, to judge from its having gone up the Osaka river as far as Yamazaki, their junk must have been a very small one, and the diary shows that it depended more on oars than on sails. Here is Tsurayuki’s description of nightfall.

“Whilst we rowed along gazing on this scene, the mountains and the sea became all dark, the night deepened, and east and west could not be seen, so we