occupied were not to be profaned by common people. I didn't want the rooms, but I did want fresh air, which could not be made to circulate so long as these rooms were closed, so I left the house and went to another, where I also declined the best rooms available; much to the astonishment of the host, who didn't understand how much better was fresh air than dignity to a foreigner. I pitched upon a very nice room with a garden on two sides of it, so that I could be cool; but by this time it was dark, and I did not get dinner till half-past nine, having breakfasted at six. However, all was right, and in another hour I was asleep, with "a fig for" possible nightmare.

On the last day of June, I re-entered ground previously traversed, at Kusatsu, where the Tōkaidō and Naka-sen-dō unite; and by eleven I was at Kiyōto station. Between Ōtsu and Kiyōto I was stopped five times by the police, for examination of my servant's pass; for during the stay of the Mikado in Kiyōto no native could travel a mile without giving an account of himself, within a day's walk of the old capital. At the station I met Tom, with whom I had tiffin; and then proceeded homeward, to find the dogs all right and everything prepared for my reception, for I had sent the boy on ahead with the baggage. In the evening Hugo came in, and we smoked the pipe of contentment together, comparing notes of our travels.

The journey from Osaka to Nara, and thence to Kiyōto, or vice versa, has been so often described that I don't propose to record the commonplace incidents of the two days I devoted to it, after I had read all my

back papers and letters, having still so much left of my month's leave. Other than commonplace there is nought to record, and by the time I returned I had my hands full, as I had to take over charge from Tom, who in turn went away to recruit his health; and I fell to work again with good spirits and feeling as if, should it be necessary to save the country by jumping over a lamp-post, I could indicate the man to do it.

CHAPTER VIII.

OSAKA AND TŌKIYŌ (1877).

As I had my neighbour's length to look after as well as my own, I was very busy directly after my return, the first week being one of heavy rain and floods; but the extreme heat had not yet commenced, and the thermometer descended below 85° Fahr. every night, so that I did not feel like beginning any deduction from the stock of health and strength laid in during my holiday.

We took advantage of the summer nights to attend the fêtes on the river; for the military officials of the various organizing departments were collected in Osaka, and brought with them materials for gaiety and pleasure, in addition to stimulating the local supply of means for light-hearted dissipation. Frequently the bands of the depôts, stationed in barges moored in the river opposite the "pleasure quarter" of the city, sent the sound of their marches, quick steps, and waltzes echoing from bank to bank, while lantern-lit boats glided about with freights of laughing "geisha," and the sellers of fireworks, and ice-vendors with their cry of "kōri-kōri,” paddled hihter and thither between the bridges. Few, perhaps, thought at such hours, of the day's work that

had been done down in Kiu-shiu, or of the lives that might be ebbing away under the forest trees that broke the moonlight as it fell upon the parched hill-sides of Hiuga.

The Mikado returned to Tōkiyō on the 28th July, exactly six months from the date of his arrival, a special train being run from Kiyōto to Kobe; and within an hour of its reaching the terminus, the steamer carrying the Imperial party was pounding away towards the south as if the devil was behind it. People said that the Adzuma-kan, the ironclad that had been lying some time at Kobe, with a crew of Satsuma men on board, was looked upon with distrust; but I don't believe it was really the case. Any feeling of disloyalty that could take an active shape was already out of date, and while the rebels of Kiu-shiu were surrendering daily by hundreds, the actual whereabouts of the rebel leaders was hardly known with any certainty; they were scarcely now possessed of any serious power.

The summer "matsuri" at Osaka and Kiyōto were carried on with more than the usual altitude of jinks. The Kiyōto matsuri, specially connected with the "Gion" quarter of the city, inhabited by singing and dancing girls and such like, not to be too particularly descriptive, was well worth seeing. About fifty of the most renowned beauties of Kiyōto, dressed in theatrical fashion to represent characters famed in story or drama, passed in procession through the principal streets of the quarter to the great Gion shrine. About every thirty yards or so a short halt was made, and appropriate dumb-show gone through, to tickle the spectators' recollections of

the episodes with which the characters were connected, and evoke their applause. The various groups were of course surrounded with lanterns, so that it was difficult sometimes to see what was going on; but if one missed the point of any one display, there were others to come; and so for nearly two hours the interest was sustained, as the procession passed between the rival hotels of Jiutei and Nakamuraya, and entered the precincts of the temple. So a summer night was passed in the old capital of Japan, a place made for all pleasure.

I was very comfortable in my little diggings in Osaka during the hot weather; and had frequent visitors from Kobe, who looked upon my spare room as a sure find" for a night's rest, for if there was a breeze stirring I could entice it in, and cunningly temper it with nets. But my work was drawing to a conclusion in this field, and in September I was summoned away to succeed the Principal Engineer in Tōkiyō, formerly our Chief Assistant in Kobe and Osaka. He had been much broken up in 1875, when his old friend Sheppard died, and had many troubles on his head in the busy part of 1876. When he went to Tōkiyō it was evident that his powers were failing; and we were all concerned at his appearance when he came down to attend the state opening of the line. He was looking better when I saw him in the beginning of June, in his own house; but my first news on returning to Osaka was of his serious illness, and after a hard fight of it, he succumbed on the 14th of September, the determining cause being cancer in the throat. He had been granted six months' leave, after seven years' service, when it was known that he could