My first experience of Japanese scenery of any wildness was gained while shooting the rapids of the Katsuragava, an exciting voyage among boulders in a shallow and often very turbulent stream in a steep and craggy valley a few miles from Kyoto. Previous to this expedition I had seen, from the train, only the trim rice fields,—each a tiny parallelogram with its irrigation channels as a boundary, so carefully tended that there is not a weed in the whole country. Japan is cut up into these absurd little squares, of which twenty and more would go into an ordinary English field. Often the terminal posts are painted a bright red; often a little row of family tombs is there too. The watermill is a common object of the country. But birds are few and animals one sees never. Indeed in all my three weeks I saw no four-footed animals, except a dead rat, two pigs and one cat. I am excluding of course beasts of draught—horses and bullocks—which are everywhere. Not a cow, not a sheep, not a dog! but that there are cattle is proved by the proverbial excellence of Kobe steaks, which I tested and can swear to. In all my three weeks, both in cities and the country, I saw only one crying child. Of children there were millions, mostly boys, but only one was unhappy.