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FROM KAMAKUBA TO YEDO. 199
Longslope sat to paint this sky and land and water
picture," said Ban.
" I do not wonder that he threw away his brush
in despair, so that this tree is called ' Throw-awaythe-Pencil
Pine," said Honda. "No drawings or
color do it justice."
on the golden
Far away rim of the horizon rose
the glorious blue mass of the mighty island Oshima.
The tops of the white swelling sails of junks
emerged from the world below to move up the bay
to Yedo. Hundreds of vessels laden with southern
produce bent their large, square sails of matting
to the breeze. Far beneath in the crawling waves
near the shore the fisher-folk gathered sea-weed.
The salt-makers, mostly merry girls with skirts
tucked up and each with a pair of buckets slung
on a neck-yoke, rushed out into the water. Gayly
singing they scooped up the brine and dexterously
showered it over the evaporating beds of hot sand.
Fishermen out in their boats flecking the blue,
millions of rice-fields checkering the leveled and
irrigated soil, temples with sweeping recurved
roofs and white gables, pagodas peeping amid the
of human art
evergreens, and many another sign
and industry made a beautiful landscape, over
which towered the lordly mountain to which the
lesser chains of hills seemed to do homage.
Evening with its purple shadows and opal tints
brought them to a miserable little village of farmers
and fishermen, named Chestnut Beach (Kurihama).
Probably six hundred persons lived on the flat land