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14 HONDA THE SAMUEAI.
tub of water and brace of brooms for fighting the
flames. Bamboo groves, beautiful and feathery, lent
variety to the scene, often serving as places of refuge
during an earthquake but no one who had learned
;
the meaning of the word " "
city in Eastern America
would suppose such a collection of low buildings
villas or shanties was a city. It might be a
number of booths erected for a fair, a mere temporary
arrangement for a few weeks; but a city one
thousand years old, how could it be that ? A Japanese
youth arriving in San Francisco, even when the
city was but twenty years old, could not believe the
houses were built by men. He thought they must
be the work of the gods.
There was not a stone house in the city. Even in
Yedo, Osaka, and Kyoto, there were not, in all, a halfdozen
stone dwelling-houses, though there were hundreds
of massive fire-proof
store-houses with earthen
walls a foot thick. Everything was of perishable
timber, the sport of time and the victim of fire.
There seemed to be nothing durable but tombstones
and castle walls, for these were of stone. Ancient
monuments of art and architecture were very few.
Everything, except their great bronze images and
their castles, was built of wood, hay and stubble,
and mud. Their best buildings were of perishable
material. This was partly because the ever-threatening
earthquake has paralyzed the growth of architecture
in Japan. Their proudest castles have been
razed, their towns engulfed, and their largest cities
leveled. Without science they were helpless, and