Nagasaki lies at the shoreward base of a range of hills, over a pass called the Himi-toge, which my road climbs immediately upon leaving the city.  A good road is maintained over the pass, and an office established there to collect toll from travellers and people bringing produce into Nagasaki.  The aged and polite toll-collector smiles and bows at me as I trundle innocently past his sentry-box-like office up the steep incline, hoping that I may take the hint and spare him the necessity of telling me the nature of his duty.  My inexperience of Japanese tolls and roads, however, renders his politeness inoperative, and, after allowing me to get past, duty compels him to issue forth and explain.  A wooden ticket containing Japanese characters is given me in exchange for a few tiny coins.  This I fancy to be a passport for another toll-place higher up.  Subsequently, however, I learn it to be a return ticket, the old toll-keeper very naturally thinking I would return, by and by, to Nagasaki.

Ponies and buffaloes, laden with baskets of rice, fodder, firewood, and various agricultural products, are encountered on the pass, in charge of Japanese rustics in broad bamboo-hats, red blankets, bare legs, and straw sandals, who lead their charges by long halter-ropes.  Both horses and buffaloes are shod with shoes of the same unsubstantial material as the men.  When the Japanese traveller sets out on a journey, he provides himself with a new pair of straw sandals; these last him for a tramp of from ten to twenty miles, according to the nature of the road.  When worn out, his foot-gear may be readily renewed at any village for a mere song.  The same may be said of his horse or buffalo, although several extra shoes are generally carried along in case of need.

The summit of the pass is distinguished by a very deep cutting through the ridge rock of the mountain, and a series of successive sharp turns back and forth along narrow-terraced gardens and fields bring the road down into the valley of a clear little stream, called the Himi-gawa.  Smooth, hard roads follow along this purling rivulet, now and then crossing it on a stone or wooden bridge.  A small estuary, reaching inland like a big bite out of a cake, is passed, and the pretty little village of Yagami reached for dinner.  The eating-house, like nearly all Japanese eating-places, is neat and cleanly, the brown wood-work being fairly polished bright from floor to ceiling.

Sitting down on the edge of the raised floor, I am approached by the landlady, who kneels down and bows her forehead to the floor.  Her politeness is very charming, and her smile would no doubt be more or less winsome were it not for the hideous blackening of the teeth.  Blackened teeth is the distinguishing mark between maid and matron in the flowery kingdom of the Mikados.  The teeth are stained black at marriage, and henceforth a smile that heretofore displayed rows of small white ivories, and perchance was fairly bewitching, becomes positively repulsive to the Western mind.