In certain districts horses of one or the other sex, as the law determines, are kept exclusively.  Horses of the gentler sex in Japan are usually led by women.  During part of my journey to the place which I am about to describe the leader of the mare I bestrode was a maiden of some forty summers—­a neat, spare, vinegar-faced sylph, who had evidently long since left the matrimonial market, and had devoted herself to making one horse happy for the rest of her pilgrimage.  That she was neither wife nor widow I discovered, not by asking questions, but by the manner in which her hair was dressed.  Japanese virgins and wives have each distinct coiffures, by which, apart from the shaven eyebrows and the teeth dyed black of the married women, the musume or young maiden may be known.  The widow who has resolved never to marry again (always too old or ugly) is distinguished by her smooth skull, every hair of which is shaved off.  A lady of rank may also be known by her coiffure; and many other distinctions are thus noted.

I waited three-quarters of an hour for my horse and its leader to appear at the post-relay at which I sat down, and was stared at during that time by about three hundred pairs of eyes.  The populace of each village turned out en masse to see the foreigner, and they diligently improved their time in examining him from crown to boot-sole.  Like everything else in the rural districts of Japan, my guide was not in a hurry, and could not understand why a foreigner should be.  But finally arriving, she bowed very low and invited me to climb up on the saddle, and off we started for a mountain ride of eight miles.

A Japanese pack-horse, at his best, seems always swaying between two opinions:  his affection for the bestower of his beans and that for the repose of the stable mutually attract him.  On this occasion the little woman gently led the horse over the rough places and down the steep paths with the ejaculation, Mite yo!  Mite yo! but when the beast stopped too long to meditate or to chew the bit, as if vainly trying to pick its teeth, a lively jerk of the rope and a “You old beast! come on,” started the animal on its travels.  Finally, when the creature stopped to deliberate upon the propriety of going forward at all, the vials of the wrath of the Japanese spinster exploded, and I was tempted to believe her affections had been blighted.  But when we met any of her friends on the road, or passed the wayside shops or farm-houses, the scolder of horses was the lady who wished all Ohaio ("Good-morning"), or remarked that the weather was very fine; and when joked for carrying a foreigner, replied, “Yes, it is the first time I have had the honor.”