The town now enjoyed as a park of more than ten acres the grounds of a subsidiary residence of the daimyo.  The magnificent trees, with lakes, rivulets and hills fashioned with infinite art,[175] and the background of natural hill and woodland, made in all a possession which exhibited the delectable possibilities of Japanese gardening.  An occasional electric light amid the trees gave an effect in the evening in which Japanese delight.  Some of the old carp which dashed up to the bridges when they heard our footsteps seemed to be not far short of 3 ft. long.

Except for a small patch of sugar cane in Shidzuoka—­it is grown practically on the sea beach where it is visible from the express—­the visitor to Japan may never see sugar cane until Shikoku is reached.  The value of the crop in the whole island is about 800,000 yen.  The tall cane is conspicuous alongside the more diminutive rice.  In this prefecture an experiment is being made in growing olives.

Kagawa is remarkable in having had until lately 30,000 pond reservoirs for the irrigation of rice fields.  Under the new system of rice-field adjustment many of the ponds are joined together.  Because in Shikoku flat tracts of land or tracts that can be made flat are limited in number the farmers have to be content with small pieces of land.  The average area of farm in Kagawa outside the mountainous region is less than two acres.  When the farms are near the sea, as they commonly are, the agriculturists may also be fishermen.

The number of place names ending in ji (temple) proclaims the former flourishing condition of Buddhism.  Shikoku is a great resort of white-clothed pilgrims.  Sometimes it is a solitary man whom one sees on the road, sometimes a company of men, occasionally a family.  Not seldom the pilgrim or his companion is manifestly suffering from some affection which the pilgrimage is to cure.  In the old days it was not unusual to send the victim of “the shameful disease” or of an incurable ailment on a pilgrimage from shrine to shrine or temple to temple.  He was not expected to return.  In Shikoku there are eighty-eight temples to Buddha and the founder of the Shingon sect, and it is estimated that it would mean a 760 miles’ journey to visit them all.

We went off our route at one point where my companion wished to visit a gorgeous shrine.  A guidebook said that people flocked there “by the million,” but what I was told was that last year’s attendance was 80,000.  The street leading to the approach to the shrine was in a series of steps.  On either side were the usual shops with piled-up mementoes in great variety and of no little ingenuity, and also, on spikes, little stacks of rin—­the old copper coin with a square hole through the middle—­into which the economical devotee takes care to exchange a few sen.  We climbed to the shrine when twilight was coming on.  At the point where the series of street steps ended there began a new series of