Our route led us along the track of the new railway line which was penetrating from Kagawa into Ehime.  Not for the first time on my journeys was I told of the corrupting influence exerted on the countryside by the imported “navvies,” if our Western name may be applied to men who in figure and dress look so little like the big fellows who do the same kind of work in England.  Although these navvies were a rough lot and our ancient basha (a kind of four-wheeled covered carriage) was a thing for mirth, we met with no incivility as we picked our way among them for a mile or two.  I was a witness indeed of a creditable incident.  A handcart full of earth was being taken along the edge of the roadway, with one man in the shafts and another pushing behind.  Suddenly a wheel slipped over the side of the roadway, the cart was canted on its axle, the man in the shafts received a jolt and the cargo was shot out.  Had our sort of navvies been concerned there would have been words of heat and colour.  The Japanese laughed.

The reference to our venerable basha reminds me of a well-known story which was once told me by a Japanese as a specimen of Japanese humour.  A basha, I may explain, has rather the appearance of a vehicle which was evolved by a Japanese of an economical turn after hearing a description of an omnibus from a foreigner who spoke very little Japanese and had not been home for forty years.  The body of the vehicle is just high enough and the seats just wide enough for Japanese.  So the foreigner continually bumps the roof, and when he is not bumping the roof he has much too narrow a seat to sit on.  Sometimes the basha has springs of a sort and sometimes it has none.  But springs would avail little on the rural roads by which many basha travel.  The only tolerable place for Mr. Foreigner in a basha is one of the top corner seats behind the driver, for the traveller may there throw an arm round one of the uprights which support the roof.  If at an unusually hard bump he should lose his hold he is saved from being cast on the floor by the responsive bodies of his polite and sympathetic fellow-travellers who are embedded between him and the door.  The tale goes that a tourist who was serving his term in a basha was perplexed to find that the passengers were charged, some first-, some second-and some third-class fare.  While he clung to his upright and shook with every lurch of the conveyance this problem of unequal fares obsessed him.  It was like the persistent “punch-in-the-presence-of-the-passengare.”  What possible advantage, he pondered, could he as first class be getting over the second and the second class over the third?  At length at a steep part of the road the vehicle stopped.  The driver came round, opened the door, and bowing politely said:  “Honourable first-class passengers will graciously condescend to keep their seats.  Second-class passengers will be good enough to favour us by walking.  Third-class passengers will kindly come out and push.”  And push they did, no doubt, kimonos rolled up thighwards, with good humour, sprightliness and cheerful grunts, as is the way with willing workers in Japan.