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affluents are the Shakado gawa the Nami gawa and the Su kawa, all of which cross the Ôshiu kaidô in their eastward descent from the central mountains. They are separated from one another by abrupt and precipitous hills over which the Ôshiu kaidô toils laboriously, apparently scorning to go round them. It is in the corner made by the junction of the Su kawa and Abukuma gawa that Fukushima is situated.
Taking now the western side of the central range, it will be sufficient to say that at the southern extremity of the straight line the turn seems to produce an enormous knot, in the southern portion of which lie ensconced the far-famed temples of Nikkô. Travelling northward through this knot and mounting to its source the bed of the Kinu gawa, one arrives at the water-shed whence rise the rivers flowing towards Niigata; and descending towards the north, the first level land reached after 30 ri of mountain climbing is the plain of Wakamatzu or Aidzu, with its lake and outlet to the west.
North of this plain there comes from the principal chain a spur, or rather cross-chain, which starting from between the great mountains of Adzuma and Bandai-san, just opposite to Fukushima, extends first westerly and then scatters towards the North-west. A few ri further one branch nearly unites with the main line, thus inclosing the Okitama Ken, and then again diverges to the west to give space to the magnificent plain of Yamagata, which is the northern limit of my own travels. This western cross chain is of great breadth, the road from Yonezawa to Niigata being known as the Ju-san Tôge. Certainly of the thirteen three are only small hills, but four or five are formidable passes.
Having said thus much on the nature of the country let us follow the Ôshiu kaidô, which leaving Tôkiô by the suburb of Senji, stretches t othe north till it reaches the banks of the Tone gawa at a small station town called Kurihashi, distant 1412 ri from the Nihon Bashi. All along this part of the road the villages and station towns succeed each other at such short intervals as almost to
