51
naked men and children were occupied in drawing up, by means of small baskets, a small kind of fish, called funa, which is boiled and dried and sometimes used as medicine, though it is also used as common food.
A little before arriving at Shimmachi, from which place a road branches off to Tomioka, which has a large silk-manufactory under French superintendence, the Kanagawa bed is passed. This river is the boundary between the provinces of Musashi and Jôshiu. Such remarkable points as this seem to impress the people; at least both times I passed here, my jinrikisha-coolie turned round to communicate this fact to me. The Kanagawa falls to the right into the Karasugawa, which in its turn fails into the Tonegawa at Goriô. Nota drop of water was to be seen in the Kanagawa; the river looked like a gravel-desert in the midst of the cultivated lands; one or two small rustic bridges were laid across the now dry channels.
At Iwabana, the Karasugawa itself is passed by means of a boat-bridge; as the river is very shallow, the boats are moored to baskets loaded with stones, lying at the bottom of the river. The Karasugawa is navigable here only for very small boats, being, as has already been said, full of waterfalls and very shallow. At Iwabana is a large prison, situated on the river, the left bank of which rises here almost perpendicularly to a height of about 30 feet above the water level.
From Iwabana the Nakasendô, not much broader than a footpath, winds through arable lands until Kuragano is reached—a place situated on the right bank of the Karasugawa, a little above the mouth of the Kaburakawa, on which Tomioka lies. From Kuragano a road branches off to the right to Nikkô. Between Kuragano and Takasuki the Nakasendô is in a very good condition, being about 30 feet wide, well drained and shaded by a row of matsu trees on each side. It lus here quite the aspect of an European road, with richly cultivated arable land on both sides, bordered by low hills in the distance.
Takasaki is a large town, 66 miles from Tôkei, with a gloomy looking Daimiô’s castle, and with a flourishing
