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OVER THE TOKAIDO TO TEDO. 271
express runners to get on the gridiron before life
was entirely extinct, for the rich epicures. On the
hills they saw the fishermen watching the waves for
signs of the incoming schools of fish, while for miles
of country millions of the smaller finny fry were being
dried for manure. Passing over a steep moun-
tain, they rested in Fu-chiu, at the foot of imposing
Mount Fuji. Thence they came over the Hakon
Mountains to Odawara and Yedo.
Notwithstanding that this was his twenty-first
journey from Fukui to Yedo, Mr. Rai looked on
many things, and especially the human beings, his
fellow-countrymen, in a new light. His long conferences
with Mr. Koba had opened his eyes. The
gamblers, the porters, the multitude of beggars, and
the hi~nin, or " not-human," the harlots, and all va-
riety of outcast humanity, so common, oppressed
him as with an unpleasant dream. In one place,
desiring to travel during the night, he came to a
relay-office, where on one side was a group of loathsome
and noisy beggars and on the other a party of
gamblers, the horrible wretches being utterly naked.
He silenced the beggars with some iron cash, and
they crawled under tfieir coverlets of filthy matting,
their shelter being only a shed of mats by the road.
He then turned his attention to the shivering porters,
for it was evident he must depend upon them
to transport him. Despite the muscular build of
some of them, they were pitiable specimens of humanity
and repulsive in their abject wretchedness.
The ruling passion was strong in death, because for