Explore "Jinrikisha Days in Japan" by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
After the pace of the jinrikisha the slow train from Nagoya to Nagahama, on Lake Biwa, seemed to attain a dizzy speed. Rising continually, we reached a hilly region where the road-bed crossed a chain of tiny valleys, penetrated mountain-tunnels, and cut through pine forests and bamboo groves.
At Nagahama we rested in a lake-side tateba, content with the glorious view, and in no way eager to search for its famous _kabe_ crapes. Lake Biwa, with long, wooded slopes running down to the shore, and mountains barring all the horizon, with smooth water and a blue sky, offers sixty miles of charming sail. Little thatched-roof villages, and the wide sweeping gables of temples show here and there in the solitude of pines, and the crest of one high promontory is girt with the white walls of Hikone castle. Many legends belong to this medieval fortress, the scene of so many famous events, whose last daimio was murdered in Tokio by disaffected followers, soon after he negotiated, as prime-minister, the treaties of 1858.