From Tsurumi, the train glides through a delicious stretch of scenery--on the one side little villages nestle amidst the trees, and the deep blue ocean glitters away into the distance; on the other, all is a romantic jumble of hill, and wood, and dale. Here and there a red temple roof breaks the sombre verdure of the hill-side, and at a certain point a depression of the hills affords the traveller a peep at the distant goblin-haunted range of mountains of which Oyama is the chief, behind which the pure white cone of the sacred mountain Fuji rises, solitary and grand, like a monarch in repose. All around is pure unadulterated rusticity. The iron road cuts remorselessly through pleasant vales and wooded hills, but nothing is changed; and if the visitor will take the trouble to explore on either side, he will find the old-world life of Japan still existing as it did centuries ago, when the only Europeans in the land were a few Portuguese missionaries and a small colony of Dutch traders cooped up in an island at Nagasaki.
After a fifteen minutes' run through this charming country, Kawasaki--exactly half-way between Yokohama and Yedo--is reached. Here the down-train from the capital meets us, and there is a stop of a few minutes.
Kawasaki was in the old days one of the most important towns on the great road. On their way from Kiyoto to Yedo, from the western capital to the eastern, the great lords made Kawasaki their last halting-place, and one may yet see the shadows of the great feudal age of Japan in the magnificent tea-houses scattered through the town. Like the old coaching inns on our great main roads in England, these tea-houses have lost almost all their ancient prosperity, as the turmoil of revolution, and above all the accomplishment of the railway, have diverted almost all the traffic from this part of the Tocaido. In one or two of the houses, however, splendidly adorned and painted suites of apartments, pretty gardens, and huge ranges of out-buildings, still attest the former splendour of the age; and although fowls and half-wild curs have made the stabling and out-houses their home, and although the numerical strength of the domestics is not sufficient to keep the dust and cobwebs away from the gaily screened rooms, the proprietors still shew the remains with some pride, and at the instigation of a cup of 'saké' will tell many a quaint story of the doings in those half-forgotten days and sigh that they can never return.