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On the other hand, those whom the Omi Court summoned to arms declined for the most part to respond. The nation evidently regarded Prince Oama as the champion of the old against the new. The crowning contest took place at the Long Bridge of Seta, which spans the waters of Lake Biwa at the place where they narrow to form the Seta River.
Its origin is reputed to be simultaneous with the formation of Biwa Lake, near Kioto, both mountain and lake being formed in a single night one rising from the plain twelve thousand eight hundred feet, the other sinking till its bed reached the level of the sea.
I asked for a royal maiden wise and beautiful, calm as the dawn, and you have told me of a wood-cutter's drudge, blind and ugly." And now Semimaru did not answer, but the tones of the biwa grew louder and clearer, and they rang like a song of triumph, and the Emperor could hear these words in the voice of the strings.
The attendants of His Majesty long since slept for sheer weariness, for the night was far spent, but the Emperor and the Dainagon still sat with their eyes fixed on the venerable Semimaru. For many hours he had played, drawing strange music from his biwa.
In the principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of trumpets or the beat of drums, "those clamorous harbingers of blood and death" stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and tender melodies on the biwa, soothing our fiery spirits, drawing our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage.
So he buckled on his two swords, took his huge bow, much taller than himself, in his hand, and slinging his quiver on his back started out. He had not gone far when he came to the bridge of Seta-no-Karashi spanning one end of the beautiful Lake Biwa. No sooner had he set foot on the bridge than he saw lying right across his path a huge serpent-dragon.
The effusive proprietor informed him that a party of five, "one single lady, and two young married couples, he thought," had breakfasted there and left immediately with Dr. Weston for Hieizan. They would not return until night. "What, pray, is Hieizan?" Percival asked, dimly remembering Mrs. Weston's outlined plan. "Very grand mountain," said the proprietor; "view of Lake Biwa.
Why do the pilgrims from all over the empire exclaim joyfully, while climbing Fuji's cinder-beds and lava-blocks, "I am a man of Omi"? Why, when quenching their thirst with the melted snow-water of Fuji crater, do they cry out "I am drinking from Lake Biwa"? Why do the children clap their hands, as they row or sail over Biwa's blue surface, and say: "I am on top of Fuji Yama"?
And Semimaru, playing very softly on the strings of his biwa made no other answer, and His Majesty, collecting his thoughts, which had become, as it were, frozen with the cold and the quiet and the strange music, spoke thus, as if in a waking dream; "Why have I not wedded? Because I have desired a bride beyond the women of earth, and of none such as I desire has the rumor reached me.
In the Palace of Electricity on a map thirty feet high and twenty-five feet wide, you see pictures of Japan's great engineering work, Lake Biwa Canal, connecting the Lake with Kioto. Irrigating, electricity making, electrical apparatus invented by them, they have nearly twenty-five thousand telephones, long and short distance.
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