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Updated: May 31, 2025
A timely holiday and a passport from the Japanese foreign office enabled me to start toward the end of March, the time when all Japan is glorious with blossoming plum trees, and the camellia trees in forests of bloom are marshaled by thousands on the mountain-slopes. I was glad to get away from Yeddo: I had a fit of anti-Caucasianism, and wished to dwell a while amidst things purely Japanese.
The next day being Sunday, the minister wished to stay in camp; and so, on account of the weather, did the Indians. I therefore set out on an excursion, and spent the day alone on the mountain-slopes above the camp, and northward, to see what I might learn.
The mountain-slopes which descend from the Sierra Madre eastward toward the sea are furrowed by barrancas deep ravines with perpendicular sides, and with streams flowing at the bottom. But here all these barrancas run almost due east and west, so that our journey from Vera Cruz to Mexico was made, as far as I can recollect, without crossing one. Now, the case was quite different.
Sometimes our people hunt two or three days without anything to eat. "But now since you mention it, Mr. John," he added, "I'd like to ask you, are you sure there are no signs of game around here?" Both the boys looked for a long time all over the mountain-slopes before them. Rob had his field-glasses with him, and these he now took out, steadily sweeping one ridge after another for some time.
On one side was a little stream, beyond which rose the steep mountain-slopes, covered with the unbroken growth of the evergreen forest. They were surprised to find that during their short absence something, apparently a bear, had visited camp, and had rummaged about among their things, scattering the contents of their packs, and in sheer wantonness destroying their lean-to.
For four miles out of Ismidt the country is flat and swampy; beyond that it changes to higher ground; and the swampy flat, the higher ground, and the mountain-slopes are all covered with timber and a dense growth of underbrush, in which wild-fig shrubs and the homely but beautiful ferns of the English commons, the Missouri Valley woods, and the California foot-hills, mingle their respective charms, and hob-nob with scrub-oak, chestnut, walnut, and scores of others.
Everything bore the trace of the devastation of the war, only the oak and cedar forests lorded it proudly over the mountain-slopes, planes and locust-trees grew in groves, and the gorges and rifts of the thinly-wooded limestone hills, which bordered the fertile low-land, were filled with evergreen brushwood.
The chaparro flowers, in dense masses of deep yellow, carpet the earth; and the dark pine forests on the mountain-slopes stare, while yellow streaks sweep up among the dusky timber. In the distance we catch a glimpse of the eastern slope of the Sandia range glistening in the bright yellow hue of the flowers that cover miles of its slanting surface.
In a green valley between two mountain-slopes lay a little village crowned by the Castle of Eppenhain, that stood on the mountain-side, built on projecting slabs of rock.
No Corean, of sound mind and body, however brave and fearless of death in battle, can ever be induced to walk out at night on the mountain-slopes; and even in the day-time a great deal of uneasiness is manifested by the natives should they have to climb a hill.
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