part3from "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" 1894
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The second garden on the north side |
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The second garden, on the north side, is my favorite. It contains no large growths. It is paved with blue pebbles, and its centre is occupied by a pondlet - a miniture lake fringed with rare plants, and containing a tiny island, with tiny mountains and dwarf peach-trees and pines and azaleas, some of which are perhaps more than a century old, though scarcely more than a foot high. Nevertheless, this work, seen as it was intended to be seen, does not appear to the eye in miniature at all. From a certain angle of the guest-room looking out upon it, the appearance is that of a real lake shore with a real island beyond it, a stone's throw away. |
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Here and there at the edge of the pond, and almost level with the water, are placed large flat stones, one which one may either stand or squat, to watch the lacustrine population or to tend the water-plants. The pond is inhabited also by many small fish; imori, or newts, with bright red bellies; and multitudes of little water-beetles, called maimamushi. Somewhere among the rocks in the pond lives a small tortoise- left in the garden, probably, by the previous tenants of the house. |
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And many lotus plants of two kinds, those which here pink and those which bear pure white flowers. On rainy days, especially, the lotus plants are worth observing. Their great cup-shaped leaves, swaying high above the pond, catch the rain and hold it a while; but always after the water in the leaf reaches a certain level the stem bends, and empties the leaf with a loud plash, and then straightens again. |
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* Hearn often put the meat of his dinig dish, on the stairs of the warehouse to ask the snakes not to kill the pity frogs. |
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Early in summer the frogs are surprisingly numerous, and, after dark, are noisy beyond description; A large family of snakes, some fully three feet long, make occasional inroads into the colony. The victims often utter piteous cries, which are promotly responded to, wherever possile, by some inmate of the house, and many frog has been saved by my servant-girl, who, by a gentle tap with a bamboo rod, compels the snake to let its prey go. |