Kanayama, July 16.

There days of travelling on the same excellent road have brought me nearly 60 miles. Yamagata ken impresses me as being singularly prosperous, progressive, and goahead ; the plain of Yamagata, which I entered soon after leaving Kaminoyama, is populous and highly cultivated, and the broad road, with its enormous traffic, looks wealthy and civilised. It is being improved by convicts in dull red kimonos printed with Chinese characters, who correspond with our ticket-of-leave men, as they are working for wages in the employment of contractors and farmers, and are under no other restriction than that of always wearing the prison dress.

At the Sakamoki river I was delighted to come upon the only thoroughly solid piece of modern Japanese work that I have met with, a remarkably handsome stone bridge nearly finished—the first T have seen. I introduced myself to the engineer Okuno Chiuzo, a very gentlemanly, agreeable Japanese, who showed me the plans, took a great deal of trouble to explain them, and courteously gave me tea and sweetmeats.

This remarkable bridge on a remarkable road is 192 feet long by 30 broad, with five arches of a span of 30 feet each. It has a massive stone balustrade, with pillars at the ends and centre, surmounted by bronze finials 3 feet high. The stones are quarried 12 miles off, and each is brought down to the river-side by eight coolies and dressed on the spot. The regular size of the stones is 3 feet by 2, and, like all Japanese masonry, they are fitted together without mortar, and with such absolute nicety that the joinings are hardly visible.