if possible), and then it may go South, and out by the West. I cannot remember ever to have seen a current which ran through a garden entirely from North to South, with no East to West in it, and I feel sure that it is for a deeper reason than because, as the Chinaman would say, it ‘B’long bad joss’! Nature herself must have indicated to the more deeply sensitive artist minds of the first garden makers that such was her way of doing things; but, until we can get at that mysterious meaning, we must continue to think this a survival of the ancient belief of primitive peoples in the occult influence of the unseen spirits of direction.
As the bite of Alice’s wonderful mushroom can make her fit into big places or little ones, as she likes, so the Japanese can make the waters of his garden represent anything from a tiny pond for goldfish up to a view (in reduced scale) of the China Sea. There is a naïveté in the latter presentment that reminds one of the houses and castles and forts which as a child one used to make of sand, with lines of sea-shells on the beach—although I am bound to say that the Japanese play-places are more convincing than ours ever were to the grown-up imagination.
This China Sea presentation is not the choppy, sea-sick thing which the poor mortals who have had to cross the real sea remember with horror;
