It is certain that if the custom be indigenous, the
imported faith adopted, absorbed and enlarged it. The peregrinations
made to the great temples and to the mountain tops, being meritorious
performances, soon filled the roads with more or less devout travellers.
In thus finding vent for their piety, the pilgrims mingled
sanctification with recreation, enjoying healthful holidays, and
creating trade with varied business, commercial and commissarial
activities, while enlarging also their ideas and learning something of
geography. Thus, in the course of time, it has come to pass that Japan
is a country of which almost every square mile is known, while it is
well threaded with paths, banded with roads, and supplied to a
remarkable extent with handy volumes of description and of local
history.[17] Her people being well educated in their own lore and local
traditions, possessed also a voluminous literature of guidebooks and
cyclopedias of information. The devotees were, withal, well instructed
and versed in a code of politeness and courtesy, as pilgrimage and
travel became settled habits of a life. As a further result, the
national tongue became remarkably homogeneous. Broadly speaking, it may
be said that the Japanese language, unlike the Chinese in this as it is
in almost every other point, has very little dialectic variation.
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