plies to Tokio

Isabella Birdの "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" を読んでいます。Isabella Birdが旅をしたのは明治の初期ですから、都会でも洋服を着ている人は少数で、ましてや田舎では皆無だったでしょう。

It is such a hindrance, even in walking, that most pedestrians have “ their loins girded up”by taking the middle of the hem at the bottom of the kimono and tucking it under the girdle. This, in the case of many, shows woven, tight-fitting, elastic, white cotton pantaloons, reaching to the ankles. After ferrying another river at a village from which a steamer plies to Tokio, the country became much more pleasing, the rice-fields fewer, the trees, houses, and barns larger, and, in the distance, high hills loomed faintly through the haze. Much of the wheat, of which they don’t make bread but vermicelli, is already being carried. You see wheat stacks ten feet high moving slowly, and while you are wondering, you become aware of four feet moving below them; for all the crop is carried on horses’ if not on human backs.

"ply" は多くの意味を持つ単語で上の引用箇所に出てきた　
"ply" は10年前（6/24/2011）に取り上げていましたが、すぐには思い出せなかったので復習です。
　
・Oxford English Dictionary: (of a vessel or vehicle) travel regularly over a route, typically for commercial purposes.: ferries ply across a strait to the island

・Collins Dictionary: If a ship, aircraft, or vehicle plies a route, it makes regular journeys along that route.: Eighteen boats plied the 1,000 miles of river along a trading route.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: When a boat, train, bus, etc. plies a particular route, it makes that journey regularly: High-speed trains regularly ply between Paris and Lyons.