Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Part 15

Except for the loss of time it made no difference to me, but when the kuruma did come up the runners were three such ruffianly- looking men, and were dressed so wildly in bark cloth, that, in sending Ito on twelve miles to secure relays, I sent my money along with him. These men, though there were three instead of two, never went out of a walk, and, as if on purpose, took the vehicle over every stone and into every rut, and kept up a savage chorus of "haes-ha, haes-hora" the whole time, as if they were pulling stone- carts. There are really no runners out of Hakodate, and the men don't know how to pull, and hate doing it.

Mororan Bay is truly beautiful from the top of the ascent. The coast scenery of j.a.pan generally is the loveliest I have ever seen, except that of a portion of windward Hawaii, and this yields in beauty to none. The irregular grey town, with a grey temple on the height above, straggles round the little bay on a steep, wooded terrace; hills, densely wooded, and with a perfect entanglement of large-leaved trailers, descend abruptly to the water's edge; the festoons of the vines are mirrored in the still waters; and above the dark forest, and beyond the gleaming sea, rises the red, peaked top of the volcano. Then the road dips abruptly to sandy swellings, rising into bold headlands here and there; and for the first time I saw the surge of 5000 miles of unbroken ocean break upon the sh.o.r.e. Glimpses of the Pacific, an uncultivated, swampy level quite uninhabited, and distant hills mainly covered with forest, made up the landscape till I reached Horobets, a mixed j.a.panese and Aino village built upon the sand near the sea.

In these mixed villages the Ainos are compelled to live at a respectful distance from the j.a.panese, and frequently out-number them, as at Horobets, where there are forty-seven Aino and only eighteen j.a.panese houses. The Aino village looks larger than it really is, because nearly every house has a kura, raised six feet from the ground by wooden stilts. When I am better acquainted with the houses I shall describe them; at present I will only say that they do not resemble the j.a.panese houses so much as the Polynesian, as they are made of reeds very neatly tied upon a wooden framework.

They have small windows, and roofs of a very great height, and steep pitch, with the thatch in a series of very neat frills, and the ridge poles covered with reeds, and ornamented. The coast Ainos are nearly all engaged in fis.h.i.+ng, but at this season the men hunt deer in the forests. On this coast there are several names compounded with bets or pets, the Aino for a river, such as Horobets, Yubets, Mombets, etc.

I found that Ito had been engaged for a whole hour in a violent altercation, which was caused by the Transport Agent refusing to supply runners for the kuruma, saying that no one in Horobets would draw one, but on my producing the sh.o.m.on I was at once started on my journey of sixteen miles with three j.a.panese lads, Ito riding on to s.h.i.+raoi to get my room ready. I think that the Transport Offices in Yezo are in Government hands. In a few minutes three Ainos ran out of a house, took the kuruma, and went the whole stage without stopping. They took a boy and three saddled horses along with them to bring them back, and rode and hauled alternately, two youths always attached to the shafts, and a man pus.h.i.+ng behind.

They were very kind, and so courteous, after a new fas.h.i.+on, that I quite forgot that I was alone among savages. The lads were young and beardless, their lips were thick, and their mouths very wide, and I thought that they approached more nearly to the Eskimo type than to any other. They had ma.s.ses of soft black hair falling on each side of their faces. The adult man was not a pure Aino. His dark hair was not very thick, and both it and his beard had an occasional auburn gleam. I think I never saw a face more completely beautiful in features and expression, with a lofty, sad, far-off, gentle, intellectual look, rather that of Sir Noel Paton's "Christ" than of a savage. His manner was most graceful, and he spoke both Aino and j.a.panese in the low musical tone which I find is a characteristic of Aino speech. These Ainos never took off their clothes, but merely let them fall from one or both shoulders when it was very warm.

The road from Horobets to s.h.i.+raoi is very solitary, with not more than four or five houses the whole way. It is broad and straight, except when it ascends hills or turns inland to cross rivers, and is carried across a broad swampy level, covered with tall wild flowers, which extends from the high beach thrown up by the sea for two miles inland, where there is a lofty wall of wooded rock, and beyond this the forest-covered mountains of the interior. On the top of the raised beach there were Aino hamlets, and occasionally a nearly overpowering stench came across the level from the sheds and apparatus used for extracting fish-oil. I enjoyed the afternoon thoroughly. It is so good to have got beyond the confines of stereotyped civilisation and the trammels of j.a.panese travelling to the solitude of nature and an atmosphere of freedom. It was grey, with a hard, dark line of ocean horizon, and over the weedy level the grey road, with grey telegraph-poles along it, stretched wearisomely like a grey thread. The breeze came up from the sea, rustled the reeds, and waved the tall plumes of the Eulalia j.a.ponica, and the thunder of the Pacific surges boomed through the air with its grand, deep ba.s.s. Poetry and music pervaded the solitude, and my spirit was rested.

Going up and then down a steep, wooded hill, the road appeared to return to its original state of brushwood, and the men stopped at the broken edge of a declivity which led down to a s.h.i.+ngle bank and a foam-crested river of clear, blue-green water, strongly impregnated with sulphur from some medicinal springs above, with a steep bank of tangle on the opposite side. This beautiful stream was crossed by two round poles, a foot apart, on which I attempted to walk with the help of an Aino hand; but the poles were very unsteady, and I doubt whether any one, even with a strong head, could walk on them in boots. Then the beautiful Aino signed to me to come back and mount on his shoulders; but when he had got a few feet out the poles swayed and trembled so much that he was obliged to retrace his way cautiously, during which process I endured miseries from dizziness and fear; after which he carried me through the rus.h.i.+ng water, which was up to his shoulders, and through a bit of swampy jungle, and up a steep bank, to the great fatigue both of body and mind, hardly mitigated by the enjoyment of the ludicrous in riding a savage through these Yezo waters. They dexterously carried the kuruma through, on the shoulders of four, and showed extreme anxiety that neither it nor I should get wet. After this we crossed two deep, still rivers in scows, and far above the grey level and the grey sea the sun was setting in gold and vermilion- streaked green behind a glorified mountain of great height, at whose feet the forest-covered hills lay in purple gloom. At dark we reached s.h.i.+raoi, a village of eleven j.a.panese houses, with a village of fifty-one Aino houses, near the sea. There is a large yadoya of the old style there; but I found that Ito had chosen a very pretty new one, with four stalls open to the road, in the centre one of which I found him, with the welcome news that a steak of fresh salmon was broiling on the coals; and, as the room was clean and sweet and I was very hungry, I enjoyed my meal by the light of a rush in a saucer of fish-oil as much as any part of the day.

SARUFUTO.

The night was too cold for sleep, and at daybreak, hearing a great din, I looked out, and saw a drove of fully a hundred horses all galloping down the road, with two Ainos on horse-back, and a number of big dogs after them. Hundreds of horses run nearly wild on the hills, and the Ainos, getting a large drove together, skilfully head them for the entrance into the corral, in which a selection of them is made for the day's needs, and the remainder--that is, those with the deepest sores on their backs--are turned loose. This dull rattle of shoeless feet is the first sound in the morning in these Yezo villages. I sent Ito on early, and followed at nine with three Ainos. The road is perfectly level for thirteen miles, through gravel flats and swamps, very monotonous, but with a wild charm of its own. There were swampy lakes, with wild ducks and small white water-lilies, and the surrounding levels were covered with reedy gra.s.s, flowers, and weeds. The early autumn has withered a great many of the flowers; but enough remains to show how beautiful the now russet plains must have been in the early summer. A dwarf rose, of a deep crimson colour, with orange, medlar-shaped hips, as large as crabs, and corollas three inches across, is one of the features of Yezo; and besides, there is a large rose-red convolvulus, a blue campanula, with tiers of bells, a blue monkshood, the Aconitum j.a.ponic.u.m, the flaunting Calystegia soldanella, purple asters, gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus, yellow lilies, and a remarkable trailer, whose delicate leaf.a.ge looked quite out of place among its coa.r.s.e surroundings, with a purplish-brown campanulate blossom, only remarkable for a peculiar arrangement of the pistil, green stamens, and a most offensive carrion-like odour, which is probably to attract to it a very objectionable-looking fly, for purposes of fertilisation.

We overtook four Aino women, young and comely, with bare feet, striding firmly along; and after a good deal of laughing with the men, they took hold of the kuruma, and the whole seven raced with it at full speed for half a mile, shrieking with laughter. Soon after we came upon a little tea-house, and the Ainos showed me a straw package, and pointed to their open mouths, by which I understood that they wished to stop and eat. Later we overtook four j.a.panese on horseback, and the Ainos raced with them for a considerable distance, the result of these spurts being that I reached Tomakomai at noon--a wide, dreary place, with houses roofed with sod, bearing luxuriant crops of weeds. Near this place is the volcano of Tarumai, a calm-looking, grey cone, whose skirts are draped by tens of thousands of dead trees. So calm and grey had it looked for many a year that people supposed it had pa.s.sed into endless rest, when quite lately, on a sultry day, it blew off its cap and covered the whole country for many a mile with cinders and ashes, burning up the forest on its sides, adding a new covering to the Tomakomai roofs, and depositing fine ash as far as Cape Erimo, fifty miles off.

At this place the road and telegraph wires turn inland to Satsuporo, and a track for horses only turns to the north-east, and straggles round the island for about seven hundred miles. From Mororan to Sarufuto there are everywhere traces of new and old volcanic action--pumice, tufas, conglomerates, and occasional beds of hard basalt, all covered with recent pumice, which, from s.h.i.+raoi eastwards, conceals everything. At Tomakomai we took horses, and, as I brought my own saddle, I have had the nearest approach to real riding that I have enjoyed in j.a.pan. The wife of a Satsuporo doctor was there, who was travelling for two hundred miles astride on a pack-saddle, with rope-loops for stirrups. She rode well, and vaulted into my saddle with circus-like dexterity, and performed many equestrian feats upon it, telling me that she should be quite happy if she were possessed of it.

I was happy when I left the "beaten track" to Satsuporo, and saw before me, stretching for I know not how far, rolling, sandy machirs like those of the Outer Hebrides, desert-like and lonely, covered almost altogether with dwarf roses and campanulas, a prairie land on which you can make any tracks you please. Sending the others on, I followed them at the Yezo scramble, and soon ventured on a long gallop, and revelled in the music of the thud of shoeless feet over the elastic soil; but I had not realised the peculiarities of Yezo steeds, and had forgotten to ask whether mine was a "front horse," and just as we were going at full speed we came nearly up with the others, and my horse coming abruptly to a full stop, I went six feet over his head among the rose-bushes.

Ito looking back saw me tightening the saddle-girths, and I never divulged this escapade.

After riding eight miles along this breezy belt, with the sea on one side and forests on the other, we came upon Yubets, a place which has fascinated me so much that I intend to return to it; but I must confess that its fascinations depend rather upon what it has not than upon what it has, and Ito says that it would kill him to spend even two days there. It looks like the end of all things, as if loneliness and desolation could go no farther. A sandy stretch on three sides, a river arrested in its progress to the sea, and compelled to wander tediously in search of an outlet by the height and ma.s.s of the beach thrown up by the Pacific, a distant forest- belt rising into featureless, wooded ranges in shades of indigo and grey, and a never-absent consciousness of a vast ocean just out of sight, are the environments of two high look-outs, some sheds for fish-oil purposes, four or five j.a.panese houses, four Aino huts on the top of the beach across the river, and a grey barrack, consisting of a polished pa.s.sage eighty feet long, with small rooms on either side, at one end a gravelled yard, with two quiet rooms opening upon it, and at the other an immense daidokoro, with dark recesses and blackened rafters--a haunted-looking abode. One would suppose that there had been a special object in setting the houses down at weary distances from each other. Few as they are, they are not all inhabited at this season, and all that can be seen is grey sand, spa.r.s.e gra.s.s, and a few savages creeping about.

Nothing that I have seen has made such an impression upon me as that ghostly, ghastly fis.h.i.+ng-station. In the long grey wall of the long grey barrack there were many dismal windows, and when we hooted for admission a stupid face appeared at one of them and disappeared. Then a grey gateway opened, and we rode into a yard of grey gravel, with some silent rooms opening upon it. The solitude of the thirty or forty rooms which lie between it and the kitchen, and which are now filled with nets and fis.h.i.+ng-tackle, was something awful; and as the wind swept along the polished pa.s.sage, rattling the fusuma and lifting the s.h.i.+ngles on the roof, and the rats careered from end to end, I went to the great black daidokoro in search of social life, and found a few embers and an andon, and nothing else but the stupid-faced man deploring his fate, and two orphan boys whose lot he makes more wretched than his own. In the fis.h.i.+ng-season this barrack accommodates from 200 to 300 men.

I started to the sea-sh.o.r.e, crossing the dreary river, and found open sheds much blackened, deserted huts of reeds, long sheds with a nearly insufferable odour from caldrons in which oil had been extracted from last year's fish, two or three Aino huts, and two or three grand-looking Ainos, clothed in skins, striding like ghosts over the sandbanks, a number of wolfish dogs, some log canoes or "dug-outs," the bones of a wrecked junk, a quant.i.ty of bleached drift-wood, a beach of dark-grey sand, and a tossing expanse of dark-grey ocean under a dull and windy sky. On this part of the coast the Pacific spends its fury, and has raised up at a short distance above high-water mark a sandy sweep of such a height that when you descend its seaward slope you see nothing but the sea and the sky, and a grey, curving sh.o.r.e, covered thick for many a lonely mile with fantastic forms of whitened drift-wood, the shattered wrecks of forest-trees, which are carried down by the innumerable rivers, till, after tossing for weeks and months along with

"--wrecks of s.h.i.+ps, and drifting spars uplifting On the desolate, rainy seas: Ever drifting, drifting, drifting, On the s.h.i.+fting Currents of the restless main;"

the "toiling surges" cast them on Yubets beach, and

"All have found repose again."

A grim repose!

The deep boom of the surf was music, and the strange cries of sea- birds, and the hoa.r.s.e notes of the audacious black crows, were all harmonious, for nature, when left to herself, never produces discords either in sound or colour.

LETTER x.x.xV--(Continued)

The Harmonies of Nature--A Good Horse--A Single Discord--A Forest-- Aino Ferrymen--"Les Puces! Les Puces!"--Baffled Explorers--Ito's Contempt for Ainos--An Aino Introduction.

SARUFUTO.

No! Nature has no discords. This morning, to the far horizon, diamond-flas.h.i.+ng blue water s.h.i.+mmered in perfect peace, outlined by a line of surf which broke lazily on a beach scarcely less snowy than itself. The deep, perfect blue of the sky was only broken by a few radiant white clouds, whose shadows trailed slowly over the plain on whose broad bosom a thousand corollas, in the glory of their brief but pa.s.sionate life, were drinking in the suns.h.i.+ne, wavy ranges slept in depths of indigo, and higher hills beyond were painted in faint blue on the dreamy sky. Even the few grey houses of Yubets were spiritualised into harmony by a faint blue veil which was not a mist, and the loud croak of the loquacious and impertinent crows had a cheeriness about it, a hearty mockery, which I liked.

Above all, I had a horse so good that he was always trying to run away, and galloped so lightly over the flowery gra.s.s that I rode the seventeen miles here with great enjoyment. Truly a good horse, good ground to gallop on, and suns.h.i.+ne, make up the sum of enjoyable travelling. The discord in the general harmony was produced by the sight of the Ainos, a harmless people without the instinct of progress, descending to that vast tomb of conquered and unknown races which has opened to receive so many before them. A mounted policeman started with us from Yubets, and rode the whole way here, keeping exactly to my pace, but never speaking a word.

We forded one broad, deep river, and crossed another, partly by fording and partly in a scow, after which the track left the level, and, after pa.s.sing through reedy gra.s.s as high as the horse's ears, went for some miles up and down hill, through woods composed entirely of the Ailanthus glandulosus, with leaves much riddled by the mountain silk-worm, and a ferny undergrowth of the familiar Pteris aquilina. The deep shade and glancing lights of this open copsewood were very pleasant; and as the horse tripped gaily up and down the little hills, and the sea murmur mingled with the rustle of the breeze, and a glint of white surf sometimes flashed through the greenery, and dragonflies and b.u.t.terflies in suits of crimson and black velvet crossed the path continually like "living flashes"

of light, I was reminded somewhat, though faintly, of windward Hawaii. We emerged upon an Aino hut and a beautiful placid river, and two Ainos ferried the four people and horses across in a scow, the third wading to guide the boat. They wore no clothing, but only one was hairy. They were superb-looking men, gentle, and extremely courteous, handing me in and out of the boat, and holding the stirrup while I mounted, with much natural grace. On leaving they extended their arms and waved their hands inwards twice, stroking their grand beards afterwards, which is their usual salutation. A short distance over s.h.i.+ngle brought us to this j.a.panese village of sixty-three houses, a colonisation settlement, mainly of samurai from the province of Sendai, who are raising very fine crops on the sandy soil. The mountains, twelve miles in the interior, have a large Aino population, and a few Ainos live near this village and are held in great contempt by its inhabitants. My room is on the village street, and, as it is too warm to close the shoji, the aborigines stand looking in at the lattice hour after hour.

A short time ago Mr. Von Siebold and Count Diesbach galloped up on their return from Biratori, the Aino village to which I am going; and Count D., throwing himself from his horse, rushed up to me with the exclamation, Les puces! les puces! They have brought down with them the chief, Benri, a superb but dissipated-looking savage. Mr.

Von Siebold called on me this evening, and I envied him his fresh, clean clothing as much as he envied me my stretcher and mosquito- net. They have suffered terribly from fleas, mosquitoes, and general discomfort, and are much exhausted; but Mr. Von S. thinks that, in spite of all, a visit to the mountain Ainos is worth a long journey. As I expected, they have completely failed in their explorations, and have been deserted by Lieutenant Kreitner. I asked Mr. Von S. to speak to Ito in j.a.panese about the importance of being kind and courteous to the Ainos whose hospitality I shall receive; and Ito is very indignant at this. "Treat Ainos politely!" he says; "they're just dogs, not men;" and since he has regaled me with all the scandal concerning them which he has been able to rake together in the village.

We have to take not only food for both Ito and myself, but cooking utensils. I have been introduced to Benri, the chief; and, though he does not return for a day or two, he will send a message along with us which will ensure me hospitality.

I. L. B.

LETTER x.x.xVI

Savage Life--A Forest Track--Cleanly Villages--A Hospitable Reception--The Chief's Mother--The Evening Meal--A Savage Seance-- Libations to the G.o.ds--Nocturnal Silence--Aino Courtesy--The Chief's Wife.

AINO HUT, BIRATORI, August 23.

I am in the lonely Aino land, and I think that the most interesting of my travelling experiences has been the living for three days and two nights in an Aino hut, and seeing and sharing the daily life of complete savages, who go on with their ordinary occupations just as if I were not among them. I found yesterday a most fatiguing and over-exciting day, as everything was new and interesting, even the extracting from men who have few if any ideas in common with me all I could extract concerning their religion and customs, and that through an interpreter. I got up at six this morning to write out my notes, and have been writing for five hours, and there is shortly the prospect of another savage seance. The distractions, as you can imagine, are many. At this moment a savage is taking a cup of sake by the fire in the centre of the floor. He salutes me by extending his hands and waving them towards his face, and then dips a rod in the sake, and makes six libations to the G.o.d--an upright piece of wood with a fringe of shavings planted in the floor of the room. Then he waves the cup several times towards himself, makes other libations to the fire, and drinks. Ten other men and women are sitting along each side of the fire-hole, the chief's wife is cooking, the men are apathetically contemplating the preparation of their food; and the other women, who are never idle, are splitting the bark of which they make their clothes. I occupy the guest seat--a raised platform at one end of the fire, with the skin of a black bear thrown over it.

I have reserved all I have to say about the Ainos till I had been actually among them, and I hope you will have patience to read to the end. Ito is very greedy and self-indulgent, and whimpered very much about coming to Biratori at all,--one would have thought he was going to the stake. He actually borrowed for himself a sleeping mat and futons, and has brought a chicken, onions, potatoes, French beans, j.a.panese sauce, tea, rice, a kettle, a stew-pan, and a rice-pan, while I contented myself with a cold fowl and potatoes.

We took three horses and a mounted Aino guide, and found a beaten track the whole way. It turns into the forest at once on leaving Sarufuto, and goes through forest the entire distance, with an abundance of reedy gra.s.s higher than my hat on horseback along it, and, as it is only twelve inches broad and much overgrown, the horses were constantly pus.h.i.+ng through leaf.a.ge soaking from a night's rain, and I was soon wet up to my shoulders. The forest trees are almost solely the Ailanthus glandulosus and the Zelkowa keaki, often matted together with a white-flowered trailer of the Hydrangea genus. The undergrowth is simply hideous, consisting mainly of coa.r.s.e reedy gra.s.s, monstrous docks, the large-leaved Polygonum cuspidatum, several umbelliferous plants, and a "ragweed"

which, like most of its gawky fellows, grows from five to six feet high. The forest is dark and very silent, threaded by this narrow path, and by others as narrow, made by the hunters in search of game. The "main road" sometimes plunges into deep bogs, at others is roughly corduroyed by the roots of trees, and frequently hangs over the edge of abrupt and much-worn declivities, in going up one of which the baggage-horse rolled down a bank fully thirty feet high, and nearly all the tea was lost. At another the guide's pack-saddle lost its balance, and man, horse, and saddle went over the slope, pots, pans, and packages flying after them. At another time my horse sank up to his chest in a very bad bog, and, as he was totally unable to extricate himself, I was obliged to scramble upon his neck and jump to terra firma over his ears.

There is something very gloomy in the solitude of this silent land, with its beast-haunted forests, its great patches of pasture, the resort of wild animals which haunt the lower regions in search of food when the snow drives them down from the mountains, and its narrow track, indicating the single file in which the savages of the interior walk with their bare, noiseless feet. Reaching the Sarufutogawa, a river with a treacherous bottom, in which Mr. Von Siebold and his horse came to grief, I hailed an Aino boy, who took me up the stream in a "dug-out," and after that we pa.s.sed through Biroka, Saruba, and Mina, all purely Aino villages, situated among small patches of millet, tobacco, and pumpkins, so choked with weeds that it was doubtful whether they were crops. I was much surprised with the extreme neatness and cleanliness outside the houses; "model villages" they are in these respects, with no litter lying in sight anywhere, nothing indeed but dog troughs, hollowed out of logs, like "dug-outs," for the numerous yellow dogs, which are a feature of Aino life. There are neither puddles nor heaps, but the houses, all trim and in good repair, rise clean out of the sandy soil.

Biratori, the largest of the Aino settlements in this region, is very prettily situated among forests and mountains, on rising ground, with a very sinuous river winding at its feet and a wooded height above. A lonelier place could scarcely be found. As we pa.s.sed among the houses the yellow dogs barked, the women looked shy and smiled, and the men made their graceful salutation. We stopped at the chief's house, where, of course, we were unexpected guests; but s.h.i.+nondi, his nephew, and two other men came out, saluted us, and with most hospitable intent helped Ito to unload the horses. Indeed their eager hospitality created quite a commotion, one running hither and the other thither in their anxiety to welcome a stranger. It is a large house, the room being 35 by 25, and the roof 20 feet high; but you enter by an ante- chamber, in which are kept the millet-mill and other articles.

There is a doorway in this, but the inside is pretty dark, and s.h.i.+nondi, taking my hand, raised the reed curtain bound with hide, which concealed the entrance into the actual house, and, leading me into it, retired a footstep, extended his arms, waved his arms inwards three times, and then stroked his beard several times, after which he indicated by a sweep of his hand and a beautiful smile that the house and all it contained were mine. An aged woman, the chief's mother, who was splitting bark by the fire, waved her hands also. She is the queen-regnant of the house.

Again taking my hand, s.h.i.+nondi led me to the place of honour at the head of the fire--a rude, movable platform six feet long by four broad, and a foot high, on which he laid an ornamental mat, apologising for not having at that moment a bearskin wherewith to cover it. The baggage was speedily brought in by several willing pairs of hands; some reed mats fifteen feet long were laid down upon the very coa.r.s.e ones which covered the whole floor, and when they saw Ito putting up my stretcher they hung a fine mat along the rough wall to conceal it, and suspended another on the beams of the roof for a canopy. The alacrity and instinctive hospitality with which these men rushed about to make things comfortable were very fascinating, though comfort is a word misapplied in an Aino hut.

The women only did what the men told them.

They offered food at once, but I told them that I had brought my own, and would only ask leave to cook it on their fire. I need not have brought any cups, for they have many lacquer bowls, and s.h.i.+nondi brought me on a lacquer tray a bowl full of water from one of their four wells. They said that Benri, the chief, would wish me to make his house my own for as long as I cared to stay, and I must excuse them in all things in which their ways were different from my own. s.h.i.+nondi and four others in the village speak tolerable j.a.panese, and this of course is the medium of communication. Ito has exerted himself n.o.bly as an interpreter, and has entered into my wishes with a cordiality and intelligence which have been perfectly invaluable; and, though he did growl at Mr. Von Siebold's injunctions regarding politeness, he has carried them out to my satisfaction, and even admits that the mountain Ainos are better than he expected; "but," he added "they have learned their politeness from the j.a.panese!" They have never seen a foreign woman, and only three foreign men, but there is neither crowding nor staring as among the j.a.panese, possibly in part from apathy and want of intelligence. For three days they have kept up their graceful and kindly hospitality, going on with their ordinary life and occupations, and, though I have lived among them in this room by day and night, there has been nothing which in any way could offend the most fastidious sense of delicacy.

They said they would leave me to eat and rest, and all retired but the chief's mother, a weird, witch-like woman of eighty, with shocks of yellow-white hair, and a stern suspiciousness in her wrinkled face. I have come to feel as if she had the evil eye, as she sits there watching, watching always, and for ever knotting the bark thread like one of the Fates, keeping a jealous watch on her son's two wives, and on other young women who come in to weave-- neither the dulness nor the repose of old age about her; and her eyes gleam with a greedy light when she sees sake, of which she drains a bowl without taking breath. She alone is suspicious of strangers, and she thinks that my visit bodes no good to her tribe.

I see her eyes fixed upon me now, and they make me shudder.

I had a good meal seated in my chair on the top of the guest-seat to avoid the fleas, which are truly legion. At dusk s.h.i.+nondi returned, and soon people began to drop in, till eighteen were a.s.sembled, including the sub-chief and several very grand-looking old men, with full, grey, wavy beards. Age is held in much reverence, and it is etiquette for these old men to do honour to a guest in the chief's absence. As each entered he saluted me several times, and after sitting down turned towards me and saluted again, going through the same ceremony with every other person.