Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Part 19

s.h.i.+raoi consists of a large old Honjin, or yadoya, where the daimiyo and his train used to lodge in the old days, and about eleven j.a.panese houses, most of which are sake shops--a fact which supplies an explanation of the squalor of the Aino village of fifty-two houses, which is on the sh.o.r.e at a respectful distance.

There is no cultivation, in which it is like all the fis.h.i.+ng villages on this part of the coast, but fish-oil and fish-manure are made in immense quant.i.ties, and, though it is not the season here, the place is pervaded by "an ancient and fish-like smell."

The Aino houses are much smaller, poorer, and dirtier than those of Biratori. I went into a number of them, and conversed with the people, many of whom understand j.a.panese. Some of the houses looked like dens, and, as it was raining, husband, wife, and five or six naked children, all as dirty as they could be, with unkempt, elf-like locks, were huddled round the fires. Still, bad as it looked and smelt, the fire was the hearth, and the hearth was inviolate, and each smoked and dirt-stained group was a family, and it was an advance upon the social life of, for instance, Salt Lake City. The roofs are much flatter than those of the mountain Ainos, and, as there are few store-houses, quant.i.ties of fish, "green"

skins, and venison, hang from the rafters, and the smell of these and the stinging of the smoke were most trying. Few of the houses had any guest-seats, but in the very poorest, when I asked shelter from the rain, they put their best mat upon the ground, and insisted, much to my distress, on my walking over it in muddy boots, saying, "It is Aino custom." Ever, in those squalid homes the broad shelf, with its rows of j.a.panese curios, always has a place. I mentioned that it is customary for a chief to appoint a successor when he becomes infirm, and I came upon a case in point, through a mistaken direction, which took us to the house of the former chief, with a great empty bear cage at its door. On addressing him as the chief, he said, "I am old and blind, I cannot go out, I am of no more good," and directed us to the house of his successor. Altogether it is obvious, from many evidences in this village, that j.a.panese contiguity is hurtful, and that the Ainos have reaped abundantly of the disadvantages without the advantages of contact with j.a.panese civilisation.

That night I saw a specimen of j.a.panese horse-breaking as practised in Yezo. A j.a.panese brought into the village street a handsome, spirited young horse, equipped with a j.a.panese demi-pique saddle, and a most cruel gag bit. The man wore very cruel spurs, and was armed with a bit of stout board two feet long by six inches broad.

The horse had not been mounted before, and was frightened, but not the least vicious. He was spurred into a gallop, and ridden at full speed up and down the street, turned by main force, thrown on his haunches, goaded with the spurs, and cowed by being mercilessly thrashed over the ears and eyes with the piece of board till he was blinded with blood. Whenever he tried to stop from exhaustion he was spurred, jerked, and flogged, till at last, covered with sweat, foam, and blood, and with blood running from his mouth and splas.h.i.+ng the road, he reeled, staggered, and fell, the rider dexterously disengaging himself. As soon as he was able to stand, he was allowed to crawl into a shed, where he was kept without food till morning, when a child could do anything with him. He was "broken," effectually spirit-broken, useless for the rest of his life. It was a brutal and brutalising exhibition, as triumphs of brute force always are.

LETTER x.x.xIX--(Continued)

The Universal Language--The Yezo Corrals--A "Typhoon Rain"-- Difficult Tracks--An Unenviable Ride--Drying Clothes--A Woman's Remorse.

This morning I left early in the kuruma with two kind and delightful savages. The road being much broken by the rains I had to get out frequently, and every time I got in again they put my air-pillow behind me, and covered me up in a blanket; and when we got to a rough river, one made a step of his back by which I mounted their horse, and gave me nooses of rope to hold on by, and the other held my arm to keep me steady, and they would not let me walk up or down any of the hills. What a blessing it is that, amidst the confusion of tongues, the language of kindness and courtesy is universally understood, and that a kindly smile on a savage face is as intelligible as on that of one's own countryman!

They had never drawn a kuruma, and were as pleased as children when I showed them how to balance the shafts. They were not without the capacity to originate ideas, for, when they were tired of the frolic of pulling, they attached the kuruma by ropes to the horse, which one of them rode at a "scramble," while the other merely ran in the shafts to keep them level. This is an excellent plan.

Horobets is a fis.h.i.+ng station of antique and decayed aspect, with eighteen j.a.panese and forty-seven Aino houses. The latter are much larger than at s.h.i.+raoi, and their very steep roofs are beautifully constructed. It was a miserable day, with fog concealing the mountains and lying heavily on the sea, but as no one expected rain I sent the kuruma back to Mororan and secured horses. On principle I always go to the corral myself to choose animals, if possible, without sore backs, but the choice is often between one with a mere raw and others which have holes in their backs into which I could put my hand, or altogether uncovered spines. The practice does no immediate good, but by showing the j.a.panese that foreign opinion condemns these cruelties an amendment may eventually be brought about. At Horobets, among twenty horses, there was not one that I would take,--I should like to have had them all shot. They are cheap and abundant, and are of no account. They drove a number more down from the hills, and I chose the largest and finest horse I have seen in j.a.pan, with some spirit and action, but I soon found that he had tender feet. We shortly left the high-road, and in torrents of rain turned off on "unbeaten tracks," which led us through a very bad swamp and some much swollen and very rough rivers into the mountains, where we followed a worn-out track for eight miles. It was literally "FOUL weather," dark and still, with a brown mist, and rain falling in sheets. I threw my paper waterproof away as useless, my clothes were of course soaked, and it was with much difficulty that I kept my sh.o.m.on and paper money from being reduced to pulp. Typhoons are not known so far north as Yezo, but it was what they call a "typhoon rain" without the typhoon, and in no time it turned the streams into torrents barely fordable, and tore up such of a road as there is, which at its best is a mere water-channel. Torrents, bringing tolerable-sized stones, tore down the track, and when the horses had been struck two or three times by these, it was with difficulty that they could be induced to face the rus.h.i.+ng water. Constantly in a pa.s.s, the water had gradually cut a track several feet deep between steep banks, and the only possible walking place was a stony gash not wide enough for the two feet of a horse alongside of each other, down which water and stones were rus.h.i.+ng from behind, with all manner of trailers matted overhead, and between avoiding being strangled and attempting to keep a tender-footed horse on his legs, the ride was a very severe one. The poor animal fell five times from stepping on stones, and in one of his falls twisted my left wrist badly. I thought of the many people who envied me my tour in j.a.pan, and wondered whether they would envy me that ride!

After this had gone on for four hours, the track, with a sudden dip over a hillside, came down on Old Mororan, a village of thirty Aino and nine j.a.panese houses, very unpromising-looking, although exquisitely situated on the rim of a lovely cove. The Aino huts were small and poor, with an unusual number of bear skulls on poles, and the village consisted mainly of two long dilapidated buildings, in which a number of men were mending nets. It looked a decaying place, of low, mean lives. But at a "merchant's" there was one delightful room with two translucent sides--one opening on the village, the other looking to the sea down a short, steep slope, on which is a quaint little garden, with dwarfed fir-trees in pots, a few balsams, and a red cabbage grown with much pride as a "foliage plant."

It is nearly midnight, but my bed and bedding are so wet that I am still sitting up and drying them, patch by patch, with tedious slowness, on a wooden frame placed over a charcoal brazier, which has given my room the dryness and warmth which are needed when a person has been for many hours in soaked clothing, and has nothing really dry to put on. Ito bought a chicken for my supper, but when he was going to kill it an hour later its owner in much grief returned the money, saying she had brought it up and could not bear to see it killed. This is a wild, outlandish place, but an intuition tells me that it is beautiful. The ocean at present is thundering up the beach with the sullen force of a heavy ground- swell, and the rain is still falling in torrents.

I. L. B.

LETTER XL

"More than Peace"--Geographical Difficulties--Usu-taki--Swimming the Osharu--A Dream of Beauty--A Sunset Effect--A Nocturnal Alarm-- The Coast Ainos.

LEBUNGE, VOLCANO BAY, YEZO, September 6.

"Weary wave and dying blast Sob and moan along the sh.o.r.e, All is peace at last."

And more than peace. It was a heavenly morning. The deep blue sky was perfectly unclouded, a blue sea with diamond flash and a "many- twinkling smile" rippled gently on the golden sands of the lovely little bay, and opposite, forty miles away, the pink summit of the volcano of Komono-taki, forming the south-western point of Volcano Bay, rose into a softening veil of tender blue haze. There was a balmy breeziness in the air, and tawny tints upon the hill, patches of gold in the woods, and a scarlet spray here and there heralded the glories of the advancing autumn. As the day began, so it closed. I should like to have detained each hour as it pa.s.sed. It was thorough enjoyment. I visited a good many of the Mororan Ainos, saw their well-grown bear in its cage, and, tearing myself away with difficulty at noon, crossed a steep hill and a wood of scrub oak, and then followed a trail which runs on the amber sands close to the sea, crosses several small streams, and pa.s.ses the lonely Aino village of Maripu, the ocean always on the left and wooded ranges on the right, and in front an apparent bar to farther progress in the volcano of Usu-taki, an imposing mountain, rising abruptly to a height of nearly 3000 feet, I should think.

In Yezo, as on the main island, one can learn very little about any prospective route. Usually when one makes an inquiry a j.a.panese puts on a stupid look, giggles, tucks his thumbs into his girdle, hitches up his garments, and either professes perfect ignorance or gives one some vague second-hand information, though it is quite possible that he may have been over every foot of the ground himself more than once. Whether suspicion of your motives in asking, or a fear of compromising himself by answering, is at the bottom of this I don't know, but it is most exasperating to a traveller. In Hakodate I failed to see Captain Blakiston, who has walked round the whole Yezo sea-board, and all I was able to learn regarding this route was that the coast was thinly peopled by Ainos, that there were Government horses which could be got, and that one could sleep where one got them; that rice and salt fish were the only food; that there were many "bad rivers," and that the road went over "bad mountains;" that the only people who went that way were Government officials twice a year, that one could not get on more than four miles a day, that the roads over the pa.s.ses were "all big stones," etc. etc. So this Usu-taki took me altogether by surprise, and for a time confounded all my carefully-constructed notions of locality. I had been told that the one volcano in the bay was Komono-taki, near Mori, and this I believed to be eighty miles off, and there, confronting me, within a distance of two miles, was this grand, splintered, vermilion-crested thing, with a far n.o.bler aspect than that of "THE" volcano, with a curtain range in front, deeply scored, and slashed with ravines and abysses whose purple gloom was unlighted even by the noon-day sun. One of the peaks was emitting black smoke from a deep crater, another steam and white smoke from various rents and fissures in its side-- vermilion peaks, smoke, and steam all rising into a sky of brilliant blue, and the atmosphere was so clear that I saw everything that was going on there quite distinctly, especially when I attained an alt.i.tude exceeding that of the curtain range.

It was not for two days that I got a correct idea of its geographical situation, but I was not long in finding out that it was not Komono-taki! There is much volcanic activity about it. I saw a glare from it last night thirty miles away. The Ainos said that it was "a G.o.d," but did not know its name, nor did the j.a.panese who were living under its shadow. At some distance from it in the interior rises a great dome-like mountain, s.h.i.+ribetsan, and the whole view is grand.

A little beyond Mombets flows the river Osharu, one of the largest of the Yezo streams. It was much swollen by the previous day's rain; and as the ferry-boat was carried away we had to swim it, and the swim seemed very long. Of course, we and the baggage got very wet. The coolness with which the Aino guide took to the water without giving us any notice that its broad, eddying flood was a swim, and not a ford, was very amusing.

From the top of a steepish ascent beyond the Osharugawa there is a view into what looks like a very lovely lake, with wooded promontories, and little bays, and rocky capes in miniature, and little heights, on which Aino houses, with tawny roofs, are cl.u.s.tered; and then the track dips suddenly, and deposits one, not by a lake at all, but on Usu Bay, an inlet of the Pacific, much broken up into coves, and with a very narrow entrance, only obvious from a few points. Just as the track touches the bay there is a road-post, with a prayer-wheel in it, and by the sh.o.r.e an upright stone of very large size, inscribed with Sanskrit characters, near to a stone staircase and a gateway in a ma.s.sive stone-faced embankment, which looked much out of keeping with the general wildness of the place. On a rocky promontory in a wooded cove there is a large, rambling house, greatly out of repair, inhabited by a j.a.panese man and his son, who are placed there to look after Government interests, exiles among 500 Ainos. From among the number of rat-haunted, rambling rooms which had once been handsome, I chose one opening on a yard or garden with some distorted yews in it, but found that the great gateway and the amado had no bolts, and that anything might be appropriated by any one with dishonest intentions; but the house-master and his son, who have lived for ten years among the Ainos, and speak their language, say that nothing is ever taken, and that the Ainos are thoroughly honest and harmless. Without this a.s.surance I should have been distrustful of the number of wide-mouthed youths who hung about, in the listlessness and vacuity of savagery, if not of the bearded men who sat or stood about the gateway with children in their arms.

Usu is a dream of beauty and peace. There is not much difference between the height of high and low water on this coast, and the lake-like illusion would have been perfect had it not been that the rocks were tinged with gold for a foot or so above the sea by a delicate species of fucus. In the exquisite inlet where I spent the night, trees and trailers drooped into the water and were mirrored in it, their green, heavy shadows lying sharp against the sunset gold and pink of the rest of the bay; log canoes, with planks laced upon their gunwales to heighten them, were drawn upon a tiny beach of golden sand, and in the shadiest cove, moored to a tree, an antique and much-carved junk was "floating double."

Wooded, rocky knolls, with Aino huts, the vermilion peaks of the volcano of Usu-taki redder than ever in the sinking sun, a few Ainos mending their nets, a few more spreading edible seaweed out to dry, a single canoe breaking the golden mirror of the cove by its noiseless motion, a few Aino loungers, with their "mild-eyed, melancholy" faces and quiet ways suiting the quiet evening scene, the unearthly sweetness of a temple bell--this was all, and yet it was the loveliest picture I have seen in j.a.pan.

In spite of Ito's remonstrances and his protestations that an exceptionally good supper would be spoiled, I left my rat-haunted room, with its tarnished gilding and precarious fusuma, to get the last of the pink and lemon-coloured glory, going up the staircase in the stone-faced embankment, and up a broad, well-paved avenue, to a large temple, within whose open door I sat for some time absolutely alone, and in a wonderful stillness; for the sweet-toned bell which vainly chimes for vespers amidst this bear-wors.h.i.+pping population had ceased. This temple was the first symptom of j.a.panese religion that I remember to have seen since leaving Hakodate, and wors.h.i.+ppers have long since ebbed away from its shady and moss-grown courts. Yet it stands there to protest for the teaching of the great Hindu; and generations of Aino heathen pa.s.s away one after another; and still its bronze bell tolls, and its altar lamps are lit, and incense burns for ever before Buddha. The characters on the great bell of this temple are said to be the same lines which are often graven on temple bells, and to possess the dignity of twenty-four centuries:

"All things are transient; They being born must die, And being born are dead; And being dead are glad To be at rest."

The temple is very handsome, the baldachino is superb, and the bronzes and bra.s.ses on the altar are specially fine. A broad ray of sunlight streamed in, crossed the matted floor, and fell full upon the figure of Sakya-muni in his golden shrine; and just at that moment a shaven priest, in silk-brocaded vestments of faded green, silently pa.s.sed down the stream of light, and lit the candles on the altar, and fresh incense filled the temple with a drowsy fragrance. It was a most impressive picture. His curiosity evidently shortened his devotions, and he came and asked me where I had been and where I was going, to which, of course, I replied in excellent j.a.panese, and then stuck fast.

Along the paved avenue, besides the usual stone trough for holy water, there are on one side the thousand-armed Kwan-non, a very fine relief, and on the other a Buddha, throned on the eternal lotus blossom, with an iron staff, much resembling a crozier, in his hand, and that eternal apathy on his face which is the highest hope of those who hope at all. I went through a wood, where there are some mournful groups of graves on the hillside, and from the temple came the sweet sound of the great bronze bell and the beat of the big drum, and then, more faintly, the sound of the little bell and drum, with which the priest accompanies his ceaseless repet.i.tion of a phrase in the dead tongue of a distant land. There is an infinite pathos about the lonely temple in its splendour, the absence of even possible wors.h.i.+ppers, and the large population of Ainos, sunk in yet deeper superst.i.tions than those which go to make up popular Buddhism. I sat on a rock by the bay till the last pink glow faded from Usu-taki and the last lemon stain from the still water; and a beautiful crescent, which hung over the wooded hill, had set, and the heavens blazed with stars:

"Ten thousand stars were in the sky, Ten thousand in the sea, And every wave with dimpled face, That leapt upon the air, Had caught a star in its embrace, And held it trembling there."

The loneliness of Usu Bay is something wonderful--a house full of empty rooms falling to decay, with only two men in it--one j.a.panese house among 500 savages, yet it was the only one in which I have slept in which they bolted neither the amado nor the gate. During the night the amado fell out of the worn-out grooves with a crash, knocking down the shoji, which fell on me, and rousing Ito, who rushed into my room half-asleep, with a vague vision of blood- thirsty Ainos in his mind. I then learned what I have been very stupid not to have learned before, that in these sliding wooden shutters there is a small door through which one person can creep at a time called the jis.h.i.+ndo, or "earthquake door," because it provides an exit during the alarm of an earthquake, in case of the amado sticking in their grooves, or their bolts going wrong. I believe that such a door exists in all j.a.panese houses.

The next morning was as beautiful as the previous evening, rose and gold instead of gold and pink. Before the sun was well up I visited a number of the Aino lodges, saw the bear, and the chief, who, like all the rest, is a monogamist, and, after breakfast, at my request, some of the old men came to give me such information as they had. These venerable elders sat cross-legged in the verandah, the house-master's son, who kindly acted as interpreter, squatting, j.a.panese fas.h.i.+on, at the side, and about thirty Ainos, mostly women, with infants, sitting behind. I spent about two hours in going over the same ground as at Biratori, and also went over the words, and got some more, including some synonyms. The click of the ts before the ch at the beginning of a word is strongly marked among these Ainos. Some of their customs differ slightly from those of their brethren of the interior, specially as to the period of seclusion after a death, the non-allowance of polygamy to the chief, and the manner of killing the bear at the annual festival.

Their ideas of metempsychosis are more definite, but this, I think, is to be accounted for by the influence and proximity of Buddhism.

They spoke of the bear as their chief G.o.d, and next the sun and fire. They said that they no longer wors.h.i.+p the wolf, and that though they call the volcano and many other things kamoi, or G.o.d, they do not wors.h.i.+p them. I ascertained beyond doubt that wors.h.i.+p with them means simply making libations of sake and "drinking to the G.o.d," and that it is unaccompanied by pet.i.tions, or any vocal or mental act.

These Ainos are as dark as the people of southern Spain, and very hairy. Their expression is earnest and pathetic, and when they smiled, as they did when I could not p.r.o.nounce their words, their faces had a touching sweetness which was quite beautiful, and European, not Asiatic. Their own impression is that they are now increasing in numbers after diminis.h.i.+ng for many years. I left Usu sleeping in the loveliness of an autumn noon with great regret. No place that I have seen has fascinated me so much.

LETTER XL--(Continued)

The Sea-sh.o.r.e--A "Hairy Aino"--A Horse Fight--The Horses of Yezo-- "Bad Mountains"--A Slight Accident--Magnificent Scenery--A Bleached Halting-Place--A Musty Room--Aino "Good-breeding."

A charge of 3 sen per ri more for the horses for the next stage, because there were such "bad mountains to cross," prepared me for what followed--many miles of the worst road for horses I ever saw.

I should not have complained if they had charged double the price.

As an almost certain consequence, it was one of the most picturesque routes I have ever travelled. For some distance, however, it runs placidly along by the sea-sh.o.r.e, on which big, blue, foam-crested rollers were disporting themselves noisily, and pa.s.ses through several Aino hamlets, and the Aino village of Abuta, with sixty houses, rather a prosperous-looking place, where the cultivation was considerably more careful, and the people possessed a number of horses. Several of the houses were surrounded by bears' skulls grinning from between the forked tops of high poles, and there was a well-grown bear ready for his doom and apotheosis.

In nearly all the houses a woman was weaving bark-cloth, with the hook which holds the web fixed into the ground several feet outside the house. At a deep river called the Nopkobets, which emerges from the mountains close to the sea, we were ferried by an Aino completely covered with hair, which on his shoulders was wavy like that of a retriever, and rendered clothing quite needless either for covering or warmth. A wavy, black beard rippled nearly to his waist over his furry chest, and, with his black locks hanging in ma.s.ses over his shoulders, he would have looked a thorough savage had it not been for the exceeding sweetness of his smile and eyes.

The Volcano Bay Ainos are far more hairy than the mountain Ainos, but even among them it is quite common to see men not more so than vigorous Europeans, and I think that the hairiness of the race as a distinctive feature has been much exaggerated, partly by the smooth-skinned j.a.panese.

The ferry scow was nearly upset by our four horses beginning to fight. At first one bit the shoulders of another; then the one attacked uttered short, sharp squeals, and returned the attack by striking with his fore feet, and then there was a general melee of striking and biting, till some ugly wounds were inflicted. I have watched fights of this kind on a large scale every day in the corral. The miseries of the Yezo horses are the great drawback of Yezo travelling. They are brutally used, and are covered with awful wounds from being driven at a fast "scramble" with the rude, ungirthed pack-saddle and its heavy load rolling about on their backs, and they are beaten unmercifully over their eyes and ears with heavy sticks. Ito has been barbarous to these gentle, little- prized animals ever since we came to Yezo; he has vexed me more by this than by anything else, especially as he never dared even to carry a switch on the main island, either from fear of the horses or their owners. To-day he was beating the baggage horse unmercifully, when I rode back and interfered with some very strong language, saying, "You are a bully, and, like all bullies, a coward." Imagine my aggravation when, at our first halt, he brought out his note-book, as usual, and quietly asked me the meaning of the words "bully" and "coward." It was perfectly impossible to explain them, so I said a bully was the worst name I could call him, and that a coward was the meanest thing a man could be. Then the provoking boy said, "Is bully a worse name than devil?" "Yes, far worse," I said, on which he seemed rather crestfallen, and he has not beaten his horse since, in my sight at least

The breaking-in process is simply breaking the spirit by an hour or two of such atrocious cruelty as I saw at s.h.i.+raoi, at the end of which the horse, covered with foam and blood, and bleeding from mouth and nose, falls down exhausted. Being so ill used they have all kinds of tricks, such as lying down in fords, throwing themselves down head foremost and rolling over pack and rider, bucking, and resisting attempts to make them go otherwise than in single file. Instead of bits they have bars of wood on each side of the mouth, secured by a rope round the nose and chin. When horses which have been broken with bits gallop they put up their heads till the nose is level with the ears, and it is useless to try either to guide or check them. They are always wanting to join the great herds on the hillside or sea-sh.o.r.e, from which they are only driven down as they are needed. In every Yezo village the first sound that one hears at break of day is the gallop of forty or fifty horses, pursued by an Aino, who has hunted them from the hills. A horse is worth from twenty-eight s.h.i.+llings upwards. They are very sure-footed when their feet are not sore, and cross a stream or chasm on a single rickety plank, or walk on a narrow ledge above a river or gulch without fear. They are barefooted, their hoofs are very hard, and I am glad to be rid of the perpetual tying and untying and replacing of the straw shoes of the well- cared-for horses of the main island. A man rides with them, and for a man and three horses the charge is only sixpence for each 2.5 miles. I am now making Ito ride in front of me, to make sure that he does not beat or otherwise misuse his beast.

After crossing the Nopkobets, from which the fighting horses have led me to make so long a digression, we went right up into the "bad mountains," and crossed the three tremendous pa.s.ses of Lebungetoge.

Except by saying that this disused bridle-track is impa.s.sable, people have scarcely exaggerated its difficulties. One horse broke down on the first pa.s.s, and we were long delayed by sending the Aino back for another. Possibly these extraordinary pa.s.ses do not exceed 1500 feet in height, but the track ascends them through a dense forest with most extraordinary abruptness, to descend as abruptly, to rise again sometimes by a series of nearly washed-away zigzags, at others by a straight, ladder-like ascent deeply channelled, the bottom of the trough being filled with rough stones, large and small, or with ledges of rock with an entangled ma.s.s of branches and trailers overhead, which render it necessary to stoop over the horse's head while he is either fumbling, stumbling, or tumbling among the stones in a gash a foot wide, or else is awkwardly leaping up broken rock steps nearly the height of his chest, the whole performance consisting of a series of scrambling jerks at the rate of a mile an hour.

In one of the worst places the Aino's horse, which was just in front of mine, in trying to scramble up a nearly breast-high and much-worn ledge, fell backwards, nearly overturning my horse, the stretcher poles, which formed part of his pack, striking me so hard above my ankle that for some minutes afterwards I thought the bone was broken. The ankle was severely cut and bruised, and bled a good deal, and I was knocked out of the saddle. Ito's horse fell three times, and eventually the four were roped together. Such are some of the divertiss.e.m.e.nts of Yezo travel.

Ah, but it was glorious! The views are most magnificent. This is really Paradise. Everything is here--huge headlands magnificently timbered, small, deep bays into which the great green waves roll majestically, great, grey cliffs, too perpendicular for even the most adventurous trailer to find root-hold, bold bluffs and outlying stacks cedar-crested, glimpses of bright, blue ocean dimpling in the suns.h.i.+ne or tossing up wreaths of foam among ferns and trailers, and inland ranges of mountains forest-covered, with tremendous gorges between, forest filled, where wolf, bear, and deer make their nearly inaccessible lairs, and outlying battlements, and ridges of grey rock with hardly six feet of level on their sinuous tops, and cedars in ma.s.ses giving deep shadow, and sprays of scarlet maple or festoons of a crimson vine lighting the gloom. The inland view suggested infinity. There seemed no limit to the forest-covered mountains and the unlighted ravines. The wealth of vegetation was equal in luxuriance and entanglement to that of the tropics, primeval vegetation, on which the lumberer's axe has never rung. Trees of immense height and girth, specially the beautiful Salisburia adiantifolia, with its small fan-shaped leaves, all matted together by riotous lianas, rise out of an impenetrable undergrowth of the dwarf, dark-leaved bamboo, which, dwarf as it is, attains a height of seven feet, and all is dark, solemn, soundless, the haunt of wild beasts, and of b.u.t.terflies and dragonflies of the most brilliant colours. There was light without heat, leaves and streams sparkled, and there was nothing of the half-smothered sensation which is often produced by the choking greenery of the main island, for frequently, far below, the Pacific flashed in all its sunlit beauty, and occasionally we came down unexpectedly on a little cove with abrupt cedar-crested headlands and stacks, and a heavy surf rolling in with the deep thunder music which alone breaks the stillness of this silent land.