Of Course There Is No Furniture; But
A Shelf Runs Under The Roof, On Which There Is A Buddhist God-
House, With Two Black Idols In It, One Of Them Being That Much-
Worshipped Divinity, Daikoku, The God Of Wealth.
Besides a rack
for kitchen utensils, there is only a stand on which are six large
brown dishes with
Food for sale - salt shell-fish, in a black
liquid, dried trout impaled on sticks, sea slugs in soy, a paste
made of pounded roots, and green cakes made of the slimy river
confervae, pressed and dried - all ill-favoured and unsavoury
viands. This afternoon a man without clothes was treading flour
paste on a mat, a traveller in a blue silk robe was lying on the
floor smoking, and five women in loose attire, with elaborate
chignons and blackened teeth, were squatting round the fire. At
the house-mistress's request I wrote a eulogistic description of
the view from her house, and read it in English, Ito translating
it, to the very great satisfaction of the assemblage. Then I was
asked to write on four fans. The woman has never heard of England.
It is not "a name to conjure with" in these wilds. Neither has she
heard of America. She knows of Russia as a great power, and, of
course, of China, but there her knowledge ends, though she has been
at Tokiyo and Kiyoto.
July 1. - I was just falling asleep last night, in spite of
mosquitoes and fleas, when I was roused by much talking and loud
outcries of poultry; and Ito, carrying a screaming, refractory hen,
and a man and woman whom he had with difficulty bribed to part with
it, appeared by my bed.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 135 of 417
Words from 36977 to 37265
of 115002
