They Are "Well
Found" In Food And Claret, But Take Such A Number Of Pack-Ponies
With Them That I Predict That They Will Fail, And That I, Who Have
Reduced My Luggage To 45 Lbs., Will Succeed!
I hope to start on my long-projected tour to-morrow; I have planned
it for myself with the
Confidence of an experienced traveller, and
look forward to it with great pleasure, as a visit to the
aborigines is sure to be full of novel and interesting experiences.
Good-bye for a long time. I. L. B.
LETTER XXXV {17}
A Lovely Sunset - An Official Letter - A "Front Horse" - Japanese
Courtesy - The Steam Ferry - Coolies Abscond - A Team of Savages - A
Drove of Horses - Floral Beauties - An Unbeaten Track - A Ghostly
Dwelling - Solitude and Eeriness.
GINSAINOMA, YEZO, August 17.
I am once again in the wilds! I am sitting outside an upper room
built out almost over a lonely lake, with wooded points purpling
and still shadows deepening in the sinking sun. A number of men
are dragging down the nearest hillside the carcass of a bear which
they have just despatched with spears. There is no village, and
the busy clatter of the cicada and the rustle of the forest are the
only sounds which float on the still evening air. The sunset
colours are pink and green; on the tinted water lie the waxen cups
of great water-lilies, and above the wooded heights the pointed,
craggy, and altogether naked summit of the volcano of Komono-taki
flushes red in the sunset. Not the least of the charms of the
evening is that I am absolutely alone, having ridden the eighteen
miles from Hakodate without Ito or an attendant of any kind; have
unsaddled my own horse, and by means of much politeness and a
dexterous use of Japanese substantives have secured a good room and
supper of rice, eggs, and black beans for myself and a mash of
beans for my horse, which, as it belongs to the Kaitakushi, and has
the dignity of iron shoes, is entitled to special consideration!
I am not yet off the "beaten track," but my spirits are rising with
the fine weather, the drier atmosphere, and the freedom of Yezo.
Yezo is to the main island of Japan what Tipperary is to an
Englishman, Barra to a Scotchman, "away down in Texas" to a New
Yorker - in the rough, little known, and thinly-peopled; and people
can locate all sorts of improbable stories here without much fear
of being found out, of which the Ainos and the misdeeds of the
ponies furnish the staple, and the queer doings of men and dogs,
and adventures with bears, wolves, and salmon, the embroidery.
Nobody comes here without meeting with something queer, and one or
two tumbles either with or from his horse. Very little is known of
the interior except that it is covered with forest matted together
by lianas, and with an undergrowth of scrub bamboo impenetrable
except to the axe, varied by swamps equally impassable, which give
rise to hundreds of rivers well stocked with fish.
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