Comely Kine - Japanese Criticism on a Foreign Usage - A Pleasant
Halt - Renewed Courtesies - The Plain of Yonezawa - A Curious Mistake-
-The Mother's Memorial - Arrival at Komatsu - Stately Accommodation -
A Vicious Horse - An Asiatic Arcadia - A Fashionable Watering-place -
A Belle - "Godowns."
KAMINOYAMA.
A severe day of mountain travelling brought us into another region.
We left Ichinono early on a fine morning, with three pack-cows, one
of which I rode [and their calves], very comely kine, with small
noses, short horns, straight spines, and deep bodies. I thought
that I might get some fresh milk, but the idea of anything but a
calf milking a cow was so new to the people that there was a
universal laugh, and Ito told me that they thought it "most
disgusting," and that the Japanese think it "most disgusting" in
foreigners to put anything "with such a strong smell and taste"
into their tea! All the cows had cotton cloths, printed with blue
dragons, suspended under their bodies to keep them from mud and
insects, and they wear straw shoes and cords through the cartilages
of their noses. The day being fine, a great deal of rice and sake
was on the move, and we met hundreds of pack-cows, all of the same
comely breed, in strings of four.
We crossed the Sakuratoge, from which the view is beautiful, got
horses at the mountain village of Shirakasawa, crossed more passes,
and in the afternoon reached the village of Tenoko.
