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 passes of Lebungetoge.
Except by saying that this disused bridle-track is impassable,
people have scarcely exaggerated its difficulties. One horse broke
down on the first pass, and we were long delayed by sending the
Aino back for another. Possibly these extraordinary passes 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
mass 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 divertissements 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 sunshine 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 masses 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.
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