Splashing Through Mire And Water We Found That The People Of Tubine
Wished To Detain Us, Saying That All The
Ferries were stopped in
consequence of the rise in the rivers; but I had been so often
misled by false
Reports that I took fresh horses and went on by a
track along a very pretty hillside, overlooking the Yonetsurugawa,
a large and swollen river, which nearer the sea had spread itself
over the whole country. Torrents of rain were still falling, and
all out-of-doors industries were suspended. Straw rain-cloaks
hanging to dry dripped under all the eaves, our paper cloaks were
sodden, our dripping horses steamed, and thus we slid down a steep
descent into the hamlet of Kiriishi, thirty-one houses clustered
under persimmon trees under a wooded hillside, all standing in a
quagmire, and so abject and filthy that one could not ask for five
minutes' shelter in any one of them. Sure enough, on the bank of
the river, which was fully 400 yards wide, and swirling like a
mill-stream with a suppressed roar, there was an official order
prohibiting the crossing of man or beast, and before I had time to
think the mago had deposited the baggage on an islet in the mire
and was over the crest of the hill. I wished that the Government
was a little less paternal.
Just in the nick of time we discerned a punt drifting down the
river on the opposite side, where it brought up, and landed a man,
and Ito and two others yelled, howled, and waved so lustily as to
attract its notice, and to my joy an answering yell came across the
roar and rush of the river.
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