Then The Road Dips Abruptly To Sandy
Swellings, Rising Into Bold Headlands Here And There; And For The
First Time I Saw The Surge Of 5000 Miles Of Unbroken Ocean Break
Upon The Shore.
Glimpses of the Pacific, an uncultivated, swampy
level quite uninhabited, and distant hills mainly covered with
forest, made up the landscape till I reached Horobets, a mixed
Japanese and Aino village built upon the sand near the sea.
In these mixed villages the Ainos are compelled to live at a
respectful distance from the Japanese, and frequently out-number
them, as at Horobets, where there are forty-seven Aino and only
eighteen Japanese houses. The Aino village looks larger than it
really is, because nearly every house has a kura, raised six feet
from the ground by wooden stilts. When I am better acquainted with
the houses I shall describe them; at present I will only say that
they do not resemble the Japanese houses so much as the Polynesian,
as they are made of reeds very neatly tied upon a wooden framework.
They have small windows, and roofs of a very great height, and
steep pitch, with the thatch in a series of very neat frills, and
the ridge poles covered with reeds, and ornamented. The coast
Ainos are nearly all engaged in fishing, but at this season the men
hunt deer in the forests. On this coast there are several names
compounded with bets or pets, the Aino for a river, such as
Horobets, Yubets, Mombets, etc.
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