His Manner Was Most Graceful, And He
Spoke Both Aino And Japanese In The Low Musical Tone Which I Find
Is A Characteristic Of Aino Speech.
These Ainos never took off
their clothes, but merely let them fall from one or both shoulders
when it was very warm.
The road from Horobets to Shiraoi is very solitary, with not more
than four or five houses the whole way. It is broad and straight,
except when it ascends hills or turns inland to cross rivers, and
is carried across a broad swampy level, covered with tall wild
flowers, which extends from the high beach thrown up by the sea for
two miles inland, where there is a lofty wall of wooded rock, and
beyond this the forest-covered mountains of the interior. On the
top of the raised beach there were Aino hamlets, and occasionally a
nearly overpowering stench came across the level from the sheds and
apparatus used for extracting fish-oil. I enjoyed the afternoon
thoroughly. It is so good to have got beyond the confines of
stereotyped civilisation and the trammels of Japanese travelling to
the solitude of nature and an atmosphere of freedom. It was grey,
with a hard, dark line of ocean horizon, and over the weedy level
the grey road, with grey telegraph-poles along it, stretched
wearisomely like a grey thread. The breeze came up from the sea,
rustled the reeds, and waved the tall plumes of the Eulalia
japonica, and the thunder of the Pacific surges boomed through the
air with its grand, deep bass.
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