This Dull
Rattle Of Shoeless Feet Is The First Sound In The Morning In These
Yezo Villages.
I sent Ito on early, and followed at nine with
three Ainos.
The road is perfectly level for thirteen miles,
through gravel flats and swamps, very monotonous, but with a wild
charm of its own. There were swampy lakes, with wild ducks and
small white water-lilies, and the surrounding levels were covered
with reedy grass, flowers, and weeds. The early autumn has
withered a great many of the flowers; but enough remains to show
how beautiful the now russet plains must have been in the early
summer. A dwarf rose, of a deep crimson colour, with orange,
medlar-shaped hips, as large as crabs, and corollas three inches
across, is one of the features of Yezo; and besides, there is a
large rose-red convolvulus, a blue campanula, with tiers of bells,
a blue monkshood, the Aconitum Japonicum, the flaunting Calystegia
soldanella, purple asters, grass of Parnassus, yellow lilies, and a
remarkable trailer, whose delicate leafage looked quite out of
place among its coarse surroundings, with a purplish-brown
campanulate blossom, only remarkable for a peculiar arrangement of
the pistil, green stamens, and a most offensive carrion-like odour,
which is probably to attract to it a very objectionable-looking
fly, for purposes of fertilisation.
We overtook four Aino women, young and comely, with bare feet,
striding firmly along; and after a good deal of laughing with the
men, they took hold of the kuruma, and the whole seven raced with
it at full speed for half a mile, shrieking with laughter.
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