There Is Something Very Gloomy In The Solitude Of This Silent Land,
With Its Beast-Haunted Forests, Its Great Patches
Of pasture, the
resort of wild animals which haunt the lower regions in search of
food when the snow drives
Them down from the mountains, and its
narrow track, indicating the single file in which the savages of
the interior walk with their bare, noiseless feet. Reaching the
Sarufutogawa, a river with a treacherous bottom, in which Mr. Von
Siebold and his horse came to grief, I hailed an Aino boy, who took
me up the stream in a "dug-out," and after that we passed through
Biroka, Saruba, and Mina, all purely Aino villages, situated among
small patches of millet, tobacco, and pumpkins, so choked with
weeds that it was doubtful whether they were crops. I was much
surprised with the extreme neatness and cleanliness outside the
houses; "model villages" they are in these respects, with no litter
lying in sight anywhere, nothing indeed but dog troughs, hollowed
out of logs, like "dug-outs," for the numerous yellow dogs, which
are a feature of Aino life. There are neither puddles nor heaps,
but the houses, all trim and in good repair, rise clean out of the
sandy soil.
Biratori, the largest of the Aino settlements in this region, is
very prettily situated among forests and mountains, on rising
ground, with a very sinuous river winding at its feet and a wooded
height above. A lonelier place could scarcely be found.
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