It Would Be Impossible To Get
Up Were It Not For The Remains Of A Wooden Staircase, Not Of Aino
Construction.
Forest and mountain surround Biratori, and the only
breaks in the dense greenery are glints of the shining waters of
the Sarufutogawa, and the tawny roofs of the Aino lodges.
It is a
lonely and a silent land, fitter for the HIDING place than the
DWELLING place of men.
When the splendid young savage, Pipichari, saw that I found it
difficult to get up, he took my hand and helped me up, as gently as
an English gentleman would have done; and when he saw that I had
greater difficulty in getting down, he all but insisted on my
riding down on his back, and certainly would have carried me had
not Benri, the chief, who arrived while we were at the shrine, made
an end of it by taking my hand and helping me down himself. Their
instinct of helpfulness to a foreign woman strikes me as so odd,
because they never show any courtesy to their own women, whom they
treat (though to a less extent than is usual among savages) as
inferior beings.
On the very edge of the cliff, at the top of the zigzag, stands a
wooden temple or shrine, such as one sees in any grove, or on any
high place on the main island, obviously of Japanese construction,
but concerning which Aino tradition is silent. No European had
ever stood where I stood, and there was a solemnity in the
knowledge.
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