Only Yesterday A
Strap Was Missing, And, Though It Was After Dark, The Man Went Back
A Ri For It, And Refused To Take Some Sen Which I Wished To Give
Him, Saying He Was Responsible For Delivering Everything Right At
The Journey's End.
They are so kind and courteous to each other,
which is very pleasing.
Ito is not pleasing or polite in his
manner to me, but when he speaks to his own people he cannot free
himself from the shackles of etiquette, and bows as profoundly and
uses as many polite phrases as anybody else.
In an hour the malarious plain was crossed, and we have been among
piles of mountains ever since. The infamous road was so slippery
that my horse fell several times, and the baggage horse, with Ito
upon him, rolled head over heels, sending his miscellaneous pack in
all directions. Good roads are really the most pressing need of
Japan. It would be far better if the Government were to enrich the
country by such a remunerative outlay as making passable roads for
the transport of goods through the interior, than to impoverish it
by buying ironclads in England, and indulging in expensive western
vanities.
That so horrible a road should have so good a bridge as that by
which we crossed the broad river Agano is surprising. It consists
of twelve large scows, each one secured to a strong cable of
plaited wistari, which crosses the river at a great height, so as
to allow of the scows and the plank bridge which they carry rising
and falling with the twelve feet variation of the water.
Ito's disaster kept him back for an hour, and I sat meanwhile on a
rice sack in the hamlet of Katakado, a collection of steep-roofed
houses huddled together in a height above the Agano. It was one
mob of pack-horses, over 200 of them, biting, squealing, and
kicking. Before I could dismount, one vicious creature struck at
me violently, but only hit the great wooden stirrup. I could
hardly find any place out of the range of hoofs or teeth. My
baggage horse showed great fury after he was unloaded. He attacked
people right and left with his teeth, struck out savagely with his
fore feet, lashed out with his hind ones, and tried to pin his
master up against a wall.
Leaving this fractious scene we struck again through the mountains.
Their ranges were interminable, and every view from every fresh
ridge grander than the last, for we were now near the lofty range
of the Aidzu Mountains, and the double-peaked Bandaisan, the abrupt
precipices of Itoyasan, and the grand mass of Miyojintake in the
south-west, with their vast snow-fields and snow-filled ravines,
were all visible at once. These summits of naked rock or dazzling
snow, rising above the smothering greenery of the lower ranges into
a heaven of delicious blue, gave exactly that individuality and
emphasis which, to my thinking, Japanese scenery usually lacks.
Riding on first, I arrived alone at the little town of Nozawa, to
encounter the curiosity of a crowd; and, after a rest, we had a
very pleasant walk of three miles along the side of a ridge above a
rapid river with fine grey cliffs on its farther side, with a grand
view of the Aidzu giants, violet coloured in a golden sunset.
At dusk we came upon the picturesque village of Nojiri, on the
margin of a rice valley, but I shrank from spending Sunday in a
hole, and, having spied a solitary house on the very brow of a hill
1500 feet higher, I dragged out the information that it was a tea-
house, and came up to it. It took three-quarters of an hour to
climb the series of precipitous zigzags by which this remarkable
pass is surmounted; darkness came on, accompanied by thunder and
lightning, and just as we arrived a tremendous zigzag of blue flame
lit up the house and its interior, showing a large group sitting
round a wood fire, and then all was thick darkness again. It had a
most startling effect. This house is magnificently situated,
almost hanging over the edge of the knife-like ridge of the pass of
Kuruma, on which it is situated. It is the only yadoya I have been
at from which there has been any view. The villages are nearly
always in the valleys, and the best rooms are at the back, and have
their prospects limited by the paling of the conventional garden.
If it were not for the fleas, which are here in legions, I should
stay longer, for the view of the Aidzu snow is delicious, and, as
there are only two other houses, one can ramble without being
mobbed.
In one a child two and a half years old swallowed a fish-bone last
night, and has been suffering and crying all day, and the grief of
the mother so won Ito's sympathy that he took me to see her. She
had walked up and down with it for eighteen hours, but never
thought of looking into its throat, and was very unwilling that I
should do so. The bone was visible, and easily removed with a
crochet needle. An hour later the mother sent a tray with a
quantity of cakes and coarse confectionery upon it as a present,
with the piece of dried seaweed which always accompanies a gift.
Before night seven people with sore legs applied for "advice." The
sores were all superficial and all alike, and their owners said
that they had been produced by the incessant rubbing of the bites
of ants.
On this summer day the country looks as prosperous as it is
beautiful, and one would not think that acute poverty could exist
in the steep-roofed village of Nojiri, which nestles at the foot of
the hill; but two hempen ropes dangling from a cryptomeria just
below tell the sad tale of an elderly man who hanged himself two
days ago, because he was too poor to provide for a large family;
and the house-mistress and Ito tell me that when a man who has a
young family gets too old or feeble for work he often destroys
himself.
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