Constantly In A Pass, The
Water Had Gradually Cut A Track Several Feet Deep Between Steep
Banks, And The Only
Possible walking place was a stony gash not
wide enough for the two feet of a horse alongside of each
Other,
down which water and stones were rushing from behind, with all
manner of trailers matted overhead, and between avoiding being
strangled and attempting to keep a tender-footed horse on his legs,
the ride was a very severe one. The poor animal fell five times
from stepping on stones, and in one of his falls twisted my left
wrist badly. I thought of the many people who envied me my tour in
Japan, and wondered whether they would envy me that ride!
After this had gone on for four hours, the track, with a sudden dip
over a hillside, came down on Old Mororan, a village of thirty Aino
and nine Japanese houses, very unpromising-looking, although
exquisitely situated on the rim of a lovely cove. The Aino huts
were small and poor, with an unusual number of bear skulls on
poles, and the village consisted mainly of two long dilapidated
buildings, in which a number of men were mending nets. It looked a
decaying place, of low, mean lives. But at a "merchant's" there
was one delightful room with two translucent sides - one opening on
the village, the other looking to the sea down a short, steep
slope, on which is a quaint little garden, with dwarfed fir-trees
in pots, a few balsams, and a red cabbage grown with much pride as
a "foliage plant."
It is nearly midnight, but my bed and bedding are so wet that I am
still sitting up and drying them, patch by patch, with tedious
slowness, on a wooden frame placed over a charcoal brazier, which
has given my room the dryness and warmth which are needed when a
person has been for many hours in soaked clothing, and has nothing
really dry to put on.
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