I Put Up Here At A Crowded Yadoya, Where They Have Given Me Two
Cheerful Rooms In The Garden, Away From The Crowd.
Ito's great
desire on arriving at any place is to shut me up in my room and
keep me a close prisoner till the start the next morning; but here
I emancipated myself, and enjoyed myself very much sitting in the
daidokoro.
The house-master is of the samurai, or two-sworded
class, now, as such, extinct. His face is longer, his lips
thinner, and his nose straighter and more prominent than those of
the lower class, and there is a difference in his manner and
bearing. I have had a great deal of interesting conversation with
him.
In the same open space his clerk was writing at a lacquer desk of
the stereotyped form - a low bench with the ends rolled over - a
woman was tailoring, coolies were washing their feet on the itama,
and several more were squatting round the irori smoking and
drinking tea. A coolie servant washed some rice for my dinner, but
before doing so took off his clothes, and the woman who cooked it
let her kimono fall to her waist before she began to work, as is
customary among respectable women. The house-master's wife and Ito
talked about me unguardedly. I asked what they were saying. "She
says," said he, "that you are very polite - for a foreigner," he
added. I asked what she meant, and found that it was because I
took off my boots before I stepped on the matting, and bowed when
they handed me the tabako-bon.
We walked through the town to find something eatable for to-
morrow's river journey, but only succeeded in getting wafers made
of white of egg and sugar, balls made of sugar and barley flour,
and beans coated with sugar. Thatch, with its picturesqueness, has
disappeared, and the Tsugawa roofs are of strips of bark weighted
with large stones; but, as the houses turn their gable ends to the
street, and there is a promenade the whole way under the eaves, and
the street turns twice at right angles and terminates in temple
grounds on a bank above the river, it is less monotonous than most
Japanese towns. It is a place of 3000 people, and a good deal of
produce is shipped from hence to Niigata by the river. To-day it
is thronged with pack-horses. I was much mobbed, and one child
formed the solitary exception to the general rule of politeness by
calling me a name equivalent to the Chinese Fan Kwai, "foreign;"
but he was severely chidden, and a policeman has just called with
an apology. A slice of fresh salmon has been produced, and I think
I never tasted anything so delicious. I have finished the first
part of my land journey, and leave for Niigata by boat to-morrow
morning.
I. L. B.
LETTER XV
A Hurry - The Tsugawa Packet-boat - Running the Rapids - Fantastic
Scenery - The River-life - Vineyards - Drying Barley - Summer Silence -
The Outskirts of Niigata - The Church Mission House.
NIIGATA, July 4.
The boat for Niigata was to leave at eight, but at five Ito roused
me by saying they were going at once, as it was full, and we left
in haste, the house-master running to the river with one of my
large baskets on his back to "speed the parting guest." Two rivers
unite to form a stream over whose beauty I would gladly have
lingered, and the morning, singularly rich and tender in its
colouring, ripened into a glorious day of light without glare, and
heat without oppressiveness. The "packet" was a stoutly-built
boat, 45 feet long by 6 broad, propelled by one man sculling at the
stern, and another pulling a short broad-bladed oar, which worked
in a wistaria loop at the bow. It had a croquet mallet handle
about 18 inches long, to which the man gave a wriggling turn at
each stroke. Both rower and sculler stood the whole time, clad in
umbrella hats. The fore part and centre carried bags of rice and
crates of pottery, and the hinder part had a thatched roof which,
when we started, sheltered twenty-five Japanese, but we dropped
them at hamlets on the river, and reached Niigata with only three.
I had my chair on the top of the cargo, and found the voyage a
delightful change from the fatiguing crawl through quagmires at the
rate of from 15 to 18 miles a day. This trip is called "running
the rapids of the Tsugawa," because for about twelve miles the
river, hemmed in by lofty cliffs, studded with visible and sunken
rocks, making several abrupt turns and shallowing in many places,
hurries a boat swiftly downwards; and it is said that it requires
long practice, skill, and coolness on the part of the boatmen to
prevent grave and frequent accidents. But if they are rapids, they
are on a small scale, and look anything but formidable. With the
river at its present height the boats run down forty-five miles in
eight hours, charging only 30 sen, or 1s. 3d., but it takes from
five to seven days to get up, and much hard work in poling and
towing.
The boat had a thoroughly "native" look, with its bronzed crew,
thatched roof, and the umbrella hats of all its passengers hanging
on the mast. I enjoyed every hour of the day. It was luxury to
drop quietly down the stream, the air was delicious, and, having
heard nothing of it, the beauty of the Tsugawa came upon me as a
pleasant surprise, besides that every mile brought me nearer the
hoped-for home letters. Almost as soon as we left Tsugawa the
downward passage was apparently barred by fantastic mountains,
which just opened their rocky gates wide enough to let us through,
and then closed again. Pinnacles and needles of bare, flushed rock
rose out of luxuriant vegetation - Quiraing without its bareness,
the Rhine without its ruins, and more beautiful than both.
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