My Room Was Only Enclosed By Shoji, And There Were
Scarcely Five Minutes Of The Day In Which Eyes Were
Not applied to
the finger-holes with which they were liberally riddled; and during
the night one of them fell
Down, revealing six Japanese sleeping in
a row, each head on a wooden pillow.
The grandeur of the route ceased with the mountain-passes, but in
the brilliant sunshine the ride from Oshamambe to Mori, which took
me two days, was as pretty and pleasant as it could be. At first
we got on very slowly, as besides my four horses there were four
led ones going home, which got up fights and entangled their ropes,
and occasionally lay down and rolled; and besides these there were
three foals following their mothers, and if they stayed behind the
mares hung back neighing, and if they frolicked ahead the mares
wanted to look after them, and the whole string showed a combined
inclination to dispense with their riders and join the many herds
of horses which we passed. It was so tedious that, after enduring
it for some time I got Ito's horse and mine into a scow at a river
of some size, and left the disorderly drove to follow at leisure.
At Yurapu, where there is an Aino village of thirty houses, we saw
the last of the aborigines, and the interest of the journey ended.
Strips of hard sand below high-water mark, strips of red roses,
ranges of wooded mountains, rivers deep and shallow, a few villages
of old grey houses amidst grey sand and bleaching driftwood, and
then came the river Yurapu, a broad, deep stream, navigable in a
canoe for fourteen miles.
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