There
Were Mountains Connected By Ridges No Broader Than A Horse's Back,
Others With Great Gray Buttresses, Deep Chasms Cleft By Streams,
Temples With Pagoda Roofs On Heights, Sunny Villages With Deep-
Thatched Roofs Hidden Away Among Blossoming Trees, And Through
Rifts In The Nearer Ranges Glimpses Of Snowy Mountains.
After a rapid run of twelve miles through this enchanting scenery,
the remaining course of the Tsugawa is that of a broad, full stream
winding marvellously through a wooded and tolerably level country,
partially surrounded by snowy mountains.
The river life was very
pretty. Canoes abounded, some loaded with vegetables, some with
wheat, others with boys and girls returning from school. Sampans
with their white puckered sails in flotillas of a dozen at a time
crawled up the deep water, or were towed through the shallows by
crews frolicking and shouting. Then the scene changed to a broad
and deep river, with a peculiar alluvial smell from the quantity of
vegetable matter held in suspension, flowing calmly between densely
wooded, bamboo-fringed banks, just high enough to conceal the
surrounding country. No houses, or nearly none, are to be seen,
but signs of a continuity of population abound. Every hundred
yards almost there is a narrow path to the river through the
jungle, with a canoe moored at its foot. Erections like gallows,
with a swinging bamboo, with a bucket at one end and a stone at the
other, occurring continually, show the vicinity of households
dependent upon the river for their water supply. Wherever the
banks admitted of it, horses were being washed by having water
poured over their backs with a dipper, naked children were rolling
in the mud, and cackling of poultry, human voices, and sounds of
industry, were ever floating towards us from the dense greenery of
the shores, making one feel without seeing that the margin was very
populous. Except the boatmen and myself, no one was awake during
the hot, silent afternoon - it was dreamy and delicious.
Occasionally, as we floated down, vineyards were visible with the
vines trained on horizontal trellises, or bamboo rails, often forty
feet long, nailed horizontally on cryptomeria to a height of twenty
feet, on which small sheaves of barley were placed astride to dry
till the frame was full
More forest, more dreams, then the forest and the abundant
vegetation altogether disappeared, the river opened out among low
lands and banks of shingle and sand, and by three we were on the
outskirts of Niigata, whose low houses, - with rows of stones upon
their roofs, spread over a stretch of sand, beyond which is a sandy
roll with some clumps of firs. Tea-houses with many balconies
studded the river-side, and pleasure-parties were enjoying
themselves with geishas and sake, but, on the whole, the water-side
streets are shabby and tumble down, and the landward side of the
great city of western Japan is certainly disappointing; and it was
difficult to believe it a Treaty Port, for the sea was not in
sight, and there were no consular flags flying. We poled along one
of the numerous canals, which are the carriage-ways for produce and
goods, among hundreds of loaded boats, landed in the heart of the
city, and, as the result of repeated inquiries, eventually reached
the Church Mission House, an unshaded wooden building without
verandahs, close to the Government Buildings, where I was most
kindly welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Fyson.
The house is plain, simple, and inconveniently small; but doors and
walls are great luxuries, and you cannot imagine how pleasing the
ways of a refined European household are after the eternal
babblement and indecorum of the Japanese.
Abominable Weather - Insect Pests - Absence of Foreign Trade - A
Refractory River - Progress - The Japanese City - Water Highways -
Niigata Gardens - Ruth Fyson - The Winter Climate - A Population in
Wadding.
NIIGATA, July 9.
I have spent over a week in Niigata, and leave it regretfully to-
morrow, rather for the sake of the friends I have made than for its
own interests. I never experienced a week of more abominable
weather. The sun has been seen just once, the mountains, which are
thirty miles off, not at all. The clouds are a brownish grey, the
air moist and motionless, and the mercury has varied from 82
degrees in the day to 80 degrees at night. The household is
afflicted with lassitude and loss of appetite. Evening does not
bring coolness, but myriads of flying, creeping, jumping, running
creatures, all with power to hurt, which replace the day
mosquitoes, villains with spotted legs, which bite and poison one
without the warning hum. The night mosquitoes are legion. There
are no walks except in the streets and the public gardens, for
Niigata is built on a sand spit, hot and bare. Neither can you get
a view of it without climbing to the top of a wooden look-out.
Niigata is a Treaty Port without foreign trade, and almost without
foreign residents. Not a foreign ship visited the port either last
year or this. There are only two foreign firms, and these are
German, and only eighteen foreigners, of which number, except the
missionaries, nearly all are in Government employment. Its river,
the Shinano, is the largest in Japan, and it and its affluents
bring down a prodigious volume of water.
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