These Sampans Are Very Clumsy-Looking, But Are
Managed With Great Dexterity By The Boatmen, Who Gave And Received
Any Number Of Bumps With Much Good Nature, And Without Any Of The
Shouting And Swearing In Which Competitive Boatmen Usually Indulge.
The partially triangular shape of these boats approaches that of a
salmon-fisher's punt used on certain British rivers.
Being floored
gives them the appearance of being absolutely flat-bottomed; but,
though they tilt readily, they are very safe, being heavily built
and fitted together with singular precision with wooden bolts and a
few copper cleets. They are SCULLED, not what we should call
rowed, by two or four men with very heavy oars made of two pieces
of wood working on pins placed on outrigger bars. The men scull
standing and use the thigh as a rest for the oar. They all wear a
single, wide-sleeved, scanty, blue cotton garment, not fastened or
girdled at the waist, straw sandals, kept on by a thong passing
between the great toe and the others, and if they wear any head-
gear, it is only a wisp of blue cotton tied round the forehead.
The one garment is only an apology for clothing, and displays lean
concave chests and lean muscular limbs. The skin is very yellow,
and often much tattooed with mythical beasts. The charge for
sampans is fixed by tariff, so the traveller lands without having
his temper ruffled by extortionate demands.
The first thing that impressed me on landing was that there were no
loafers, and that all the small, ugly, kindly-looking, shrivelled,
bandy-legged, round-shouldered, concave-chested, poor-looking
beings in the streets had some affairs of their own to mind. At
the top of the landing-steps there was a portable restaurant, a
neat and most compact thing, with charcoal stove, cooking and
eating utensils complete; but it looked as if it were made by and
for dolls, and the mannikin who kept it was not five feet high. At
the custom-house we were attended to by minute officials in blue
uniforms of European pattern and leather boots; very civil
creatures, who opened and examined our trunks carefully, and
strapped them up again, contrasting pleasingly with the insolent
and rapacious officials who perform the same duties at New York.
Outside were about fifty of the now well-known jin-ti-ki-shas, and
the air was full of a buzz produced by the rapid reiteration of
this uncouth word by fifty tongues. This conveyance, as you know,
is a feature of Japan, growing in importance every day. It was
only invented seven years ago, and already there are nearly 23,000
in one city, and men can make so much more by drawing them than by
almost any kind of skilled labour, that thousands of fine young men
desert agricultural pursuits and flock into the towns to make
draught-animals of themselves, though it is said that the average
duration of a man's life after he takes to running is only five
years, and that the runners fall victims in large numbers to
aggravated forms of heart and lung disease.
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