Uneasy about her, but being so, showed as much calmness as if
he had been a Briton!
The gale rose again after sunrise, and when, after doing sixty
miles in fourteen hours, we reached the heads of Hakodate Harbour,
it was blowing and pouring like a bad day in Argyllshire, the spin-
drift was driving over the bay, the Yezo mountains loomed darkly
and loftily through rain and mist, and wind and thunder, and
"noises of the northern sea," gave me a wild welcome to these
northern shores. A rocky head like Gibraltar, a cold-blooded-
looking grey town, straggling up a steep hillside, a few coniferae,
a great many grey junks, a few steamers and vessels of foreign rig
at anchor, a number of sampans riding the rough water easily, seen
in flashes between gusts of rain and spin-drift, were all I saw,
but somehow it all pleased me from its breezy, northern look.
The steamer was not expected in the gale, so no one met me, and I
went ashore with fifty Japanese clustered on the top of a decked
sampan in such a storm of wind and rain that it took us 1.5 hours
to go half a mile; then I waited shelterless on the windy beach
till the Customs' Officers were roused from their late slumbers,
and then battled with the storm for a mile up a steep hill. I was
expected at the hospitable Consulate, but did not know it, and came
here to the Church Mission House, to which Mr. and Mrs. Dening
kindly invited me when I met them in Tokiyo. I was unfit to enter
a civilised dwelling; my clothes, besides being soaked, were coated
and splashed with mud up to the top of my hat; my gloves and boots
were finished, my mud-splashed baggage was soaked with salt water;
but I feel a somewhat legitimate triumph at having conquered all
obstacles, and having accomplished more than I intended to
accomplish when I left Yedo.
How musical the clamour of the northern ocean is! How inspiriting
the shrieking and howling of the boisterous wind! Even the fierce
pelting of the rain is home-like, and the cold in which one shivers
is stimulating! You cannot imagine the delight of being in a room
with a door that will lock, to be in a bed instead of on a
stretcher, of finding twenty-three letters containing good news,
and of being able to read them in warmth and quietness under the
roof of an English home!
I. L. B.
ITINERARY OF ROUTE FROM NIIGATA TO AOMORI
No. of Houses. Ri. Cho.
Kisaki 56 4
Tsuiji 209 6
Kurokawa 215 2 12
Hanadati 2O 2
Kawaguchi 27 3
Numa 24 1 18
Tamagawa 40 3
Okuni 210 2 11
Kurosawa 17 1 18
Ichinono 2O 1 18
Shirokasawa 42 1 21
Tenoko 120 3 11
Komatsu 513 2 13
Akayu 350 4
Kaminoyama 650 5
Yamagata 21,O00 souls 3 19
Tendo 1,040 3 8
Tateoka 307 3 21
Tochiida 217 1 33
Obanasawa 506 1 21
Ashizawa 70 1 21
Shinjo 1,060 4 6
Kanayama 165 3 27
Nosoki 37 3 9
Innai 257 3 12
Yusawa 1,506 3 35
Yokote 2,070 4 27
Rokugo 1,062 6
Shingoji 209 1 28
Kubota 36,587 souls 16
Minato 2,108 1 28
Carry forward 107 21
No. of Houses Ri. Cho.
Brought forward 107 21
Abukawa 163 3 33
Ichi Nichi Ichi 306 1 34
Kado 151 2 9
Hinikoyama 396 2 9
Tsugurata 186 1 14
Tubine 153 1 18
Kiriishi 31 1 14
Kotsunagi 47 1 16
Tsuguriko 136 3 5
Odate 1,673 4 23
Shirasawa 71 2 19
Ikarigaseki 175 4 18
Kuroishi 1,176 6 19
Daishaka 43 4
Shinjo 51 2 21
Aomori 1 24
Ri 153 9
About 368 miles.
This is considerably under the actual distance, as on several of
the mountain routes the ri is 56 cho, but in the lack of accurate
information the ri has been taken at its ordinary standard of 36
cho throughout.
LETTER XXXIII
Form and Colour - A Windy Capital - Eccentricities in House Roofs.
HAKODATE, YEZO, August 13, 1878
After a tremendous bluster for two days the weather has become
beautifully fine, and I find the climate here more invigorating
than that of the main island. It is Japan, but yet there is a
difference somehow. When the mists lift they reveal not mountains
smothered in greenery, but naked peaks, volcanoes only recently
burnt out, with the red ash flaming under the noonday sun, and
passing through shades of pink into violet at sundown. Strips of
sand border the bay, ranges of hills, with here and there a patch
of pine or scrub, fade into the far-off blue, and the great cloud
shadows lie upon their scored sides in indigo and purple. Blue as
the Adriatic are the waters of the land-locked bay, and the snowy
sails of pale junks look whiter than snow against its intense
azure. The abruptness of the double peaks behind the town is
softened by a belt of cryptomeria, the sandy strip which connects
the headland with the mainland heightens the general resemblance of
the contour of the ground to Gibraltar; but while one dreams of the
western world a kuruma passes one at a trot, temple drums are
beaten in a manner which does not recall "the roll of the British
drum," a Buddhist funeral passes down the street, or a man-cart
pulled and pushed by four yellow-skinned, little-clothed mannikins,
creaks by, with the monotonous grunt of Ha huida.
A single look at Hakodate itself makes one feel that it is Japan
all over.
