In A Few Minutes Three
Ainos Ran Out Of A House, Took The Kuruma, And Went The Whole Stage
Without Stopping.
They took a boy and three saddled horses along
with them to bring them back, and rode and hauled
Alternately, two
youths always attached to the shafts, and a man pushing behind.
They were very kind, and so courteous, after a new fashion, that I
quite forgot that I was alone among savages. The lads were young
and beardless, their lips were thick, and their mouths very wide,
and I thought that they approached more nearly to the Eskimo type
than to any other. They had masses of soft black hair falling on
each side of their faces. The adult man was not a pure Aino. His
dark hair was not very thick, and both it and his beard had an
occasional auburn gleam. I think I never saw a face more
completely beautiful in features and expression, with a lofty, sad,
far-off, gentle, intellectual look, rather that of Sir Noel Paton's
"Christ" than of a savage. His manner was most graceful, and he
spoke both Aino and Japanese in the low musical tone which I find
is a characteristic of Aino speech. These Ainos never took off
their clothes, but merely let them fall from one or both shoulders
when it was very warm.
The road from Horobets to Shiraoi is very solitary, with not more
than four or five houses the whole way. It is broad and straight,
except when it ascends hills or turns inland to cross rivers, and
is carried across a broad swampy level, covered with tall wild
flowers, which extends from the high beach thrown up by the sea for
two miles inland, where there is a lofty wall of wooded rock, and
beyond this the forest-covered mountains of the interior. On the
top of the raised beach there were Aino hamlets, and occasionally a
nearly overpowering stench came across the level from the sheds and
apparatus used for extracting fish-oil. I enjoyed the afternoon
thoroughly. It is so good to have got beyond the confines of
stereotyped civilisation and the trammels of Japanese travelling to
the solitude of nature and an atmosphere of freedom. It was grey,
with a hard, dark line of ocean horizon, and over the weedy level
the grey road, with grey telegraph-poles along it, stretched
wearisomely like a grey thread. The breeze came up from the sea,
rustled the reeds, and waved the tall plumes of the Eulalia
japonica, and the thunder of the Pacific surges boomed through the
air with its grand, deep bass. Poetry and music pervaded the
solitude, and my spirit was rested.
Going up and then down a steep, wooded hill, the road appeared to
return to its original state of brushwood, and the men stopped at
the broken edge of a declivity which led down to a shingle bank and
a foam-crested river of clear, blue-green water, strongly
impregnated with sulphur from some medicinal springs above, with a
steep bank of tangle on the opposite side. This beautiful stream
was crossed by two round poles, a foot apart, on which I attempted
to walk with the help of an Aino hand; but the poles were very
unsteady, and I doubt whether any one, even with a strong head,
could walk on them in boots. Then the beautiful Aino signed to me
to come back and mount on his shoulders; but when he had got a few
feet out the poles swayed and trembled so much that he was obliged
to retrace his way cautiously, during which process I endured
miseries from dizziness and fear; after which he carried me through
the rushing water, which was up to his shoulders, and through a bit
of swampy jungle, and up a steep bank, to the great fatigue both of
body and mind, hardly mitigated by the enjoyment of the ludicrous
in riding a savage through these Yezo waters. They dexterously
carried the kuruma through, on the shoulders of four, and showed
extreme anxiety that neither it nor I should get wet. After this
we crossed two deep, still rivers in scows, and far above the grey
level and the grey sea the sun was setting in gold and vermilion-
streaked green behind a glorified mountain of great height, at
whose feet the forest-covered hills lay in purple gloom. At dark
we reached Shiraoi, a village of eleven Japanese houses, with a
village of fifty-one Aino houses, near the sea. There is a large
yadoya of the old style there; but I found that Ito had chosen a
very pretty new one, with four stalls open to the road, in the
centre one of which I found him, with the welcome news that a steak
of fresh salmon was broiling on the coals; and, as the room was
clean and sweet and I was very hungry, I enjoyed my meal by the
light of a rush in a saucer of fish-oil as much as any part of the
day.
SARUFUTO.
The night was too cold for sleep, and at daybreak, hearing a great
din, I looked out, and saw a drove of fully a hundred horses all
galloping down the road, with two Ainos on horse-back, and a number
of big dogs after them. Hundreds of horses run nearly wild on the
hills, and the Ainos, getting a large drove together, skilfully
head them for the entrance into the corral, in which a selection of
them is made for the day's needs, and the remainder - that is, those
with the deepest sores on their backs - are turned loose. This dull
rattle of shoeless feet is the first sound in the morning in these
Yezo villages. I sent Ito on early, and followed at nine with
three Ainos. The road is perfectly level for thirteen miles,
through gravel flats and swamps, very monotonous, but with a wild
charm of its own.
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