We Travelled Less Than A Ri An Hour, As It Was A Mere Flounder
Either Among Rocks Or In Deep
Mud, the woman in her girt-up dress
and straw sandals trudging bravely along, till she suddenly flung
away the
Rope, cried out, and ran backwards, perfectly scared by a
big grey snake, with red spots, much embarrassed by a large frog
which he would not let go, though, like most of his kind, he was
alarmed by human approach, and made desperate efforts to swallow
his victim and wriggle into the bushes. After crawling for three
hours we dismounted at the mountain farm of Kohiaku, on the edge of
a rice valley, and the woman counted her packages to see that they
were all right, and without waiting for a gratuity turned homewards
with her horses. I pitched my chair in the verandah of a house
near a few poor dwellings inhabited by peasants with large
families, the house being in the barn-yard of a rich sake maker. I
waited an hour, grew famished, got some weak tea and boiled barley,
waited another hour, and yet another, for all the horses were
eating leaves on the mountains. There was a little stir. Men
carried sheaves of barley home on their backs, and stacked them
under the eaves. Children, with barely the rudiments of clothing,
stood and watched me hour after hour, and adults were not ashamed
to join the group, for they had never seen a foreign woman, a fork,
or a spoon.
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