The Miseries Of The Yezo Horses Are The Great Drawback Of
Yezo Travelling.
They are brutally used, and are covered with
awful wounds from being driven at a fast "scramble" with the rude,
ungirthed pack-saddle and its heavy load rolling about on their
backs, and they are beaten unmercifully over their eyes and ears
with heavy sticks.
Ito has been barbarous to these gentle, little-
prized animals ever since we came to Yezo; he has vexed me more by
this than by anything else, especially as he never dared even to
carry a switch on the main island, either from fear of the horses
or their owners. To-day he was beating the baggage horse
unmercifully, when I rode back and interfered with some very strong
language, saying, "You are a bully, and, like all bullies, a
coward." Imagine my aggravation when, at our first halt, he
brought out his note-book, as usual, and quietly asked me the
meaning of the words "bully" and "coward." It was perfectly
impossible to explain them, so I said a bully was the worst name I
could call him, and that a coward was the meanest thing a man could
be. Then the provoking boy said, "Is bully a worse name than
devil?" "Yes, far worse," I said, on which he seemed rather
crestfallen, and he has not beaten his horse since, in my sight at
least
The breaking-in process is simply breaking the spirit by an hour or
two of such atrocious cruelty as I saw at Shiraoi, at the end of
which the horse, covered with foam and blood, and bleeding from
mouth and nose, falls down exhausted. Being so ill used they have
all kinds of tricks, such as lying down in fords, throwing
themselves down head foremost and rolling over pack and rider,
bucking, and resisting attempts to make them go otherwise than in
single file. Instead of bits they have bars of wood on each side
of the mouth, secured by a rope round the nose and chin. When
horses which have been broken with bits gallop they put up their
heads till the nose is level with the ears, and it is useless to
try either to guide or check them. They are always wanting to join
the great herds on the hillside or sea-shore, from which they are
only driven down as they are needed. In every Yezo village the
first sound that one hears at break of day is the gallop of forty
or fifty horses, pursued by an Aino, who has hunted them from the
hills. A horse is worth from twenty-eight shillings upwards. They
are very sure-footed when their feet are not sore, and cross a
stream or chasm on a single rickety plank, or walk on a narrow
ledge above a river or gulch without fear. They are barefooted,
their hoofs are very hard, and I am glad to be rid of the perpetual
tying and untying and replacing of the straw shoes of the well-
cared-for horses of the main island. A man rides with them, and
for a man and three horses the charge is only sixpence for each 2.5
miles. I am now making Ito ride in front of me, to make sure that
he does not beat or otherwise misuse his beast.
After crossing the Nopkobets, from which the fighting horses have
led me to make so long a digression, we went right up into the "bad
mountains," and crossed the three tremendous passes of Lebungetoge.
Except by saying that this disused bridle-track is impassable,
people have scarcely exaggerated its difficulties. One horse broke
down on the first pass, and we were long delayed by sending the
Aino back for another. Possibly these extraordinary passes do not
exceed 1500 feet in height, but the track ascends them through a
dense forest with most extraordinary abruptness, to descend as
abruptly, to rise again sometimes by a series of nearly washed-away
zigzags, at others by a straight, ladder-like ascent deeply
channelled, the bottom of the trough being filled with rough
stones, large and small, or with ledges of rock with an entangled
mass of branches and trailers overhead, which render it necessary
to stoop over the horse's head while he is either fumbling,
stumbling, or tumbling among the stones in a gash a foot wide, or
else is awkwardly leaping up broken rock steps nearly the height of
his chest, the whole performance consisting of a series of
scrambling jerks at the rate of a mile an hour.
In one of the worst places the Aino's horse, which was just in
front of mine, in trying to scramble up a nearly breast-high and
much-worn ledge, fell backwards, nearly overturning my horse, the
stretcher poles, which formed part of his pack, striking me so hard
above my ankle that for some minutes afterwards I thought the bone
was broken. The ankle was severely cut and bruised, and bled a
good deal, and I was knocked out of the saddle. Ito's horse fell
three times, and eventually the four were roped together. Such are
some of the divertissements of Yezo travel.
Ah, but it was glorious! The views are most magnificent. This is
really Paradise. Everything is here - huge headlands magnificently
timbered, small, deep bays into which the great green waves roll
majestically, great, grey cliffs, too perpendicular for even the
most adventurous trailer to find root-hold, bold bluffs and
outlying stacks cedar-crested, glimpses of bright, blue ocean
dimpling in the sunshine or tossing up wreaths of foam among ferns
and trailers, and inland ranges of mountains forest-covered, with
tremendous gorges between, forest filled, where wolf, bear, and
deer make their nearly inaccessible lairs, and outlying
battlements, and ridges of grey rock with hardly six feet of level
on their sinuous tops, and cedars in masses giving deep shadow, and
sprays of scarlet maple or festoons of a crimson vine lighting the
gloom.
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