The
great stream, whose beauty I had formerly admired, was now a thing
of dread, and had to be forded four times without fords.
It
crashed and thundered, drowning the feeble sound of human voices,
the torrents from the heavens hissed through the forest, trees and
logs came crashing down the hillsides, a thousand cascades added to
the din, and in the bewilderment produced by such an unusual
concatenation of sights and sounds we stumbled through the river,
the men up to their shoulders, the horses up to their backs. Again
and again we crossed. The banks being carried away, it was very
hard to get either into or out of the water; the horses had to
scramble or jump up places as high as their shoulders, all slippery
and crumbling, and twice the men cut steps for them with axes. The
rush of the torrent at the last crossing taxed the strength of both
men and horses, and, as I was helpless from being tied on, I
confess that I shut my eyes! After getting through, we came upon
the lands belonging to this village - rice-fields with the dykes
burst, and all the beautiful ridge and furrow cultivation of the
other crops carried away. The waters were rising fast, the men
said we must hurry; they unbound me, so that I might ride more
comfortably, spoke to the horses, and went on at a run. My horse,
which had nearly worn out his shoes in the fords, stumbled at every
step, the mago gave me a noose of rope to clutch, the rain fell in
such torrents that I speculated on the chance of being washed off
my saddle, when suddenly I saw a shower of sparks; I felt
unutterable things; I was choked, bruised, stifled, and presently
found myself being hauled out of a ditch by three men, and realised
that the horse had tumbled down in going down a steepish hill, and
that I had gone over his head. To climb again on the soaked futon
was the work of a moment, and, with men running and horses
stumbling and splashing, we crossed the Hirakawa by one fine
bridge, and half a mile farther re-crossed it on another, wishing
as we did so that all Japanese bridges were as substantial, for
they were both 100 feet long, and had central piers.
We entered Ikarigaseki from the last bridge, a village of 800
people, on a narrow ledge between an abrupt hill and the Hirakawa,
a most forlorn and tumble-down place, given up to felling timber
and making shingles; and timber in all its forms - logs, planks,
faggots, and shingles - is heaped and stalked about. It looks more
like a lumberer's encampment than a permanent village, but it is
beautifully situated, and unlike any of the innumerable villages
that I have ever seen.
The street is long and narrow, with streams in stone channels on
either side; but these had overflowed, and men, women, and children
were constructing square dams to keep the water, which had already
reached the doma, from rising over the tatami.
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