Unbeaten Tracks In Japan By Isabella L. Bird
























































 -   They are well
found in food and claret, but take such a number of pack-ponies
with them that I - Page 143
Unbeaten Tracks In Japan By Isabella L. Bird - Page 143 of 219 - First - Home

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They Are "Well Found" In Food And Claret, But Take Such A Number Of Pack-Ponies With Them That I Predict That They Will Fail, And That I, Who Have Reduced My Luggage To 45 Lbs., Will Succeed!

I hope to start on my long-projected tour to-morrow; I have planned it for myself with the

Confidence of an experienced traveller, and look forward to it with great pleasure, as a visit to the aborigines is sure to be full of novel and interesting experiences. Good-bye for a long time. I. L. B.

LETTER XXXV {17}

A Lovely Sunset - An Official Letter - A "Front Horse" - Japanese Courtesy - The Steam Ferry - Coolies Abscond - A Team of Savages - A Drove of Horses - Floral Beauties - An Unbeaten Track - A Ghostly Dwelling - Solitude and Eeriness.

GINSAINOMA, YEZO, August 17.

I am once again in the wilds! I am sitting outside an upper room built out almost over a lonely lake, with wooded points purpling and still shadows deepening in the sinking sun. A number of men are dragging down the nearest hillside the carcass of a bear which they have just despatched with spears. There is no village, and the busy clatter of the cicada and the rustle of the forest are the only sounds which float on the still evening air. The sunset colours are pink and green; on the tinted water lie the waxen cups of great water-lilies, and above the wooded heights the pointed, craggy, and altogether naked summit of the volcano of Komono-taki flushes red in the sunset. Not the least of the charms of the evening is that I am absolutely alone, having ridden the eighteen miles from Hakodate without Ito or an attendant of any kind; have unsaddled my own horse, and by means of much politeness and a dexterous use of Japanese substantives have secured a good room and supper of rice, eggs, and black beans for myself and a mash of beans for my horse, which, as it belongs to the Kaitakushi, and has the dignity of iron shoes, is entitled to special consideration!

I am not yet off the "beaten track," but my spirits are rising with the fine weather, the drier atmosphere, and the freedom of Yezo. Yezo is to the main island of Japan what Tipperary is to an Englishman, Barra to a Scotchman, "away down in Texas" to a New Yorker - in the rough, little known, and thinly-peopled; and people can locate all sorts of improbable stories here without much fear of being found out, of which the Ainos and the misdeeds of the ponies furnish the staple, and the queer doings of men and dogs, and adventures with bears, wolves, and salmon, the embroidery. Nobody comes here without meeting with something queer, and one or two tumbles either with or from his horse. Very little is known of the interior except that it is covered with forest matted together by lianas, and with an undergrowth of scrub bamboo impenetrable except to the axe, varied by swamps equally impassable, which give rise to hundreds of rivers well stocked with fish.

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