A Japanese Ferry—A Corrugated Road—The Pass of Sanno—Various
Vegetation—An Unattractive Undergrowth—Preponderance of Men.
WE changed horses at Tajima, formerly a _daimiyô’s_ residence, and, for a
Japanese town, rather picturesque. It makes and exports clogs, coarse
pottery, coarse lacquer, and coarse baskets.
After travelling through rice-fields varying from thirty yards square to
a quarter of an acre, with the tops of the dykes utilised by planting
dwarf beans along them, we came to a large river, the Arakai, along whose
affluents we had been tramping for two days, and, after passing through
several filthy villages, thronged with filthy and industrious
inhabitants, crossed it in a scow. High forks planted securely in the
bank on either side sustained a rope formed of several strands of the
wistaria knotted together. One man hauled on this hand over hand,
another poled at the stern, and the rapid current did the rest. In this
fashion we have crossed many rivers subsequently. Tariffs of charges are
posted at all ferries, as well as at all bridges where charges are made,
and a man sits in an office to receive the money.
The country was really very beautiful. The views were wider and finer
than on the previous days, taking in great sweeps of peaked mountains,
wooded to their summits, and from the top of the Pass of Sanno the
clustered peaks were glorified into unearthly beauty in a golden mist of
evening sunshine. I slept at a house combining silk farm, post office,
express office, and _daimiyô’s_ rooms, at the hamlet of Ouchi, prettily
situated in a valley with mountainous surroundings, and, leaving early on
the following morning, had a very grand ride, passing in a crateriform
cavity the pretty little lake of Oyakê, and then ascending the
magnificent pass of Ichikawa. We turned off what, by ironical courtesy,
is called the main road, upon a villainous track, consisting of a series
of lateral corrugations, about a foot broad, with depressions between
them more than a foot deep, formed by the invariable treading of the
pack-horses in each other’s footsteps. Each hole was a quagmire of
tenacious mud, the ascent of 2400 feet was very steep, and the _mago_
adjured the animals the whole time with _Hai_! _Hai_! _Hai_! which is
supposed to suggest to them that extreme caution is requisite. Their
shoes were always coming untied, and they wore out two sets in four
miles. The top of the pass, like that of a great many others, is a
narrow ridge, on the farther side of which the track dips abruptly into a
tremendous ravine, along whose side we descended for a mile or so in
company with a river whose reverberating thunder drowned all attempts at
speech. A glorious view it was, looking down between the wooded
precipices to a rolling wooded plain, lying in depths of indigo shadow,
bounded by ranges of wooded mountains, and overtopped by heights heavily
splotched with snow! The vegetation was significant of a milder climate.
The magnolia and bamboo re-appeared, and tropical ferns mingled with the
beautiful blue hydrangea, the yellow Japan lily, and the great blue
campanula. There was an ocean of trees entangled with a beautiful
trailer (_Actinidia polygama_) with a profusion of white leaves, which,
at a distance, look like great clusters of white blossoms. But the rank
undergrowth of the forests of this region is not attractive. Many of its
component parts deserve the name of weeds, being gawky, ragged umbels,
coarse docks, rank nettles, and many other things which I don’t know, and
never wish to see again. Near the end of this descent my mare took the
bit between her teeth and carried me at an ungainly gallop into the
beautifully situated, precipitous village of Ichikawa, which is
absolutely saturated with moisture by the spray of a fine waterfall which
tumbles through the middle of it, and its trees and road-side are green
with the _Protococcus viridis_. The Transport Agent there was a woman.
Women keep _yadoyas_ and shops, and cultivate farms as freely as men.
Boards giving the number of inhabitants, male and female, and the number
of horses and bullocks, are put up in each village, and I noticed in
Ichikawa, as everywhere hitherto, that men preponderate. {98}