Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, page 308 by Isabella L. Bird
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fter enduring it for some time I got Ito's horse and mine into a scow at a river of some size, and left the disorderly drove to follow at leisure.
At Yurapu, where there is an Aino village of thirty houses, we saw the last of the aborigines, and the interest of the journey ended. Strips of hard sand below high-water mark, strips of red roses, ranges of wooded mountains, rivers deep and shallow, a few villages of old grey houses amidst grey sand and bleaching driftwood, and then came the river Yurapu, a broad, deep stream, navigable in a canoe for fourteen miles. The scenery there was truly beautiful in the late and splendid afternoon. The long blue waves rolled on shore, each one crested with light as it curled before it broke, and hurled its snowy drift for miles along the coast with a deep booming music. The glorious inland view was composed of six ranges of forest-covered mountains, broken, chasmed, caverned, and dark with timber, and above them bald, grey peaks rose against a green sky of singular purity. I longed to take a boat up the Yurapu, which penetrates by many a gorge into their solemn recesses, but had not strength to carry my wish.
After this I exchanged the silence or low musical speech of Aino guides for the harsh and ceaseless clatter of Japanese. At Yamakushinoi, a small hamlet on the sea-shore, where I slept, there was a sweet, quiet yadoya, delightfully situated, with a wooded cliff at the back, over which a crescent hung out of a pure sky; and besides, there were the more solid pleasures of fish, eggs, and black beans. Thus, instead of being starved and finding wretched accommodation, the week I spent on Volcano Bay has been the best fed, as it was certainly the most comfortable, week of my travels in northern Japan.
Another glorious day favoured my ride to Mori, but I was unfortunate in my horse at each stage, and the Japanese guide was grumpy and ill-natured--a most unusual thing. Otoshibe and a few other small villages of grey houses, with "an ancient and fish-like sme