Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, page 48 by Isabella L. Bird
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rience, and success or failure depends mainly on personal idiosyncrasies. Many matters will be remedied by experience as I go on, and I shall acquire the habit of feeling secure; but lack of privacy, bad smells, and the torments of fleas and mosquitoes are, I fear, irremediable evils. I. L. B.
LETTER VI--(Continued)
A Coolie falls ill--Peasant Costume--Varieties in Threshing--The Tochigi yadoya--Farming Villages--A Beautiful Region--An In Memoriam Avenue--A Doll's Street--Nikko--The Journey's End--Coolie Kindliness.
By seven the next morning the rice was eaten, the room as bare as if it had never been occupied, the bill of 80 sen paid, the house- master and servants with many sayo naras, or farewells, had prostrated themselves, and we were away in the kurumas at a rapid trot. At the first halt my runner, a kindly, good-natured creature, but absolutely hideous, was seized with pain and vomiting, owing, he said, to drinking the bad water at Kasukabe, and was left behind. He pleased me much by the honest independent way in which he provided a substitute, strictly adhering to his bargain, and never asking for a gratuity on account of his illness. He had been so kind and helpful that I felt quite sad at leaving him there ill,--only a coolie, to be sure, only an atom among the 34,000,000 of the Empire, but not less precious to our Father in heaven than any other. It was a brilliant day, with the mercury 86 degrees in the shade, but the heat was not oppressive. At noon we reached the Tone, and I rode on a coolie's tattooed shoulders through the shallow part, and then, with the kurumas, some ill- disposed pack-horses, and a number of travellers, crossed in a flat-bottomed boat. The boatmen, travellers, and cultivators, were nearly or altogether without clothes, but the richer farmers worked in the fields in curved bamboo hats as large as umbrellas, kimonos with large sleeves not girt up, and large fans attached to their girdles. Many of the travellers whom we met were without hats, but shie