The Ainu are gentle and mild by nature, but, like all ignorant people, they are extremely superstitious, and superstition is a powerful excitant. Nevertheless, they are good people in their own way, and it must not be inferred from this small experience of mine that they are bullies, for they are not. The superstition regarding the reproduction of images is common all through the East, with the exception of the Japanese, and in many parts of Europe itself strange ideas are connected with portrait-painting. In Spain or Italy many a girl of the lower classes would think herself dishonoured if she happened to be sketched unawares, or if her picture were shown without the consent of her parents, brothers, relatives, and the parish priest.
However, these Horobets Ainu are said, since civilisation has set in in that part of Yezo, of late years to have become untrustworthy and violent. They are more given to drunkenness than their neighbours, as they can procure from the Japanese stronger beverages than their own. Sake (Japanese wine) of inferior quality is sold and exchanged in large quantities, and has the same fatal effects on them as rum—our fire-water—had on the American Indians.
I was not sorry to leave a village which had displayed so little appreciation of my art. I took two ponies and two pack-saddles, to one of which was lashed my baggage, while I sat on the other. Riding is a delightful pastime when you have a good horse and a good saddle; but not when you have to look after two vicious animals, and are yourself perched on a rough wooden pack-saddle. Moreover, Ainu pack-saddles are perhaps the most uncomfortable of their kind. The illustration shows one of them. It is made with a rough, solid wooden frame, of which the front and back parts are semicircular. One large hole is perforated in each of these to allow ropes to be passed through. Under this frame are two mat cushions or pads, which are somehow supposed to fit the pony's back; and by means of three ropes, one of which is passed under the pony's body and fastened on each side of the saddle, while the others hang loose across its chest and under its tail respectively, the pack-saddle is made to remain in position either going uphill, downhill, or on level ground. Stirrups, of course, there are none; and mounting involves some difficulties at first. One has to face one's pony and place the left foot on the breast-piece, lift oneself up and swing right round, describing three-quarters of a circle before attaining one's seat in the saddle. If distances are miscalculated in this gymnastic feat, it is a common occurrence to find oneself seated on the pony's neck, or else landed heavily on either of the two hard wooden arches of the saddle, instead of gracefully falling between them. Keeping your equilibrium when you are on is also a trying exercise to anybody not born and bred a circus rider, and balancing your baggage perfectly on each side of the saddle is somewhat more difficult than it sounds.
PACK-SADDLE.
Nine miles from Horobets one comes across the Nobori-bets[1] hot-springs. There was, formerly, a geiser here, but it is seldom active now. These hot-springs are situated two-and-a-half miles from the sea-coast, and a miserable building, which is a mere shanty, is built in the vicinity of them, where people who wish to be cured of different complaints put up and take the waters.
I rode on to the Noboribets village, consisting of a few houses only; and, though I reached it late in the evening, I had to ride fourteen miles further to Shiraoi, "a place of horse-flies."[2]
At sunrise I was up again and on my way to Tomakomai,[3] the largest Japanese fishing village between Mororran and Cape Erimo.
NOBORIBETS VOLCANO.