Sardine fishing is the principal and, indeed, the only industry of the place. It is carried on in a practical way. When the long nets are ready, and one end of them is fastened to the shore, they launch the boat, which is rowed rapidly by twenty or thirty strong men, while the net is dropped as the boat goes along. Having thus described a semicircle, the boat is beached. All on board jump out, and the net is pulled on shore amid the shrieks and yells of the excited fishermen. Myriads of sardines are caught each time the net is hauled in; and it is a fantastic scene to see the naked crowd which, in clearing the nets from the beheaded fish, get covered with silver scales, which stick to their arms, legs, and body, and give them a strange appearance.
Look-out towers are built on four high posts, where a watchman is posted to signal the arrival and approach of the shoals. The sea is so dense with them that it changes its colour, and these moving banks of sardines are distinguishable four or five miles from the coast. This method is the same as that adopted in Cornwall when the pilchards are expected, and the same discoloration of the sea takes place.
From Tomakomai a road branches to the north leading to Sappro, the capital of Hokkaido, and it is the last place on the southern coast which is visited by that rare specimen of the globe-trotter who ventures to Yezo. He hastily makes his way from here to Sappro and Otaru on the northern coast, and waits for a ship to be conveyed back to Hakodate. He then, of course, tells his friends that he has been round and about and through Yezo, while in fact he has seen absolutely nothing of Yezo or its inhabitants. About half-a-dozen Europeans, however, have been further on—as far as the Saru River; and each one has written a book on the Ainu, for the most part copying what the previous author had written.
As far as Tomakomai there is a road—a sure sign of civilisation—but nothing but a horse-track is to be found all along the southern coast after this place has been passed.
Changing my ponies at Yuhuts,[4] nine miles east, and again at Mukawa and Saru-buto, I was able to reach Saru Mombets that same night. Many Ainu and Japanese fishermen's huts are scattered between Horohuts[5] and Yuhuts, on the sandy track along the sea.
The traveller then leaves the sea on the right, and by a very uneven track, and after fording several rivers of little importance comes to Mukawa, a dirty little village fourteen miles from Yuhuts. My lunch that day consisted of a large piece of raw salmon, which was easily digested in riding nine more miles to Saru-buto. Sharu in Ainu, corrupted into Saru, means a grassy plain; and buto is a Japanese corruption of the Ainu word huts, the mouth of a river. My ponies must have known of this "grassy plain," for they went remarkably well, and I reached the latter village some time before dark, so that I was able to push on to Saru Mombets, a larger village nearly four miles further. Saru Mombets translated means "a tranquil river in a grassy plain," a name thoroughly appropriate to the locality.
There is nothing to interest the traveller along the coast, unless he be a geologist. Almost the whole of the western part of the Iburi district is of volcanic formation. The eastern part is abundant in sandstones, breccias, and shales. In the neighbourhood of Yuhuts, and all along the coast as far west as Horobets, pumice forms the surface soil, showing that in former days frequent eruptions must have taken place. Vegetable mould alternates with pumice. Sand, clay, tufa, with beds of peat and gravel, are the components of the soil which is found filling up the declivities of mountains, covering low-lands and sea-beaches in this part of the island. Specimens of the palæozoic group are found in the pebbles of the Mukawa River and valley, like amphibolite, limestone, phyllite, sandstone, and clay-slate, besides variegated quartzite of greenish and red layers. Primary rocks are common all through Iburi and Hidaka.
The terraces surrounding the Saru valley are mostly wooded with oak, and the swampy region between the Mukawa and Sarubuto has many patches of green grass, and a thick growth of high swamp reeds.
HOROBETS.