AINU HUTS AND STOREHOUSES ON KUTCHARO LAKE.
CHAPTER X.
The Kutcharo River and Lake—A Sulphur Mine—Akkeshi and its Bay.
The Kutcharo River is of some importance, for though not of great length, it is navigable by small boats for nearly twenty miles from its mouth.
I left Kushiro one morning, and made my way up the river, not by boat but along its banks on horseback, so as to get a better idea of the surrounding country and its inhabitants. At Kushiro I left more than half my luggage, to be sent down to Hakodate by the first ship that happened to call, and this greatly changed my mode of travelling. Instead of two ponies, one pony would now be quite sufficient to carry my baggage and myself; and where ponies were not obtainable, I could carry all my paraphernalia on my own back with no very great difficulty, and in this way I should not be hindered on my journey.
I daresay the baggage I was carrying now weighed about forty-five pounds. It mostly consisted of painting materials, and wooden panels, on which I usually paint my sketches when travelling.
As to clothes and boots, I was beginning to be rather "hard up." No weaver's work, no tailor's garments, nor tanner's hides, can stand the wear and tear of such rough travelling as I had had, and the old saying, that a "light heart and a thin pair of breeches carry you a long way," is most decidedly not to be applied to anyone journeying to and fro on a pack-saddle in Yezo. My coat and trousers were showing signs of rapid decay, and I thought with vain desire of needle and thread, buttons and hooks. My boots were falling to pieces owing to their continual immersion in salt water. The impossibility of cleaning or greasing them added to the original damage; and, worse luck of all, they could not be replaced. Altogether, what with frayed garments, leaky boots, a battered hat, and a general out-at-elbows air, I was scarcely presentable in any society a grade above that of the hairy Ainu.
A road has been cut between Kushiro and Shibetcha, a distance of thirty miles; but though quite new, it is already out of repair, and it will not be long before it is washed away entirely. The Japanese Government does its best to open roads near the largest settlements, but Japanese officials do not seem to understand that after a road has been made it has to be kept in repair.
The country all along is good, and the soil seems rich and fertile. Nearly half-way up, on the east side of the Kutcharo River, are three lakes,—the Takkobe, the Tori Lake, and the Shirin. The Tori is the largest. Its length is five miles, its width about one mile. On the southern shore of this lake is a picturesque Ainu village, with its old tumble-down huts, and close to it is a group of Japanese houses. The contrast between the dirty and neglected old hovels of the Ainu and the clean, spruce, and somewhat finikin houses of the Japanese is very striking. In this difference we read an epitome of the way in which civilisation has travelled from primitive barbarism. The road runs through dense forests; but in several places, especially on its highest level, we come to lovely views of mountain scenery, towering over the shimmering water of the underlying lakes.
In the evening I reached Shibetcha, a nice little place, constructed on each side of a large road which rises considerably as it goes through the village. The village lies in a small valley surrounded by moderately high mountains, and is on the western side of the Kutcharo River, which intersects the valley. A wooden bridge and a three-storied Japanese tea-house are the two main structures in the place. There are sixty-eight houses in the village, and nearly half of them are houses of ill-fame, the three-storied tea-house being the principal.
At a distance of twenty-five miles from here is a sulphur mine, and the miners, after having amassed sufficient money, come and squander it at Shibetcha, thus supporting this nook of demoralization in the wilderness of these mountains. As the river becomes very shallow, the mineral from the sulphur mine of Yuzan was carried until quite recently on pack-saddles as far as here, whence it was brought down by boat to Kushiro for shipment; but a small railway, on which only a "truck train" is now running once a day from the mine to Shibetcha, has greatly simplified matters, and increased the export returns of the mine.