"Kamaimasen, Sayonara!"—"It little matters; good-bye!" was my reply; and I left him standing there perplexed, looking after me as if I had been a phenomenon.
The Japanese in Yezo and the Ainu never on any account travel far at night; and as for going through a forest alone, unprotected, and without knowing the way, they evidently regarded it as something more reprehensible than folly. Two days previously, when in the train, I had noticed that the railway described a curve several miles long, and I knew then that by cutting across I could considerably shorten my way. When I entered the forest, the sun with its last rays was casting warm tints on the tops of the pine-trees. Everything was still, and only now and then some huge owl, awakened by the noise of my steps from its day's long sleep, would fly away, starting off on its night's peregrinations and depredations. I walked mile after mile, and finally struck the rails again. On a white post I saw a cipher in Chinese characters, which brought me back to the reality that I was still seventeen miles away from Shibetcha. I followed the line of rail as closely as I could, and late at night I reached Shibetcha. I roused the people at the Marui yadoya, and, having eaten some salmon and water soup, I retired to my foutangs, between which, it is useless to say, I slept well. I had walked forty-two odd miles that day, and it had been a pleasant change from the continuous riding on pack-saddles.
The next day I rode down to the coast to the bay of Akkeshi, about forty-two miles east of Kushiro. The road is very good all the way, and has on each side woods of oak and pine trees. The traffic on it is at present very small, and the only living creatures I saw during the twenty-eight or thirty miles were a beautiful long-tailed red fox and a number of Japanese convicts led by a policeman. These were dressed in red trousers and a short red coat made of coarse material. They were walking in a row, and they were chained two by two, and, moreover, a long rope joined the chain of each couple to that of the next, so that all couples were tied together. The end of this rope was held by the policeman. Some of them wore large hats entirely covering their face; others wore no hat at all, and had their head shaved in a peculiar manner. They were mostly bare-footed, but a few wore straw sandals. The Government wisely makes use of these convicts in opening roads and other public works, and after their term of punishment is expired, these men almost invariably become fishermen. A great part of the Japanese population of Yezo is composed of exiles and ex-convicts; in other words, Yezo is nothing more or less to Japan than what Australia was to England some years ago.
Nearing the coast I passed the "Tonden" of Hondemura, a colonial militia farming settlement. A long line of new houses, all exactly alike in shape and size, and built at intervals, stretches on each side of the wide road. Each of these houses is inhabited by a man who has served his time as a soldier, and who has now his family about him, and does work as a farmer in this settlement assigned to him. These "Tondens" were established by the Government, and I believe that the farmer-soldiers give fairly good results in the zeal and industry with which they cultivate the land, and the honesty and morality of their lives. I saw most of them occupied in stubbing up the scrub, and tearing or cutting down the trees, burning the more worthless parts; but it will be some years yet before they have cleared an area of cultivable land sufficiently large for profit, as the country is very thickly wooded in that neighbourhood.
Soon after I had passed the settlement, going down a steep hill I came upon a small and dirty semi-Ainu village, and ultimately reached the seashore.
The distance from Shibetcha is thirty miles, and the riding was beginning to be unpleasant, owing to the gathering darkness, which made my pony shy at everything it passed. At the mouth of the Pehambe Ushi River I had great difficulty in getting my pony on the ferry-boat, which was to take me across the mouth of the lagoon to Akkeshi. Several drunken fishermen came on board, and were disagreeably noisy. One of these fellows had a pony, which he tied to mine when on board. The ferry was to take us across the entrance of the Akkeshi lagoon, and it was more than a quarter of an hour before we reached the opposite shore. When we were still nearly twenty feet from terra firma, my pony, frightened at the cries of the drunken crowd, jumped overboard, carrying with him his companion steed. The sudden shock and lurch of the boat knocked down everybody on board, and nearly capsized us. As it was we shipped a lot of water. The ponies found the water deeper than they expected, and they had to swim for it. Having landed before he came ashore, I recaptured mine, gave him a sound thrashing, and rode on to Akkeshi, a few hundred yards from the landing-place. Akkeshi lies at the north-east side of the large bay which goes by the same name, and which, by the way, is probably one of the best anchorages on the south coast of Yezo. The mouth of the bay is to the southward; it extends seven miles in a northerly direction, and is about six miles wide in its widest part. The bay is prolonged further inland by a large lagoon, called Se-Cherippe, which contains many shoals and low islands, near which are beds of oysters of enormous size, the shells of some measuring as much as eighteen inches in length. The Koro-pok-kuru, by whom this district was formerly thickly populated, seem to have relished this diet, as we find thick beds of discarded shells on the top of some of the lower hills, and in many places, especially in the vicinity of pits. These shell heaps are similar to those found on the main island of Nippon, and attributed to the Ainu. (See [Chapter IX.])
The country round the bay and the lagoon forms a high land or plateau between two hundred and three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and the higher ground is thickly wooded, thus supplying Akkeshi with abundance of timber, mostly of evergreen trees, as Todo and Yezo-matzu, two spruces common in other parts of Yezo as well. With its good harbour, its large export of oysters, salmon, herrings, fish-manure, and seaweed, besides its seal-fishery and the quantity of good timber easily cut and transported down the lagoon and across the bay for shipment, it is not surprising that Akkeshi has become, after Hakodate, the most important centre on the southern coast. It is nearly half as large again as Kushiro, and has as many as nine hundred Japanese houses, besides sixty or seventy Ainu huts.
The Ainu were formerly extremely numerous in this district; but few of them are left now, and those few are indeed poor specimens of their race. They have nearly all become bald, and they seem to suffer very severely from rheumatism. Thick fogs are very prevalent along the coast, and it is but seldom that one can obtain a view of the whole bay. These fogs naturally render navigation unsafe, and are one of the great drawbacks to the prosperity of the place. However, our good Londoners could tell us that greater evils than fogs can exist. I have no doubt that at some future date we shall hear of Akkeshi as being the most important port in Yezo, when a railway to join it to Shibetcha shall have been constructed. The sulphur of Mount Yuzan will probably then be taken direct to this place instead of Kushiro, owing to the safety of its harbour, an advantage which Kushiro does not possess. The Akkeshi Bay is also interesting from a picturesque point of view, when fogs give one a chance of seeing the surrounding scenery. Some fine headlands are found near the town of Akkeshi, and also on each side of the opening of the bay into the ocean. On the eastern side, the two islands of Daikuku and Kodaikuku, joined to the mainland by the low reef, slightly under water-level, which goes round the bay, are of some importance for an artist. This is especially true of the larger island of Daikuku, which rises at a considerable height above the sea, forming majestic cliffs, beautiful in shape and colour, on which myriads of seagulls, albatrosses, and penguins have chosen their abode, finding in these almost untrodden and picturesque cliffs a safe place in which to lay their eggs and rear their young. Here they live undisturbed, save for the dashing waves of the ocean, which make the earth tremble and the rock crumble to pieces, but only meet with a blithesome welcome from the screaming, light-hearted, fat, and lazy-winged inhabitants, to whom those waves bring good stores of daily food.
AKKESHI IN A FOG.