Toward the Pass.
I was waked by good news. The porters had, to a certain extent, come round. If we would halve their burdens by doubling their number, they would make an attempt on the pass, or, rather, they would go on as far as they could. This was a great advance. To be already moving implies a momentum of the mind which carries a man farther than he means. I acquiesced at once. The recruits consisted of the master of the house—his father, the officiator at family prayers, had retired from the cares of this world—and a peasant of the neighborhood. The charcoal burners were too busy with their own affairs. From the sill, as I put on my boots, I watched with complacence the cording of the loads, and then, with quite a lightsome gait, followed the lengthened file out into the street. One after the other we tramped forth past the few houses of the place, whose people watched us go, with the buoyant tread of those about to do great things, and so out into the open.
The path appeared very well. It trotted soberly along across a mountain moor until it came out above the river. It then wound up stream, clinging to the slope several hundred feet above the valley bottom. It was precipitous in places, but within reason, and I was just coming to consider the accounts exaggerated when it descended to the river bed at a point where a butt of neve stuck a foot into the shingle. The stream, which had looked a thread from above, turned out a torrent when we stood upon its brink. The valley was nothing but river bed, a mass of boulders of all sizes, through the midst of which the stream plunged with deafening roar, and so deep that fording was out of the question. A man's life would not have been worth a rush in it.
We followed up the boulder bank in search of a more propitious spot. Then we followed down again. Each place promised at a distance, and baulked hope at hand. At last, in despair, we came to a halt opposite the widest and shallowest part, and after no end of urging, one of the porters stripped, and, armed with his pole, ventured in. The channel lay well over to the farther side; thrice he got to its nearer edge and thrice he turned back, as the rush of water became too great. His life was worth too much to him, he said, not unnaturally, for him to throw it away. Yet cross the stream we must, or return ignominiously; for the path we had so far followed had fallen over the cliff in front.
We improved the moments of reflection to have lunch. While we were still discussing viae and viands, and had nearly come to the end of both, we suddenly spied a string of men defiling slowly down through the wide boulder desert on the other side. We all rose and hailed them. They were so far away that at first they failed to hear us, and even when they heard they stared vacantly about them like men who hear they know not what. When at last they caught sight of us, we beckoned excitedly. They consulted, apparently, and then one of them came down to the edge of the stream. The torrent made so much noise that our men could make themselves intelligible only in part, and that by bawling at the top of their lungs. Through the envoy, they invited the band to string themselves across the stream and so pass our things over. The man shook his head. We rose to fabulous sums and still he repeated his pantomime. It then occurred to Yejiro that a certain place lower down might possibly be bridged, and beckoning to the man to follow, he led the way to the spot in mind. A boulder, two-thirds way in stream, seemed to offer a pier. He tried to shout his idea, but the roar of the torrent, narrow though it was, drowned his voice; so, writing on a piece of paper: "What will you take to build us a bridge?" he wrapped the paper round a stone and flung it over. After reading this missive, the spokesman held a consultation with his friends and a bargain was struck. For the huge sum of two yen (a dollar and a half), they agreed to build us a bridge, and at once set off up the mountain side for a tree.
The men, it seemed, were a band of wood-cutters who had wintered, as was their custom, in a hut at Kurobe, which was this side of the Harinoki toge, and were just come out from their hibernation. They were now on their way to Ashikura, where they belonged, to report to their headman, obtain supplies and start to return on the after-morrow. It was a two-days' journey either out or in.
Bridges, therefore, came of their trade. The distance across the boulder bed was considerable, and as they toiled slowly up the face of the opposite mountain, they looked like so many ants. Picking out a trunk, they began to drag it down. By degrees they got it to the river bed, and thence eventually to the edge of the stream. To lay it was quite a feat of engineering. With some pieces of drift-wood which they found lying about, they threw a span to the big boulder, and from the boulder managed to get the trunk across. Then, with rope which they carried at their girdles, they lashed the whole together until they had patched up a very workmanlike affair. We trod across in triumph. With praiseworthy care lest it should be swept away they then took the thing all down again.
Such valuable people were not idly to be parted with. Here was a rare chance to get guides. When, however, we approached them on the point, they all proved so conscientious about going home first, that the attempt failed. But they gave us some important information on the state of the streams ahead and the means of crossing them, and we separated with much mutual good-will.
For my part I felt as if we had already arrived somewhere. I little knew what lay beyond. While I was plodding along in this blissfully ignorant state of mind, communing with a pipe, the path, which had frisked in and out for some time among the boulders, suddenly took it into its head to scale a cliff on the left. It did this, as it seemed to me, without provocation, after a certain reckless fashion of its own. The higher it climbed, the more foolhardy it got, till the down-look grew unpleasant. Then it took to coquetting with the gulf on its right until, as I knew would happen, it lost its head completely and fell over the edge. The gap had been spanned by a few loose boards. Over the makeshift we all, one after the other, gingerly crawled, each waiting his turn, with the abyss gaping on his side, for the one in front to move on.
We had not yet recovered from the shock when we came to another place not unlike the first. Here again the path had given way, and a couple of logs had been lashed across the inner elbow of the cliff. We crossed this by balancing ourselves for the first two steps by the stump of a bush that jutted out from a crevice in the rock; for the next two we touched the cliff with the tips of our fingers; for the last two we balanced ourselves alone.
For the time being the gods of high places had tempted us enough, for the path now descended again to the dry bed of the stream, and there for a certain distance tripped along in all soberness, giving me the chance to look about me. The precipitous sides of the mountains that shut in the narrow valley were heavily masked in forest; and for some time past, the ravines that scored their sides had been patched with snow. With each new mile of advance the patches grew larger and merged into one another, stretching toward the stream. We now began to meet snow on the path. In the mean time, from one cause and another, insensibly I fell behind. The others passed on out of sight.
The path, having lulled me into a confiding unconcern, started in seeming innocence of purpose to climb again. Its ingenuousness but prefaced a malicious surprise. For of a sudden, unmasking a corner, it presented itself in profile ahead, a narrow ledge notched in naked simplicity against the precipice. Things look better slightly veiled; besides, it is more decent, even in a path. In this case the shamelessness was earnest of the undoing. For on reaching the point in view and turning it I stood confronted by a sight sorry indeed. The path beyond had vanished. Far below, out of sight over the edge, lay the torrent; unscalable the cliff rose above; and a line of fossil footprints, leading across the face of the precipice in the debris, alone marked where the path had been. Spectres they seemed of their former selves. Crusoe could not have been more horrified than was I.
Not to have come suggested itself as the proper solution, unfortunately an impracticable one, and being there, to turn back was inadmissible. So I took myself in hand and started. For the first few steps I was far too much given up to considering possibilities. I thought how a single misstep would end. I could see my footing slip, feel the consciousness that I was gone, the dull thuds from point to point as what remained of me bounded beyond the visible edge down, down. . . And after that what! How long before the porters missed me and came back in search? Would there be any trace to tell what had befallen? And then Yejiro returning alone to Tokyo to report—lost on the Dragon peak! Each time I almost felt my foot give way as I put it down, right before left, left before right.
Then I realized that this inopportune flirting with fate must stop; that I must give over dallying with sensations, or it would soon be all over with me. I was falling a prey to the native Lorelei—for all these spots in Japan have their familiar devils—subjectively, as befits a modern man. I numbed sensibility as best I could and cared only to make each step secure. Between the Nirvana within and the Nirvana below, it was a sorry hell.
In mid-career the path made an attempt to recover, but relapsed to further footprints in the sand. At last it descended to a brook. I knelt to drink, and on getting up again saw my pocket-handkerchief whisking merrily away down stream. I gave chase, but in vain; for though it came to the surface once or twice to tantalize me it was gone before I could seize it. So I gave over the pursuit, reflecting that, after all, it might have fared worse with me. If the Lorelei had hoped to turn my head, I was well quit of my handkerchief for her only trophy.
Shortly after this, the main stream divided into two, and the left branch, which we followed, led up to a gorge,—beyond a doubt the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet. I do not remember a landscape more ghastly. Not a tree, not a blade of grass, not even decent earth in the whole prospect. Apparently, the place had been flayed alive and sulphur had then been poured into the sore. Thirty years before a cataclysm had occurred here. The side of one of the mountains had slid bodily into the valley. The debris, by damming up the stream, caused a freshet, which swept everything before it and killed quantities of folk lower down the valley. The place itself has never recovered to this day.
Although the stream here was a baby to the one below, it was large enough to be impassable to the natural man. From our woodcutter friends, however, we had learned of the leavings of a bridge, upon which in due time we came, and putting the parts of it in place, we passed successfully over.
We now began to enter the snow in good earnest, incipient glacier snow, treacherously honeycombed. It made, however, more agreeable walking than the boulders. The path had again become precipitous, and kept on mounting, till of a sudden it landed us upon an amphitheatral arena, dominated by high, jagged peaks. One unbroken stretch of snow covered the plateau, and at the centre of the wintry winding-sheet a cluster of weather-beaten huts appealed pitiably to the eye. They were the buildings of the Riuzanjita hot-springs; in summer a sort of secular monastery for pilgrims to the Dragon peak. They were tenanted now, we had been told, by a couple of watchmen. We struck out with freer strides, while the moon, which had by this time risen high enough to overtop the wall of peaks, watched us with an ashen face, as in single file we moved across the waste of level white.
Riuzanjita.
We made for the main hut, a low, mouse-colored shanty fast asleep and deep drifted in snow. The advance porter summoned the place, and the summons drew to what did for door a man as mouselike as his mansion. He had about him a subdued, monkish demeanor that only partially hid an alertness within,—a secular monk befitting the spot. He showed himself a kindly body, and after he had helped the porters off with their packs, led the way into the room in which he and his mate hibernated. It was a room very much in the rough; boards for walls, for ceiling, for floor, its only furnishing a fire. It was the best of furnishing in our eyes, and we hasted to squat round it in a circle, in attitudes of extreme devotion, for it was bitter cold. The monkish watchman threw a handful more twigs on the embers, out of a cheerful hospitality to his guests.
The fireplace was merely a hole in the floor, according to Japanese custom, and the smoke found its way out as best it could. But there was very little of it; usually, indeed, there is none, for charcoal is the common combustible. A cauldron hung, by iron bars jointed together, from the gloom above. It was twilight in the room. Already the day without was fading fast, and even at high noon, none too much of it could find a way into the building, now half buried under the snow. A second watchman sat muffled in shadow on the farther side of the fire. He made his presence known, from time to time, by occasional sympathetic gutturals, or by the sudden glow of a bit of charcoal, which he took out of the embers with a pair of chopstick fire-irons to relight his pipe. The talk naturally turned upon our expedition, with Yejiro for spokesman, and from that easily slid into the all-important question of guides. Our inquiries on this head elicited nothing but doubt. We tried at first to get the watchmen to go. But this they positively refused to do. They could not leave their charge, in the first place, they said; and for the second, they did not know the path. We asked if there was no one who did. There was a hunter, they said, near by who was by way of knowing the road. A messenger was sent at once to fetch him.
In the mean time, if they showed themselves skeptical about our future, they proved most sympathetic over our past. Our description of the Friday footprints especially brought out much fellow-feeling. They knew the spot well, they said, and it was very bad. In fact it was called the Oni ga Jo, or place of many devils, for its fearfulness. It would be better, they added, after the mountain opening on the tenth of June.
"Mountain opening!" said I to Yejiro; "what is that? Is it anything like the 'river opening'?" For the Japanese words seemed to imply not a physical, but a formal unlocking of the hills, like the annual religious rite upon the Sumidagawa in Tokyo. Such, it appeared, it was. For the tenth of June, he said, was the date of the mountain-climbing festival. Yearly on that day all the sacred peaks are thrown open to a pious public for ascent. A procession of pilgrims, headed by a flautist and a bellman, wend their way to the summit, and there encamp. For three days the ceremony lasts, after which the mountains are objects of pilgrimage till the twenty-eighth day of August. For the rest of the year the summits are held to be shut, the gods being then in conclave, to disturb whom were the height of impiety. A pleasing coincidence of duty and pleasure, that the scaling of the peaks should be enjoined to pilgrims at the times of easiest ascent! Preparatory to the procession all the paths of approach are repaired. It was this repairing to which the watchmen referred and which concerned our secular selves.
Our difficulties began to be explained. We were very close to committing sacrilege. We had had, it is true, no designs on the peaks, but were we wholly guiltless in attempting so much as the passes in this the close season? Apparently not. At all events, we were a month ahead of time in our visit, which in itself was of questionable etiquette.
At this point the messenger sent to find the hunter returned without his man. Evidently the hunter was a person who meant to stand well with his gods, or else he was himself a myth.
Distraught in mind and restless in body, I got up and went out into the great snow waste. The sunset afterglow was just fading into the moonshine. The effect upon the pure white sheet before me was indescribably beautiful. The warm tint of the last of day, as it waned, dissolved imperceptibly into the cold lustre of the night as if some alchemist were subtly changing the substance while he kept the form. For a new spirit was slowly possessing itself of the very shapes that had held the old, and the snow looked very silent, very cold, very ghostly, glistening in its silver sheen.
The sky was bitterly clear, inhumanly cold. To call it frosty were to humanize it. Its expanse stretched far more frozen than the frozen earth. Indeed, the night sky is always awful. For the most part, we forget it for the kindlier prospect of the cradling trees, and the whispers of the wind, and the perfumes of the fields, the sights and sounds that even in slumber stir with life; and the nearer thrust away the real horror of the far. But the awe speaks with insistence when the foreground itself is dead.
Shivering, I returned to the fire and human companionship. The conversation again rolled upon precipices, which it appeared were more numerous before than behind, and casualties among the woodcutters not unknown in consequence. There was one place, they said, where, if you slipped, you went down a ri (two miles and a half). It was here a woodcutter had been lost three days before. The ri must have been a flight of fancy, since it far exceeded the height of the pass above the sea. But a handsome discount from the statement left an unpleasant balance to contemplate.
This death had frightened one of the watchmen badly, as it may well have done. The facts were these. Separated from the hot springs of Riuzanjita by two passes lay a valley, uninhabited except for two bands of woodcutters, who had built themselves a couple of huts, one on either side the stream, in which they lived the year round. It was these huts that went by the name of Kurobe. During the winter they were entirely cut off from the outside world. As soon as practicable in the spring, a part of each band was accustomed to come out over the passes, descend to Ashikura, and return with provisions and money.
Now this year, before the men in the valley had thought it time to attempt the passes, a solitary woodcutter came up to the hot springs from below, and, in spite of warning from the watchmen, started alone for Kurobe. On the afternoon of the third day after his departure, the regular band turned up at Riuzanjita, having left Kurobe, it seemed, that morning. They passed the night at the hot springs hut, and on being questioned by the watchmen about the man of three days before, they said they had heard of no such person. It turned out, to the horror of both parties, that he had never reached Kurobe. It was only the night before we arrived that the woodcutters had been there, and the affair was still terribly fresh in the watchman's thoughts; in fact, it was the identical band that had built us our bridge. These men were thoroughly equipped for snow-climbing and had come over safely; and yet, as it was, the head man of the other band at Kurobe had been afraid to cross with them, and had, instead, gone all the way round by the river and the sea, a very long and rough journey. Fatal accidents, the watchmen said, were of yearly occurrence on the passes.
And all this was only the way to Kurobe. Beyond it lay the Harinoki toge. That pass no one had yet crossed this year. And at intervals during the talk the watchman repeated excitedly, as a sort of refrain, "It is impossible to go on,—it is impossible to go on."
This talk, a part of which I understood, was not very heartening, following as it did the personal experience of the Oni ga Jo. The prospect began to look too uncertain in its conclusion and too certain in its premises to be inviting. If professionals, properly accoutred, found crossing so dangerous a matter, the place was hardly one for unprovided amateurs. These mountaineers were not tied together, but wore over their waraji, or straw sandals, a set of irons called kanakajiki. We were shown some of them which had been left by the woodcutters against their return. They were skeleton sandals, iron bands shod with three spikes. They looked like instruments of torture from the Middle Ages, and indeed were said to be indispensable against backsliding.
On the other hand, one Blondin feat over the Devil Place was enough for me. To take it on the road rather than turn back was one thing, to start to take it in cold blood another. I had had quite enough of balancing and doubt. So I asked if there was no other way out. We might, they said, go to Arimine.
"And how was the road?"
"Oh, the road was good," they answered cheerily.
"Could we get a guide?"
Apparently we could not, for an awkward pause ensued until, after some suspense, the bigger of the two watchmen, he that sat in the shadow of the corner, volunteered to pilot us himself; and, he added, we should not have to start betimes, as the snow would not be fit to travel on till the sun had melted the crust.
Upon this doubly comforting conclusion I bade them good-night, and betook me to the cell-like room allotted me to sleep.
Over the Snow.
When Yejiro pushed the shoji and the amado (night shutters) apart in the morning, he disclosed a bank of snow four feet deep; not a snowfall over night, but the relic of the winter. I found myself in a snow grotto beyond which nothing was visible. He then imparted to me the cheerful news that the watchman had changed his mind, and now refused to set out with us. It was too late in the day to start, the man said, which, in view of his having informed us only the night before that the snow would not be fit to travel on till this very hour, was scarcely logical. The trouble lay not in the way, but in the will. The man had repented him of his promise. Things look differently as certainties in the morning from what they do as possibilities overnight. Fortunately he proved amenable to importunity, and finally consented to go. His fellow was much worried, and followed him distressfully to the outer threshold; whence in perturbation of spirit he watched us depart, calling out pathetically to his mate to be very careful of himself. His almost motherly solicitude seemed to me more comical at the time than it came to seem later.
The sky was without a fleck of cloud, and, as we struck out across the snow, I feared at first for my eyes, so great was the glare. For I had neither goggles nor veil. In fact, we were as unprepared a troop as ever started on such an expedition. We had not a pair of foot spikes nor a spiked pole to the lot of us.
The jagged peaks of the valley's wall notched the sky in vivid relief, their sharp teeth biting the blue. We below were blinking. Luckily before very long we had crossed the level and were attacking the wall, and once on it the glare lessened, for we were facing the south, and the slant of the slope took off from the directness of the sun's rays. The higher we rose, the greater the tilt became. The face of the slope was completely buried in snow except where the aretes stuck through, for the face was well wrinkled. The angle soon grew unpleasant to visage, and certainly looked to have exceeded the limit of stable equilibrium. In mid-ascent, as we were winding cautiously up, a porter slipped. He stopped himself, however, and was helped on to his feet again by his fellow behind. The bad bit was preface to a worse effect round the corner, for on turning the arete, we came upon a snow slope like a gigantic house-roof. It was as steep as you please, and disappeared a few hundred feet below over the edge into the abyss. Across and up this the guide, after looking about him, struck out, and I followed. The snow was in a plastic state, and at each step I kicked my toes well in, so wedging my footing. The view down was very unnerving. It soon grew so bad I fixed my thought solely on making each step secure, and went slowly, which was much against my inclination. In this manner we tacked gradually upward in zigzags, some forty feet apart, each of us improving the footprints of his predecessor.
After a short eternity, we came out at the top. I threw myself upon the snow, and when I had sufficiently recovered my breath asked the guide, with what I meant for sarcasm, whether that was his idea of "a good road." He owned that it was the worst bit on the way, but he somewhat grudgingly conceded it a "gake." I sat corrected, but in the interest of any future wanderer I submit the following definition of a "gake," which, if not strictly accurate, at least leans to the right side. If the cliff overhang, it is a "gake;" but if a plumb line from the top fall anywhere within the base, it is no longer a "gake," but "a good road."
On the other side the slope was more hospitable. Even trees wintered just below the crest, their great gaunt trunks thrust deep into the snow. We glissaded down the first few hundred feet, till we brought up standing at the head of an incipient gorge, likewise smothered in snow. Round the boles of the trees the snow had begun to thaw, which gave me a chance to measure its depth, by leaning over the rim of the cup and thrusting my pole down as far as I could reach. The point of it must have been over seven feet from the surface, and it touched no bottom. My investigations took time enough to put a bend of the hollow between me and the others, and when at last I looked up they were nowhere to be seen. As I trudged after them alone I felt like that coming historical character, the last man on our then frozen earth.
For some minutes past a strange, far-away musical note, like the murmur of running water, had struck my ear, and yet all about everything looked dead. Of animate or even inanimate pulsation there was no sign. One unbroken sheet of snow stretched as far as I could see, in which stood the great trees like mummies. Still the sound continued, seeming to come from under my feet. I stopped, and, kneeling down, put my ear to the crust, and there, as distinct as possible, I heard the wimpling of a baby brook, crooning to itself under its thick white blanket. Here then was the cradle of one of those streams that later would become such an ugly customer to meet. It was babily innocent now, and the one living thing beside myself on this May day in the great snow-sheeted solitude.
Perhaps it was the brook that had undermined the snow. At all events, soon after I overtook the others, the guide, fearing to trust to it farther, suddenly struck up again to the left. We all followed, remonstrating. We had no sooner got up than we went down again the other side, and this picket-fence style of progress continued till we emerged upon the top of a certain spur, which commanded a fine view of gorges. Unfortunately we ourselves were on top of some of them. The guide reconnoitered both sides for a descent, pushing his way through a thick growth of dwarf bamboo, and brought up each time on the edge of an impassable fall to the stream below. At last he took to the arete. It was masked by trees for some distance, and then came out as a bare knife edge of rock and earth. Down it we scrambled, till the slope to the side became passable. This was now much less steep, although still steep enough for the guide to make me halt behind a tree, for fear of the stones dislodged by those behind. These came down past us like cannon-balls, ricochetting by big bounds.
At the bottom we reached the stream, and beside it we halted for lunch. Just below our resting place another stream joined our own, both coming down forbidding-looking valleys, shut in by savage peaks. On the delta, between the waters, we made out a band of hunters, three of them, tarrying after an unsuccessful chase. This last was a general inference, rather than an observed fact.
The spot was ideal for picturesque purposes,—the water clear as crystal, and the sunshine sparkling. But otherwise matters went ill with us. Our extempore guide had promised us, over his own fire the evening before, a single day of it to Arimine. On the road his estimate of the time needed had increased alarmingly. From direct questioning it now appeared that he intended to camp out on the mountain opposite, whose snowy slopes were painfully prophetic of what that night would be. Besides, this meant another day of it to Arimine; and even when we reached Arimine, we were nowhere, and I was scant of time. We had already lost three days; if we kept on, I foresaw the loss of more. It was very disheartening to turn back, but it had to be done.
Our object now was to strike the Ashikura trail and follow it down. The guide, however, was not sure of the path, so we hailed the hunters. One of them came across the delta to the edge of the stream within shouting distance, and from him we obtained knowledge of the way.
At first the path was unadventurous enough, though distressingly rough. In truth, it was no path at all; it was an abstract direction. It led straight on, regardless of footing, and we followed, now wading through swamps, now stumbling over roots, now ducking from whip-like twigs that cut us across the face, until at last we emerged above the stream, and upon a scene as grandly desolate as the most morbid misanthrope might wish. A mass of boulders of all sizes, from a barn to a cobblestone, completely filled a chasm at the base of a semicircular wall of castellated clay cliffs. Into the pit we descended. The pinnacles above were impressively high, and between them were couloirs of debris that looked to us to be as perpendicular as the cliffs. Up one of these breakneck slides the guide pointed for our path. Porters and all, we demurred. Path, of course, there was none; there was not even an apology for a suspicion that any one had ever been up or down the place. We felt sure there must be some other way out. The more we searched, however, the less we found. The stream, which was an impassable torrent, barred exit below on our side by running straight into the wall of rock. The slide was an ugly climb to contemplate, yet we looked at it some time before we accepted the inevitable.
When in desperation we finally made up our minds, we began picking our dubious way up among a mass of rocks that threatened to become a stone avalanche at any moment. None of us liked it, but none of us knew how little the others liked it till that evening. In the expansion of success we admitted our past feelings. One poor porter said he thought his last hour had come, and most of us believed a near future without us not improbable. It shows how danger unlocks the heart that just because, halfway up, I had relieved this man of his stick, which from a help had become a hindrance, he felt toward me an exaggerated gratitude. It was nothing for me to do, for I was free, while he had his load, but had I really saved his life he could not have been more beholden. Indeed, it was a time to intensify emotion.
As we scrambled upward on all fours, the ascent, from familiarity, grew less formidable. At least the stones decreased in size, although their tilt remained the same, but the angle looked less steep from above than from below.
At last, one after the other, we reached a place to the side of the neck of the couloir, and scrambling round the coping of turf at the top emerged, to our surprise, upon a path, or rather upon the ghost of one. For we found ourselves upon a narrow ridge of soil between two chasms, ending in a pinnacle of clay, and along this ribbon of land ran a path, perfectly preserved for perhaps a score of paces out, when it broke off bodily in mid-air. The untoward look of the way we had come stood explained. Here clearly had been a cataclysm within itinerary times. Some gigantic landslide must have sliced the mountain off into the gorge below, and instead of a path we had been following its still unlaid phantom. The new-born character of the chasm explained its shocking nakedness. But it was an uncomfortable sight to see a path in all its entirety vanish suddenly into the void.
The uncut end of the former trail led back to a little tableland supporting a patch of tilling and tenanted by an uninhabited hut. The Willow Moor they called it, though it seemed hardly big enough to bear a name. On reconnoitring for the descent, we found the farther side fallen away like the first; so that the plateau was now cut off from all decent approach. One of us, at last, struck the butt end of a path; but we had not gone far down it before it broke off, and delivered us to the gullies. This side, however, was much better than the other, and it took none of us very long to slip down the slope, repair the bridge, and join the Ashikura trail.
We were now once more on the path we had come up, with the certainty of bad places instead of their uncertainty ahead of us, a doubtful betterment. The Oni ga Jo lay in wait round the corner, and the rest of the familiar devils would all appear in due course of time.
Tied over my boots were the straw sandals of the country. They were not made to be worn thus, and showed great uneasiness in their new position, do what we might with the thongs. Everybody tried his hand at it, first and last; but the fidgety things always ended by coming off at the toe or the heel, or sluing round to the side till they were worse than useless. They were supposed to prevent one from slipping, which no doubt they would have done had they not begun by slipping off themselves. They wore themselves out by their nervousness, and had to be renewed every little while from the stock the porters carried. In honor of the Oni ga Jo I had a fresh pair put on beside the brook sacred to the memory of my pocket-handkerchief. We then rose to the Devil Place, and threaded it in single file. Whether it were the companionship, or familiarity, or simply that my right side instead of my left next the cliff gave greater seeming security, I got over it a shade more comfortably this time, though it was still far from my ideal of an afternoon's walk. The road to the next world branched off too disturbingly to the left.
At last the path descended to the river bottom for good. I sat down on a stone, pulled out my tobacco pouch, and lit a pipe. The porters passed on out of sight. Then I trudged along myself. The tension of the last two days had suddenly ceased, and in the expansion of spirit that ensued I was conscious of a void. I wanted some one with me then, perhaps, more than I ever craved companionship before. The great gorge about me lay filled to the brim with purple shadow. I drank in the cool shade-scented air at every breath. The forest-covered mountain sides, patched higher up with snow in the gullies, shut out the world. Only a gilded bit here and there on some lofty spur lingered to hint a sun beyond. The strip of pale blue sky far overhead bowed to meet the vista of the valley behind, a vista of peaks more and more snow-clad, till the view was blocked at last by a white, nun-veiled summit, flushed now, in the late afternoon light, to a tender rose. Past strain had left the spirit, as past fatigue leaves the body, exquisitely conscious; and my fancy came and walked with me there in that lonely valley, as it gave itself silently into the arms of night.
Probably none I know will ever tread where I was treading then, nor I ever be again in that strange wild cleft, so far out of the world; and yet, if years hence I should chance to wander there alone once more, I know the ghost of that romance will rise to meet me as I pass.
I own I made no haste to overtake the caravan.
Darkness fell upon us while we were yet a long way from Ashikura, with an uncertain cliff path between us and it: for the path, like a true mountain trail, had the passion for climbing developed into a mania, and could never rest content with the river's bed whenever it spied a chance to rise. It had just managed an ascent up a zigzag stairway of its own invention, and had stepped out in the dark upon a patch of tall mountain grass, as dry as straw, when Yejiro conceived the brilliant idea of torches. He had learned the trick in the Hakone hills, where it was the habit, he told the guide, when caught out at night; and he proceeded to roll some of the grass into long wisps for the purpose. The torches were remarkably picturesque, and did us service beside. Their ruddy flare, bowing to the breeze, but only burning the more madly for its thwarting, lighted the path like noonday through a circle of fifteen feet, and dropped brands, still flaring, into the stubble, which we felt it a case of conscience to stop and stamp out. The circle, small as it was, sufficed to disclose a yawning gulf on the side, to which the path clung with the persistency of infatuation.
The first thing to tell us of approach to human habitation was the croaking of the frogs. After the wildness of our day it sounded like some lullaby of Mother Earth, speaking of hearth and home, and we knew that we were come back to ricefields and man. It was another half hour, however, before our procession reached the outskirts of the village. Here we threw aside our torches, and in a weary, drawn-out file found our way, one by one, into the courtyard of the inn. It was not an inn the year round; it became such only at certain seasons, of which the present was not one. It had the habit of putting up pilgrims on their way to the Dragon Peak; between the times of its pious offices it relapsed into a simple farmhouse. But the owner received us none the less kindly for our inopportune appearance, and hasted to bring the water-tubs for our feet. Never was I more willing to sit on the sill a moment and dabble my toes; for I was footsore and weary, and glad to be on man's level again. I promise you, we were all very human that evening, and felt a deal aloud.
A Genial Inkyo.
The owner of the farmhouse had inherited it from his father. There was nothing very odd about this even to our other-world notions of property, except that the father was still living, as hale and hearty as you please, in a little den at the foot of the garden. He was, in short, what is known as an inkyo, or one "dwelling in retirement,"—a singular state, composed of equal parts of this world and the next; like dying in theory, and then undertaking to live on in practice. For an inkyo is a man who has formally handed in his resignation to the community, and yet continues to exist most enjoyably in the midst of it. He has abdicated in favor of his eldest son, and, having put off all responsibilities, is filially supported in a life of ease and pleasure.
In spite of being no longer in society, the father was greedily social. As soon as he heard a foreigner had arrived, he trotted over to call, and nothing would do but I must visit his niche early in the morning, before going away.
After breakfast, therefore, the son duly came to fetch me, and we started off through the garden. For his sire's place of retirement lay away from the road, toward the river, that the dear old gentleman might command a view of the peaks opposite, of one of which, called the Etchiu Fuji, from its conical form, he was dotingly fond.
It was an expedition getting there. This arose, not from any special fault in the path, which for the first half of the way consisted of a string of stepping-stones neatly laid in the ground, and for the latter fraction of no worse mud than could easily be met with elsewhere. The trouble came from a misunderstanding in foot-gear. It seemed too short a walk to put one's boots twice on and off for the doing of it. On the other hand, to walk in stocking-feet was out of the question, for the mud. So I attempted a compromise, consisting of my socks and the native wooden clogs, and tried to make the one take kindly to the other. But my mittenlike socks would have none of my thongs, and, failing of a grip for my toes, compelled me to scuffle along in a very undignified way. Then every few steps one or the other of the clogs saw fit to stay behind, and I had to halt to recover the delinquent. I made a sorry spectacle as I screwed about on the remaining shoe, groping after its fellow. Once I was caught in the act by my cicerone, who turned round inopportunely to see why I was not following; and twice in attempting the feat I all but lost my balance into the mud.
The worthy virtuoso, as he was, met us at the door, and escorted us upstairs to see his treasures. The room was tapestried with all manner of works of art, of which he was justly proud, while the house itself stood copied from a Chinese model, for he was very classic. But I was pleased to find that above all his heart was given to the view. It was shared, as I also discovered, by the tea-ceremonies, in which he was a proficient; such a mixture is man. But I believe the view to have been the deeper affection. While I was admiring it, he fetched from a cupboard a very suspicious-looking bottle of what turned out to be honey, and pressed a glass of it upon me. I duly sipped this not inappropriate liquor, since cordials savor of asceticism, and this one being of natural decoction peculiarly befitted a secular anchorite. Then I took my leave of one who, though no longer in the world, was still so charmingly of it.
The good soul chanced to be a widower, but such bereavement is no necessary preliminary to becoming a "dweller in retirement." Sometimes a man enters the inkyo state while he still has with him the helpmate of his youth, and the two go together to this aftermath of life. Surely a pretty return, this, of the honeymoon! Darby and Joan starting once more hand in hand, alone in this Indian summer of their love, as they did years ago in its spring-tide, before other generations of their own had pushed them on to less romantic parts; Darby come back from paternal cares to be once more the lover, and Joan from mother and grandam again become his girl.
We parted from our watchman-guide and half our porters with much feeling, as did they from us. As friendships go we had not known one another long, but intimacy is not measured by time. Circumstances had thrown us into one another's arms, and, as we bade good-by first to one and then to another, we seemed to be severing a tie that touched very near the heart.
Two of the porters came on with us, as much for love as for money, as far as Kamiichi, where we were to get kuruma. A long tramp we had of it across leagues of ricefields, and for a part of the way beside a large, deep canal, finely bowered in trees, and flowing with a swift, dark current like some huge boa winding stealthily under the bamboo. It was the artery to I know not how many square miles of field. We came in for a steady drizzle after this, and it was long past noon before we touched our noontide halt, and stalked at last into the inn.
With great difficulty we secured three kuruma,—the place stood on the limits of such locomotion,—and a crowd so dense collected about them that it blocked the way out. Everybody seemed smitten with a desire to see the strangers, which gave the inn servants, by virtue of their calling, an enviable distinction to village eyes. But the porters stood highest in regard, both because of their more intimate tie to us and because we here parted from them. It was severing the final link to the now happy past. We all felt it, and told our rosary of memories in thought, I doubt not, each to himself, as we went out into the world upon our different ways.
Eight miles in a rain brought us to the road by which we had entered Etchiu some days before, and that night we slept at Mikkaichi once more. On the morrow morning the weather faired, and toward midday we were again facing the fringe of breakers from the cliffs. The mountain spurs looked the grimmer that we now knew them so well by repulse. The air was clearer than when we came, and as we gazed out over the ocean we could see for the first half day the faint coast line of Noto, stretching toward us like an arm along the horizon. We watched it at intervals as long as it was recognizable, and when at last it vanished beyond even imagination's power to conjure up, felt a strange pang of personal regret. The sea that snatches away so many lands at parting seems fitly inhuman to the deed.
In the course of these two days two things happened which pointed curiously to the isolation of this part of Japan. The first was the near meeting with another foreigner, which would seem to imply precisely the contrary. But the unwonted excitement into which the event threw Yejiro and me was proof enough of its strangeness. It was while I was sipping tea, waiting for a fresh relay of kuruma at Namerigawa, that Yejiro rushed in to announce that another foreigner was resting at an inn a little further up town. He had arrived shortly before from the Echigo side, report said. The passing of royalty or even a circus would have been tame news in comparison. Of course I hastened into my boots and sallied forth. I did not call on him formally, but I inspected the front of the inn in which he was said to be, with peculiar expectation of spirit, in spite of my affected unconcern. He was, I believe, a German; but he never took shape.
The second event occurred the next evening, and was even more singular. Like the dodo it chronicled survival. It was manifested in the person of a policeman.
Some time after our arrival at the inn Yejiro reported that the police officer wished to see me. The man had already seen the important part of me, the passport, and I was at a loss to imagine what more he could want. So Yejiro was sent back to investigate. He returned shortly with a sad case of concern for consideration, and he hardly kept his face as he told it. The conscientious officer, it seemed, wished to sleep outside my room for my protection. From the passport he felt himself responsible for my safety, and had concluded that the least he could do would be not to leave me for a moment. I assured him, through Yejiro, that his offer was most thoughtful, but unnecessary. But what an out-of-the-world corner the thought implied, and what a fine fossil the good soul must have been! Here was survival with an emphasis! The man had slept soundly through twenty years or more of change, and was still in the pre-foreign days of the feudal ages.
The prices of kuruma, too, were pleasingly behind the times. They were but two-fifths of what we should have had to pay on the southern coast. As we advanced toward Shinshiu, however, the prices advanced too. Indeed, the one advance accurately measured the other. We were getting back again into the world, it was painfully evident. At last fares rose to six cents a ri. Before they could mount higher we had taken refuge in the train, and were hurrying toward Zenkoji by steam.
Our objective point was now the descent of the Tenriugawa rapids. It was not the shortest way home, but it was part of our projected itinerary and took us through a country typical of the heart of Japan. It began with a fine succession of passes. These I had once taken on a journey years before with a friend, and as we started now up the first one, the Saru ga Bamba no toge, I tried to make the new impression fit the old remembrance. But man had been at work upon the place without, and imagination still more upon its picture within. It was another toge we climbed in the light of that latter-day afternoon. With the companion the old had passed away.
Leaving the others to follow, I started down the zigzags on the farther side. It was already dusk, and the steepness of the road and the brisk night air sent me swinging down the turns with something of the anchor-like escapement of a watch. Midway I passed a solitary pedestrian, who was trolling to himself down the descent; and when in turn he passed me, as I was waiting under a tree for the others to catch up, he eyed me suspiciously, as one whose wanderings were questionable. They were certainly questionable to myself, for by that time we were come to habitations, and each fresh light I saw I took for the village where we were to stop for the night, in spite of repeated disillusionings.
Overhead, the larger stars came out and winked at me, and then, as the fields of space became more and more lighted with star-points, the hearth-fires to other homes of worlds, I thought how local, after all, is the great cone of shadow we men call night; for it is only nature's nightcap for the nodding earth, as she turns her head away from the sun to lie pillowed in space.
The next day was notable chiefly for the up-and-down character of the country even for Japan; which was excelled only by the unhesitating acceptance of it on the part of the road, and this in its turn only by the crowds that traveled it. It seemed that the desire to go increased inversely as the difficulty in going. The wayfarers were most sociable folk, and for a people with whom personality is at a discount singularly given to personalities. Not a man who had a decent chance but asked whither we were going and whence we had come. To the first half of the country-side we confided so much of our private history; to the second we contented ourselves in saying, with elaborate courtesy, "The same as six years ago," an answer which sounded polite, and rendered the surprised questioner speechless for the time we took to pass.
Especially the women added to the picturesqueness of the landscape. Their heads done up in gay-colored kerchiefs, framing their round and rosy faces, their kit slung over their shoulders, and their kimono tucked in at their waists, they trudged along on useful pairs of ankles neatly cased in lavender gaiters. Some followed dutifully behind their husbands; others chatted along in company with their kind,—members these last of some pilgrim association.
There were wayfarers, too, of less happy mind. For over the last pass the authorities were building a new road, and long lines of pink-coated convicts marched to and fro at work upon it, under the surveillance of the dark-blue police; and the sight made me think how little the momentary living counts in the actual life. Here we were, two sets of men, doing for the time an identical thing, trudging along a mountain path in the fresh May air; and yet to the one the day seemed all sunshine, to the other nothing but cloud.
Our Passport and the Basha.
It was bound to come, and we knew it; it was only a question of time. But then we had braved the law so far so well, we had almost come to believe that we should escape altogether. I mean the fatal detection by the police that we were violating my passport. That document had already outrun the statute of limitations, and left me no better than an outlaw. For practical purposes my character was gone, and being thus self-convicted I might be arrested at any moment!
In consequence of pending treaty negotiations the government had become particular about the privileges it granted. One of the first counter-moves to foreign insistence on exterritoriality was the restricting of passports to a fortnight's time. You might lay out any tour you chose, and if granted by the government, the provinces designated would all be duly inscribed in your passport, but you had to compass them all in the fortnight or be punished. Of course this could be evaded, and a Japanese friend in the foreign office had kindly promised to send me an extension on telegraph. But the dislike of being tied to times and places made me sinfully prefer the risk of being marched back to Tokyo under the charge of a policeman, a fate I had seen overtake one or two other malefactors caught at somewhat different crimes, whom we had casually met on the road. The Harinoki toge was largely to blame for the delay, it is true. But then unluckily the Harinoki toge could not be arrested, and I could.
The bespectacled authorities who examined my credentials every night had hitherto winked at my guilt, so that the bolt fell upon us from a clear sky. It is almost questionable whether it had a right to fall at that moment at all. It was certainly a case of officious officialdom. For we had stopped simply to change kuruma, and the unwritten rule of the road runs that so long as the traveler keeps moving he is safe. To catch him napping at night is the recognized custom.
Besides, the police might have chosen, even by day, some other opportunity to light upon us than in the very thick of our wrestle with the extortionate prices of fresh kuruma. It was inconsiderate of them, to say the least; for the attack naturally threw us into a certain disrepute not calculated to cheapen fares. Then, too, our obvious haste helped furnish circumstantial evidence of crime.
Nevertheless, in the very midst of these difficult negotiations at Matsumoto, evil fate presented itself, clothed as a policeman, and demanded our papers. Luckily they were not at the very bottom of the baggage, but in Yejiro's bosom; for otherwise our effects would have become a public show, and collected an even greater crowd than actually gathered. The arm of the law took the passport, fell at once on the indefensible date, and pointed it out to us. There we were, caught in the act. We sank several degrees instantly in everybody's estimation.
How we escaped is a secret of the Japanese force; for escape we did. We admitted our misfortune to the policeman, and expressed ourselves as even more desirous of getting back to Tokyo than he could be to have us there. But we pointed out that now the Tenriugawa was to all intents as short a way as any, and furthermore that it was the one expressly nominated in the bond. The policeman stood perplexed. Out of doubt or courtesy, or both, he hesitated for some moments, and then reluctantly handed the passport back. We stood acquitted. Indeed we were not only suffered to proceed, and that in our own way, but he actually accelerated matters himself, for he turned to against the kuruma, to their instant discomfiture. Indeed, this was quite as it should be, for he was as anxious to be rid of us as we were to be quit of him.
On the road the kuruma proved unruly. The exposure we had sustained may have helped to this, or the coercion of the policeman may have worked revolt. They jogged along more and more reluctantly, till, at last, the worst of them refused to go on at all. After some quite useless altercation, we made what shift we might with the remainder, but had not got far when we heard the toot of a fish-horn behind, and the sound gradually overhauled us. Now, a fish-horn on a country road in Japan means a basha, and a basha means the embodiment of the objectionable. It is a vehicle to be avoided; both externally like a fire-engine, and internally like an ambulance or a hearse. Indeed, so far as its victim is concerned, it usually ends by becoming a cross between the latter two. It is a machine absolutely devoid of recommendations. I speak from experience, for in a moment of adventure I once took passage in one, some years ago, and I never mean to do so again. Even the sound of its fish-horn now provokes me to evil thoughts. But we were in a bad way, and, to my wonder, I found my sentiments perceptibly softening. Before the thing caught up with us, I had actually resolved to take it.
We made signals of distress, and, rather contrary to my expectation, the machine stopped. The driver pulled up, and the guard, a half-grown boy, who sat next him on the seat in front, making melody on the horn, jumped down, a strange bundle of consequence and courtesy, and helped us and our belongings in. He then swung himself into his seat, as the basha set off again, and fell to tooting vociferously. We had scarce got settled before the vehicle was dashing along at what seemed, to our late perambulator experience, a perfectly breakneck speed. The pace and the enthusiasm of the boy infected us. Yejiro and I fell to congratulating each other, with some fervor, on our change of conveyance, and each time we spoke, the boy whisked round in his seat and cried out, with a knowing wag of his head, "I tell you, it's fast, a basha! He!" and then as suddenly whisked back again, and fell to tooting with renewed vigor, like one who had been momentarily derelict in duty. The road was quite deserted, so that so much noise would have seemed unnecessary. The boy thought otherwise. Meanwhile, we were being frightfully jolted, and occasionally slung round corners in a way to make holding on a painful labor.
I suppose the unwonted speed must have intoxicated us. There is nothing else that will account for our loss of head. For, before we were well out of the machine, we had begun negotiations for its exclusive possession on the morrow; and by the time we were fairly installed in the inn at Shiwojiri, the bargain stood complete. In consideration of no exorbitant sum, the vehicle, with all appertaining thereto, was to be taken off its regular route and wander, like any tramp, at our sweet will, in quite a contrary direction. The boy with the horn was expressly included in the lease. By this arrangement we hoped to compass two days' journey in one, and reach by the morrow's night the point where boats are taken for the descent of the Tenriugawa rapids. We knew the drive would be painful, but we had every promise that it would be fast.
The inn at Shiwojiri possessed a foreign table and chairs; a bit of furnishing from which the freshness of surprise never wore off. What was even less to be looked for, the son of the house was proficient in English, having studied with a missionary in Tokyo. I had some talk with him later, and lent him an English classic which he showed great desire to see.
Betimes the next morning the basha appeared, both driver and guard got up in a fine dark-green uniform, a spruceness it much tickled our vanity to mark. With a feeling akin to princely pride we stepped in, the driver cracked his whip, and, amid the bows of the inn household, we went off up the street. Barring the loss of an umbrella, which had happened somewhere between the time we boarded the basha on the yestereen and the hour of departure that morning, and an exhaustive but vain hunt for the same, first in the vehicle and then at the stables, nothing marred the serenity of our first half hour. The sky was dreamy; a delicate blue seen through a golden gauze. I fancy it was such a sky with which Danae fell in love. We rose slowly up the Shiwojiri pass, which a new road enabled even the basha to do quite comfortably; and the southern peaks of the Hida-Shinshiu range rose to correspond across the valley, the snow line distinctly visible, though the nearer ranges did their best to cut it off. Norikura, the Saddle, especially, showed a fine bit of its ten thousand feet, wrapped in the indistinctness of the spring haze. The heavy air gave a look of slumber to the peaks, as if those summits, waked before the rest of the world, had already grown drowsy. We had not yet ceased gazing at them when a turn of the road shut them out. A rise of a few feet, a dip, a turn, and the lake of Suwa lay below us on the other side, flanked by its own mountains, through a gap in which showed the just perceptible cone of Fuji.
The Shiwojiri toge is not a high pass, and yet it does duty as part of a great divide. A drop of water, falling on the Shiwojiri side, if it chance to meet with other drops before it be snatched up again into the sky, wanders into the sea of Japan; while its fellow, coming to earth not a yard away, ends at last in the Pacific ocean. Our way now lay with the latter. For the Tenriugawa, or River of the Heavenly Dragon, takes its rise in the lake of Suwa, a bowl of water a couple of miles or more across. It trickles out insignificantly enough at one end; gathers strength for fifty miles of flow, and then for another hundred cuts its way clean across a range of mountains. How it ever got through originally, and why, are interesting mysteries. Its gorge is now from one to two thousand feet deep, cleft, not through a plateau, but through the axis of a mountain chain. In most places there is not a yard to spare.
We were still a doubtful day off from where it is customary to take a boat. We had started somewhat late, stopped for the lack of umbrella, and now were committed to a digression for letters I expected at Shimonosuwa. I never order my letters to meet me on the line of march but I bitterly repent having chosen that special spot. There is always some excellent reason why it turns out most inconvenient. But as yet I was hopeful, for I thought I knew the speed of the basha, and the day was still young.
The day had grown older and I wiser by the time my letters were read, with their strange perfume from outre-mer, the horses harnessed afresh, and we under way once more, clattering down the main street of the village. It was not only in the village that we made a stir. A basha is equal to the occasion anywhere. The whole countryside stopped in its tracks to turn and stare as we passed, and at one point we came in for a perfect ovation; for our passage and the noonday recess of a school happening to coincide, the children, at that moment let loose, instantly dashed after us pell-mell, in a mass, shouting. One or two of them were so eager in the chase that they minded not where they went, and, tripping over stones or ruts, fell headlong in the mud. The rest pursued us panting, each according to his legs, and gave over at last only for want of wind.
The guard was supremely happy. What time the upper half of him was too tired to toot the lower half spent in hopping off his seat and on again upon imaginary duty. Meanwhile, in spite of enlivenments not included in the bill, my old dislike was slowly but surely coming back. I began to be uneasy on the score of time. The speed was not what hope and the company had led me to expect. I went through some elaborate rule-of-three calculation between the distance, the speed, and the time; and, as far as I could make out, it began to look questionable whether we should arrive that night at all. I had already played the part of goad out of precaution; I now had to take to it in good earnest,—futiley, to boot. Meanwhile my body was as uneasy as my mind. In the first place, the seats faced sideways, so that we progressed after the fashion of crabs. Secondly, the vehicle hardly made apologies for springs. We were rattled about like parched corn in a hopper.
What a blessed trick of memory that, of winnowing the joys of travel from its discomforts, and letting the latter slip unconsciously away! The dust and the heat and the thousand petty annoyances pass with the fact to be forgotten, while the snow-hooded mountains and the deep blue sky and the smiling fields stay with us, a part of ourselves. That drive seems golden as I look back upon it; yet how sadly discomforting it was at the time!
Toward afternoon a rumor became current that the road had been washed away ahead, and that the basha would have to stop some miles short of where we had hoped to be that night. This was disheartening. For with all its shortcomings the basha was undeniably faster than perambulators. The rumor gathered substance as we advanced, until in consequence we ceased to advance at all. At a certain village, called Miyada, the basha drew up, and we were informed that it was impossible to proceed further.
There was nothing for it but to hire kuruma. The men were a rascally lot, and made gain of our necessity. But we were not as sorry to leave the basha as we might have been, and the reports of impassability substantiated themselves before we had got a mile out. In further consolation, the kuruma men turned out well on the road, and bowled us along right merrily. The road ran along the skirts of the mountains on the right, which fell in one long sweep to the river, a breadth of plain unexpectedly gored by streams. The canons were startlingly abrupt, and the darkness which now came on took nothing from the effect. A sudden zigzag down to a depth of a hundred feet, a careful hitching over a decrepit bridge, and a zigzag up the other side, and we were off at a good trot again. This dispatch on the part of the men brought us in much-improved spirits and in very good time into Iijima, our hoped-for goal.
Down the Tenriugawa.
We had made arrangements overnight for a boat, not without difficulty, and in the morning we started in kuruma for the point of embarkation. We were eager to be off upon our voyage, else we should have strolled afoot down the long meadow slope, such invitation lay in it, the dew sparkling on the grass blades, the freshly tilled earth scenting the air, and the larks rising like rockets up into the sky and bursting into song as they went. It seemed the essence of spring, and we had a mile or more of it all before we reached the brink of the canon. For even here the river had begun a gorge for itself through the plain. We left our jinrikisha at the top and zigzagged on foot down the steep descent, and straightway departed the upper life of fields and larks and sunshine for a new and semi-subterranean one. It was not simply a change of scene; it was a complete change of sphere. The world with its face open to the day in a twinkling had ceased to be, and another world, a world of dark water girt by shadowed walls of rock and trees, had taken its place.
Amid farewell wavings from the jinrikisha men we pushed off into the stream. In spite of the rush of the water and the creaking of the oars, a strange stillness had fallen on everything. The swirling, inky flood swept us on past the hushed banks, heights of motionless leaves nearly hiding the gray old rock. Occasionally some puff of wind more adventurous than its fellows swooped down to make the leaves quiver a moment, and then died away in awe, while here and there a bird flew in and out among the branches with strangely subdued twitter.
Although this part of the river could show its gorge and its rapids, it made only the preface to that chapter of its biography we had come to read. At Tokimata, some hours further down, begins the voyage proper. But even the preface was imposing. The black water glided sinuous along, its stealthy course every now and again interrupted by rapids, where the sullen flood lashed itself to a passion of whitecaps with a kind of hissing roar. Down these we shot, the boat bowing first in acquiescence, and then plunging as madly as the water itself. It was hard to believe that both boat and river were not sentient things.
At intervals we met other boats toiling slowly up stream, pulled laboriously by men who strained along the bank at the ends of hundreds of feet of tow-rope, the ropes themselves invisible at first for distance; so that we were aware only of men walking along the shore in attitudes of impossible equilibrium, and of boats that followed them doglike from pure affection. It would seem weary work even for canal-boating. It takes weeks to toil up what it once took only hours to float down. As we sped past the return convoys, we seemed sad profligates, thus wantonly to be squandering such dearly-won vantage of position. The stream which meant money to them was, like money, hard come and easy go.
Still the stream hurried us on. We hugged the cliffs, now on one side, now on the other, only to have them slip by us the quicker. Bend after bend opened, spread out, and closed. The scene changed every minute, and yet was always the same. Then at times we were vouchsafed openings in the surrounding hills, narrow bits of foreground, hints of a something that existed beyond.
For three hours and more we kept on in our serpentine course, for the river meandered as whimsically as if it still had a choice of its own in the matter. Then gradually the land about began to make overtures toward sociability. The trees on the banks disappeared, the banks themselves decreased in height; then the river took to a more genial flow, and presently we were ware of the whole countryside to the right coming down in one long sweep to the water's edge.
The preface was over. The stream was to have a breathing spell of air and sunlight before its great plunge into sixty miles of twilight canon. With a quick turn of his rudder oar the boatman in the stern brought the flat-bottomed craft round, and in a jiffy she lay beached on the shingle at Tokimata. It was now high noon.
The greater part of the village kindly superintended the operation of disembarking, and then the more active of its inhabitants trotted before as guides to the inn. For our boat would go no further, and therefore all our belongings had to come out. It was only when we inquired for further conveyance that the crowd showed signs of satiety and edged off. To our importunities on this head the populace were statuesque or worse. A Japanese assent is not always the most encouraging of replies, and a Japanese "No" touches in you a depth not unlike despair. They have a way of hinting the utter hopelessness of your wish, past, present, and to come, an eternity of impossibility to make you regret that you ever were born. After we had reached the inn, and had stated our wants to a more informed audience, we were told that the nautical part of the inhabitants were in the fields, gathering mulberry leaves for the silkworms. From the bribe we offered to induce a change in pursuit, we judged money to be no object to them. There remained nothing, therefore, but the police.
It is good policy never to invoke the law except in the last extremity, for you are pretty safe to have some flaw shown up in you before you are through with it. The law in this case was represented, Yejiro found, by a person still yellow with the jaundice. He met the demand for boatmen with the counter demand for the passport, and when this was produced his official eye at once detected its anachronism.
"This," said he, "is not in order. I do not see how you can go on at all."
To add artificial impossibility to natural, was too much. Yejiro answered that he had better come to the inn; which he accordingly did. Poor man! I pitied him. For, in the first place, he was still jaundiced; and, in the second, although conscious of guilt as I was, I was much the less disturbed of the two. I was getting used to being a self-smuggler; while he, as the Japanese say, was "taihen komarimasu" (exceedingly "know not what to do"), a phrase which is a national complaint. In this instance he had cause. What to do with so hardened a sinner was a problem passing his powers. Here was a law-breaker who by rights should at once be bundled back to Tokyo under police surveillance. But he could not go himself, he had no one to send, and furthermore the delinquent seemed only too willing to escort himself there, free of government expense, as speedily as possible. All I had to do was to whet his perception that the sooner boatmen were got the sooner I should be on the right side of the law again. After some conflict with himself he went in search of men.
I was left to study the carp-pond, with its gold and silver fish, the pivot of attention of the pretty little garden court which stood handy to the kitchen. This juxtaposition was no accident; for such ponds are landscape and larder in one. Between meals the fish are scenery; at the approach of the dinner hour they turn into game. The inn guest having sufficiently enjoyed the gambols of future repasts, picks out his dish to suit his taste or capacity, and the fish is instantly netted and translated to the gridiron. The survivors, none the wiser, continue to steamboat about, intent on their own dinners, flashing their colors as they turn their armored sides in and out of the light. Eccentric nature has fitted these prototypes of navigation with all the modern improvements. Double and even triple sets of screws are common things in tails, and sometimes the fins, too, are duplex. As for me, I had neither the heart nor the stomach to help depopulate the pond. But I took much mechanical delight in their motions; so I fed them instead of they me.
I had my choice between doing this and watching the late boatmen at their dinner in the distance. No doubt moods have an aesthetic conscience of their own,—they demand appropriate setting; for I was annoyed at the hilarity of these men over their midday meal. I bore them no malice, but I own I should have preferred not to have seen them thus making free with time they had declared themselves unable to sell to me.
Thanks in part to my quality of outlaw, and in part to four hours' propitiation of the gods of delay, the jaundiced policeman finally succeeded in beating up a crew. There were four conscripts in all, kerchiefed, not to say petticoated, in the native nautical costume; a costume not due to being fresh-water sailors, since their salt-water cousins are given to a like disguise of sex. These mariners made us wait while they finished their preparations. It meant a long voyage to them,—a facilis descensus Averni; sed revocare gradum,—a very long pull. Then the bow was poled off, the current took us in its arms and swung us out into the stream, and the crowd on the shingle dropped perspectively astern.
While I was still standing gazing at lessening Tokimata, I heard a cry from behind me, and, turning, ducked just in time to escape being unceremoniously somersaulted into the water by a hawser stretched from bank to bank at a level singularly suited to such a trick. The rope was the stationary half of a ferry to which I had neglected to make timely obeisance. It marked, indeed, an incipient stage in the art of suspension bridges, the ferryboat itself supporting a part of the weight, while the ferryman pulled it and himself across. We met several more in the course of the next few minutes, before which we all bowed down into the bottom of the boat, while the hawser scraped, grumbling impotently, overhead.