The Sea-shore—A “Hairy Aino”—A Horse Fight—The Horses of Yezo— “Bad Mountains”—A Slight Accident — Magnificent Scenery — A Bleached Halting-Place—A Musty Room—Aino “Good-breeding.”

A CHARGE of 3 sen, per n more for the horses for the next stage, because there were such “bad mountains to cross,” prepared me for what followed—many miles of the worst road for horses I ever saw. I should not have complained if they had charged double the price. As an almost certain consequence, it was one of the most picturesque routes I have ever travelled. For some distance, however, it runs placidly along by the sea-shore, on which big, blue, foam-crested rollers were disporting themselvesnoisily, and passes through several Aino hamlets, and the Aino village of Abuta, with sixty houses, rather a prosperous-looking place, where the cultivation was consider ably more careful, and the people possessed anumber of horses. Several of the houses were surrounded by bears’ skulls grinning from be tween the forked tops of high poles, and there was a well-grown bear ready for his doom and apotheosis. In nearly all the houses a woman was weaving bark-cloth, with the hook which holds the web fixed into the ground several feet outside the house. At a deep river called the Nopkobets, which emerges from the mountains close to the sea, we were ferried by an Aino completely covered with hair, which on his shoulders was wavy like that of a retriever, and rendered clothing quite needless either for covering or warmth. A wavy, black beard rippled nearly to his waist over his furry chest, and, with his black locks hanging in masses over his shoulders, he would have looked a thorough savage had it not been for the exceeding sweetness of his smile and eyes. The Volcano Bay Ainos are far more hairy than the mountain Ainos, but even among them it is quite common to see men not more so than vigorous Europeans, and I think that the hairiness of the race as a distinctive feature has been much exaggerated, partly by the smooth-skinned Japanese.

The ferry scow was nearly upset by our four horses beginning to fight.