LETTER XXII

Summary

Ichinono, July 12.

Two foreign ladies, two fair-haired foreign infants, a longhaired foreign dog, and a foreign gentleman, who, without these accompaniments, might have escaped notice, attracted a large but kindly crowd to the canal side when I left Niigata. The natives bore away the children on their shoulders, the Fysons walked to the extremity of the canal to bid me good-bye, the sampan shot out upon the broad, swirling flood of the Shinano, and an awful sense of loneliness fell upon me. We crossed the Shinano, poled up the narrow, embanked Shinkawa, had a desperate struggle with the flooded Aganokawa, were much impeded by strings of nauseous manure-boats on the narrow, discoloured Kajikawa, wondered at the interminable melon and cucumber fields, and at the odd river life, and after hard poling for six hours, reached Kisaki, having accomplished exactly ten miles. Then three kurumas with trotting runners took us twenty miles at the low rate of 4 ½ sen per ri. In one place a board closed the road, but, on representing to the chief man of the village that the traveller was a foreigner, he courteously allowed me to pass, the Express Agent having accompanied me thus far to see that I “got through all right.” The road was tolerably populous throughout the day's journey, and the farming villages which extended much of the way—Tsuiji, Kasayanagê, Mono, and Mari—were neat, and many of the farms had bamboo fences to screen them from the road. It was on the whole a pleasant country, and the people, though little clothed, did not look either poor or very dirty. The soil was very light and sandy.