Unbeaten Tracks in Japan | Page 4

had to be disinterred by careful labour from
amidst a mass of rubbish. The Ainos supplied the information which is
given concerning their customs, habits, and religion; but I had an
opportunity of comparing my notes with some taken about the same
time by Mr. Heinrich Von Siebold of the Austrian Legation, and of
finding a most satisfactory agreement on all points.
Some of the Letters give a less pleasing picture of the condition of the
peasantry than the one popularly presented, and it is possible that some
readers may wish that it had been less realistically painted; but as the
scenes are strictly representative, and I neither made them nor went in
search of them, I offer them in the interests of truth, for they illustrate
the nature of a large portion of the material with which the Japanese
Government has to work in building up the New Civilisation.
Accuracy has been my first aim, but the sources of error are many, and
it is from those who have studied Japan the most carefully, and are the
best acquainted with its difficulties, that I shall receive the most kindly
allowance if, in spite of carefulness, I have fallen into mistakes.

The Transactions of the English and German Asiatic Societies of Japan,
and papers on special Japanese subjects, including "A Budget of
Japanese Notes," in the Japan Mail and Tokiyo Times, gave me
valuable help; and I gratefully acknowledge the assistance afforded me
in many ways by Sir Harry S. Parkes, K.C.B., and Mr. Satow of
H.B.M.'s Legation, Principal Dyer, Mr. Chamberlain of the Imperial
Naval College, Mr. F. V. Dickins, and others, whose kindly interest in
my work often encouraged me when I was disheartened by my lack of
skill; but, in justice to these and other kind friends, I am anxious to
claim and accept the fullest measure of personal responsibility for the
opinions expressed, which, whether right or wrong, are wholly my
own.
The illustrations, with the exception of three, which are by a Japanese
artist, have been engraved from sketches of my own or Japanese
photographs.
I am painfully conscious of the defects of this volume, but I venture to
present it to the public in the hope that, in spite of its demerits, it may
be accepted as an honest attempt to describe things as I saw them in
Japan, on land journeys of more than 1400 miles.
Since the letters passed through the press, the beloved and only sister to
whom, in the first instance, they were written, to whose able and
careful criticism they owe much, and whose loving interest was the
inspiration alike of my travels and of my narratives of them, has passed
away.
ISABELLA L. BIRD.

LETTER I

First View of Japan--A Vision of Fujisan--Japanese Sampans--
"Pullman Cars"--Undignified Locomotion--Paper Money--The
Drawbacks of Japanese Travelling.

ORIENTAL HOTEL, YOKOHAMA, May 21.
Eighteen days of unintermitted rolling over "desolate rainy seas"
brought the "City of Tokio" early yesterday morning to Cape King, and
by noon we were steaming up the Gulf of Yedo, quite near the shore.
The day was soft and grey with a little faint blue sky, and, though the
coast of Japan is much more prepossessing than most coasts, there were
no startling surprises either of colour or form. Broken wooded ridges,
deeply cleft, rise from the water's edge, gray, deep-roofed villages
cluster about the mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice cultivation,
bright with the greenness of English lawns, run up to a great height
among dark masses of upland forest. The populousness of the coast is
very impressive, and the gulf everywhere was equally peopled with
fishing-boats, of which we passed not only hundreds, but thousands, in
five hours. The coast and sea were pale, and the boats were pale too,
their hulls being unpainted wood, and their sails pure white duck. Now
and then a high-sterned junk drifted by like a phantom galley, then we
slackened speed to avoid exterminating a fleet of triangular- looking
fishing-boats with white square sails, and so on through the grayness
and dumbness hour after hour.
For long I looked in vain for Fujisan, and failed to see it, though I heard
ecstasies all over the deck, till, accidentally looking heavenwards
instead of earthwards, I saw far above any possibility of height, as one
would have thought, a huge, truncated cone of pure snow, 13,080 feet
above the sea, from which it sweeps upwards in a glorious curve, very
wan, against a very pale blue sky, with its base and the intervening
country veiled in a pale grey mist. {1} It was a wonderful vision, and
shortly, as a vision, vanished. Except the cone of Tristan
d'Acunha--also a cone of snow--I never saw a mountain rise in such
lonely majesty, with