CHAPTER IV.

SECOND YEAR'S WORK: AKASAKA, NAGOYA (1875). WE were busy enough all through January of 1875 in making up our estimates, occasionally getting out for a tramp in the snow or a coasting voyage round the head of the lake after game. Our great shikari, Tom, shot what he called a mountain sheep, really a sheepfaced antelope, before Christmas; and they were shot by the native hunters in large numbers when the heavy snows drove them down into the valleys. Wild boar were also slain in plenty, and one enormous one, said to weight forty-five "kan" or "kwamme," equivalent to three hundred and seventy-five pounds, was hoisted in triumph up to the top of the look-out ladder in the next village. We couldn't do very much of this kind of fun, being far too heavy to get about on any kind of snow-shoe we could devise; for the snow remained soft and unfrozen all through the winter. Tom, however, shot a young pig with a revolver through a hole in the top of the box in which the luckless pig was confined, his capture having been previously effected by a combination of Japanese strategy with foreign dollars. James and Charlie had lots of fun, and got several good skins.

Of my own achievements I will only say that I didn't give myself any airs on account of them.

Our poultry yard at Shiōtsŭ was a great temptation to the foxes, who used to come and hang about round the corner, and even try and get under the house. But Tom was too many for them; whenever he smelt a fox he would arise and go to his muzzle-loader, and fire from the verandah at the thick of the scent, rarely failing to hit something. Our worst enemies, however, were the polecats, or "ten," as the Japanese call them. We lost more than twenty fowls one night, in spite of watching and dodging; but we got one of the marauders at last, whose mate had shut up the hole through which he essayed to retreat, by dragging a too-too fowl into it; so that he was peppered with small shot, and after waltzing round the cook's quarters, and being transfixed there with a carving-fork, he died.

Every day Tom and I struggled up to a little garden we had in a sheltered corner, and dug some endive out from under the snow, and Mrs. Tom accompanied us as directress. The season was a trying one, however, to any but rude constitutions; and at the end of the month I was obliged to send them both away to find the doctor, as we couldn't get a doctor to come to Shiōtsŭ; at least he was so long in coming that we gave him up, and I couldn't take the responsibility of keeping Tom, who fell really ill, and his wife any longer in such an out of the way hole as Shiōtsu. So on the first available fine day they started off, on what was a very trying journey; but, with the help of friends on the way, they reached Kobe all right.

The Kiyōto doctor arrived at Shiōtsŭ a few hours after their departure, having taken three days to come round the lake-and sharp work, too, in such a season-rather than trust to a steamer. He was naturally wroth at finding his journey useless; but there was no help for it at that time. So he stopped only long enough to take some lunch, and departed down the other side of the lake, hoping to find the roads better that way; but came to grief, being pitched out of his jinrikisha backwards, so that he nearly broke his neck, and reached home rather more dead than alive.

I was now left alone, and as our estimates and plans had all been sent in, time hung heavily on my hands; so I induced James and Charlie to come over, and we had a few days shooting together quietly, and otherwise strove to make our miserable lives happy. And then one morning in came our letters, and amongst them a summons to myself to repair to Kobe, there to receive from the Chief instructions for a new survey for the coming season, of greater extent than the one just completed, and involving the services of a larger staff under my supervision. We gave three cheers, for we very soon became tired of the workless state; and by eight o'clock next morning I was keeping an eye upon the pressure gauge of a cranky little paddle-steamer, and leaving Shiōtsŭ behind me.

Touching the said pressure gauge, I afterwards found that I was a victim to a kindly imposture; for owing to the spread of intelligence and development of exact knowledge in the land, all steamers were provided with

two gauges-one in a conspicuous position, and warranted to keep steady within small limits, so that the nervous passenger might be comforted-as I was,-and another in a secluded corner of the stoke-hole, for the information of the head engineer and stoker's mate, who Occupy the inside of one hat. In spite of this considerate arrangement, a steamer on the lake had gone to glory with all hands only a few days before; and when Tom and his wife were on the journey down he had been obliged to get out on the deck of his boat, which was being towed by the steamer, and use several short words, emphasized by the display of a pocket Derringer, to prevent twenty-six “damp, moist, and unpleasant bodies" being taken on board, the results of the capsize on the previous day.

The account that reached me of this latter casualty, was that one of the smallest steamers, licensed to carry thirty-six passengers, had started away from Shiōtsu at the dead of the night with sixty-five; and that four people having gone simultaneously to one side of the boat to look at bubbles in the water, she heeled over, and forty wide-awake passengers rushed to the other side to keep her steady; but she righted too much, turned turtle, and five out of the whole number on board lived happy ever afterwards.

As all passengers have to be registered by name, there were twenty-nine unregistered, so that the terms of the licence might not appear on the record to have been transgressed; and the authorities were annoyed to find upon inquiry that the five survivors had apparently not been on board at all; but as all the hands belonging

to the steamer were lost, it was found convenient to lay the blame upon the unhappy skipper, who could not, of course, speak up in his own defence. When returning, I put myself and belongings into a tow-boat, by official command, without a pang.

However, thanks to the show-gauge, I was quite happy on the way down. The surface of the lake was as calm as a mill-pond, darkened here and there by myriads of geese and teal. All around the mountains were snow-clad from summit to base, until we came within a few miles of Ōtsu, where a deep cross valley between Shirayama to the north and Iye-san to the south-two mountains of over three thousand feet high -seemed curiously to mark a change of climate. Shirayama (white hill) fully deserved its name; but even on the northern slope of Iye-san there was scarcely a patch of snow visible. At Ōtsu I found that only about a foot of snow altogether had fallen, and not above two inches in any one fall-yet we were only fifty miles from Shiōtsu! where we certainly had a minimum of four feet in depth of snow on the ground for five weeks; and there was fully half of it remaining when I left.

I found, to my delight, that the road from Ōtsu to Kiyōto had been vastly improved from the state of fourteen months before. It was now a good wide road, with the old tramway removed, inclines eased, and properly drained; and I bowled along merrily into the old capital with many a yell from the coolies who were drawing my jinrikisha, and many a close shave of corners, and many a leap of the heart into the throat