These animals and their leaders deserve a whole chapter of description
for themselves. Fancy a brass-bound peaked pack-saddle rising a foot
above the animal's back, with a crupper-strap slanting down to clasp
the tail. The oft-bandied slur, that in Japan everything goes by
contraries, has a varnish of truth on it when we notice that the most
gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on
a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. The man who
leads the horse is an animal that by long contact and companionship
with the quadruped has grown to resemble him in disposition and
ejaculation: at least, the equine and the human seem to harmonize well
together. This man is called in Japanese "horse side." He is dressed
in straw sandals and the universally worn _kimono_, or blue cotton
wrapper-like dress, which is totally unfitted for work of any kind,
and which makes the slovens of Japan--a rather numerous class--always
look as if they had just got out of bed. At his waist is the usual
girdle, from which hangs the inevitable bamboo-and-brass pipe, the
bowl of which holds but a pellet of the mild fine-cut tobacco of the
country. The pipe-case is connected with a tobacco-pouch, in which
are also flint, steel and tinder. All these are suspended by a cord,
fastened to a wooden or ivory button, which is tucked up through the
belt. On his head, covering his shaven mid-scalp and right-angled
top-knot, is a blue cotton rag--not handkerchief, since such an
article in Japan is always made of paper. This head-gear is usually
fastened over the head by twisting the ends under the nose. With a
rope six feet long he leads his horse, which trusts so implicitly
to its master's guidance that we suspect the prevalence of blindness
among the Japanese pack-horses arises from sheer lack of the exercise
of their eyesight. These unkempt brutes are strangers to curry-combs
and brushes, though a semi-monthly scrubbing in hot water keeps them
tolerably clean. Their shoes are a curiosity: the hoofs are not shod