with them to bring them back, and rode and hauled alternately, two
youths always attached to the shafts, and a man pushing behind.
They were very kind, and so courteous, after a new fashion, that I
quite forgot that I was alone among savages. The lads were young
and beardless, their lips were thick, and their mouths very wide,
and I thought that they approached more nearly to the Eskimo type
than to any other. They had masses of soft black hair falling on
each side of their faces. The adult man was not a pure Aino. His
dark hair was not very thick, and both it and his beard had an
occasional auburn gleam. I think I never saw a face more
completely beautiful in features and expression, with a lofty, sad,
far-off, gentle, intellectual look, rather that of Sir Noel Paton's
"Christ" than of a savage. His manner was most graceful, and he
spoke both Aino and Japanese in the low musical tone which I find
is a characteristic of Aino speech. These Ainos never took off
their clothes, but merely let them fall from one or both shoulders
when it was very warm.

The road from Horobets to Shiraoi is very solitary, with not more
than four or five houses the whole way. It is broad and straight,
except when it ascends hills or turns inland to cross rivers, and
is carried across a broad swampy level, covered with tall wild
flowers, which extends from the high beach thrown up by the sea for
two miles inland, where there is a lofty wall of wooded rock, and
beyond this the forest-covered mountains of the interior. On the
top of the raised beach there were Aino hamlets, and occasionally a
nearly overpowering stench came across the level from the sheds and
apparatus used for extracting fish-oil. I enjoyed the afternoon
thoroughly. It is so good to have got beyond the confines of
stereotyped civilisation and the trammels of Japanese travelling to