cap and covered the whole country for many a mile with cinders and
ashes, burning up the forest on its sides, adding a new covering to
the Tomakomai roofs, and depositing fine ash as far as Cape Erimo,
fifty miles off.

At this place the road and telegraph wires turn inland to
Satsuporo, and a track for horses only turns to the north-east, and
straggles round the island for about seven hundred miles. From
Mororan to Sarufuto there are everywhere traces of new and old
volcanic action--pumice, tufas, conglomerates, and occasional beds
of hard basalt, all covered with recent pumice, which, from Shiraoi
eastwards, conceals everything. At Tomakomai we took horses, and,
as I brought my own saddle, I have had the nearest approach to real
riding that I have enjoyed in Japan. The wife of a Satsuporo
doctor was there, who was travelling for two hundred miles astride
on a pack-saddle, with rope-loops for stirrups. She rode well, and
vaulted into my saddle with circus-like dexterity, and performed
many equestrian feats upon it, telling me that she should be quite
happy if she were possessed of it.

I was happy when I left the "beaten track" to Satsuporo, and saw
before me, stretching for I know not how far, rolling, sandy
machirs like those of the Outer Hebrides, desert-like and lonely,
covered almost altogether with dwarf roses and campanulas, a
prairie land on which you can make any tracks you please. Sending
the others on, I followed them at the Yezo scramble, and soon
ventured on a long gallop, and revelled in the music of the thud of
shoeless feet over the elastic soil; but I had not realised the
peculiarities of Yezo steeds, and had forgotten to ask whether mine
was a "front horse," and just as we were going at full speed we