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Scarcely less beautiful than bateiseki, and equally black, is another Oki meibutsu, a sort of coralline marine product called umi-matsu, or 'sea-pine. Pipe-cases, brush-stands, and other small articles are manufactured from it; and these when polished seem to be covered with black lacquer. Objects of umimatsu are rare and dear.
The pool was sacred to the gods, and was guarded by invisible monsters; to enter it was impious and dangerous I felt obliged to respect the local ideas on the subject, and contented myself with inquiring where the bateiseki was found. They pointed to the hill on the western side of the water. This indication did not tally with the legend.
Artistic objects are made of bateiseki: ink- stones, wine-cups, little boxes, small dai, or stands for vases or statuettes; even jewellery, the material being worked in the same manner as the beautiful agates of Yumachi in Izumo. These articles are comparatively costly, even in the place of their manufacture. There is an odd legend about the origin of the bateiseki.
She had a foal, which fell into a deep lake in Dogo, and was drowned. She plunged into the lake herself, but could not find her foal, being deceived by the reflection of her own head in the water. For a long time she sought and mourned in vain; but even the hard rocks felt for her, and where her hoofs touched them beneath the water they became changed into bateiseki.
It owes its name to some fancied resemblance to a horse's hoof, either in colour, or in the semicircular marks often seen upon the stone in its natural state, and caused by its tendency to split in curved lines. But the story goes that the bateiseki was formed by the touch of the hoofs of a sacred steed, the wonderful mare of the great Minamoto warrior, Sasaki Takatsuna.
I was surprised to learn that there was no record of any person having been injured by these monstrous creatures. Another meibutsu of Oki is much less known than it deserves to be the beautiful jet-black stone called bateiseki, or 'horsehoof stone. It is found only in Dogo, and never in large masses.
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