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Six days ago he had been happy, indeed, too happy! for he and Uchida had drunk themselves into a condition of giggling bliss, and had needed to be taken away bodily from the bridal bower, hoisted into a double jinrikisha, and driven off ignominiously, still embracing, still pledging with tears an eternity of brotherhood.
It was not simply a change of scene; it was a complete change of sphere. The world with its face open to the day in a twinkling had ceased to be, and another world, a world of dark water girt by shadowed walls of rock and trees, had taken its place. Amid farewell wavings from the jinrikisha men we pushed off into the stream.
At Kobe I found that the steamer, Mongolia, would be delayed, and therefore I would need to remain there until the second day. The following morning, I took a jinrikisha ride to the country and revisited several points of interest. June 6th: I was awakened at seven on the morning of June 6th by the voice of the guide saying, "We are now in the narrowest part of the Inland Sea."
The jinrikisha man here is the first person to gain your attention; so winning are his ways and so rapid his pace that he is justly popular for a short spin to the very interesting shopping district, where almost everything may be found, the jewels holding the interest of the stranger above all else.
One of their jinrikisha men stumbled and fell, just as they passed us, and the wrestler shot out, head over heels, and lay, a helpless ball of fat, in the middle of the road, till somebody came and picked him up. He was not in the least hurt, and, as soon as he was set on his feet again, began to belabour the poor jinrikisha man most unmercifully.
The Tamils, being light of body and used to laborious occupations, make the best jinrikisha men, the small, man-propelled chaise, trotting off in their almost naked condition with the speed of a horse, while drawing the vehicle and its occupants behind them.
Directly we landed at the jetty we were rushed at by a crowd of jinrikisha men, each drawing a little vehicle not unlike a Hansom cab, without the seat for the driver there being no horse to drive. The man runs between the shafts, and is often preceded by a leader, harnessed on in front, tandem fashion. Each of these vehicles holds one person, and they go along at a tremendous pace.
The Chaldean shepherds alone with the night had grander thoughts for the companionship, and I venture to believe that the heart of the mountaineer owes quite as much to what he is forced to visage as to what he is compelled to do. We tucked ourselves into our jinrikisha and started down. By virtue of going, the speed increased, till the way we rolled round the curves was intoxicating.
Josiah still called 'em "coolers," because they wuz dressed kinder cool, but carryin' baskets, buckets, sedans, or trottin' a sort of a slow trot hitched into a jinrikisha, or holdin' it on each side with their hands, with most nothin' on and two pigtail braids hangin' down their backs, and such a jabberin' in language strange to Jonesville ears; peddlers yellin' out their goods, bells ginglin', gongs, fire-crackers, and all sorts of work goin' on right there in the streets.
A ride in a jinrikisha, a two-wheeler, with a buggy top and poles for the biped horse to trot between, from Nagasaki to a fishing village over the mountains, five miles away, passing at the start through the Japanese quarter, long streets of shops, populous and busy, many diligent in light manufacturing work, and all scant in clothing the journey continuing in sharp climbs alongside steep places and beside deep ravines, the slopes elaborately terraced, and again skirting the swift curves of a rapid brook from the mountains, that presently gathered and spread over pretty beds of gravel, providing abundant fresh water bathing, in which a school of boys, leaving a small guard for a light supply of clothing ashore the ride ending in a village of fishermen that, by the count of the inhabitants, should be a town permitted close observation of the Japanese in a city and a village, on their sky-scraping gardens and in the road, going to and coming from market, as well as in places of roadside entertainment; and at last a seaside resort, in whose shade a party of globetrotters were lunching, some of them, I hear, trying to eat raw fish.
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