United States or Uganda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If he could but find the tattered blue kimono worn during that upward journey from Kiu Shiu! Stained by berries and green leaves, torn by a thousand graceful vines, for laundering only a few vigorous swirls in a running stream with a quick sun-drying on the river stones, yet how comfortable, how companionable it was! There had been a blue something folded on the shelf of his closet.
He strove now to speak simply, directly, and with convincing earnestness. Kano had settled into his old attitude of dejection. "One morning, not more than six weeks ago," began Uchida, "the engineering party which I command had climbed some splintered peaks of the Kiu Shiu range to a spot quite close, indeed, to that thin waterfall which you remember "
"Kiu Shiu," murmured the artist. "I wandered there in youth and have thought always to return. The rocks and cliffs are of great beauty. I remember well one white, thin waterfall that flung itself out like a laugh, but never reached a thing so dull as earth. Midway it was splintered upon a sunbeam, and changed into rainbows, pearls, and swallows!" "I know it excellently well," said Uchida.
A letter had been dispatched that first day, to Tatsu of Kiu Shiu, with a sum of money for the defraying of travelling expenses, and the petition that the youth should come as quickly as possible for a visit to Kano Indara, since the old man could not, of himself, attempt so long a journey. By what route he would travel or on what date arrive, only the gods could tell.
He then drew from his kimono sleeve a pink-bordered foreign pocket-handkerchief, and began to mop his damp forehead. Kano's politeness could not hide, entirely, a shudder of antipathy. He hurried into new speech. "And where, if it is not rude to ask, has my friend Ando sojourned during the long absence?" "Chiefly among the mountains of Kiu Shiu," answered the other.
Had he not seen just such a one in Kiu Shiu, had he not scaled it, crying aloud upon its summit to the gods to yield him there his bride? Trembling now, and weak, he crawled on hands and knees toward the frame. He had forgotten Kano, Uchida, Mata, forgotten even Umè-ko. Fingers not his own lifted the fallen brush. The wonderful cold wind of a dawning frenzy swept clean his soul.
"Is it is it Tatsu?" screamed the old man, hurling his voice before him. "It is a madman," declared the servant, and flattened herself against the hedge. Umè said nothing at all. After one look into the stranger's face she had withdrawn, herself unseen, into the shadowy rooms. "I am Tatsu of Kiu Shiu," announced the apparition, in a voice of strange depth and sweetness.
Through subsequent days of discouragement and brave effort his power of painting grew with a slow but normal splendor of achievement. His fame began to spread. The "New Kano" and "The Dragon Painter of Kiu Shiu" the people of the city called him. Not only his work but his romantic, miserable story drew sympathy to him, and bade fair to make of him a popular idol.
Next we have Khazi, mentioned also in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, from which we learn that it was in the hill-country south of Megiddo. It may be the Gaza of 1 Chron. vii. 28 which was supplanted by Shechem in Israelitish days. Kitsuna, the Kuddasuna of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, follows: where it stood we do not know. The next name, "the Spring of Shiu," is equally impossible to identify.
Zuu shiu menes; ne mee se Ijinaar chish Ijeen pa-shuatur skiotta, e i ducheje per moon. I will only add that the translation of such a passage it contains twenty-eight accents which I have omitted is mere child's play to its pronunciation. Sometimes I find my way to the village of Macchia, distant about three miles from San Demetrio.