Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/26

 a strip of the almost indestructible hechima fibre for the soles. The hechima is the gourd which furnishes the vegetable washrag, or looffa sponge of commerce. The snow-white cotton tabis of the better classes are made an important part of their costume.

Those coolies who pull and push heavily loaded carts or drays keep up a hoarse chant, which corresponds to the chorus of sailors when hauling ropes. “''Hilda! Hoida!''” they seem to be crying, as they brace their feet for a hard pull, and the very sound of it exhausts the listener. In the old days people were nearly deafened with these street choruses, but their use is another of the hereditary customs that is fast dying out. In mountain districts one’s chair-bearers wheeze out “''Hi rikisha! Ho rikisha!” or “Ito sha! Ito sha!''” as they climb the steepest paths, and they cannot keep step nor work vigorously without their chant.

Settlement is bounded by the creek, from whose opposite side many steep hill-roads wind up to the Bluff, where most of the foreigners have their houses. These bluff-roads pass between the hedges surrounding trim villas with their beautifully set gardens, the irregular numbering of whose gates soon catches the stranger’s eye. The first one built being number one, the others were numbered in the order of their erection, so that high and low numerals are often side by side. To coolies, servants, peddlers, and purveyors, foreign residents are best known by their street-door numeration, and “Number four Gentleman” and “Number five Lady” 10