Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/516

500 With the house built and the family in possession, let us enter and see how they conduct themselves, and how they arrange their various goods and belongings. And, in order to make the picture more real, I will describe some houses which I actually visited in the village of Horobetsu, province of Iburi, on the east coast of the island of Yezo. Passing through the porch of the first house into the western extension or vestibule, we found a medley of articles hanging from the beams and pegs in the walls or resting on shelves hanging from the cross-beams, or tossed into the corners and lying on the earthen floor. There were pack-saddles, bundles of grain and hemp, some strips of smoked fish, clothing (old and new), fishing and hunting implements, and apparently a thousand and one useful and useless things scattered about in the wildest confusion. This room was evidently the workshop, and two old women were busily occupied, nor did our entrance in the least disconcert them; for, after giving us a pleasant greeting and a laughing permission to examine everything, and to write and sketch as much as we pleased, they went on with their work—nor did they stop from time to time to see what we were about and to talk about the foreigner, as I am sure Japanese peasant-women would have done under similar circumstances. One of those women was cutting off the heads of a lot of barley with an old knife, preparatory to thrashing, and preserving the straw for future use in making rough mats; the other was washing a lot of potatoes that had evidently been torn from the earth all too soon, or else they were of the kind known as "small potatoes and few in the hill." This one had apparently left her weaving to care for the potatoes, as a mat-loom was lying on the ground near her.

Between this vestibule and the main room the wall had been cut away (probably had never been built), and a light, open wicket fence made of rushes, about three feet high, thrown across the dividing line, with openings on the north and south sides giving entrance to the living-room. Passing through the southern entrance we found that the fireplace was surrounded on the west, north, and south sides by a narrow passage-way, the floor of which was the ground itself. This was backed up by a narrow shelf on the north and south, but on the east the raised dais came up flush with the rim of the fireplace.

The south side of the house is devoted to the younger members of the family and to occasional visitors. Close to the wall were some small boxes containing the private belongings of some of the girls. Strange to say, these boxes, although without locks or fastenings of any kind, are considered inviolable by the men, and no one ventures to open them save the owner. Even if the master himself knows that they contain the much-coveted saké, to