500 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 arti- 

 cles 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 en- 

 trance 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 mem- 

 bers 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 sake, to 



