1900] Another Frontier Town 



display beautifully tanned skins, and the vigorous, 

 good-natured people are of a distinctly frontier type. 

 Of foreign settlement there was little trace, although 

 the sign on one of the most conspicuous (and least 

 attractive) of the inns read: 



YOKOHAMA HOUSE 

 BY HANNABREWER 



But fish were there in amazing abundance; also they 

 bore, in the mass, a striking resemblance to those of 

 Alaska, for while most of the species are different the 

 same general types prevail. 



Not content, however, with the spoils of the mar- A big 

 ket, I went over to the rocks off Hakodate Head, 

 where I set a drove of little, naked boys to hunting 

 with dip nets and basket scoops for whatever could 

 there be brought up. I thus secured, at trifling cost, 

 species after species among them a full half- 

 bushel of small blennies, so that my collection of 

 rock-pool fish from Hakodate was the largest ever 

 made anywhere up to that time. 



Our next stand was Mororan, a frontier city fifty 

 miles still farther to the north. Its landlocked, 

 almost circular harbor opening into Volcano Bay is 

 as smooth as glass, and filled with the clearest, 

 greenest, oiliest of water, through which the unsilted 

 lava floor is seen to be covered with swaying sea 

 wrack. It is, in fact, an ancient crater surrounded by 

 low hills, very green, very wet, and heavily wooded 

 with beech and chestnut. The town rambles dis- 

 jointedly along the rock hook which bounds the 

 harbor, not venturing far from water, perhaps for 

 fear of losing itself in the damp woods and dense 

 underbrush of the background. 



C 55 3 



