198
A JOURNEY IN NORTH-EAST JAPAN.
BY
Captain BLAKISTON, late R. A.
Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan,
on the 17th June, 1874.
——o——
Some months have elapsed since the wreck of the P. M. S. S. Ariel, on a reef off Toyoma Point on the East coast of Japan in Latitude 37° N., was the cause of the journey here recorded. When Captain Newell and myself slid down a rope from the fore chains, the vessel had sunk so far aft that the water was on the upper deck forward of the paddle boxes, and the whole after hurricane deck was submerged. Fortunately there was little swell, so that all the boats in the darkness of the night reached the shore, and chanced to strike parts of the beach between the reefs. The head-man of the little village of Toyoma whom I found with the assistance of a fisherman and his paper lantern, made arrangements for the accommodation of the eighty-four shipwrecked people, and the villagers were all extremely civil.
Next morning all that was visible of the unfortunate Ariel was one of her mast-heads. So, after a breakfast of beef and ship-biscuit, I hired a man to carry a small leather bag, which my next cabin neighbour had luckily saved for me, and started on foot for Taira, the chief town of Iwasaki ken or district, to which a fair path of about three ri (712 miles) in a general W.N.W. direction, leads through small valleys and over some low hills.
The town lies in a plain of some extent; in fact, the
