津川は会津藩の水陸輸送の中継地として栄えた。船着き場は「大船戸」と呼ばれ、「日本三大河港」の一つとされた＝新潟県阿賀町で2024年7月16日、森忠彦撮影 西会津の悪路を歩き続けてきたイザベラ・バードは1878年7月2日、阿賀野川（あがのがわ）沿いにある津川（新潟県阿賀町）にたどり着いた。ここはかつては会津藩領で、河川交通の重要な拠点だった。ここから新潟までは川下りが主要ルートで、バードも船待ちの宿へ入った。「Unbeaten Tracks in Japan」を見てみよう。I put up here at a crowded yadoya, where they have given me two cheerful rooms in the garden, away from the crowd. Ito's great desire on arriving at any place is to shut me up in my room and keep me a close prisoner till the start the next morning; but here I emancipated myself, and enjoyed myself very much sitting in the daidokoro. The house-master is of the samurai, or two-sworded class, now, as such, extinct. His face is longer, his lips thinner, and his nose straighter and more prominent than those of the lower class, and there is a difference in his manner and bearing. I have had a great deal of interesting conversation with him.In the same open space his clerk was writing at a lacquer desk of the stereotyped form -- a low bench with the ends rolled over -- a woman was tailoring, coolies were washing their feet on the itama, and several more were squatting round the irori smoking and drinking tea. A coolie servant washed some rice for my dinner, but before doing so took off his clothes, and the woman who cooked it let her kimono fall to her waist before she began to work, as is customary among respectable women. The house-master's wife and Ito talked about me unguardedly. I asked what they were saying. "She says," said he, "that you are very polite -- for a foreigner," he added. I asked what she meant, and found that it was because I took off my boots before I stepped on the matting, and bowed when they handed me the tabako-bon.We walked through the town to find something eatable for tomorrow's river journey, but only succeeded in getting wafers made of white of egg and sugar, balls made of sugar and barley flour, and beans coated with sugar. Thatch, with its picturesqueness, has disappeared, and the Tsugawa roofs are of strips of bark weighted with large stones; but, as the houses turn their gable ends to the street, and there is a promenade the whole way under the eaves, and the street turns twice at right angles and terminates in temple grounds on a bank above the river, it is less monotonous than most Japanese towns. It is a place of 3000 people, and a good deal of produce is shipped from hence to Niigata by the river. Today it is thronged with pack-horses. I was much mobbed, and one child formed the solitary exception to the general rule of politeness by calling me a name equivalent to the Chinese Fan Kwai, "foreign;" but he was severely chidden, and a policeman has just called with an apology. A slice of fresh salmon has been produced, and I think I never tasted anything so delicious. I have finished the first part of my land journey, and leave for Niigata by boat tomorrow morning.…Google検索で「毎日新聞」の記事を優先的に表示できます。【前の記事】/13 一夜を過ごした宿「大内宿」