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146 HONDA THE SAMURAI.
where riding-masters gave lessons to those wishing
to learn. Only the samurai or gentry were allowed
to ride on saddled horses. A man of the lower
classes, merchant, laborer, or artisan, if on a packsaddle
or riding bareback, must dismount on seeing
a gentleman approach. While there was a large
number of pack-horses employed as burden-carriers,
a horse harnessed to a wagon or carriage was a
thing unknown. The use of the horse as a beast of
bullocks and human
draught was yet in the future,
beings still having the monopoly of draught-labor.
One could have often seen women harnessed to
small carts. The sight of mothers with babies slung
on their backs, pulling loaded wagons, was very common
in provinces near Echizen. This unnecessary
and degrading form of human drudgery had not yet
become the work of the horse and the locomotive;
but education and the elevating ideas of the dignity
of humanity afterward became more general under
the teaching of such men as Mr. Koba, and when the
ancient and ever-pressing necessity of the country
good roads was provided for. This matter of good
roads was one of the many great enterprises which
feudalism discouraged, for there was little
sentiment
of national unity in the empire before the epochal
year of 1868.
Let us walk round Fukui, of feudal days, and first
go to see the horses.
Immediately in front of the gate and bridge leading
from the citadel of the castle, on the far side of
the broad avenue skirting the moat, were the stable,