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12 HONDA THE SAMURAI.
the beasts of burden were human beings. Men
carried stones down hill and up. Men and women
shouldered fagots and bags of rice and bundles of
charcoal. Men made themselves fulcrums, and bore
all the burdens, where an Anglo-Saxon makes the
round earth with its gravitation do half the work.
All sorts of loads were carried by the "heavenly
balance-pole," of which the human being was the
supporting column and his shoulder the restingplace.
Even wheelbarrows were unknown. River
boats were hauled by men instead of by mules.
Horses, stupid and lazy, unkempt and ill-fed, did
duty as sumpters, and bullocks likewise ;
but twolegged
beasts of burden were in the majority.
There was no bread, no milk, no beef. A native
man wants but little wheat, but he wants that little
long. The Japanese usually eats wheat in the form
of thick vermicelli, in strips the length of a yardstick.
When he can get rice, he disdains to eat
other grain. There was no word in the language
for bread ;
and wheat was cheap and in little demand.
There was no milk, for the people thought it wrong
to deprive the cow of it, and the majority of people
never thought of such a thing as using cow's milk
for food. There was no beef, for the two religions,
with their thirty-five or more sects, taught that it
was a sin to eat the flesh of domestic cattle.
The prohibition did not extend to monkeys, foxes,
wild boars, and deer, for these were wild. Of potatoes,
that is, the Satsuma imo, or sweet potato, there
were plenty, which were eaten as "refreshments"