the yellow race is not superior to the other in many important respects.

Certainly the trade of Japan, which was expected to make rapid strides under a government ostensibly devoted to material progress, and eager to imitate European models, has progressed very slowly. The total imports for the year 1870, when the country had hardly recovered from the civil war of 1868, or adjusted itself to the great political changes which followed it, were thirtyone million dollars. Five years afterwards, they were twenty-five millions; and if, ten years later, they were thirty-six millions, 1880 is the only year whose totals have exceeded those of 1870. Exports, it is true, have largely increased during the same time, as they were bound to do with the opening of railroads, however limited in their extent, to say nothing of the new American demand for Japanese tea. But the wants of the people that sure test of advancing civilization-have not grown since the establishment of the reformed government, and, looking now at Japanese progress from a totally different standpoint to that taken above, we already begin to doubt whether the rulers of Japan are as sincerely anxious for the extension of intercourse with Europe as we have been led to

suppose.

It is arranged that we make Yokohama our headquarters during our stay in the country. The settlement

is a much more convenient centre than the capital, and we look forward with pleasure to returning again and again, from such inland trips as we may make, to our circle of hospitable friends and to the pleasant European town which has taken the place of the old Japanese fishing village "Across the Seashore."

CHAPTER III.

A JAPANESE AT HOME."

October 14.

ONE of our fellow-passengers across the Pacific was a Mr. Okowa, son and partner of a Japanese paper manufacturer, who, formerly a member of the military caste, devoted himself to business on the abolition of the daimiate and consequent dispersion of the "samurai." Okowa spoke English well, having just spent a year, studying American processes of paper-making, in the States, where my companion had known him intimately, and he was good enough to arrange his return home so as to coincide with our visit to his country. This not only gave us an opportunity of acquiring a few useful Japanese words and phrases on the voyage, but opened the doors of Japanese family life to us as well, a fact of which we took advantage almost immediately on our arrival. Mr. Okowa's house and mill are situated at Oji, a charming village about seven miles from the capital, where we paid our friend a visit, and were most agreeably entertained in purely native style.

A railway, opened in 1872, connects Yokohama with

Tokio, situated at the head of Jeddo Bay, and still, perhaps, better known in Europe by its old name of Jeddo (The Sea-gate) than by that of Tokio (Eastern Capital), which it has borne since, on the close of the civil war in 1868, it became the residence of the Mikado, as it had formerly been that of the Shogun, or Tycoon. The line is eighteen miles long and skirts Jeddo Bay, whose shore is, as we have already seen, a wide shelf of low and level land, once evidently the sea-bottom, but now upraised. An English railway at last! What a pleasure to see again the finished details of permanent way, points, crossings, and signals, after so many thousand miles of rough-and-ready railroads in America! Everything looked solid and good; the iron bridges as if they would carry the train, the stations brick-built, and the very ballast so neatly laid that we were half ashamed of throwing our cigar-ashes on the tidy track. Track! that is the very word for an American railroad. No people name things so aptly as the Yankees. Going gunning with a smell-dog" is good Yankee, and truer description than "shooting over a pointer," and the American who first called "the line" "a track," had a sense of the fitness of things.

On our right hand was the Bay of Jeddo, shimmering in the sunlight, crowded with native and foreign craft, and with the mountains of Kadzusa and Awa provinces bounding its opposite shore. On our left stretched a wide and cultivated flat, covered almost exclusively

with rice-fields, and ending in toy hills, behind which rose the symmetrical cone of Fusiyama, faintly seen through the misty air. The fields were dotted with blue figures, some reaping, others carrying the rice crop, for there are no horses or carts employed on the land in this part of Japan; while, elsewhere, men and women were digging, manuring, and planting the soil. The villages are close together, and we made many stoppages, always finding the stations crowded. Our fellowpassengers in the first-class carriage were, for the most part, native merchants, going up to town by the early train on business. Each of them was reading, or, to speak quite correctly, intoning his morning newspaper, a quaint little sheet about the size of a concert programme, and taking breath at measured intervals with a sound like a loud and long-drawn sigh. The costumes were very mixed, sometimes entirely European, sometimes purely Japanese, but oftener a comical mixture of both. The first article of clothing which a Jap adopts from foreigners, is a hat; the last, a pair of boots. Reforming thus, from the head downwards, he is found in every stage of the transformation, sometimes covered with a "bowler," or a straw hat, but wearing his own handsome and dignified dress; sometimes in coat and trousers, but retaining the "geta," or wooden clogs, because he cannot give up the habit of squatting, a thing impossible with dirty shoes. The effect of all this is truly ridiculous. Native Japanese costume is

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