United States of America. Here had dwelt successively Ministers Townsend Harris, Robert H. Pruyn, and General Van Valkenbergh. United States Vice-consul C. O. Shepherd was then occupying the premises. I noticed a somewhat dusty portrait of Franklin Pierce hung on the walls of one of the inner empty rooms. The one bright oasis spot during his barren administration was the success of Perry's mission, and the opening of Japan to the world. The glory of the great United States had been here maintained, by its Government never paying any rent for its tenantry of buildings, and by extorting "indemnities" for every accidental fire, for every provoked injury, and even for every man killed in the open and active hostilities of war, and in joining the governments of Europe in keeping the feeble empire crushed under diplomacy, backed by ships and cannon.

One of the most important persons for me was a good interpreter. A tongue was more than a right arm. To procure one of first-rate abilities was difficult. When the embassy, sent out by the ill-starred li Kamon no kami, visited Philadelphia, I had frequently seen a lively young man whom every one called "Tommy," who had made a decidedly pleasant impression upon the ladies and the Americans generally. "Tommy" was at this time in Tōkiō. The Echizen officers went to him and asked him to accept the position of interpreter, at a salary of one thousand dollars, gold, per annum. This was tempting pay to a Japanese; but the foreignized Tommy preferred metropolitan life, and the prospect of official promotion, to regular duties in an interior province. They then sought among the corps of interpreters in the Imperial College. The choice fell upon Iwabuchi (rock-edge), who, fortunately for me, accepted, and we were introduced. This gentleman was about twenty years old, with broad, high forehead, luxuriant hair cut in foreign style, keen, dancing black eyes, and blushing face. He was a rōnin samurai of secondary rank, and rather well educated. His father had been a writing-master in Sakura, Shimōsa, and Iwabuchi was an elegant writer. He wore but one sword. He was of delicate frame, his face lighted by intellect, softened by his habitual meekness, but prevented by a trace of slyness from being noble. He seemed the very type of a Japanese gentleman of letters. He was as gentle as a lady. In his checkered experience at Hakodaté and other cities, he had brushed against the Briton, the Yankee, the Frenchman, and the Russian. At first shy and retiring, he warmed into friendship. In his merry moods he would astonish me by humming familiar tunes, and recall a whole chapter of home memories by sing

ing snatches of American college and street songs. In his angry moods, when American steel struck Japanese flint, his eyes would snap fire and his frame quiver. For over a year Iwabuchi was invaluable to me, until my own articulation became bi-lingual; but from first to last, notwithstanding occasional friction, arising from the difference in American and Japanese psychology, we continued, and remain, fast friends.

My business with the officers of the Echizen clan was finished. I was engaged to teach the physical sciences in the city of Fukui, the capital of the province, two hundred miles west of Tokio, and twelve miles from the Sea of Japan. In accordance with custom observed between foreigners and Japanese, we made a contract, which, after passing the inspection and receiving the approval of the Guai Mu Shō (Office of Foreign Affairs), was written out in duplicate in imposing Chinese characters, and in plain English. I agreed to teach chemistry and physics for the space of three years, and "not to enter into any trading operations with native merchants." The insertion of a comic clause, very funny indeed to the American, but quite justifiable by the bitter experience of the Japanese, was, that the teacher must not get drunk.

They, on their side, agreed to pay my salary; to build me a house after the European style; and after three years to return me safely to Yokohama; to hand my corpse over to the United States Consul if I should die, or carry me to him should I be disabled through sickness. Nothing was said concerning religion in any reference whatever, but perfect freedom from all duties whatsoever was guaranteed me on Sundays; and I had absolute liberty to speak, teach, or do as I pleased in my own house.

As an illustration of the extreme jealousy with which the mikado's ministers guarded the supremacy of the national government, the first draft of the contract, made by myself, was rejected by the Foreign Office because I had written" the government of Fukui," instead of the "local authorities," a correction which appeared in the final docu

ments.

I made the acquaintance of several of the daimios, and many retainers of various clans. A Fukui samurai, whom I shall call Darémo, and who knew to a rung the exact status of every one on the social ladder, always informed me as to the rank of the various personages whom I met as host or guest. I bought the latest copy of the Bu Kuan (Mirror of the Military Families), which he explained and trans

lated for me. In discussing each one, his nose rose and fell with the figures before him. "That gentleman is only a karo of a 10,000 koku daimiō." "This is himself, a fudai daimiō of 15,000 koku." With profound indifference, I would be informed that the person who called on me to inquire after his brother in New York was "merely a samurai of a 30,000 koku clan." That gentleman whose politeness so impressed me was a hatamoto of 800 koku; but he was very poor since the restoration." Darémo's congratulations were showered thick and fast when I dined with the kokushiu Echizen (360,000 koku), and Uwajima (100,000 koku), with five or six karōs. He also translated for me the letters I received from distinguished Japanese officers. With the aid of the Bu Kuan and Darémo, I was soon able to distinguish many of the rising and falling men of Japan.

I had seen the great objects of interest to a tourist. I had feasted my eyes on novelty and a new life, yet the freshness of continual glad surprise was not yet lost. I had seen the old glory of Yedo in ruins, and the new national life of Japan emerging from Tōkiō in chaos. I had stood face to face with paganism for the first time. I had felt the heart of Japan pulsing with new life, and had seen her youth drinking at the fountains of Western science. I had tasted the hospitality of one of the "beginners of a better time." I had learned the power of the keen sword. For the first time I had experience of paganism, feudalism, earthquakes, Asiatic life and morality. I had seen how long contact with heathen life and circumstances slowly disintegrates the granite principles of eternal right, once held by men reared in a more bracing moral atmosphere. I met scores of white men, from Old and New England, who had long since forgotten the difference between right and wrong. I had seen also the surface of Japan. I was glad to go into the interior. I bid good-bye to Tōkiō, and went to Yokohama to take the steamer to Kobé, whence I should go, viâ Lake Biwa, and over the mountains to the city of the Well of Blessing, Fukui.

Our party made rendezvous at a native hotel. It was to be both my escort and following. The former consisted of my interpreter, Iwabuchi, one of the teachers of English in the university; Nakamura, the soldier-guard, who had fought in the late civil war; and the treasurer, Emori, a polished gentleman, and shrewd man of the Japanese world. There were two servants, and, with my own cook and his wife, we made up a party of eight persons, with as many characters and dispositions as faces. The ship to take us to Kobé was one of the fine

steamers of the Pacific Mail Company's fleet, the Oregonian. As several days would elapse before her departure, I made a visit to Kanazawa, Kamakura, Enoshima, and Fujisawa, with Nakamura, and an American friend who spoke Japanese fluently. That visit was afterward repeated many times. Every spot made famous by Yoritomo, Yoshitsuné, Semman and Kugiō, the Hōjō, Nitta Yoshisada, Nichiren, and the Ashikaga, was seen over and over again, until the life of old Japan became as vivid to me as the thrilling scenes of our own late war. Besides the architectural remains of these classic places, is a rich museum of armor, weapons, and other mediæval antiquities in the temple on Tsuruga-öka, in Kamakura.

On our ride back, Fuji, all in white, loomed up grandly. A flurry of snow added to its beauty. In such a snow-shower the artist must have made the spirited sketch here reproduced. Snow rarely falls on the Tōkaido to a depth greater than two inches, and usually neither hoof nor sandal, as in the cut, sinks beneath its level. The Japanese, however, make a great fuss over a little cold. They go about with their hands in their sleeves, which stick out like the wings of a trussed turkey, repeating "samui, samui" (cold, cold), until it loses all originality.

VII.

IN THE HEART OF JAPAN.

THE weather was rough as we embarked, late in the afternoon of February 22d, on the Oregonian, and steamed down the Bay of Yedo. At night, the fixed white light in the stone tower on Cape Idzu, visible twenty miles, reminded us of the new order of things. Of old a wood-fire blazed on the promontory. The Nil did not yet know the fate to befall her.*

The next day was foggy, and mal de mer held high revel among the passengers. The Oregonian was true to the reputation of its namesake given by Bryant-" where rolls the mighty Oregon." My own thoughts were less poetic. My feelings are best described by the Japanese proverb, "A sea-voyage is an inch of hell."

About midnight we rounded the promontory of Kii, where Jimmu passed centuries ago. Its splendid light-house, on a promontory one hundred and thirty feet high, on Ō Island, holds a revolving white light, alternately flashing and being eclipsed during every minute. Ō is a good harbor for wind-bound junks, and the fishermen here are noted whalers, hunting whales successfully with nets and spears. The light on Cape Shiwo, one hundred and fifty-five feet above water, may be seen for twenty miles. Ships from China make this point night or day.

The three officers of our party had been empowered to take cabin passage with their foreign charge; but such a foolish waste of money was not to be thought of. To pay forty dollars for forty-eight hours, and three hundred and forty-two geographical miles of nausea in a state-room, was not according to their ideas of happiness. Far better

*On the night of the 20th of March, 1874, at 10.30 P.M., the French M. M. steamer Nil, having on board one hundred and eleven persons, and the Japanese articles on exhibition at Vienna, her engines being out of order, and the currents unusually strong, lost her reckoning, struck a rock near the village of Irima, in Yoshida Bay, ten miles from Cape Idzu, and sunk in twenty-one fathoms. Only four persons were saved. A marble monument was erected, and now commemorates the accident, which was robbed of many of its saddest features by the kindness and energy of the natives.