the
south in large bodies, as well as by the contributions of devout
visitors from neighboring cities.

It is well to mention in this connection that the prevailing religions
of Japan are Shinto and Buddhism, each, however, being sub-divided into
many sects. The Shinto may be said to be indigenous to the country, and
is also the official religion, being largely a form of hero worship;
successful warriors are canonized as martyrs are in the Roman Catholic
church. The Buddhist faith is borrowed from the Chinese, and was
introduced about the sixth century. There may be any diversity of creeds
among a people, extending even to idolatry. Creeds never came from
heaven, but morality is the same in Christian or heathen lands, because
it is of God. It is singular that two nations located so near to each
other, both of Asiatic race, and with so many important features in
common, should have for two thousand years maintained a policy of entire
isolation towards each other, though they are now good friends as well
as neighbors. This is more remarkable when we remember that a thousand
years before the Japanese borrowed from China their written characters,
religion, and philosophy. As to the language of Japan, it is composed,
as popularly written, of the Chinese and Japanese combined,--the fifty
Chinese characters being so intimately interwoven with the original
Japanese as to form a medley of the two. Modern authors freely use both
in the same sentences, and indeed the characters of both languages often
appear in the same line.

It is rather deductions than detail which we propose to record in these
pages, and though many excursions were made, a minute description of
them would prove tedious. Places were pointed out to us here and there,
where large and populous cities once stood in eligible spots, but where
no ruins marked the place. A dead and buried city in Europe, or even in
India, leaves rude but almost indestructible remains to mark where great
communities once built temples and monuments, and lived and thrived,
like those examples of mutability, Memphis, Paestum, Cumae, or Delhi, but
not so in Japan. At first it seemed strange that a locality where half a
million of people had made their homes within the period of a century
should now present the aspect only of fertile fields of grain. But when
it is remembered of what ephemeral material the natives build their
dwellings, namely, of light, thin wood and paper, utter disappea