the island is only separated from the Russian mainland by
5 or 6 miles of water. The distance between Hakodate, in Yesso, and
the great Russian port of Vladivostock is somewhere about 200 miles.
This contiguity of Japan to the Asiatic Continent has already had a
marked effect on the politics of the world, and in the future, if I
mistake not, is likely to be a preponderating factor therein. The area
of Japan is about half as large again as that of the United Kingdom.
The southern extremity of the country is in latitude 31 deg. N., the
northern in latitude 45-1/2 deg. N.

The Japanese islands are undoubtedly of volcanic origin, and many of
the volcanoes in the country are still more or less active. The
general conformation of the land leads one to suppose that the islands
are the summits of mountain ranges which some thousands of years back
had their bases submerged by the rising of the sea or else had by
degrees settled down beneath the surface of the ocean. The general
characteristic of the country is mountainous, and only about one-sixth
of the total area is in cultivation. Fuji-yama, the loftiest mountain,
for which the Japanese have a peculiar veneration and which has been
immortalised in the art of the country, has an altitude of 12,730
feet. The next in height, Mount Mitake, ascends some 9,000 feet, and
there are many others of 5,000 feet or more. Japan has from time to
time been ravaged by, and indeed still is subject to, terrible
earthquakes. These dire calamities seem to recur at regular intervals.
The Japanese islands appear to be in the centre of great volcanic
disturbances--a fact which probably accounts for those seismic
outbreaks which periodically devastate considerable tracts of the
country and cause tremendous havoc to life and property. The written
records, extending back some 1,400 or 1,500 years, clearly prove that
earthquakes even more terrible in their effects than any that have
taken place in recent times were of frequent occurrence. It is, of
course, possible that these records may be inaccurate or have been
largely exaggerated, but they at any rate tend to show that those
great cosmic forces which are popularly termed earthquakes have been
constantly at work in Japan ever since any written records have been
preserved and no doubt long anterior to that time.

As the islands are narrow and mountainous there are no great rivers
and none available for important navigation. None of the rivers exceed