that the water you drink has been boiled. I found hot tea an
excellent drink even in the tropics and I was never troubled with the
complaints that follow drinking unboiled water. It is well to make
liberal use of the curries and rice which are excellent everywhere.
These, with fish, eggs and fruit, formed the staple of my diet. Never
eat melons nor salads made of green vegetables; the native methods of
fertilizing the soil are fatal to the wholesomeness of such things.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS WHICH HELP ONE TO UNDERSTAND THE ORIENT AND ITS PEOPLE

In this bibliography no attempt has been made to cover the field of
books about the leading countries of the Orient. The aim has been to
mention the books which the tourist will find most helpful. Guide books
are indispensable, but they give the imagination no stimulus. It is a
positive help to read one or two good descriptive accounts of any
country before visiting it; in this way one gets an idea of comparative
values. In these notes I have mentioned only the books that are familiar
to me and which I have found suggestive.

JAPAN

Of all foreigners who have written about Japan, Lafcadio Hearn gives one
the best idea of the Japanese character and of the literature that is
its expression. Hearn married a Japanese lady, became Professor of
English Literature at the Imperial University of Tokio, renounced his
American citizenship, and professed belief in Buddhism. He never
mastered the Japanese language but he surpassed every other foreign
student in his ability to make real the singular faith of the Japanese
in the presence of good and evil spirits and the national worship of
beauty in nature and art. Hearn's father was Greek and his mother Irish.
In mind he was a strange mixture of a Florentine of the Renaissance and
a pagan of the age of Pericles. In _The West Indies_ he has given the
best estimate of the influence of the tropics on the white man, and in
_Japan: An Interpretation_, _In Ghostly Japan_, _Exotics and
Retrospections_, and others, he has recorded in exquisite literary style
his conception of Japanese character, myths and folk-legends. His work
in this department is so fine that no one else ranks with him. He seems
to have been able to put himself in the place of the cultivated Japanese
and to interpret the curious national beliefs in good and evil spirits
and ghosts. He has also made more real than any other foreign writer the
peculiar position of the