ry off the water. The harbor is pretty and on the opposite shore
are large engine works, three large docks and a big ship-building
plant, all belonging to the Mitsu Bishi Company. Here some five thousand
workmen are constantly employed.

[Illustration:

The Daibutsu or Great Bronze Buddha
at Hyogo, Near Kobe. The Impressive Figure is Forty-eight
Feet High and Eighty-five Feet Round the Waist. It is
Not so Fine as the Daibutsu at Kamakura But
Surpasses That at Nara]

One of the great industries of Nagasaki is the coaling of Japanese and
foreign steamships. A very fair kind of steam coal is sold here at three
dollars a ton, which is less by one dollar and one-half than a poorer
grade of coal can be bought for in Seattle; hence the steamer Minnesota
coaled here. The coaling of this huge ship proved to be one of the most
picturesque sights of her voyage. Early on the morning of her arrival
lighters containing about a railway carload of coal began to arrive.
These were arranged in regular rows on both sides of the ship. Then came
out in big sampans an army of Japanese numbering two thousand in all.
The leaders arranged ladders against the sides of the ship, and up these
swarmed this army of workers, three-quarters of whom were young girls
between fourteen and eighteen years old. They were dressed in all
colors, but most of them wore a native bonnet tied about the ears. They
formed in line on the stairs and then the coal was passed along from
hand to hand until it reached the bunkers. These baskets held a little
over a peck of coal, and the rapidity with which they moved along this
living line was startling.

Every few minutes the line was given a breathing space, but the work
went on with a deadly regularity that made the observer tired to watch
it. Occasionally one of the young girls would flag in her work and,
after she dropped a few basketfuls, she would be relieved and put at the
lighter work of throwing the empty baskets back into the lighters. Most
of these girls, however, remained ten hours at this laborious work, and
a few worked through from seven o'clock in the morning until nearly
midnight, when the last basket of coal was put on board. At work like
this no such force of Europeans would have shown the same self-control
and constant courtesy which these Japanese exhibited. Wranglings would
have been inevitable, and the strong workers would have shown little
regard