n all kinds of handicrafts and mechanical work the Japanese are
experts. A workman will sit with inexhaustible patience and diligence
for days, and even months and years, executing in ivory a boy carrying a
fruit basket on his back. He strikes and cuts with his small hammers and
knives, his chisels and files, and gives himself no rest until the boy
is finished. Perhaps it may cost him a year's work, but the price is so
high that all his expenses for the year are covered when the boy is sold
to an art-dealer.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] "Fuji," without equal; "yama," mountain.

[18] The Emperor Mutsuhito died on July 30, 1912, and was succeeded by
his eldest son, Yoshihito, who was born in 1879.

XIV

BACK TO EUROPE

KOREA

Our journey eastwards ends with Japan, and we turn westwards on our way
back to Europe. The portion of the mainland of Asia which lies nearest
to Japan is Korea, and the passage across the straits from Shimonoseki
to Fu-san takes only about ten hours. The steamer sails in the morning,
and late in the afternoon we see to larboard the Tsushima Islands rising
out of the water like huge dolphins. Our course takes us almost over the
exact place where, on May 27, 1905, Admiral Togo annihilated the
squadron of the Russian Admiral Rozhdestvenski.

The Russian fleet had sailed round Asia, and steamed up east of Formosa
to the Strait of Korea. The Admiral hoped to be able to reach
Vladivostock, on the Russian side of the Sea of Japan, without being
attacked, and on May 27 his fleet was approaching the Tsushima Islands.
But Admiral Togo, with the Japanese fleet, lay waiting off the southern
coast of Korea. He had divided the straits into squares on a map, and
his scouting boats were constantly on the look-out. They could always
communicate with Togo's flagship by wireless telegraphy. And now
currents passing through the air announced that the Russian fleet was in
sight, and was in the square numbered 203. This number was considered a
good omen by the Japanese, for the fate of the fortress of Port Arthur
was sealed when the Japanese took a fort called "203-metre Hill" (Port
Arthur, which lies on the coast of the Chinese mainland, had fallen into
the hands of the Japanese on January 1, 1905).

When the news came, Togo knew what to do. With his large ships and sixty
torpedo boats he fell upon the Russian fleet, and the battle was
decided within an hour. The Russian Admiral's flagship sank just on the
spot