ounds,
stud the hills on every side, giving to Nagasaki almost a distinct
feature.

Immediately ahead of the anchorage is the small island of Desima, the
most interesting portion of the city to Europeans. Previous to 1859 it
was the only part of Japan open to foreigners, and even then only to the
Dutch, who, for upwards of 200 years, had never been allowed to set foot
outside the limits of the island,--a space 600 feet long by 150 feet
broad--separated from the main land by the narrowest of canals.

Japanese towns are laid out in regular streets, much after the fashion
obtaining in Europe. The system of drainage is abominable, though
personally, the people are the cleanest on earth, if constant bathing is
to be taken as an index to cleanliness. The streets have no footpaths,
and access to the houses is obtained by three or four loose planks
stretching across the open festering gutters. As a natural result, small
pox and cholera commit yearly ravages amongst the populace. Another
great evil against good sanitation, exists in the shallowness of their
graves. The Japanese have also a penchant for unripe fruits.

A native house is a perfect model of neatness and simplicity. A simple
framework, of a rich dark coloured wood, is thrown up, and roofed over
with rice straw. There is but one story, the requisite number of
apartments being made by means of sliding wooden frames, covered with
snow-white rice paper. The floor is raised off the ground about eighteen
inches, and is covered with beautiful and delicately wrought straw
mattresses, on which the inmates sit, recline, take their meals, and
sleep at night. These habitations possess nothing in the shape of
furniture; no fireplace even, because the Japanese--like Chinese--never
use fire to warm themselves, the requisite degree of warmth being
obtained by the addition of more and heavier garments. These abodes
present a marked contrast to the Chinese dwellings, which, as we saw,
were foul and grimy, whilst here all is cheerful and airy.

No house is complete without its tiny garden of dwarf trees, its model
lakes, in which that curiosity of fish-culture, the many tailed gold and
silver fish, are to be seen disporting themselves; its rockeries
spanned by bridges; its boats and junks floating about on the surface of
the lakes, in fact a Japanese landscape in miniature.

It seems the privilege of a people, who live in a land where nature
surrounds them with bright and beautif