I
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in 1827, to a group of islands that had been known, and of which we have
authentic accounts as early as the seventeenth century. According to
Ksempfer, these islands were known to the Japanese at a period as far back
as 1675, and were described by them under the name of Buna Sima, signifying
an island without people. According to the account of this traveller,
whose words we quote, the Japanese accidentally, about the year 1675, discovered
a very large island, one of their barques having been forced, in a
storm, from the island Fatscyo, from which place they computed it to be
three hundred Japanese miles distant, toward the east. They met with no
inhabitants, but found it to be a very pleasant and fruitful country, well
supplied with fresh water, and furnished with plenty of plants and trees,
particularly the arrack tree, which, however, might give room to the conjecture
that the island lay rather to the south of Japan than to the east, as
these trees grow only in hdt countries. The Japanese marked it as an uninhabited
place, but they found upon its shores an incredible quantity of fish
and crabs, “ some of which were from four to six feet long.” The description
of Ka'inpf'er, as well as that of an original Japanese writer, given in
the note below, was found by Commodore Perry to correspond exactly with
the present appearance of the island. The arrack, or areca tree, alluded to
in the extract, is found upon Peel Island.*
* Extract from Klaproth's translation o f San Kohp Tsoir Ran To Sits.
gj Jh® original name of these islands, is O-gasa-wara-sima, but they are commonly called
Mon-nin-sima, (in Chinese, Wu-jin-ton,) or the islands without people, and this is the
name which I have adopted in my wort. That of O-gasa-wara-sima, or the O-gasa-wara
islands, was given to them after the navigator who first visited them, and who prepared a
map of them. In the same manner has the southern part of the New World been called
Magalania, (Magellan,) who first discovered it some two hundred years since.
“ The Bonin islands are found 270 ri to the southeasterly of the province of Idsu. From
Simoda, in that principality, it is 13 ri to the island of Myake; from thence to Sin-sima or
New island, seven r i ; from Sin-sima to Mikoura, five ri ; from thence to Fatsicio or Fatiho,
(Fatsisio,) 41 r i; and, lastly, from this to the most northern of the uninhabited islands, it
is reckoned to be 180 ri; and to the most southerly 200 ri.
“ This Archipelago lies in the 27th degree of north latitude. The climate is warm, and
makes the valleys lying between the high mountains, watered by rivulets, to be very fertile,
so that they produce beans, wheat, millet, grain of all kinds, and sugar cane. The tree
called Nankin, faze or tallow tree (Stillingia sehifera) grows there, and likewise the wax
tree. The fishery is good, and might be made very productive.
“ Many plants and trees grow in these islands, hut there are very few quadrupeds.
There are trees so large that a man cannot embrace them with his arms, and which are
frequently thirty Chinese fathoms in height, (or 240 feet.) Their wood is hard and beautiful.
There are also some very high trees resembling the sion-ro-tsoung-liu, or chamarops
exoelsa, cocoa nuts, areca palms, that tree whose nuts are called pe-couan-tsy in Chinese
the katsiran, the red sandal wood, the tou-mou, the camphor, tub figs of the mountains, a
high tree whose leaves resemble those of the ground ivy, the cinnamon tree, mulberry, md
some others.