and which they after retained, though joined to one another. I t hath many
towns, the chief whereof may, of a certainty, vie with the most considerable
in the world for largeness, magnificence, and number of inhabitants.”
Kaempfer says of Jeddo, that he was one whole day, riding at a moderate
pace, “ from Sinagawa, where the suburb begins, along the main street, which
goes across, a little irregularly indeed, to the end of the city.”
As to the variety of climate and produce, the southern part of the
Kingdom, reaching down as low as the twenty-fourth degree of north latitude,
produces the sugar cane and the tropical fruits; while the northern,
extending as high up as fifty degrees, yields the products of the temperate
zones. The mineral wealth of the country is very great, the manufactures
numerous, and, under such circumstances, the internal trade among so many
people is necessarily active. Of the facilities for carrying it on, we remark
that goods are conveyed by land on pack-horses and paek-oxen, and that the
roads are excellent, and kept in admirable order. In the rugged and mountainous
parts of the country where the road must pass, they make it zigzag
on the side of the mountain, and, where necessary, cut steps in the rocks.
Indeed, the roads must he kept in order, otherwise they could not accomplish
what they do by their postal arrangements. As among the ancient Mexicans
and Peruvians, the post is pedestrian, and very expeditious. Every carrier
is accompanied by a partner to take his place in ease of accident. The men
run at their utmost speed, and as they approach the end of their stage, find
the relay waiting, to whom, as soon as they are near enough, they toss the
package of letters, when the new runners set off before the coming ones have
stopped. Nothing must he interposed to delay them a moment on the road.
The highest prince of the Empire, with all his train, must make way for
the postmen, if he meet them on the road. Where necessary and practicable
on their roads, the Japanese make good bridges, often of stone; but
they do not seem to have arrived at the art of tunnel-making. Some principles
of civil engineering they understand and apply, but of military engineering
they know nothing. But beside their roads, they use their rivers
and inland lakes for internal trade wherever it is possible; and in those parts
of the Kingdom nearest the sea, probably the greater part of the inland
trade is carried on by the rivere, which, though short, are navigable for some
miles into the interior. On the roads, in all parts of the Empire, stables,
inns, tea-shops, and other resting places, occur at intervals, and the distances
are regularly marked.
Scientific knowledge and its applications.—We have just said that the
Japanese possess some knowledge of the principles of civil engineering.
They know something of mathematics, mechanics, and trigonometry. Thus,
they have constructed very good maps of their country; they have measured
the height of some of their mountains by the barometer; they have made
some very good canals; they have constructed water-mills, and lathes moved
by water power. They make clocks, and herein, by the way, they have
shown remarkable ingenuity and skill. Meylan gives the following account
of a dock which they made, and exhibited to the Dutch, while he was an
inmate of Dezima. “ The elook,” says he, “ is contained in a frame three
feet high by five feet long, and presents a fair landscape at noon-tide. Plum
and cherry trees in full blossom, with other plants, adorn the foreground.
The back-grdund consists of a hill, from which falls a cascade, skilfully imitated
in glass, that forms a softly flowing river, first winding round rocks
placed here and there, then ru .ning across the middle of the landscape till
lost in a wood of fir trees. A golden sun hangs aloft in the sky, and, turning
upon a pivot, indicates the striking of the hours. On the frame below, the
twelve hours of day and night are marked, where a slowly creeping tortoise
serves as a hand. A bird, perched upon the branch of a plum tree, by its
song and the clapping of its wings, announces the moment when the hour
expires; and as the song ceases, a bell is heard to strike the hour—during
which operation, a mouse comes out of a grotto and runs over the hill.
* * * * Every separate part was nicely executed; but the bird was
too large for the tree, and the sun for the sky, while the mouse scaled
the mountain in a moment of time.” Whatever may have been the defects
of taste, the ingenuity and skill in this piece of mechanism are very apparent
.F
ischer also tell us a story of the ingenuity of a Japanese fisherman,
of which, perhaps, the specimen may now be found among ourselves. The
Japanese, like many other people of lively temperaments, have a passion
for things that are strange and odd, and rather prefer sometimes to be gulled.
This fisherman, availing himself of this passion, contrived to unite the upper
half of a monkey to the lower half of a fish, so neatly as to defy ordinary
inspection. He then announced that he had caught a strange animal alive
in his net, hut that the creature had soon died when taken out of the water,
and invited his countrymen to come, and, for a consideration, to see the
curiosity. After he had put money in his purse to some considerable extent
by this hold reliance on human credulity, he improved on the original story,
and said that during the few moments of its life the strange creature had
spoken to him, (whether in the language of Japan or in that of the Fee-jee
islands, he did not say,) and had predicted a certain number of years of
great fertility, to be followed or accompanied by a most fatal epidemic; and
that against this last the only remedy would be the possession of a likeness
o f the marine nondescript, half human, half fish. Pictures of the mermaid
were forthwith in demand, and the sale was immense. Presently, as the
affair had well nigh had its run in Japan, this mermaid, or one made like it,
was sold to the Dutch factory at Dezima, and was sent off in the next ship
to Batavia. Here one of our speculating brethren of the “ universal Yankee
nation ” contrived to get it, and forthwith repaired to Europe, where he