China and Japan.

The neatness and care which the Chinese display in the cultivation of their fields and gardens is very pleasing; but the towns and villages, though curious to see, are dirty and detestable, even when quite near to the admirably laid-out English settlements of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Neither are the Chinese people so agreeable to deal with as the affable and amiable Japanese, who, still retaining some very strange customs in country places, were, in my time at least, very kind, gentle, and courteous. Their abodes are tidy, and the temples and public buildings are very imposing structures; the public roads on which I travelled in visiting some parts of the interior are shaded by handsome cryptomerias, and at some places by camellias, laden in the season with multitudes of large single flowers. The mode of travelling in Japan by a large kind of perambulator, called a jinricksha, drawn by two men, trotting at the rate of five or six miles an hour, is easy and pleasant, but will probably soon be superseded by carriages and railways already begun; for the inhabitants of this once rigorously exclusive country have within a few page 76 years' time adopted the habits of Europeans, and a system of government and armaments so powerful as to have astonished the world by a display of naval and military advancement so unlooked for as to appear almost miraculous. The scenery of Japan is varied and generally pleasing. The lake-like inland sea and the sacred Fuseh-Yamah Mountain are especially at tractivcand picturesque. The volcanicupheaval forming the mountain resembles those of other volcanic peaks found in various parts of the world which I have seen, such as the Peak of Teneriffe, Mount Egmont in New Zealand, Mount Hecla in Iceland, and Mount Hood in Oregon, all from 9000 to 12,000 feet in height, and clad with snow, like gigantic sugar-loaves, reflecting the splendour of the rising and setting sun.