On the 26th September I started for Tokio, in order thence to undertake a journey proposed and arranged by the Danish consul, Herr Bavier, to Asamayama, a yet active volcano in the interior of the country. In consequence of an unexpected death among the European consuls at Yokohama, Herr Bavier, however, could not join us until the day after that which had been fixed for our departure. The 27th accordingly was passed in Tokio among other things, in seeing the beautiful collections of antiquities made by the attaché of the Austrian legation, Herr H. VON SIEBOLD, son of the famous naturalist of the same name. Japan has also, like most other lands, had its Stone Age, from which remains are found at several places in the country, both on Yezo and on the more southerly islands. Implements from this period are now collected assiduously both by natives and Europeans, and have been described by H. von Siebold in a work accompanied by photographic illustrations. In general the implements of the Japanese stone folk have a resemblance to the stone tools still in use among the Eskimo, and even in this fruitful land the primitive race, as the bone remains in the kitchen-middens show, lived at first mainly by hunting and fishing.
FOOTNOTES:
[372] The Dutch had permission in former times to send some vessels annually to Nagasaki. By Perry's treaty, signed on the 31st March, 1854, Shimoda and Hakodate were opened to the Americans. Finally, by new treaties with the United States and various European powers, the harbours Kanagava (Yokohama), Nagasaki, Hakodate, Niigata, Hiogo, and Osaka, were assigned for commerce with foreigners.
[373] At first it strikes a European as if all the Japanese had about the same appearance, but when one has got accustomed to the colour of the skin and the traits of the race, the features of the Japanese appear as various in form and expression as those of Europeans.
[374] At the close of the twelfth century this now inconsiderable town was the residence of Joritomo, the founder of the Shogun power, and the arranger of the Japanese feudal system.
[375] Five yen are about equal to £1 sterling.
[376] The Japanese pipes are now so small that no serious results from this disadvantage are to be dreaded. In former times the pipes used were long and probably heavy. The Dyaks of Borneo still use pipes so heavy that they may be used as weapons.
[377] The work bears the title Tai-sei-hon-zo-mei-so (short list of European plant-names), by Ito-Keske, 1829, 3 vols.
[378] Carl Peter Thunberg, born at Jönköping in 1743, famed for his travels in South Africa, Japan, &c., and for a number of important scientific works, finally Professor at Upsala, died in 1828. Engelbert Kämpfer, born in Westphalia in 1651, was secretary of the embassy that started from Sweden to Persia in 1683. Kämpfer, however, did not return with the embassy, but continued his travels in the southern and eastern parts of Asia, among them, even to Japan, which he visited in 1690-92, he died in 1716. Kämpfer's and Thunberg's works, together with the great work of von Siebold, who erected the monument to them, form the most important sources of the knowledge of the Japan that once was.