evaporate, and from which the condensed salt liquid is afterwards drawn into salt-pans in order that the evaporation may be completed. It was remarkable to observe that several crustacea throve exceedingly well in the very strong brine.
On the surrounding hills we saw thickets of the Japanese wax tree, Rhus succedaneus. The wax is pressed out of the berries of this bush with the help of heat. It is used on a large scale in making the lights which the natives themselves burn, and is exported bleached and refined to Europe, where it is sometimes used in the manufacture of lights. Now, however, these wax lights are increasingly superseded by American kerosene oil. The price has fallen so much that the preparation of vegetable wax is now said scarcely to yield a profit.[384]
We left this place next morning, and on the 21st October the Vega anchored in the harbour of Nagasaki. My principal intention in visiting this place was to collect fossil plants, which I supposed would be found at the Takasima coal-mine, or in the neighbourhood of the coal-field. In order to find out the locality without delay, I reckoned on the fondness of the Japanese for collecting remarkable objects of all kinds from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. I therefore hoped to find in some of the shops where old bronzes, porcelain, weapons, &c., were offered for sale, fossil plants from the neighbourhood, with the locality given. The first day, therefore, I ran about to all the dealers in curiosities, but without success. At last one of the Japanese with whom I conversed told me that an exhibition of the products of nature and art in the region was being arranged, and that among the objects exhibited I might possibly find what I sought for.
Of course I immediately availed myself of the opportunity to see one of the many Japanese local exhibitions of which I had heard so much. It was yet in disorder, but I was, at all events, willingly admitted, and thus had an opportunity of seeing much that was instructive to me, especially a collection of rocks from the neighbourhood. Among these I discovered at last, to my great satisfaction, some beautiful fossil plants from Mogi, a place not far from Nagasaki.
Immediately the following morning I started for Mogi, accompanied by the Japanese attendant I had with me from Kobe, and by another adjutant given me by the very obliging governor of Nagasaki. We were to travel across the hills on horseback. I was accompanied, besides my Japanese assistants and a man from the Vega, all on horseback, by a number of coolies carrying provisions and other equipment. The Governor had lent me his own horse, which was considered by the Japanese something quite grand. It was a yellowish-brown stallion, not particularly large, but very fine, resembling a Norwegian horse, very gentle and sure-footed. The latter quality was also quite necessary, for the journey began with a ride up a hundred smooth and not very convenient stone steps. Farther on, too, the road, which was exceedingly narrow and often paved with smooth stones, went repeatedly up and down such stairs, not very suitable for a man on horseback, and close to the edge of precipices several hundred feet deep, where a single false step would have cost both the horse and its rider their lives. But as has been said, our horses were sure-footed and sure-eyed, and the riders took care in passing such places not to pull the reins.
None of the mountain regions I have seen in Japan are so well cultivated as the environs of Nagasaki. Every place that is somewhat level, though only several hundred square yards in extent, is used for growing some of the innumerable cultivated plants of the country, principally rice but as such easily cultivated places occur in only limited numbers, the inhabitants have by industry and hard labour changed the steep slopes of the mountains into a succession of level terraces rising one above the other, all carefully watered by irrigating conduits.
Mogi is a considerable fishing village lying at the seaside twenty kilometres south of Nagasaki in a right line, on the other side of a peninsula occupied by lava beds and volcanic tuffs, which projects from the island Kiushiu, which at that place is nearly cut asunder by deep fjords. No European lives at the place, and of course there is no European inn there. But we got lodgings in the house of one of the principal or richest men in the village, a maker and seller of saki, or as we would call him in Swedish, a brandy distiller and publican. Here we were received in a very friendly manner, in clean and elegant rooms, and were waited on by the young and very pretty daughter of our host at the head of a number of other female attendants. It may be supposed that our place of entertainment had no resemblance to a public-house in Sweden. We did not witness here the tipsy behaviour of some human wrecks, and as little some other incidents which might have reminded us of public-house life in Europe. All went on in the distillery and the public-house as calmly and quietly as the work in the house of a well-to-do country squire in Sweden who does not swear and is not quarrelsome.
Saki is a liquor made by fermenting and distilling rice. It is very variable in taste and strength, sometimes resembling inferior Rhine wine, sometimes more like weak grain brandy. Along with saki our host also manufactured vinegar, which was made from rice and saki residues, which with the addition of some other vegetable substances were allowed to stand and acidify in large jars ranged in rows in the yard.
When my arrival became known I was visited by the principal men of the village. We were soon good friends by the help of a friendly reception, cigars and red wine. Among them the physician of the village was especially of great use to me. As soon as he became aware of the occasion of my visit he stated that such fossils as I was in search of did indeed occur in the region, but that they were only accessible at low water. I immediately visited the place with the physician and my companions from Nagasaki, and soon discovered several strata containing the finest fossil plants one could desire. During this and the following day I made a rich collection, partly with the assistance of a numerous crowd of children who zealously helped me in collecting. They were partly boys and partly girls, the latter always having a little one on their backs. These little children were generally quite bare-headed. Notwithstanding this they slept with the crown of the head exposed to the hottest sun-bath on the backs of their bustling sisters, who jumped lightly and securely over stocks and stones, and never appeared to have any idea that the burdens on their backs were at all unpleasant or troublesome.
According to Dr. A.G. NATHORST'S examination, the fossil plants which I brought home from this place belong to the more recent Tertiary formation. Our distinguished and acute vegetable paleontologist fixes attention on the point, that we would have expected to find here a fossil flora allied to the recent South Japanese, which is considered to be derived from a Tertiary flora which closely resembles it. There is, however, no such correspondence, for impressions of ferns are almost completely wanting at Mogi, and even of pines there is only a single leaf-bearing variety which closely resembles the Spitzbergen form of Sequoia Langsdorfii, Brag. On the other hand, there are met with, in great abundance, the leaves of a species of beech nearly allied to the red beech of America, Fagus ferruginea, Ait., but not resembling the recent Japanese varieties of the same family. There were found, besides, leaves of Quercus, Juglans, Populus, Myrica, Salix, Zelkova, Liquidambar, Acer, Prunus, Tilia, &c., resembling leaves of recent types from the forests of Japan, from the forest flora of America, or from the temperate flora of the Himalayas. But