We are twisting in and out of the inlets and coming very close to the islands, and if the landscape were not so much softer and greener and more rounded, I could well imagine we were in the Fjords of Norway. The rocks are in places very white, and here and there near villages are groups of lime-kilns of primitive type. There are fleets of fishing-boats everywhere—and I believe (by this time I have seen a good deal of the country) that there are no consecutive 2 miles along the whole coast of Japan without a fishing village! It is not on the coast, but in the mountains that the really solitary places are to be found.
I arrived almost in the middle of the night, to be welcomed on the ship by various folk, from the inn-keeper upwards and downwards—there was a regular lantern procession of people. They all stopped round or in my room to talk or stare, according to their social stations; the landlord coming midway, he sat just outside the limit of the room—which was, of course, widely opened on three sides—and held converse with all of us within, or hurled abuse at all the maids and boys and small children who collected without. Fortunately the chief official of the mines left soon, intimating that it was late, so I got to bed earlier than I expected and slept well, though, as my window-walls were wide open, it was so light that I had to put up my umbrella. It is getting quite usual for me to sleep under my open umbrella, and as the mats they spread on the floor are never more than 3 or 4 inches thick, it feels very like sleeping on the seashore, and I quite enjoy it, though at first I used to wake up and wonder where I could be.
October 18.—Early this morning I started to look at mines—with five people in my official train. This island is one of the least civilised of Japan, and there are practically no roads on it, though tracks here and there, and some surprisingly big coal mines. We went from place to place on foot and in small fishing-boats across the bays, which would have caused very long detours to walk round; and these were numerous, for these islands are very much cut up, and the sea surprises one everywhere one goes, generally on two or three sides at once.
Some of the bigger fishing-boats we passed were most interesting, and looked, on a small scale, exactly like my imagination of what an old Egyptian boat must have been. The six oars (one can hardly call them oars in our sense of the word, for they are thick, and much the same shape from end to end, and with a little twist in them) were manned each by three naked men, all standing clad in their skins (which the scorching hot sun had burnt a lovely brown gold colour), and with the minutest white-and-blue waist cloth. Round their heads they had a white or white-and-blue towel tied fillet fashion, with a bow on one side. As they bent and rose over the oars they shouted all the time and very hoarsely a sort of meaningless refrain—but it was very good for keeping time and could be heard a long way off. Of the three oars on each side of the ships, two were pulled one way and one the other, and as the pullers kept forgetting which was which, I could not understand how the boats ever progressed, but they did, and at a pretty good speed, but far out at sea they put up sails. My little boat tried a sail for a short time. It was nearly square, with a bamboo to keep it out at each end, but the peg which held it down gave out when a puff of wind came and the boat tipped over gaily. The mast was tied in a very primitive fashion, and I wondered how the fishermen ever dared to go out to sea in such a craft. It landed us safely, however. One coal mine we went to was high up, 700 feet straight up from the sea, and amid pretty scenery. At one mine, where the people were most kind, they had gone to the extent of carrying a tea-cup with a handle for me, because they said I could not use their kind without a handle (as though I never drank out of glasses), but the owner of the mine took off all his English clothes, down to the shortest shirt I have ever seen, which was open up the back, and did not think I might find that a little more difficult to put up with than a cup without a handle. It is a good thing that I had all the up-to-date ideas of hygiene before I came!
October 19.—To-day was spent in returning to the main island of Kiushiu, for the little ship took nine to ten hours about it. The start to-day was made in good time, so that three separate sets of people were late, and the steamer stopped to take them on one by one. A skiff came along propelled by three boards pulled up from the bottom of the boat, and left us two passengers. In order to get to the north of this small island of Amakusa, though only 25 miles or so from the south of the island, I must go back to the main island, to Mogi, and take another steamer back to the northern port of Amakusa!—multiplying the distance a hundred-fold, but there seems nothing else to do, it is impossible (they assert) to go on foot, and very dangerous to go in a small boat round the coast, and no steamer runs. The chief manager of the mines, who has some in the north and some in the south, has to go this ridiculous round every time he goes between them.
As the northern mines are the same formation and contain identical specimens with those I have collected in sufficient quantity in the south, I shall not return, it is too ridiculous and too expensive of time.
October 20.—I reached Nagasaki and found Mr. G—— (the half Japanese son of a Scotchman and an important person here) most kind. He arranged for a delightful steam-launch all to myself to take me to Takashima, a small island which exists for, and is entirely populated by, the coal-mining people, to whom it belongs.
The mine was the first opened in Japan, and was for some time owned by Mr. G——’s father; it is the most completely arranged I have yet seen, probably owing to its age, but is rather dangerous to work, as it goes miles under the sea, and there is a large quantity of gas. Last year 300 men were killed in it—I was on the very spot where the chief engineer was found dead.
There is another little island very near to it, with a coast-line of only 4000 feet and a population of 2500! It also has a mine which is entirely under the sea. If the little islands had not stuck up out of the sea to show where the coal lay hid below it, Japan would have been much the poorer. As well as working huge quantities, the quality of this coal is the best they have. They must use salt water, of course, so they combine their engine work with salt making, and thus make a lot of money, as well as provide their thousands of people with distilled water for domestic purposes. It was very funny to go only a couple of yards from the black coal sacks to the great room filled with snowy salt.
In the evening I went to dinner with the G——s, and then they took me to a kind of semi-amateur theatrical performance at the theatre. About 3000 people were in the theatre, very crowded, and nearly all sitting on the floor in the little divisions corresponding to boxes, but which fill practically all the space of a Japanese theatre. The only amusing thing—except the spectators themselves—was a huge dragon made to move and wriggle by a dozen men, and which darted in and out after a golden ball—it depends on some legend or other which I have not yet learned.