Again, the whole contour, in a sort of proud, queenly sweep, stands out against a cloudless ether, or with a little vapor drifting to leeward of the summit giving the appearance of a crater--or, after a cool night in September, the eye is arrested by the appearance of the bursting downward of a flattened shell, the pure white snow filling the valleys from the top, the haze of the morning half concealing the hill beneath. Every hour brings a change upon a landscape which consists of a single object which the lover of nature can never weary of admiring, in a climate where seventy miles of atmosphere does not obscure the larger features on the face of the mountain even to the naked eye. How often would such an object be visible in the climate of England? The first settlement of inhabitants upon an island is always a subject of interesting speculation and inquiry. The insular position gives an idea of a definite time or period at which the peopling of a large island must have taken place. The freedom of possession of boundless wealth presents every inducement to the immigrant to remain, while distance and difficulties repel the idea of return. In Japan this immigration may in all probability have commenced by a gradual spreading from the north of inhabitants of Manchuria through the islands of Saghalien and Jezo to those of the Japanese group. During the earlier periods of a nation’s existence, the art of writing has been generally kept in the hands of men who have devoted themselves to a life of retirement and seclusion from the strife and temptations of the outer world. These have been found among the priesthood, and it has been their business or their amusement to gather up and commit to writing what had been up to the time current as oral tradition in regard to prehistoric occurrences. Men are forced by reasoning to refer the appearance of their first ancestors to a creation by, or procession from, a Divine Being. At the same time, those who have wielded the power of writing, and thereby reached and influenced a larger circle of their fellowmen, have generally endeavored to clothe the deities from whom they profess to have sprung with virtues which were to be emulated by their descendants, or to inculcate through them, by precept, a purity of moral conduct to be practiced by their followers. The group of islands generally included under the one name Japan was known in remote times by a variety of names--“Akitsu sima, Toyo aki, Toyo ashiwarra no nakatsa kooni.” “Wo kwo,” the country of peace, is used by the Chinese for Japan. “Ho,” pronounced “Yamato,” and used for one province, is frequently applied in Japan to the whole country.