The traveller bound from Hong-Kong for Yokohama can take either the Canadian Pacific steamers or the Pacific Mail. If, however, he is anxious to see the ports of China and Japan before entering on the great thoroughfare of the Pacific Ocean, he has at his choice several efficient lines of local and coasting steamers, that will bear him safely to the different treaty ports and afford him all the time he will require for sight-seeing. Most of the European mail lines go to Shanghai, and the coasting lines of both China and Japan make it a stopping-place. Shanghai is worth a visit because of the different European ways of living in China. The city is composed of sections where each nation has established its own settlement, contiguous to, but quite distinct from, that of any other nation. There is an American town, an English town, a French town, a German town, and a Chinese town, each preserving its own language and society, and as far as possible its own architecture. The Mitsu Bishe line of steamers, the Nippon Yusen, and two or three others, ply between the ports of Japan along the really beautiful inland passage, and up the Japan Sea. If one be interested in Japanese ceramics, swords, armor, and antiquities, he should take this way trip; eventually bringing up at Yokohama, whence a railway ride of an hour will land him in Tokio. At Yokohama passage is secured for San Francisco, 5,000 miles to the eastward, across the broadest part of the Pacific Ocean. This route is one of the longest direct lines between two places that is steamed over by the ships of any company. It is a dull and monotonous voyage; nothing but blue water for 18 days, no land is seen, no strange sail sighted, rarely even do gales of wind blow hard enough to make things lively. The cabin passengers are principally Americans returning to their native land, a few Englishmen making the round of the world, a couple of Australians full of talk of the greatness of their own country and sceptical as to the advance and improvement of any other; some Japanese, curious, polite, intelligent; one or two rich Chinamen who keep to themselves, and a sprinkling of other nationalities. This heterogeneous crowd gets on well together, plays cards, makes pools on each day’s run, discusses the 180th meridian question, as to why the week is one day longer than seven, jokes, laughs, reads, smokes, and drinks.