The European quarter, along the quay, is full of hotels and restaurants, banks, and other houses of business. Here the streets are somewhat wider, and the houses more solidly built, with the lower stories of brick, while many of them have verandas and front gardens. Life in Nagasaki is wonderfully cheap, but it is also a trifle monotonous, particularly for a stranger not conversant with the language. There is little in the way of “sights”—two or three temples of Buddha, with gigantic pictures of Sakia-Mouni, a commercial institute with samples of native goods, and the well-known tea-houses; that is all the visitor is invited to inspect. But the neighbourhood is extremely beautiful, and at every step one is forced to admire the industry of the Japanese, who leave no inch of soil untilled; except the very tops of the rocky hills, all is carefully cultivated. And yet, notwithstanding this heavy labour that the Japanese expends upon his land, his existence seems to have something of the ethereal and fairylike; and many things in his wonderful country contribute to produce an impression of unreality, as if they were happening not in actual life, but on the screen of a cinematograph. The “progress” that Japan has made during the latter half of the nineteenth century is doubtless very striking; but it seems to me overestimated by many Europeans and also by the Japanese themselves. Only a very small part of the population has been affected by Western civilisation—a thin layer of the upper classes in the coast towns. The rest of the people are scarcely touched by it; not only beliefs and customs, but the whole mode of living remains the same, both in town and country, as it has been from time immemorial. The primitive nature of the Japanese character reveals itself in the transparent honesty everywhere prevalent. No house or shop is shut up for the night; nobody touches what does not belong to him; and lost property when found is immediately restored to the owner. But in the seaports where European culture already makes its influence felt, it may be feared that the Japanese will soon adopt new ideas of “honour.” I left Nagasaki on board the huge Pacific steamer _China_, belonging to an American company. The two days that the boat stopped at Yokohama I spent in visiting that town and the capital Tokio, which is reached in about twenty minutes by rail; but there is no need to give my superficial impressions of such well-known places. During the first five days of the voyage I could talk with none of my fellow-passengers, as I spoke no English, and I found this very wearisome; but at Yokohama we were joined by a Frenchman, a German, and a Japanese who spoke a little German, and we four formed an interesting little international society, the members of which still keep in touch with one another.