[Illustration: WOMEN IN JAPAN CARRYING OIL ON THEIR BACKS.] Japan also takes a position in the oleiferous procession allied to that of the yellow dog under the band-wagon. At the base of Fuji-Yama, a mountain of respectable altitude, the thrifty subjects of the Mikado manage a cluster of oil-pits in the style practiced by their forefathers. The mirv holes, the creaking apparatus and the general surroundings are second editions of the Rangoon exhibits. Yum-Yum’s countrymen are clever students and they have much to learn concerning petroleum. Twenty-one years ago a Japanese nobleman inspected the Pennsylvania oil-fields, sent thither to report to the government all about the American system of operating the territory. His observations, embodied in an official statement, failed to amend the moss-grown processes of the Fuji-Yamans, who preferred to “fight it out on the old line if it took all summer.” Two others followed on a similar mission in 1897. Fifty wells, from one thousand to eighteen hundred feet deep, are producing in the Echigo province of Japan. The largest flowed five-hundred barrels the first day, declining to eight or ten, the customary average. The sand is white and the oil is of two grades, one amber of 38° gravity, the other much darker and of 310 gravity. The methods of refining and transporting are of the rudest, women carrying the crude from the wells on their backs as squaws in North America tote their papooses. [Illustration: S. G. BAYNE.] In 1874 S. G. Bayne, now president of the Seaboard Bank of New-York City, visited these oriental regions. The hard fate of the benighted heathen moved him to briny tears. They had never heard or read of “the annealed steel coupling,” “the Palm link,” the tubing, casing, engines and boilers the distinguished tourist had planted in every nook and corner of Oildom. With the spirit of a true philanthropist, Bayne determined to “set them on a higher plane.” His choicest Hindostanee persiflage was aired in detailing the advantages of the Pennsylvania plan of running the petroleum-machine. Tales of fortunes won on Oil Creek and the Allegheny River were garnished with scintillations of Irish wit that ought to have convulsed the listeners. Alas! the supine Asiatics were not built that way and the good seed fell upon barren soil. The story and, despite the finest lacquer and veneer embellishments, the experience were repeated in Japan. What better could be expected of pagans who wore skirts for full-dress, practiced hari-kari and knew not a syllable about Brian Boru? Their conduct was another convincing evidence of “the stern Calvinistic doctrine” of total depravity. The Japs voted to stay in their venerable rut and not monkey with the Yankee buzz-saw. “And the band played on.”