The moment the traveller enters the harbour of Nagasaki he finds himself surrounded by the most extraordinary contrasts. In the first place, the scenery is quite charming: the mountains are a delightful green and are thickly draped with foliage, from which peep out a number of pretty little wooden houses, whose windows are replaced by sliding paper-panels. The sea is dotted with rocky islands covered with those picturesque Japanese fir-trees whose outline is as varied as it is graceful. Here and there rise from the water curious little fishing-sheds, the delight of the amateur photographer, which add considerably to a landscape which looks for all the world like an animated picture off a Japanese screen. One can scarcely believe that it is all real, and certainly not that it was at one time the scene of a terrible tragedy: yet such it was, for from one of the neighbouring islands in 1638—yclept Pappenberg—several hundred Christians were cast into the sea. Presently we see rising in the background a tall chimney with its streaming cloud of smoke, and the noise of machinery in motion grating upon our ears reminds us somewhat unpleasantly that modern civilization has at length penetrated into Japan, and the better to emphasize this fact, our steamer is presently surrounded by a fleet of ugly coal-barges, and a sudden turn brings us face to face with the ships and flags of all nations—British, French, German, Russian, and American. On the other side of the bay, in the docks recently constructed by the Mitsubishi Company, workmen are busy building a 5,000–ton vessel. Not far distant, on the southern slope of the hill overlooking the town, is the European quarter, situated in the midst of delightful gardens. The elegant steeple of the Catholic church rises sharply from among the pine-trees, and contrasts favourably with the massive and very ugly building—an eyesore on the pretty scene—that disagreeably emphasizes the very bad taste of the American missionaries, as also the absolute tolerance which the Government of the Mikado accords to all denominations in a country where, not so very long ago, so great was its exclusiveness that even the shipwrecked were put to a cruel death. As I gazed upon this charming scene, I could not forbear picturing to myself how it must have looked fifty years ago when a solitary Dutch vessel landed its tiny cargo for the benefit of a few foreign merchants imprisoned in the artificial island of Deshima, the only spot where they were allowed to live, and even then subjected to many vexatious humiliations.