About the middle of February, 1691, the customary presents having been got ready, and the necessary preparations made, the Dutch embassy set out from Nangasaki for the court of the emperor, with Kæmpfer and his pupil in its train. Having got fairly out of the city they proceeded on their journey, passing through the small village of Mangome, wholly inhabited by leather-tanners, who perform the office of public executioners in Japan; and in about two hours passed a stone pillar marking the boundaries of the territory of Nangasaki. Here and there upon the wayside they beheld the statue of Zisos, the god of travellers, hewn out of the solid rock, with a lamp burning before it, and wreaths of flowers adorning its brows. At a little distance from the image of the god stood a basin full of water, in which such travellers performed their ablutions as designed to light the sacred lamps, or make any other offering in honour of the divinity. Towards the afternoon of the first day’s journey they arrived at the harbour of Omura, on the shore of which they observed the smoke of a small volcano. Pearl oysters were found in this bay; and the sands upon the coast had once been strewn with gold, but the encroachment of the sea had inundated this El Doradian beach. Next morning they passed within sight of a prodigious camphor-tree, not less than thirty-six feet in circumference, standing upon the summit of a craggy and pointed hill; and soon afterward arrived at a village famous for its hot-baths. After passing through another village, they reached a celebrated porcelain manufactory, where the clay used was of a fat-coloured white, requiring much kneading, washing, and cleansing, before it could be employed in the formation of the finer and more transparent vessels. The vast labour required in this manufacture gave rise to the old saying, that porcelain was formed of human bones.