"The natives of the interior of Kiúsiú, who devote themselves chiefly to agriculture, are a larger race, and are distinguishable by a broad and flattened countenance; by the prominence of their cheek-bones, and the distance between the inner canthi; by their broad and very flat nose, their large mouth; by their hair, which is of a deep brown colour, inclining to red-brown, _tirant sur le brun-rougeâtre_,--and by the clearer colour of their skin. Among the cultivators, who are perpetually exposed to the air and sun, the skin becomes red: the women, who protect themselves from the influence of the atmosphere, have generally a fine and white skin, and the cheeks of the young girls display a blooming carnation. "This agricultural race is laborious, sober, pious, cordial, and consequently hospitable. The savage nature, tempered from infancy by the constant observance of the forms of politeness and the etiquette of the country, does not exclude a certain nobility, and never degenerates into grossness as among the peasantry of Europe. The husbandmen of Fizen are even too ceremonious."--SIEBOLD.[92] Of the nobles of Japan, Kæmpfer says, they "are somewhat more majestic in their shape and countenance than the generality, and are more like Europeans."[93] The notices of tribes darker in colour than the dominant part of the population, of which we have seen so much in the oceanic area, re-appear in the history of Japan. They are stated to belong to either the interior or to the southern portion of the empire. This, however, may be the case without involving the necessity of assuming a second source for the population; at the same time such a second source is no ethnological improbability. The darker Amphinesians of Formosa, may possibly have tended farther northward. The Japanese Alphabet is of Chinese origin; changed from a rhæmatographic to a syllabic form. Indeed the great civilizing influence in Japan has been from China. This, according to the doubts expressed in a previous[94] part of the present work, limits the antiquity of the Japanese history, and the value of the Japanese traditions. The original paganism of Japan is probably to be studied in the Kurile Islands. Siebold's notice of it (extracted from Prichard)[95], is as follows:--