Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

I ought really not to say a word about Japan, I suppose, with only six weeks of scurrying to and fro in it. "Old-timers" of the former treaty-ports, to say nothing of the more experienced ones of the interior, would be scathing at the suggestion that so brief a stay could give the slightest food for thought. But "old-timers" the world over rarely deign to pour out on paper their own distilled wisdom, and such bits as are conversationally dropped by those who have spent at least half a lifetime in an alien land often suggest that their few immediate trees have long since cut off any clear view of the woods. At any rate, though China was our real goal, there seemed no good reason to dash blindly past the still interesting, if better known, empire which adjoins it to the east; and, once there, no serious harm can be done by recording a few fleeting impressions.

I am quite willing to have charged to the brevity of our sojourn the notion that Japan is sometimes overrated,-that Matsushima and Toba are, to be sure, pretty, pine-clad clusters of islands, but in no way superior to scores of similar, yet rarely mentioned, scenes of our own broad land: that the Inland Sea is beautiful, yet no more so than many a stretch of water along our northern border which has not had its tithe of publicity; that Enoshima is, after all, a commonplace handful of earth with some trees and caves and shrines on it; that Miyajima really consists of a single _torii_ picturesquely set only partly above high tide-and of absurdly high prices for unpleasing accommodations; that many a sea-flanked strip of sand, viewed undignifiedly through the outspread legs, is as genuine a "bridge of heaven" as Ama-no-hashidate.