Nearly Every House Is A Shop; Most Of The Shops Supply Only The Ordinary Articles Consumed By A Large And Poor Population; Either Real Or Imitated Foreign Goods Abound In Main Street, And The Only Novelties Are The Furs, Skins, And Horns, Which Abound In Shops Devoted To Their Sale.

I covet the great bear furs and the deep cream-coloured furs of Aino dogs, which are cheap as well as handsome.

There are many second-hand, or, as they are called, "curio" shops, and the cheap lacquer from Aomori is also tempting to a stranger.

I. L. B.

LETTER XXXIV

Ito's Delinquency - "Missionary Manners" - A Predicted Failure.

HAKODATE, YEZO.

I am enjoying Hakodate so much that, though my tour is all planned and my arrangements are made, I linger on from day to day. There has been an unpleasant eclaircissement about Ito. You will remember that I engaged him without a character, and that he told both Lady Parkes and me that after I had done so his former master, Mr. Maries, asked him to go back to him, to which he had replied that he had "a contract with a lady." Mr. Maries is here, and I now find that he had a contract with Ito, by which Ito bound himself to serve him as long as he required him, for $7 a month, but that, hearing that I offered $12, he ran away from him and entered my service with a lie! Mr. Maries has been put to the greatest inconvenience by his defection, and has been hindered greatly in completing his botanical collection, for Ito is very clever, and he had not only trained him to dry plants successfully, but he could trust him to go away for two or three days and collect seeds.

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