Tea-Houses With Many Balconies Studded The River-Side, And Pleasure-Parties Were Enjoying Themselves With Geishas And Sake, But,

On the whole, the water-side streets are shabby and tumble down, and the landward side of the great city

Of western Japan is certainly disappointing; and it was difficult to believe it a Treaty Port, for the sea was not in sight, and there were no consular flags flying. We poled along one of the numerous canals, which are the carriage-ways for produce and goods, among hundreds of loaded boats, landed in the heart of the city, and, as the result of repeated inquiries, eventually reached the Church Mission House, an unshaded wooden building without verandahs, close to the Government Buildings, where I was most kindly welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Fyson.

The house is plain, simple, and inconveniently small; but doors and walls are great luxuries, and you cannot imagine how pleasing the ways of a refined European household are after the eternal babblement and indecorum of the Japanese.

ITINERARY OF ROUTE FROM NIKKO TO NIIGATA

(Kinugawa Route.)

From Tokiyo to

No. of houses. Ri. Cho Nikko 36 Kohiaku 6 2 18 Kisagoi 19 1 18 Fujihara 46 2 19 Takahara 15 2 10 Ikari 25 2 Nakamiyo 10 1 24 Yokokawa 2O 2 21 Itosawa 38 2 34 Kayashima 57 1 4 Tajima 25O 1 21 Toyonari 120 2 12 Atomi 34 1 Ouchi 27 2 12 Ichikawa 7 2 22 Takata 42O 2 11 Bange 910 3 4 Katakado 50 1 20 Nosawa 306 3 24 Nojiri 110 1 27 Kurumatoge 3 9 Hozawa 20 1 14 Torige 21 1 Sakaiyama 28 24 Tsugawa 615 2 18 Niigata 50,000 souls 18 Ri. 101 6 About 247 miles.

LETTER XVI

Abominable Weather - Insect Pests - Absence of Foreign Trade - A Refractory River - Progress - The Japanese City - Water Highways - Niigata Gardens - Ruth Fyson - The Winter Climate - A Population in Wadding.

NIIGATA, July 9.

I have spent over a week in Niigata, and leave it regretfully to- morrow, rather for the sake of the friends I have made than for its own interests. I never experienced a week of more abominable weather. The sun has been seen just once, the mountains, which are thirty miles off, not at all. The clouds are a brownish grey, the air moist and motionless, and the mercury has varied from 82 degrees in the day to 80 degrees at night. The household is afflicted with lassitude and loss of appetite. Evening does not bring coolness, but myriads of flying, creeping, jumping, running creatures, all with power to hurt, which replace the day mosquitoes, villains with spotted legs, which bite and poison one without the warning hum. The night mosquitoes are legion. There are no walks except in the streets and the public gardens, for Niigata is built on a sand spit, hot and bare. Neither can you get a view of it without climbing to the top of a wooden look-out.

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