The Doctor Made The Voyage To Jeddo By Land From Nagasaki, And Is Well Acquainted With The Character, Manners, And Customs Of The People Of Japan, And With The Geology, Physical Features, And Natural History Of The Country.

He showed me collections of cheap woodcuts printed in colours, which are sold at less than a farthing each, and comprise an endless variety of sketches of Japanese scenery and manners.

Though rude, they are very characteristic, and often exhibit touches of great humour. He also possesses a large collection of coloured sketches of the plants of Japan, made by a Japanese lady, which are the most masterly things I have ever seen. Every stem, twig, and leaf is produced by single touches of the brush, the character and perspective of very complicated plants being admirably given, and the articulations of stem and leaves shown in a most scientific manner.

Having made arrangements to stay for three weeks at a small hut on a newly cleared plantation in the interior of the northern half of the island, I with some difficulty obtained a boat and men to take me across the water - for the Amboynese are dreadfully lazy. Passing up the harbour, in appearance like a fine river, the clearness of the water afforded me one of the most astonishing and beautiful sights I have ever beheld. The bottom was absolutely hidden by a continuous series of corals, sponges, actinic, and other marine productions of magnificent dimensions, varied forms, and brilliant colours. The depth varied from about twenty to fifty feet, and the bottom was very uneven, rocks and chasms and little hills and valleys, offering a variety of stations for the growth of these animal forests. In and out among them, moved numbers of blue and red and yellow fishes, spotted and banded and striped in the most striking manner, while great orange or rosy transparent medusa floated along near the surface. It was a sight to gaze at for hours, and no description can do justice to its surpassing beauty and interest. For once, the reality exceeded the most glowing accounts I had ever read of the wonders of a coral sea. There is perhaps no spot in the world richer in marine productions, corals, shells and fishes, than the harbour of Amboyna.

From the north side of the harbour, a good broad path passes through swamp clearing and forest, over hill and valley, to the farther side of the island; the coralline rock constantly protruding through the deep red earth which fills all the hollows, and is more or less spread over the plains and hill- sides. The forest vegetation is here of the most luxuriant character; ferns and palms abound, and the climbing rattans were more abundant than I had ever seen them, forming tangled festoons over almost every large forest tree. The cottage I was to occupy was situated in a large clearing of about a hundred acres, part of which was already planted with young cacao-trees and plantains to shade them, while the rest was covered with dead and half- burned forest trees; and on one side there was a tract where the trees had been recently felled and were not yet burned.

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