CHAP, xviii.] A JAPANESE RAILWAY. 673 



any European language. He showed himself, however, to be 

 much interested in our voyage, and immediately ordered an 

 official in his court, who was well acquainted with English, 

 Mr. Yanimoto, to accompany me to Kioto. 



We travelled thither by a railway constructed wholly in the 

 European style. At Kioto my comjoanion, at my special request, 

 conducted me, not to the European hotel there, but to a 

 Japanese inn, remarkable as usual for cleanliness, for a 

 numerous crowd of talkative female attendants, and for the 

 extreme friendliness of the inn people to their guests as soon 

 as they indicated, by taking off their boots at the door, that it 

 was their intention not to break Japanese customs and usages 

 in any offensive way. A calling card and a letter from Admiral 

 Kawamura, minister of marine, which I sent from the hotel to 

 the Governor of Kioto, procured me an adjutant No. 2, a young, 

 cheerful, and talkative official, Mr. Koba-Yaschi, whose eyes 

 sparkled with intelligence and merry good humour. One would 

 sooner have taken him for a highly-esteemed student president 

 at some northern university, than for a Japanese official. It 

 was already late in the day, so that before nightfall I had time 

 only to take the bath which, at every Japanese inn not of too 

 inferior a kind, is always at the traveller's call, and arrange the 

 dredging excursion which, along with Lieut, Nordquist, I 

 intended to make next day on Lake Biwa. 



The road between Kioto and Biwa we travelled the following 

 morning in jinrikishas. In a short time there will be com- 

 munication between these two places by a railway constructed 

 exclusively by native workmen and native engineers. It will 

 be, and is intended to be, an actual Japanese railway. For a 

 considerable distance it passes through a tunnel, which, how- 

 ever, as some of the Europeans at Kobe stated, might easily 

 have been avoided " if the Japanese had not considered it 

 desirable that Japan, too, should have a railway tunnel to 

 show, as such are found both in Europe and America." It is 

 probable, in any case, that the bends which would have been 

 required if the tunnel was to be avoided, would have cost more 

 by the additional length than the tunnel, and that therefore the 

 procedure of the Japanese was better considered than their 

 envious European neighbours would allow. There appears to 

 prevail among the European residents in Japan a certain 

 jealousy of the facility with which this country, till recently so 

 far behind in an industrial respect, assimilates the skill in art 

 and industry of the Europeans, and of the rapidity with which 

 the people thereby make themselves independent of the wares 

 of the foreign merchants. 



When we reached Lake Biwa we were conducted by Mr. 

 Koba-Yaschi to an inn close by the shore, with a splendid view 



X X 



