XVIII.] VISIT TO MOGI. G89 



great satisfaction, some beautiful fossil plants from Mogi, a place 

 not far from Nagasaki. 



Immediately the following morning I started for Mogi, accom- 

 panied by the Japanese attendant I had with me from Kobe, 

 and by another adjutant given me by the very obliging governor 

 of Nagasaki. We were to travel across the hills on horse- 

 back. I was accompanied, besides my Japanese assistants and a 

 man from the Vega, all on horseback, by a number of coolies 

 carrying provisions and other equipment. The Governor had 

 lent me his own horse, which was considered by the Japanese 

 something quite grand. It was a yellowish-brown stallion, not 

 particularly large, but very fine, resembling a Norwegian horse, 

 very gentle and sure-footed. The latter quality was also quite 

 necessary, for the journey began with a ride up a hundred 

 smooth and not very convenient stone steps. Farther on, too, 

 the road, which was exceedingly narrow and often paved with 

 smooth stones, went repeatedly up and down such stairs, not very 

 suitable for a man on horseback, and close to the edge of preci- 

 pices several hundred feet deep, where a single false step would 

 have cost both the horse and its rider their lives. But as has 

 been said, our horses were sure-footed and sure-eyed, and the 

 riders took care in passing such places not to pull the reins. 



None of the mountain regions I have seen in Japan are so well 

 cultivated as the environs of Nagasaki. Every place that is some- 

 what level, though only several hundred square yards in extent, is 

 used for growing some of the innumerable cultivated plants of 

 the country, principally rice : but as such easily cultivated places 

 occur in only limited numbers, the inhabitants have by industry 

 and hard labour changed the steep slopes of the mountains 

 into a succession of level terraces rising one above the other, all 

 carefully watered by irrigating conduits. 



Mogi is a considerable fishing village lying at the seaside 

 twenty kilometres south of Nagasaki in a right line, on the 

 other side of a peninsula occupied by lava beds and volcanic 

 tuffs, which projects from the island Kiushiu, which at that place 

 is nearly cut asunder by deep fjords. No European lives at the 

 place, and of course there is no European inn there. But we 

 got lodgings in the house of one of the principal or richest men 

 in the village, a maker and seller of saH, or as we would call 

 him in Swedish, a brandy distiller and publican. Here Ave were 

 received in a very friendly manner, in clean and elegant rooms, 

 and were waited on by the young and very pretty daughter of 

 our host at the head of a number of other female attendants. 

 It may be supposed that our place of entertainment had no 

 resemblance to a public-house in Sweden. We did not witness 

 here the tipsy behaviour of some lunnan wrecks, and as little 

 some other incidents which might have reminded us of public- 



Y Y 



