8 INTRODUCTION. 



mountain torrents. Some of the rivers, however, are navigable by small boats for several miles 

 from the sea into the interior. The Japanese, from the nature and position of their country, 

 ought to be a maritime people ; they can have but few natural facilities for inland trade. Their 

 ingenuity and industry have, however, been taxed to open modes of communication with the 

 interior ; roads and bridges have been constructed, and in some instances canals have been made 

 to unite their rivers and lakes. 



Of the climate of Japan it is not possible to speak with much certainty. In the southern 

 part of the Kingdom it is said to be not unlike that of England. Some winters are remarkably 

 mild, without any frost or snow, though generally such is not the case ; when however these 

 occur, they last but for a few days. The heat in summer is said to average 98° of Fahrenheit 

 at Nagasaki. This, which would otherwise be excessive, is much moderated by the breeze 

 which, in the day time, blows from the south, and at night from the east. There is what the 

 Japanese call satkasi, or the rainy season, in June and July ; by this, however, it is only meant 

 that the rains are then most abundant ; for, in point of fact, they are frequent all the year round, 

 and the weather appears to be variable. No part of the ocean is subject to heavier gales than 

 the sea around Japan, and the hurricanes are terrific ; fogs also are, as might be expected, very 

 prevalent, thunder storms are common, and earthquakes have more than once destroyed a great 

 part of the most populous towns. Kfempfer remarked, also, that water-spouts were of very 

 frequent occurrence in the seas around Japan. Yet, notwithstanding all these things, the 

 country cannot^ we think, be deemed insalubrious ; for the Japanese are in general a healthful 

 people^ and the country is very thickly inhabited. 



SECTION IT. 



ORIGIN OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE. 



An opinion has been expressed by several writers that Japan was colonized by the Chinese. 

 Such an opinion, founded on very superficial observation, was advanced long before comparative 

 philology had been resorted to by the learned, as one of the safest and best tests of truth in 

 tracing the relationship of nations. But since the application of this test, no one, competent to 

 speak instructively on the subject, has ventured to deduce the Japanese from a Chinese origin. 

 The structure of the languages of the two people is essentially different. It is true that certain 

 Chinese words, the names of objects, introduced by the Chinese, may be heard from the lips of a 

 Japanese, modified however in the pronunciation ; it is also true that the Chinese dialect of the 

 Mandarins forms a species of universal language among the learned, a sort of latin in the 

 extreme east that is understood by the highly educated, not only in China, but in Corea, at 

 Tonquin, and other parts, and also in Japan ; but so little is the affinity between the primitive 

 language of Japan and that of China, that the common people of the two countries, neighbors 

 as they are, cannot understand each other without the aid of an interpreter. 



Probably those Europeans who too hastily adopted in former times the conclusion of a 

 Chinese origin for the Japanese, may, in their ignorance of the languages, have been misled by. 

 observing among the Japanese the occasional use of the idiographic cypher of the Chinese iu 



