20 HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 



In the Plutonic chain that skirts the eastern shores of 

 Asia, passes southwards through the Philippines and 

 Moluccas, joins the Southern Belt, and finally traverses 

 Sumatra and Java, the Japanese Islands may be said to take 

 the most prominent place for active volcanos and seismic 

 disturbances, and although, since the terrible earthquake of 

 1855 which destroyed the greater part of Tokio, and brought 

 death to tens of thousands of people, there has been nothing 

 approaching catastrophe, almost every mountain may be 

 said to be of volcanic origin, while no fewer than fifty are in 

 a state of intermittent activity. Waves of earth motion 

 numbering hundreds within a single month have been 

 observed and recorded by the Seismological Society. In 

 the south especially the earth not unfrequently opens in 

 cracks and chasms, making the natives fly to the bamboo 

 groves under the belief that the thickly interlacing roots 

 would so bind the surface of the ground as to prevent its 

 disruption. It is impossible to imagine a more disagreeable 

 and eerie sensation, or one more suggestive of the uncanny, 

 than to be suddenly awakened on one of those sultry nights 

 which usually precede those visitations, by the violent 

 rattling of every door and window in the house, to be 

 succeeded by one, two, or more sickening heaves, while 

 every beam and rafter cracks and groans like a soul in 

 agony. In Japan an old legend ascribes earthquakes to the 

 movements of a creature with an oblong, scaly body, ten 

 legs, feet like a spider's, and the head of a dragon Jishin- 

 mushi, or earthquake insect ; on its head rests the Kaname 

 rock, with which it is the duty of the Kami or deity of the 

 district to keep the beast as quiet as possible. 



To continue the narrative. The breeze which had been 

 very light freshened somewhat about eight o'clock, and being 

 right aft enabled us, running wind and wing, to make good 

 way until midnight, when it became so brisk that we were 

 compelled, not a moment before it was absolutely necessary, 

 to take in a couple of reefs. About three in the morning 

 the skipper, keeping watch on deck, startled all the ship's 



