CHAP. II.] GEOGRAPHICAL GHABAGTERISTIGS. 27 



servation revealed the fact that, like Hoa-pin-su, its position had 

 been erroneously given in the " Directory," where it is stated to be 

 twenty miles farther to the south than it actually is. We dis- 

 covered afterwards that these islands are correctly marked on the 

 chart, but, in spite of all the virtues of " the lead and a good look- 

 out," we were not sorry to turn in that night with the happy con- 

 sciousness of a clear sea and no dangers. 



It was with no little pleasure that we looked forward to our 

 visit to the Liu-kiu Islands. Captain Basil Hall's well-known 

 account of them in the " Voyage of the Alccstc and Lyra " is so 

 prepossessing, that every one who has read it must long to make 

 acquaintance with a people so unsophisticated : a quiet and peace- 

 loving race to whom traders'-rum, guns, and other implements 

 of civilisation are practically unknown, and whose natural tendencies 

 seem to be towards virtue rather than vice. In these latter days 

 of omniscience, when no land of Arcady, no j^a^/s dc Cokayne, lure the 

 traveller to undertake fresh hardships in their search, it is rare 

 indeed to find any country at all approaching one's notions of a 

 teiTestrial paradise, but Liu-kiu and its inhabitants, as depicted by 

 Captain Hall in 1816, appear to attain to within an interesting 

 distance of one's ideal, and we were curious to know how far the 

 changes of three-quarters of a century had served to destroy the 

 many charms of the self-styled "nation that observes propriety." 

 Happily we were not doomed to be disenchanted. 



The Liu-kiu group lie some two hundred and fifty miles to the 

 east-north-east of Formosa, which, in defiance of every political 

 and geographical reason, was, in the early days of Chinese com- 

 merce, called Little Liu-kiu. Okinawa-sima, which is the largest 

 island of the archipelago, from its greater commerce and population, 

 was known as Great Liu-Kiu — a name it has retained to the present 

 day. The islands extend north and south for about three degxees 

 of latitude, and lie just north of the tropic, a position that permits 

 the growth of the crops both of temperate and sub-tropical regions. 

 They are partially volcanic, and thus form one of the links in the 



