APPENDIX. 379 



great efforts to adopt what is best and most progressive among 

 other nations. Kailroads and telegraphs have been constructed 

 between principal cities in the interior, steamship lines estab- 

 lished along the coast and to China, lighthouses erected and 

 connected by telegraph with the principal ports of entry, har- 

 bors improved, breakwaters constructed, mines opened, and a 

 mint established, besides which the entire administration of 

 government has been changed ; a judicial and police system based 

 upon the French, an educational and postal system like that of 

 America has been adopted, while the army has adopted the Prus- 

 sian and the navy the English system of organization and tactics. 

 In short, they have taken the best from the organizations of the 

 principal nations of the earth, and utUized it for the benefit of the 

 Japanese people, and the wonderful part is that all this has been 

 done within ten years. It is said that the Mikado also contem- 

 plated the adoption of a state religion, and with this view sent for 

 leading missionaries of the different Christian sects resident in 

 Japan to confer with them, but they differed so widely in their 

 views, each claiming that they were right while all the others were 

 wrong, that the Mikado concluded that there was more of the 

 spirit of peace and goodwill in the Buddhist and Shintu beliefs 

 than in the religion of " the Westerns." 



CHINESE NOTES. 



Steamek Nasota Maku, 

 Off Coast of CniNA, September 21, 1876. 



I was awakened this morning by our stopping to take on 

 board the p:^lot. Looking from the window of my state-room, 

 I saw that the water was yellow with mud, and I knew that we 

 must be in the " Yellow Sea of China " and nearing shore — the 

 shores of a country that have been a romantic mystery to me all 

 the days of my life. The "Celestial Empire" and "flowery 

 land " of my boyhood's dreams, whence came our tea and silk ! 

 The land of great walls and porcelain pagodas, of Shanghai roost- 



