Chap. VIII. 
EARTHQUAKES. 
133 
Smith, in his ‘ Ten Weeks in Japan,’ gives an 
amusing account of his first experience in this way. 
He says, “ At 4 a.m. on the morning following 
my first night of sleeping in the Legation, I was 
suddenly .awoke by a loud rattling noise at my door, 
and a forcible lifting up of my bed, and its heavy 
descent with a violent jerk to the ground. I 
shouted again and again to no purpose, wa rnin g 
the supposed intruder from my room, and making 
it perceptible that I was on the alert. A continued 
shaking of the bed, and a rumbling noise through- 
out the building, at first suggested the suspicion 
that our native guards were right, and that I had 
to prepare myself for the irruption of some invader. 
The foe, however, came from a quarter which I 
little suspected. An English voice in a distant 
apartment exclaimed, * An earthquake ! ’ The sign 
of panic amongst the native population was soon 
audible. The priests rushed to the temples and 
commenced reciting their Buddhist chants. The 
monks began their ringing of bells, and beating of 
drums and gongs at the neighbouring shrines. 
The Japanese domestics fled into the open air, 
and for the moment all was confusion and dis- 
may.” 
The natives of the country seem to dread these 
earthquakes even more than the foreigners who 
are now located amongst them. An intelligent 
Japanese, who spoke English well, expressed his 
fears that his country would one day disappear from 
the surface of the globe, and sink down under the 
