A SINOCLAR FABRIC. 
237 
other part of the world, ever excelled it. It was the first 
thing of the kind that we had seen or heard of ; hut we 
were told that they were quite plentiful in Yeddo. This 
fellow sat upon an ivory perch, to which he was secured 
by a chain of the same, and was invariably, when first 
seen, taken for a live bird : every thing was perfect 
There was also in one of those stalls a most beauti- 
ful fabric, which, for want of a better name, we called 
crimped crape. It was in the form of a scarf, some four 
feet in length by six inches in width, was of a brilliant 
crimson colour, and capable of being stretched to a length 
of twenty feet while retaining its width unimpaired. Upon 
being let go, after being thus elongated, it would spring 
back, India-rubber-like, to its former length. We subse- 
quently observed that the -women used it largely for tying 
up their hair, and that after a time its elasticity became 
greatly impaired. “What a sweet spring-scarf it would 
make !” exclaimed a young lady of Philadelphia, upon 
seeing a sample of it, which I had brought home simply 
to show the fabric. 
And now I will conclude this account of the bazaar 
with a general remark upon the utter uselessness of the 
great majority of the articles made by the Japanese for 
export. They themselves have no use for many of them; 
and, when asked why they had been made, would reply 
that they -were copied from drawings or patterns ob- 
tained from the Dutch, and that they — the Dutch — 
bought them in large quantities and carried them 
away. 
As we walked among them, such expressions as the 
following might be heard at every turn : — “ It’s a very 
