CHAPTER XIV. 
SOMETHING ABOUT BATHS AND BATUIXG IN JAPAN, AND HOW THEY OBJECTED 
TO ODE SURVEYING THEIR COASTS HOW WE OVERCAME THEIR OBJECTIONS, 
AND HOW TATZ-NOSKY TOOK SEVERAL LONG RIDES — HOW BUNSBY DIS- 
COVERED LAND, AND IIOW THE “OLD JOHN” CROSSED THE STRAITS OP 
t’sugar. 
There is a wide-spread idea in regard to the profligacy 
and Icw’dness of the Japanese as a nation; and, though it 
must be confessed that there is little or no modesty 
among the middle and lower classes, — wo had no oppor- 
tunity of judging in regard to the higher, — still, I never 
during our entire intercourse with them saw any indica- 
tions of a lack of practical morality. Natural depravity 
and impurity of taste is perceptible at almost every turn 
in the shape of lewd engravings and a disregard to expo- 
sure of the person ; but then it must he remembered that 
they are half-civilized Orientals, and heathens at that. 
As far as their acts are concerned, the women are per- 
fectly correct in their intercourse with strangers, which is 
more than can he said of the Chinese, though they do 
what the latter do not, — they bathe promiscuously with 
the opposite sex in the public baths, because, I suppose, 
their ancestors did so before them, and their primitive 
ideas recognise no harm in so doing. 
These people are, like most Orientals, a nation of 
ducks, — their greatest luxury consisting in vapour, warm, 
or surf bathing, — and much of their time is devoted to 
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