814 
THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THE PICTURE. 
other and with strangers, is beautiful to behold. They 
arc a people who, if once restored to the freedom of 
which they were so glaringly deprived, would be pecu- 
liarly fitted, both by superiority of intellect and natural 
mildness of disposition, to receive the truths of a gospel 
against which sensuality and innate rascality close the 
eyes of the nations which surround them. I am not un- 
aware of the fact that years have elapsed since the intro- 
duction by the Russians of the tenets of the Greek 
Church into their more northern islands, and of the very 
few sincere converts which that doctrine has obtained; 
but what more can be expected when the priest visits his 
flock but annually, remains a few days, and then leaves 
them to the association of sailors and Russian hunters, 
the nature of whose lives is by no means calculated to 
impress them favourably in regard to their religion ? 
“Love to one’s neighbour,” true generosity of disposi- 
tion, a general cheerfulness of manner, and a modest and 
retiring bearing, are general characteristics wliich strike 
the eye of even the passing stranger. It is greatly to be 
lamented that a single bold stroke of villany on the part 
of the Japanese should have degraded a great part of 
their race to an apparently-endless servitude. 
I cannot account for Bi'oughton’s assertion in regard 
to their being of “a light copper-colour,” unless he re- 
ferred to a few isolated cases. As I have previously 
remarked, we saw several hundred men, women, and 
children, and these were all of a dark hrownish-black^ 
with one exception; which exception was a male adult, 
strongly suspected of being a half-breed. In regard to 
the several quotations which I have inserted from the 
