CHAP. XVIII.] 
A JAPANESE RAILWAY, 
369 
was their intention not to break Japanese customs and usages 
in any offensive way. A calling card and a letter from Admiral 
Kawamura, minister of marinej which I sent from the hotel to 
the Governor of Kioto, procured me an adjutant No. 2, a young, 
cheerful, and talkative official, Mr. Koba-Yaschi, whose eyes 
sparkled with intelligence and merry good humour. One would 
sooner have taken him for a highly-esteemed student president 
at some northern university, than for a Japanese official. It 
was already late in the day, so that before nightfall I had time 
only to take the bath which, at every Japanese inn not of too 
inferior a kind, is always at the traveller s call, and arrange the 
dredging excursion which, along with Lieut. Nordquist, I 
intended to make next day on Lake Biwa. 
The road between Kioto and Biwa we travelled the following 
morning in jinrihishas. In a short time there will be com¬ 
munication between these two places by a railway constructed 
exclusively by native workmen and native engineers. It will 
be, and is intended to be, an actual Japanese railway. For a 
considerable distance it passes through a tunnel, which, how¬ 
ever, as some of the Europeans at Kobe stated, might easily 
have been avoided “ if the Japanese had not considered it 
desirable that Japan, too, should have a railway tunnel to 
show, as such are found both in Europe and America.” It is 
probable, in any case, that the bends which would have been 
required if the tunnel was to be avoided, would have cost more 
by the additional length than the tunnel, and that therefore the 
procedure of the Japanese was better considered than their 
envious European neighbours would allow. There appears to 
prevail among the European residents in Japan a certain 
jealousy of the facility with which this country, till recently so 
far behind in an industrial respect, assimilates the skill in art 
and industry of the Europeans, and of the rapidity with which 
the people thereby make themselves independent of the wares 
of the foreign merchants. 
VOL. II. 
B B 
