152 
FROM HONG-KONG TO YOKOHAMA. 
sad and dejected, or rather half-idiotic, would no doubt have preferred to crop the grass in 
some green meadow to being perpetually held up as an object of cuiiosity or admiration, shut 
up in a narrow stall. Not far off, a monkey in a cage was a perpetual source of merriment 
to the crowd. We could not ascertain whether these animals were attached to the temple 
merely as objects of curiosity, or because of their connection with some superstitious belief. 
They reminded one of the sacred animals which, according to Herodotus, used to be kept in 
the temples of ancient Egypt. 
The railway which connects Kobe with Oosaka—probably is now being continued 
towards Miako, the former residence of the Mikados—traverses a well-cultivated plain, affording 
evidence of the great perfection to which agriculture has been carried in this country. The 
whole plain, which stretches many miles inland, is not merely a combination of tilled fields 
such as we see in Europe, but may be better described as an immense garden. Nothing 
can exceed the patient toil and skill with which every inch of ground is made to grow food, 
or the regularity and neatness with which the watercourses are laid out, so that not a drop of 
water may be wasted. Besides their wonderful proficiency as farmers and gardeners, the 
Japanese are remarkable for their love of flowers. They seem to be a necessary of life, and 
are met with every¬ 
where, in the temple 
as well as in the 
poorest shop, in front 
of the cottage and the 
farm-house, in the 
children’s hair, and the 
very babe carried on 
its mother’s back is 
seldom without a small 
branch covered with 
blossoms. How largely 
designs of flowers enter 
into the decoration of 
the dresses, the orna¬ 
ments, and the house¬ 
hold articles of the 
people generally, is 
well known. It is 
probably this trait in the national character which, more than anything else, has won for 
them the admiration, I may say the affection, of all who have come in contact with them. It 
sums up, in truth, the most prominent features of the Japanese mind. The active worker 
revels in all that pertains to form and colour, and may be termed a born artist; indeed, if 
culture consists in the ait of surrounding the necessarily commonplace exterior of life with 
JAPANESE MANNERS. 
