Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/62

NUMBER SEVEN.

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The Shops and How Customers are Treated—Very Sharp at a Bargain—The Currency—Mexican Silver Dollars the Standard—Pasteboard Money Drives Out Coin—A Financial Smash not Improbable—Calculating Machines—Chinamen in Yokohama—Statistics of Trade With this Country—Political Sketch of Japan—The Mikado and the Tycoon—A Duel^{[errata 1]} Government—The Late Civil War—North Against the South—A Great Mistake—The Mikado Triumphs and the Tycoon is Deposed—The British Minister Omnipotent in Foreign Affairs—Americans Can Take a Back Seat.

Yokohama, Japan, Dee, 6, 1870.

The islands forming the Japanese empire stretch along the east coast of Asia, and are the barriers which separate a great ocean from a great continent. Except Formosa all the islands of this chain belong to Japan. The number is variously estimated from 1,000 to 3,800, large and small, having an aggregate area of 170,000 square miles, and a population of about 35,000,000. The four largest islands are Nippon, 900 miles long by about 100 miles wide, with about 95,000 square miles; Yesso, about 30,000; Kinsieu, about 16,000; and Sikok about 10,000. Nippon signifies the “Land of the Rising Sun,” and the imperial banner is a red sun on a white ground. Near the center, on the east side of Nippon, is Yokohama, in about the latitude of Philadelphia, although the average temperature is considerably warmer than the corresponding points on the eastern coast of America. Today, the 6th of December, the sun is quite warm, and I sit with my window open, although the nights are chilly as October. Snow sometimes fails to the depth of a few inches, and ice an inch thick is not unusual in January, which is the coldest month of the year. Farther north, in Yesso, they have weather as cold and snow as deep as in

1. Correction: Duel should be amended to Dual