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and unfit for any building intended to be lasting. There is also a stone of white appearance much employed, but it is of little use except for the very questionable expedient adopted by foreigners here which makes it take the place of tiles and plaster as the outside casing for the walls of their wooden houses. The only really serviceable stones at present used in this neighbourhood are got from Idzu about 80 miles distant.
The stone erections which have been executed in Japan are very unimportant. On my making enquiries whether there were any stone houses in Yedo I was informed that the only one was a house built 100 years ago by Nakagawa, then Governor of Osaka. It is constructed of granite brought from the neighbourhood of Osaka, but as it is only 12 feet by 9 feet and 10 feet high it is not a very imposing erection.
If we go back as far as the period of the Pelasgic architecture which dates from 30 centuries ago when the Pelasgi erected throughout Asia Minor and the whole south of Europe those wonderful specimens of their constructive skill which still exist, and if we compare their system of masonry with what may be seen in Japan at the present day, we can appreciate the want of progress made in this country. The walls of the Pelasgic erections were formed of stones of immense size put together without mortar. The stones when taken from the quarries were cut into irregular polygons and placed together in such a manner as to make the different faces of the geometrical figures which they employed coincide. This system of building resembles very closely what is to be seen at the Castle of Osaka, or at the moats and gateways of the Castle of Yedo. But while the Pelasgi themselves gradually improved and adopted the use of square stones laid on a flat bed, while in later years the ancient Romans gave a further impetus to the science and have left such specimens of their skill and knowledge of the properties of materials as their aqueducts and great roads, the Japanese have not moved; they still employ the same crude systems of
