Let them alone. They have toiled much and long in an alien land, bearing the insults and often the cuffs of a race they despise. Now they have made their little heap of money, and are going back to spend it with their families and with the sweet certainty that their bones shall rest in their own land. There will be labour again when the voyage is over and they land in Hongkong. In the mean

while, let them

memory,

Muse and brood and live again in
With those old faces of their infancy,

Heap'd over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust shut in an urn of brass.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOME JAPANESE TRAITS.

As we steamed into the bay of Yeddo, Yokohama was dimly discernible under lowering skies and through the mist of incessant rain. In crossing the Pacific we had been cheered by the sight of many sunsets of ever varied beauty. However dull or wet the day, the sunset was rarely missing. Now the sun seemed to have set for ever. It had, we learned on landing, been raining for a fortnight; which was a little hard on Yokohama, since it had had its rains in June and July, and this was its season for fair weather. One of our fellow-passengers was from Glasgow, and as we stood in the Custom House, sheltering from the pitiless rain and wondering how far we should be successful in making a dash into a jinrikisha without getting wet through, he was visibly affected.

"It is just like Glasgae," he murmured,

thinking of the many months that had separated him from home and friends, fog and rain.

But the rain was the only thing homelike in the scene. As the Coptic steamed up to the buoy we caught some indefinite glimpses of Yokohama with the green Bluff which Europeans have wisely marked for their own, and where they live in pretty bungalows set in cool gardens, flanked by tennis lawns.

Even through the rain the bay was a fine sight. All the navies of the world might ride at anchor here safe from the winds that mock at the name of the Pacific. Half a dozen men-of-war were already anchored, notably a Russian ironclad, one of the most beautiful things afloat. England was represented by a single ship, two having been ordered off to Hongkong in view of possibilities that might be created by the trouble agitating France and China. There were ships of larger or smaller tonnage from American and British ports. A Mitsu Bishi steamer came puffing in our wake, arriving from one of the southern Japanese ports and going north at daybreak. One smart steamer moored to the buoy must have been an object of special interest to the Mitsu Bishi people. She is the first comer of a splendid fleet of sixteen steamers now build

ing on the Clyde, and intended to run in competition with the Mitsu line. By October, 1884, this fine fleet of steamers will be coasting round Japan.

Long before the Coptic was made fast to the buoy the bay was alive with sampans, the heavy-looking native boat, with the crews clamorous for fares. The boatmen, standing in the stern vigorously working the colossal oar that sculls the sampan, were dressed for a wet day. It is not many years since the Japanese native costume amongst the lower orders was limited to a hand's-breadth of cloth tied about the loins. The new order of Japanese, impregnated with Western ideas, sternly sets its face against this habitude. The upper classes, laying aside the graceful Eastern robes which their fathers wore, have attired themselves in European dress, which they wear without grace. There seems no

reason why, given a capable tailor, a Japanese gentleman should not look well in broadcloth. As a matter of fact, he never does. From the Mikado down to the merchant or tradesman, a Japanese who wears European dress seems to have bought his suit at a ready-made clothing establishment. Happily the ladies, with instinctive good taste, more generally retain the native costume, with its graceful lines and

soft colours. When they lay it aside for European clothes they lose all their natural taste in colours, and come out with painful contrasts.

The lower classes, compelled by Imperial edict to go about clothed, keep to the native dress, and so obtain a vast advantage over their superiors in station. In fine weather this dress is with the men exceeding scanty, consisting of a blouse and blue cotton drawers, tightly fitting and extending half-way down the thigh. On a day like this they put on wonderful straw cloaks, reaching to the knee, whilst their heads are thatched with wide straw hats of saucer shape. Thus arrayed, with bare brown legs, and brawny arms wielding the gigantic oar, they looked like a regiment of Man-Fridays expectant of Robinson Crusoe's arrival in the Coptic, and eager to welcome him back to island life. Presently, when the rain ceased, the cloaks were dropped off, straw hats pitched aside, and they stood there some forty or fifty of the stalwartest men in either hemisphere. They do not run much to height, but their limbs are magnificent and their energy tireless.

All ages were represented in the sampans, from boys of eight or ten with tremendous biceps and stout calves, to men so old and