With interest ever deepening, through the day we saw the picturesque shores of Japan gradually displayed as we approached, broken as they are, and as artists must exult to see them, into hills and headlands, valleys and sand-beaches, rocks and caves, in indescribable variety. On many an island and promontory stand lighthouses—those beacons of civilisation of which any nation may well be proud.* The days being short at this season of the year, night came on, and the lighthouses blazed forth long before we reached the roadstead of Yokohama, where steam-launches term indifferently in this case. Yaraa, Taka, and San or Zun are all applied to mountains according to their position or im[)ortance.

* " The first view of the coast of Japan which one obtains after five or six days' voyage from Hong Kong is a very fair specimen of tlie coast scenery in general. Hills of peculiarly sharp outline, and which bear unmistakable signs of volcanic formation, send their rounded spurs out seaward in such a way as to form along the entire coast a series of small bays, in some of the more protected of which may be seen little nests of grey huts, with their inevitable accompaniment of single -masted junks lying at anchor close in to tiie shore. Every now and then a little white sail will be seen skimming along pa.st the shore, the hull of tlie vessel often being out of sight to passengers on the mail steamers, wliich naturally give the wast a wide berth. At times the hills will fall away enough to give you a glimpse into the interior of the country, wlien you see others, range beyond range, of the same varied and picturesque forms, increasing apparently in height in proportion to their distance inland. With the exception of those nearest to the coast, these hills appear pretty thickly wooded, and even the barer parts are overgrown with grass which in the winter is of a deep straw color, the result of the scorching sun of the preceding summer. This scenery, varying slightly at times of course, repeats itself continually as you pass along towards the Gulf of Yedo. Now and then the shore becomes more rocky, and the surf forms a broken line of white as far as the eye can reach.