Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/105

 allied powers, who sunk his gunboats, dismounted his cannon, and threatened to burn the town if his piratical attempts were renewed.

All night we coasted along the western shore of Kiusin, and soon after daylight we passed close to a remarkable gateway, which lies directly in our track. It is formed of two tall masses of granite, fifty feet apart, and perhaps one hundred and fifty in height, and pointed at the top. Between these two pillars, by some convulsion of nature, is lodged an immense boulder of rock. The water is deep on all sides at the base and between these pillars, and through this natural gateway a fleet might sail in grand procession.

It was a beautiful morning when we steamed in towards the entrance of Nagasaki harbor, which to our eyes seemed completely hidden from view. After twisting and turning round one island after another the long bay became visible with the town at the further end, clustering at the foot of a range of hills, and in some places creeping up the terraced sides nearly to the summit. The bay is most spacious, and so completely land-locked as to be secure against the most violent gales or typhoons. Just at the entrance to the inner harbor we pass close to an island of perhaps one hundred acres, with a steep, rocky precipice toward the sea, and a gradual slope on the opposite side next to the main land. This little islet, which now looks so bright and pleasant in the early morning sun, is said to be the place where twenty thousand native Christians were slaughtered, being driven up the sloping bank and forced over the edge of the precipice to be dashed upon the rocks a hundred feet below. The same year when the last of the Roman Catholic converts were buried under the ruins of the captured city of Nagasaki, or hurled from this rocky islet, just two hundred and fifty years ago, a few exiles landed on Plymouth Rock, in a newly discovered continent, where they were destined to plant the seeds of a Protestant faith and found a great Protestant empire. And it was the descendants of these Pilgrim Fathers who, two centuries later, were the first among Western nations to bring a lapsed Heathen race once more within the circle of Christian communion, and invite them anew to take their place in the family of civilized nations.

In the harbor of Nagasaki we find a large fleet of foreign vessel, besides almost