Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/68

 made of wooden buttons strung on a wire frame, much like those used in primary schools at home. Every shop is provided with these machines, as are, also, the banking offices, where the receiving and paying tellers are generally Chinamen. There are hundreds of Chinese here holding the positions of higher servants and compradores for the hotels, banks and business houses. They are to be seen in the streets nicely dressed in silk and broadcloth, and as many of them occupy positions of trust in the largest establishments, they consider themselves very much above the natives. The “Japs,” in writing, use the Chinese characters, and like them, commence at the right hand upper corner, the lines running from top to bottom of the page.

Yokohama is the great shipping emporium of Japan. The present United States Consul at this port, Mr. Lyons, unlike some of his predecessors, is very popular with the American merchants here, and has the reputation of being a thoroughly upright, honest man. The importance of the trade will be seen from the fact that the export of merchandize to the United States in 1870 will exceed five and a half million of dollars. The greater part of this is tea, of which the export to the United States in 1870 will hebe [sic] over fourteen million pounds, paying a duty to the government of $3,500,000. Nearly all the Japan tea goes to America. The first cargo ever shipped was to England, but finding no sale there, was sent to New York. Unlike the Chinese teas, it is all uncolored, the natural leaf, and free from the copperas poison of the green teas of China.

The political situation of Japan has changed so materially within the last two years that no books or account of the method of government written five years ago are at all applicable to the present status of affairs. By Japanese chronology the history of the Mikados, or Emperors, gees back six hundred years before the Christian era. Honors were paid to him as the great high priest, son of heaven, and absolute spiritual as well as temporal ruler. His person was so sacred as to be veiled from all profane eyes. If he ever left his palace at Miako, every face was laid in the dust, as if in the presence of a god. In the twelfth century one of the most powerful of the Daimios, a man of great ability and ambition, during a period of civil commotion, assumed the real sovereignty of the empire, under the name