Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/357

 the many American sailing vessels that come out loaded with kerosene return with cargoes of rags, camphor, and curios, by which general invoice name are included the cheaper porcelains, lacquers, fans, lanterns, toys, and trifles made for the foreign trade.

Kobé, lying at the head of the Inland Sea, sheltered from the ocean, and screened even from the land by the low range of mountains back of it, possesses the best and driest climate of any of the treaty ports now open for the residence of foreigners. The soil is sandy, and the site, facing southward, enjoys to the full the winter sun and summer winds. The town, beginning in lines of houses that run down from each velvet, green ravine in the abrupt hill-wall, slopes steeply to the water’s edge, and there spreads out in a long Bund, one part of which, lined with foreign residences, banks, and consulates, is the pride of Kobé. This foreign Bund is much less picturesque than the native or Hiogo Bund, off which lie hundreds of curious junks, that at night display constellations of softly glowing lanterns on their masts, while the whole harbor and hill-side twinkle with open lights, and the electric search-lights of the men-of-war Hash broad rays over the scene.

At the end of the native Bund Government buildings close the street, and the railway wharf and sea-wall follow a long point of land that runs far out into the bay, and is capped by a fortress with a round stone tower and a light house. A double line of ancient trees marks the course of the Minatogawa, which centuries ago was turned from its proper channel and made to run along this high embankment. A steep slope of forty feet in some places leads from the level of the Hiogo streets to the banks of this watercourse, which are turfed over, shaded with rows and groves of pines and enormous camphor-trees, and made gay with garden-plots and picturesque tea-houses. The dry river-bed is a play-ground 341