Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/383

 either the billets of wood used in cricket, or old boot-soles. These hard blocks are the dried bonito which, shaved on a plane, stewed, and eaten with rice, are a staple of food in both countries, and not unpalatable, as we found while storm-bound on Fuji.

Almost all the coal used in China and Japan, and by the Asiatic fleets of the different nations, comes from the mines on the island of Takashima, at the entrance of Nagasaki’s fiord-like harbor. Cargoes of it have been sent even to San Francisco with profit, although this soft and very dirty fuel is much inferior to the Australian coal. The Takashima mines and the dry-dock at Nagasaki are owned by the Mitsu Bishi company, which retained those properties when it sold its steamship line to the Government, and the coal-mine brings in two million yen a year to its owners. Its deepest shaft is only one hundred and fifty feet down, and barges carry the coal from the mouth of the shafts to the waiting ships in harbor.

In 1885. the year of the great cholera epidemic, the village of mining employés was almost depopulated. The harbor was nearly deserted, the American and English mission stations were closed, and the missionaries and their families tied to Mount Hiyeizan. Only the Catholic fathers and the nuns remained, much to the concern of the governor and officials, who begged them to go. On our way to China we touched at Nagasaki while the epidemic was at its height, but no passenger was allowed to go ashore, and all day we kept to the decks that were saturated with carbolic acid. It took six hours to coal the ship, and from noon to sundown we beheld a water carnival. As the first coal-barge drew near, a man in the airy summer costume of the harbor country—which consisted of a rope around his waist—jumped over the side and swam to the stern of our steamer. He was like a big, brown frog kicking about in the water, and when he 367