Page:Farmers of forty centuries.djvu/392

374 trains were absent, their place being supplied by cooled bottled waters of various brands, including soda-water, sold by Japanese boys at nearly every important station. Close connection was made by trains with steamers to and from Japan and we went directly on board the Iki Maru which was to weigh anchor for Moji and Shimonoseki at 8 P. M. Although small, the steamer was well equipped, providing the best of service. We were fortunate in having a smooth passage, anchoring at 6:30 the next morning and making close connection with the train for Nagasaki, landing at the wharf with the aid if a steam launch.

Our ride by train through the island of Kyushu carried us through scenes not widely different from those we had just left. The journey was continuously among fields of rice, with Korean features strongly marked but usually under better and more intensified culture, and the season, too, was a little more advanced. Here the plowing was being done mostly with horses instead of the heavy bullocks so exclusively employed in Korea. Coming from China into Korea, and from there into Japan, it appeared very clear that in agricultural methods and appliances the Koreans and Japanese are more closely similar than the Chinese and Koreans, and the more we came to see of the Japanese methods the more strongly the impression became fixed that the Japanese had derived their methods either from the Koreans or the Koreans had taken theirs more largely from Japan than from China.

It was on this ride from Moji to Nagasaki that we were introduced to the attractive and very satisfactory manner of serving lunches to travelers on the trains in Japan. At important stations hot tea is brought to the car windows in small glazed, earthernware teapots provided with cover and bail, and accompanied with a teacup of the same ware. The set and contents could be purchased for five sen, two and a half cents, our currency. All tea is served without milk or sugar. The lunches were very substantial and put together in a neat sanitary manner in a three-compartment wooden box, carefully made from clear lumber joined with