Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/405

Rh Spaniards in 1637 only the Dutch and the Chinese were allowed to trade here, until it was opened for foreign trade in 1859. There are large British and Russian colonies here. The three-mile-long narrow harbour is a good one and also very pretty.

The famous Jimmu Tenno was the first Mikado and was born 660

Before 7 a.m. we were aroused by the Japanese Health Officers for inspection, and the ship-coaling operations began. All the coaling was done by men and young girls by passing quite small baskets with great rapidity over their heads. A C.P.R. boat had 1360 tons of coal put on board by these girls in four hours! They were ugly, thick-set creatures, but very wonderful. They all wore round their heads those cheap but wonderfully artistic towels, which you buy in rolls, and cut off a bit as you want it, and which are fascinating things.

A girl and man rowed me ashore in a sampan, and I floundered about the streets in the detestable mud. The inscriptions on the shops were in English and Russian. I had no opportunity of trying the kin-gyoku-to—the famous jelly made out of seaweed.

Many of the men in Japan at the first glimpse give one a shock, dressed as they are—or were on this day—in long ulsters, and fearful pot-hats of German origin!

A Scottish girl who had been a fellow-passenger landed here to be married. The Captain went with her to be a witness to the ceremony.

The picturesque islets which dot the harbour, and that group of three islands outside it, are known to the whole world by Japanese prints and drawings, and struck one as being so like those Japanese drawings, though one ought to