first students. There have always been American professors at
Sapporo--its first president came from Massachusetts--and the
professorship of English has always been held by an American.

The 50 acres of elm-studded land in which the University buildings
stand are a surprise, for the elm grows nowhere else in Japan but
Hokkaido.[240] The extent of the University's landed possessions is
also unexpected. There are two training farms of 185 and 260 acres
respectively, beautifully kept botanic gardens, a tract of 15,000
acres on which there are already more than a thousand tenants, and
300,000 acres of forests in Hokkaido, Saghalien and Korea. Four or
five times as many students as can be admitted offer themselves at
Sapporo.

There is in Hokkaido an agricultural and rural life conceived for a
country where stock may be kept and a farmer does not need to practise
the superintensive farming of Old Japan. At the first University farm
I looked over it was clear that not only American but Swedish, German
and Swiss farming practice had had its influence. No longer was the
farmer content with mattocks, hoes and flails. A silo dominated the
scene, and maize, eaten from the cob in Old Japan, was a crop for
stock.[241] I also noticed crops of oats and rye.

I arrived in Hokkaido in the last week of August in a linen suit and
was glad to put on a woollen one. By September 29 it was snowing.
Snow-shoes were shown among the products of the island at the
prefectural exhibition. Canadians have likened the climate of Hokkaido
to that of Manitoba. Hokkaido is on the line of the Great Lakes, but
the cold current from the North makes comparisons of this sort
ineffective. It is only in southern Hokkaido that apples will grow.
Thirty years ago wolves and bear were shot two miles from Sapporo and
bear may still be found within ten miles.

The sea fisheries of Hokkaido are valuable but agriculture and
forestry are greater money makers. Even without forestry agriculture
is well ahead of factory industry, which is also eclipsed by mining.
Industry is aided by the presence of coal. Among manufactures, brewing
stands out even more conspicuously than wood-pulp making or canning.
One of the three best-known beers in Japan comes from Hokkaido.[242]
In contrast with the situation in Old Japan, where the land is half
paddy and half upland, there is in Hokkaido only a ninth of the
cultivated land under rice.[243] When I was in Hokkaido there were
600,