o slip across the alley and visit the
ancient island of Zipango.

Zipango, Nipon, Japon, have one consistent syllabic element, and the
rulers of the country are so desirous that it should take its place
among the civilized nations of the world that they have not shown to any
liberal extent the native machinery, except in the form of models which
attract but little attention, a few machines for winding and measuring
silk, some curious articles of bamboo and ratan, fishpots and baskets,
and cutlery of native shapes.

[Illustration: TOOL-GRINDING EMERY-WHEEL.]

The exclusiveness which had marked the policy of Japan from time
immemorial, and which was somewhat roughly intruded upon by Captain
Perry, and subsequently by other explorers and diplomatists, has given
place to a change which amounts to a revolution. Japan, under the name
of Zipango, took its place on the map of the world some time before
Columbus discovered, unwittingly to himself, that a continent intervened
between Western Europe and Eastern Asia. When Columbus made his voyage
in search of Asia, assisted by those very estimable persons Ferdinand
and Isabella, it was on the part of the latter intended as a flank
movement against the Portuguese, who, consequent upon the discovery of
the passage of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama, had obtained a
patent from the pope for the eastern route to India. The globe of Martin
Behaim at that time depicted Zipango as off the coast of Asia and near
the longitude actually occupied by the Carolinas and Florida, the
eastward extension of Asia being fearfully exaggerated. The globe of
John Schoener, of 1520, fourteen years after the death of Columbus, had
Zipango in the same place, and Cuba alongside of it, ranging north and
south. So loath were geographers to give up preconceived ideas. Columbus
died supposing he had discovered "fourteen hundred islands and three
hundred and thirty-three leagues of the coast of Asia," and hence our
group are called the West Indies, and our aborigines Indians. Such are
one's reflections as one wanders in the Japanese section, dreaming among
the objects of a land which has just awaked from what may be called the
sleep of centuries.

Italy has much that is valuable as well as beautiful in other classes,
but her attempts in agricultural machinery are but rude. Here, for
example, is a plough. Well, perhaps it is not exactly that which made
the trench over which Remus leaped, to be slain by