eniable
that the Japanese have good reason to stand off for strict examination
the ships of other nations that call at their ports. The British and
Chinese have had an experience of the bubonic plague at Hongkong,
and the Japanese are using all the power of arms and the artifice
of science they possess to keep aloof from the disastrous disease,
which is most contagious. The China had called at Hongkong, and
hence the sharp attentions at a coaling station where there are about
seventy-five thousand inhabitants of the Japanese quarters, which are
an exhibit of Old Japan, and most interesting. Nagasaki has, indeed,
the true Japanese flavor. If there had been a sick man on our ship we
should have been quarantined. Further on we were halted in the night
off the city of Kobe, to the sound of the firing of a cannon, for we
had dropped there a passenger, Mr. Tilden, the Hongkong agent of the
Pacific Mail line, and if our ship had been infected with plague he
might have passed it on to Japan! I had gone to bed, and was called
up to confront the representative of the Imperial Government of the
Japanese, and make clear to his eyes that I had not returned on account
of the plague. Authorities of Japan treat people who are quarantined
in a way that removes the stress of disagreeableness. All are taken
ashore and to a hospital. There is furnished a robe of the country,
clean and tidy in all respects. The common clothing is removed and
fumigated. It is necessary for each quarantined person to submit to
this and also to a bath, which is a real luxury, and after it comes a
cup of tea and a light lunch. There was an actual case of plague on an
American ship at this city of Kobe not long ago, at least, it was so
reported with pretty strong corroborative evidence. The symptom in the
case on the ship was that of a fever, probably pneumonia. The man was
landed and examined. The plague fever resembles pneumonia at an early
stage. The Japanese physicians found signs of plague and the end came
soon. The sick man, taken ashore in the afternoon, at nine o'clock
was dead, transferred at once to the crematory, in two hours reduced
to ashes, and the officers of the ship informed that if they wanted
to carry the "remains" to America they would be sealed in a jar and
certified. The ship's officers did not want ashes, and the Japs hold
the jar. They are so "advanced" that cremation is becoming a fad with
them. It would not be surprising to find that the