ado to sink
the vessel, have left a memory in the minds both of the Government
and of the people, which may in the future lead them to a perhaps
unwise but fully justified exertion of their strength were such a
deed to be repeated.

The first impression of the Japanese, both men and women, is
exceedingly pleasant, but many Europeans who have lived a
considerable time in the country say that this impression is not
maintained, a circumstance which in my belief depends more on the
Europeans themselves than on the Japanese. For the European
merchants are said not to find it so easy to cut gold here with a
case-knife as before, and the ambassadors of the Great Powers find
it day by day more difficult to maintain their old commanding
standpoint towards a government which knows that a great future is
before the country, if inconsiderate ambition or unlooked-for
misfortune do not unexpectedly hinder its development. Another
reproach, that the Japanese can imitate what another has done, but
is unable himself to invent anything new, appears on the other hand
to be justified in the meantime. But it is unreasonable to demand
that a nation should not only in a few decades pass through a
development for which centuries have been required in Europe, but
also immediately reach the summit of the knowledge of our time so as
to be at the same time creative. But it would be wonderful, if the
natural science, literature, and art of the nineteenth century,
transplanted among a gifted people, with a culture so peculiar and
so pervasive, and with an art-sense so developed as those of Japan,
did not in time produce new, splendid, and unexpected fruit. The
same irresistible necessity which now drives the Japanese to learn
all that the European and the American know, will, when he has
reached that goal, spur him on to go further up the Nile river of
research.

A short distance beyond Takasaki the road to the volcano to which we
were on our way, was no longer along Nakasendo, and we could
therefore no longer continue our journey in carriages drawn by
horses, but were compelled to content ourselves with _jinrikishas_.
In these, on the 29th of September, we traversed in five and a half
hours the very hilly road to Ikaho, noted for its baths, situated at
a height of 700 metres above the sea. The landscape here assumes a
quite different stamp. The road which before ran over an unbroken
plain, thickly peopled, and cultivated like a garden, now begi