trees in the outer
archipelago of northern Norway. It is possible to collect there in a
few hours as many annuals of this group as in fertile Japan in as
many days. There are parts of Japan, covered with thick woods and
thickets of bushes, where during a forenoon's excursion one can
scarcely find a single crustacean, although the ground is full of
deep, shady clefts in which masses of dried leaves are collected,
and which therefore ought to be an exceedingly suitable haunt for
land mollusca. The reason of this poverty ought perhaps to be sought
in the want of chalk or basic calcareous rocks, which prevails in
the parts of Japan which we visited.

After the Swedish-Dutch minister had further given us a splendid
farewell dinner at the Grand Hotel, to which, as before, the
Japanese minsters and the representatives of the foreign powers in
Japan were invited, we at last weighed anchor on the 11th October to
prosecute our voyage. At this dinner we saw for the first time the
Chinese embassy which at the time visited Japan with the view of
settling the troublesome Loo-Choo affair which threatened to lead to
a war between the two great powers of Eastern Asia. The Chinese
ambassadors were, as usual, two in number, being commissioned to
watch one over the other. One of them laughed immoderately at all
that was said during dinner, although he did not understand a word.
According to what I was told by one who had much experience in the
customs of the heavenly empire, he did this, not because he heard or
understood anything worth laughing at, but because he considered it
good manners to laugh.

Remarkable was the interest which the Chinese labourers settled at
Yokohama took in our voyage, about which they appeared to have read
something in their own or in the Japanese newspapers. When I sent
one of the sailors ashore to execute a commission, and asked him how
he could do that without any knowledge of the language, he replied,
"There is no fear, I always meet with some Chinaman who speaks
English and helps me." The Chinese not only always assisted our
sailors as interpreters without remuneration, but accompanied them
for hours, gave them good advice in making purchases, and expressed
their sympathy with all that they must have suffered during our
wintering in the high north. They were always cleanly, tall, and
stately in their figures, and corresponded in no particular to the
calumnious descriptions we so often read of this people