ght possibly find what I sought for.

Of course I immediately availed myself of the opportunity to see one
of the many Japanese local exhibitions of which I had heard so much.
It was yet in disorder, but I was, at all events, willingly
admitted, and thus had an opportunity of seeing much that was
instructive to me, especially a collection of rocks from the
neighbourhood. Among these I discovered at last, to my great
satisfaction, some beautiful fossil plants from Mogi, a place not
far from Nagasaki.

Immediately the following morning I started for Mogi, accompanied by
the Japanese attendant I had with me from Kobe, and by another
adjutant given me by the very obliging governor of Nagasaki. We were
to travel across the hills on horseback. I was accompanied, besides
my Japanese assistants and a man from the _Vega_, all on horseback,
by a number of coolies carrying provisions and other equipment. The
Governor had lent me his own horse, which was considered by the
Japanese something quite grand. It was a yellowish-brown stallion,
not particularly large, but very fine, resembling a Norwegian horse,
very gentle and sure-footed. The latter quality was also quite
necessary, for the journey began with a ride up a hundred smooth and
not very convenient stone steps. Farther on, too, the road, which
was exceedingly narrow and often paved with smooth stones, went
repeatedly up and down such stairs, not very suitable for a man on
horseback, and close to the edge of precipices several hundred feet
deep, where a single false step would have cost both the horse and
its rider their lives. But as has been said, our horses were
sure-footed and sure-eyed, and the riders took care in passing such
places not to pull the reins.

None of the mountain regions I have seen in Japan are so well
cultivated as the environs of Nagasaki. Every place that is somewhat
level, though only several hundred square yards in extent, is used
for growing some of the innumerable cultivated plants of the
country, principally rice but as such easily cultivated places occur
in only limited numbers, the inhabitants have by industry and hard
labour changed the steep slopes of the mountains into a succession
of level terraces rising one above the other, all carefully watered
by irrigating conduits.

Mogi is a considerable fishing village lying at the seaside twenty
kilometres south of Nagasaki in a right line, on the other side of a
peninsula occupied by lava beds