the rest of the world. Being populous, and marked by striking and peculiar features, it has, notwithstanding the complete state of insulation in which it holds itself from other nations, attracted a large share of the curiosity of Europe.

Japan consists of three principal islands, one large, and two smaller, which, being separated from each other by narrow channels, form altogether one long, winding, irregular range of territory. The entire length, in one oblique line, from point to point, scarcely falls short of 1000 miles; while the breadth varies from 40 or 50 to 200.

The aspect of Japan is bold, varied, abrupt, and striking, without any single feature that is very prominent. Rugged chains traverse its interior, from several of which volcanic fire is thrown up; and Fusi, the highest, is covered with almost perpetual snow. Niphon, the largest, is about 800 miles long; Kiusiu, 150 miles long by 120 broad; Sikoke, 90 long by 50 broad. The other islands are mere detached and local objects. The southern part of the large contiguous island of Jesso, is completely colonised and possessed by the Japanese. Much of the surface of Japan consists of rich valleys and extending plains, on which most of the articles of tropical produce grow in great abundance. It was entirely unknown to the ancients, and is not mentioned by any of their historians. The empire, however, has records, which affect to detail its revolutions for a period long anterior to that which we are justified in assigning to the origin of human society. The intercourse of Europeans with Japan, which is to us the most interesting part of history, commenced in the sixteenth century. The Portuguese, who were the first explorers of this as well as of every other part of the Asiatic coast, did not at first encounter that deadly jealousy with which Japan was afterwards closed against Europeans. Not only were they allowed to establish a factory, and carry on a great trade at Firando, but no opposition was made to the introduction of missionaries, for diffusing the Catholic religion. St. Francis Xavier, the celebrated apostle of the East, made Japan the great theatre of his preaching. After some obstacles, considerable progress was made; several of the princes or tributary kings, with a great number of their subjects, embraced the new faith; and an embassy was even sent to Philip II. and the pope. In no long time, however, these fair promises began to be clouded. The nobles became impatient of the restraints imposed by their new profession; and the perpetual jealousy of a despotic government was kindled by the introduction of new doctrines, habits, and ideas, from a foreign nation, who might employ this change as a prelude to conquest. Some rash steps taken by the missionaries, and, probably, the report of Portuguese proceedings in other parts of Asia, raised this hostile disposition to the utmost pitch. A general persecution was commenced against all, both native and foreign, who held the new faith; and it was carried on with an unrelenting severity characteristic of the nation, which ended in completely extirpating the Catholic faith. Afterwards the Dutch, by assuming the most submissive deportment, and, as has been alleged, denying the faith on account of which their predecessors had been expelled, succeeded in establishing a factory at Firando. This being soon considered too wide a field, they were removed to the smaller spot of Nangasaki, where they have ever since been allowed to remain under restrictions progressively severe. They have at length been circumscribed as in a prison; allowed, indeed, to carry on a certain portion of trade, but without ever passing the allotted boundaries. All attempts made by other European states have completely failed.

The division of power between the ecclesiastical and military potentate is the most remarkable peculiarity in the government of Japan: the one holds the highest rank, and the first place in the veneration of the whole nation; the other absorbs all the solid realities of power.

The dairi, who resides at Miaco, appropriates the whole revenue of that city and its rich adjoining territory. In order, also, that he may maintain the full pomp of a sovereign, a liberal allowance is held due to him out of the general revenue. This, however, is all in the hands of the cubo, who often finds it inconvenient to make the payment, and has recourse to apologies which, whether satisfactory or not, the other has no means of disallowing. Thus, a proud poverty reigns in this

sacred court, which is greatly increased by the circumstance, that all the members of the blood royal, now amounting to many thousands, must be so maintained as not to bring contempt upon the race.

The cubo, or temporal sovereign of Japan, rules with an authority which admits, in principle, of no limitation. In fact, however, it stands on a very different footing from that of the despotic monarchies of Asia. The provinces are ruled by princes, once warlike and independent, and only reduced, after a hard struggle, to bend to the will of a conqueror. They are obliged to leave the greater part of their family at court as hostages, and themselves to reside there for a great part of the year. When discovered or believed to be engaged in any measure hostile to the government, death is the immediate and irrevocable sentence; and the only mitigation granted is that of being allowed to procure it by their own hands. The laws of Japan, in general, may be said, even more emphatically than those of Draco, to be written in blood. Cutting in pieces, piercing the belly with a knife, immersion in boiling oil, are common modes of punishing the guilty. The parent suffers for the crime of the child, and the child for that of the parent. Of these violent measures, however, the result really is, that the security of person and property is very complete, and that capital punishments are even rendered more rare than in most other nations. Around Nangasaki only, examples of this unrelenting severity continue more frequent, in order to extirpate every remnant of Christianity, and also to punish the instances of contraband traffic which private interest prompts, in the face of the most rigorous prohibitions.

The Japanese rank with the richest and most industrious nations of Asia, though they confine themselves so entirely to their internal resources. In particular, their fertile soil, and even those parts of it to which nature has been least bountiful, are improved with the most exemplary diligence. The basis of their culture is Chinese; and they resemble that people in the extreme care with which manure is collected. Rice is the pride of Japanese agriculture, and the main staff of life. That which is raised on the best soil is said to be finer, whiter, and more easily preserved, than any other in Asia. Next in utility ranks the daid-su, a species of large bean, which, being made into a pulp, serves like butter as a condiment to season many of their dishes. Wheat and barley are also standard grains, though not to an equal extent.

The tea-plant grows without culture in the hedges; ginger, pepper, sugar, cotton, and indigo, are cultivated with success. The fig and the chestnut are their principal fruits. One of the most valuable trees is the Arusi, which yields the varnish employed in the rich lackered ware peculiar to the country. There are few cattle in Japan: a variety of the buffalo, and some small oxen, are employed in agriculture. The horses are small, but not numerous: dogs abound, and a few hogs have been brought from China.

The Japanese do not use much animal food, with the exception of fish, of which there is a great variety; and the whale is highly prized by them, more as an article of food than for the oil. The standard food is hot rice-cakes, along with tea or rice beer.

Japan is considered to be very populous; but statements of the amount are so uncertain as to have been estimated at from 15,000,000 to 50,000,000. Allowing it to be as thickly inhabited as China Proper, it will amount to about the former number. This country is rich in mineral productions, which consist of gold and silver, copper in great abundance and the best in the world, some iron and tin, also sulphur and coal. Pearls and amber are found on the sea-shores in considerable quantities. Manufactures are exerted on the same branches and after the same models as the Chinese. Silk, cotton, porcelain, and lackered ware, in which last they excel, are the chief. They are also well acquainted with the art of working metals and the making of glass.

The Japanese do not themselves carry on foreign commerce, but permit the Chinese and Coreans to trade to Nangasaki; also, the Dutch, who are restricted to a small island, where, subjected to every humiliation, they are allowed to dispose of two annual cargoes. As they make, however, a profit of 20,000l. a year, they continue, notwithstanding some menaces, to brave all the mortifications, and

even dangers, which attend this traffic. Commerce, thus confined almost entirely to the interior of the empire, is very active within that sphere. All the shores and bays appear crowded with barks, conveying from place to place the various products of the provinces. The roads are excellent, and thronged in an amazing degree; they are kept clean by the mere anxiety of the people to collect the mud as manure. The broad and rapid torrents in the mountainous districts are crossed by handsome bridges of cedar, well fenced, and always kept in the most perfect repair.

The Japanese seem, in personal appearance, to be a somewhat altered and improved variety of the Mongols and Chinese. Their eyes are even in a greater degree small, pointed, oblong, sunk in the head, with a deep furrow made by the eyelids; they have almost the appearance of being pink-eyed. Their heads are in general large, and their necks short; their hair is black, thick, and shining from the use of oil. They are, however, robust, well made, active, and easy in their motions. Their complexion, yellow and passing into brown, appears to be entirely produced by the climate; since ladies, who are constantly protected from the heat of the sun, are as white as in Europe.

The national character is strikingly marked, and strongly contrasted with that which generally prevails throughout Asia. The Japanese differ most especially from the Chinese, their nearest neighbours, notwithstanding the resemblance in form and lineaments. Although they are said to make good subjects, even to the severe government under which they live, they yet retain an impatience of control, and a force of public opinion, which renders it impossible for any ruler wantonly to tyrannize over them. Instead of that mean, artful, and truckling disposition, so general among Asiatics, their manners are distinguished by a manly frankness, and all their proceedings by honour and good faith. They are habitually kind and good-humoured, when nothing occurs to rouse their hostile passions, and they carry the ties of friendship even to a romantic height. To serve and defend a friend in every peril, and to meet torture and death rather than betray him, is considered as a duty from which nothing can dispense. The greatest defect seems to be pride, which runs through all classes, rises to the highest pitch among the great, and leads them to display an extravagant pomp in their retinue and establishment, and to despise everything in the nature of industry and mercantile employment. Self-murder here, like duelling in Europe, seems to be the point of honour among the great; and the nobles, even when condemned to death by the sovereign, reserve the privilege of executing the sentence with their own hands. There are two religions in Japan; one native, called the Sintos, at the head of which is the dairi; the other, the Buddha, called here Budso, the same which prevails over all eastern Asia. The Budso gains ascendency by mingling with the original system those attractive accessories which it possesses in common with the Catholic, monasteries, processions, beads, drums, noisy music, and the belief of purgatory; which, though condemned by the pure and orthodox Sintoists, have a general influence over the people. The Sintos profess to believe in a Supreme Ruler of the universe, and among their number is distinguished a class of pure and philosophic worshippers, who entertain lofty conceptions of the Deity, and cultivate the practice of virtue as the chief means of gaining his favour. Their belief, however, being thought to resemble the Christian, fell into some discredit when the latter became the object of such deadly persecution.

Pilgrimage is the custom to which the Japanese adhere with the greatest zeal, and from which they promise themselves the greatest benefit, temporal and spiritual. No one can be accounted at all eminent in sanctity, or have any assurance of the forgiveness of his sins, who has not been once a year at Isje, the grand temple of the Tensio Dai Sir, or first of the celestial spirits, situated in a province of the same name. The roads in summer are completely choked with the crowds of devout worshippers, on their way to the sacred shrine. As many have not the means of paying their own way, a large proportion betake themselves to begging, and, prostrate on the ground, call out to the rich passengers, “A farthing to carry me to Isje!"

The Japanese, in their mode of printing, and their ideas on speculative subjects,

are originally Chinese. They are far, however, from displaying the same proud indifference and disdain of everything foreign. Their minds are active, and imbued with the most eager curiosity on all subjects. On the few occasions allowed to them by the jealous rigour of their government, they have harassed Europeans with multiplied questions respecting those branches of knowledge in which they felt and admitted their superiority.

In travelling, the Japanese spend more time than perhaps any other nation. The main roads are said to be usually as crowded as the streets of the most populous cities in Europe. This is owing to their numerous pilgrimages; to the extent of their inland trade; and, most of all, to the immense retinues which attend the princes in their annual journeys to and from the court of the cubo. The retinue of one of the very first rank is computed to amount to 20,000, and covers the roads for several miles. That such a retinue may pass without inconvenience or collision, all the inns are engaged for a month before; and in all the towns and villages on the route, boards are set up to announce that, on such a day, such a great lord is to pass through.

Jeddo, the capital of Japan, lies at the head of a deep bay on the eastern coast of Niphon, and at the mouth of one of the few rivers which possess any considerable magnitude. It is seven miles long and five broad, and contains many splendid palaces of the great lords, all of whom must reside in it for a great part of the year. The buildings, on account of the frequency of earthquakes, are built of one story only. The palace, however, though equally low, is five leagues in circumference, including a wide exterior area occupied by the spacious mansions of the princes and great lords of the court. The city is subject to dreadful fires, one of which, in 1703, consumed 100,000 houses. It is the seat of varied branches of industry, and carries on also a great internal trade.

Miaco, the spiritual capital of Japan, is still the chief seat of polished manners, refined arts, and intellectual culture. The finest silk stuffs flowered with gold and silver, the richest varnishes, the best painted papers, and the most skilful works in gold, silver, and copper, are here manufactured. It is likewise the centre of literature and science, and most of the works which are published and read in Japan issue from its presses. The lay inhabitants, according to the last enumeration, were 477,000, and the ecclesiastical, including the court, 52,000; making in all, 529,000.

Osaka, at the mouth of the river on which Miaco is situated, is a flourishing sea-port, intersected, like Venice, by numerous canals, which are connected by bridges of cedar.

The Japanese have now occupied all the southern parts of the great island of Jesso which are accessible and improveable. Matsmai, the capital, is supposed to contain 50,000 souls.

Nangasaki, that interesting point at which alone this empire comes in contact with any foreign nation, is a large, industrious, trading town. On a small adjoining island the Dutch are allowed to carry on their scanty commerce. They have here a space of 600 feet long by 120 broad, on which they have erected several large storehouses, and rendered them fire-proof. The most unheard-of precautions are taken to prevent any contraband transaction, commercial or political, and it is confidently asserted that these are insufficient to guard against the powerful impulse of self-interest, and that contraband trade is carried on to a considerable extent.

The strong disposition on the part of the Japanese,-stronger even than the similar feeling which prevails in China,-to have the least possible intercourse with Europeans, has doubtless proceeded from their knowledge of the facts connected with European colonization in India and elsewhere; and however lightly we may esteem the general intellect and polity of these two great Asiatic nations, it can scarcely be doubted that to the rigorous interdiction in question they are indebted for the continuance of their national independence.

OCEANIСА.

OCEANICA is the name recently adopted to designate all the countries which are considered as forming the fifth grand division of the globe. Up to the middle of the last century, and still later, theoretical geographers, from the fanciful idea of the necessity of an equilibrium in the solid parts of the surface of the earth, supposed that a vast continent surrounded the Antarctic Pole; and this imaginary region was called by them Terra Australis. When the errors of these speculative writers were corrected by the voyages and discoveries of Captain Cook, all the islands lying south of Asia and those in the Pacific Ocean had already received peculiar proper names. It did not seem convenient to the geographers of that period to add those islands either to Asia or to America, and they wished, therefore, to devise a name which should comprehend all of these, and at the same time express their position on the globe. The different terms Australia, Australasia, and Oceanica, have been proposed by different writers, of which the last appears to have obtained the ascendency.

The islands composing Oceanica are situated partly to the south of Asia, and partly in the wide Pacific between Asia and America. This portion of the globe began to be discovered after America and the South Seas were known to Europeans. Magellan, who first undertook a voyage round the world, had promised the Spanish monarch, into whose service he entered when he left the Portuguese, that he would arrive at the Moluccas by sailing westward. On this voyage he discovered, March 6, 1521, the Ladrones, or Mariana Islands, a group which constitutes a part of Oceanica. Magellan must, therefore, be regarded as the first discoverer of this portion of the globe, and opened the way for the subsequent discoveries in this quarter. Three hundred years elapsed before all the islands, which now pass under the name of Oceanica, were known to Europeans.

After Magellan, the Spanish navigators continued the process of discovery in this part of the world, particularly Alvaro de Mendana, who, in the last part of the sixteenth century, discovered the Solomon Islands and the Marquesas, and passed through the Society and Friendly Islands without seeing them. Fernandez de Quiros, who had accompanied him on his third voyage, took a southerly direction, and hit upon the part of the Pacific Ocean which contains the most islands. He made known to the world the Society Islands and Terra del Espiritu Santo. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch began to explore this part of the ocean, and, besides several small islands, discovered the large island of Australia, or New Holland, which received its name from them, although there is some reason for supposing that it had been visited by the Portuguese a hundred years earlier; but their discoveries seem to have been concealed by their government, and afterwards forgotten. Tasman, a Dutchman, and Dampier, an Englishman, continued these discoveries. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the English navigators Byron, Wallis and Carteret, and the French Bougainville, exerted themselves to extend the knowledge of Oceanica. But Captain James Cook, who circumnavigated the world from 1768 to 1779, contributed most to the more accurate examination of this portion of the globe, corrected the knowledge of Europeans with regard to the islands already known, again discovered islands before seen, and was the original discoverer of New Caledonia and the Sandwich Islands. After the time of Cook, both the French and English exerted themselves to give the world a better acquaintance with Oceanica. Among the later navigators Entrecasteaux, Grant, La Peyrouse, Baudin, Flinders, Krusenstern, Kotzebue, and Beechey, added to our knowledge of this region.

Many of these islands are extensive countries, and one of them is about equal in area to Europe. The whole surface of the islands may be estimated at from 4 to 5,000,000 of square miles, an extent perhaps nearly equal to one-tenth part of all the land on the globe. The population may be estimated at from 15,000,000 to 20,000,000. No portion of the globe has more numerous inequalities of surface,