Jinrikisha Days in Japan
While Nagasaki was the first port opened to foreigners, it now has fewer foreign residents than any other. There are large mission establishments, but, outside of their community, the society open to the consuls and merchants is very limited when the harbor is empty of men-of-war. Their villas on the heights are most luxurious, and the views these command down the narrow fiord and out to the ocean entrancing. Life and movement fill the harbor below. Ships, junks, and sampans come and go; bells strike in chorus around the anchorage-ground; whistles echo, bands play, saluting and signalling flags slip up and down the masts, and the bang and long-rolling echo of the ships’ guns make mimic war. At night the harbor lights are dazzling, and the shores twinkle to the very hill-tops. The crowded masts of native junks are as trees hanging full of golden, glowing spheres, and electric flash-lights from the men-of-war illuminate sections of hill and town and harbor niches.
The Nagasaki winter is delightful—clear, bright, sunny days continually succeeding each other; but in summer-time the climate leaves much to be desired. The air is heavy with moisture, and when the thermometer registers 90° there is a steamy, green-house temperature that encourages the growth of the hundred varieties of ferns that amateur botanists collect on these hills. This damp heat is exhausting and wearing, trying to temper and patience, and annihilating to starch and artificial crimps. Man’s energy fails with his collar, and although all the sights of the empire were just over the hill, the tourist would miss them rather than go to see them. Everything mildews then; boots taken off at night are covered with green mould in the morning, gloves spot and solidify, and fungi gather on any clothing packed away. Every morning, on balconies and clothes-lines, is aired and sunned the clothing that nevertheless mildews. Only a strong sense of reverence for a hero’s memory
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