The Inland Sea and Nagasaki
can then lead one up the terraces of the public gardens near the O Suwo temple to see the tree that General Grant set out. When he came to Nagasaki, both the General and Mrs. Grant planted trees to commemorate the visit, and his autograph certificate recording the event was cut in fac-simile on the face of the large, irregular stone between the two saplings. Though the trees have been most carefully tended, one died and had to be replaced, but both now promise to spread into a generous shade. At the tea-house where the great Japanese dinner was given by the local governor, with maiko and geisha and jugglers performing between the courses, they still preserve the floor-cushion on which their illustrious guest was seated, and bring it out to show to favored Americans. To the Japanese, General Grant and Commodore Perry mean America; nor could we have sent them better types than the great sailor who peaceably opened Japan to the world, and the greater soldier who made use of war only to insure enduring peace.
The Portuguese and Dutch have left records of their occupancy here in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Francis Xavier and the Jesuit fathers who succeeded him converted thousands of Japanese to Christianity, and though it had been supposed that the persecutions and tortures under Iyeyasu had destroyed the Christians, the opening of the country after the Restoration discovered whole communities of them near Nagasaki, who retained their belief, wore the peculiar dress prescribed for them by the Jesuits, knew the prayers and forms, and made the sign of the cross. Nothing in the Book of Martyrs exceeds the tortures and suffering of these Christians, who would not deny their religion, nor tread upon the paper picture of Christ, as they were bidden to do. The tradition goes that at Pappenberg, the precipitous little island at the mouth of the harbor, thousands of converts were forced by spear-
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