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The water you see filling that long level beyond the town is part of the great arm of the Pacific that they call the Inland Sea. Csaka, the largest manufacturing city in the empire, is only eighteen miles away across the bay behind that sturdy pine tree.

Forty years ago there was only and insignificant little town here. Today there are considerably over a quarter of a million people and the city has a larger foreign trade than even Yokohama or Tokyo. In 1868 it was made a treaty port and ever since there has been a strong representation of foreigners here engaged in business. Those smart two-story houses down below the hill are private residences of foreigners. The Japanese themselves do now and then build and furnish houses after the European manner, but most of them naturally prefer their own mode of life, and, in this land of earthwuakes there is certainly good sense in keeping to one-story structures without chimneys. (Morse's "Japanese Homes" gives admirable explanations of all the whys and wherefores in the native house-building.)

These are lower-class townspeople whom you meet up here on the hill. Babies have their heads shaven, but the hair of boys this size is allowed to grow and kept much like that of English or American lads.

Do you notice that the young woman carries a baby strapped upon her back? That is the universal mode of baby-tending here in Japan-- even little girls of seven and eight often carry baby brothers in that fashion and run about playing games. 

(See Chamberlain's "things Japanese." Henry Norman's "Real Japan," Griffis' "The Mikado's Empire," etc. Ransome's "Japan in Transition" gives interesting information about industrial and commercial affairs.)

From Notes of Travel, No. 9, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.


Looking from the heights of Suwayama over Kobe, Japan.
Vue de Kobe des hauteurs de Suwayama, Japon.
Aussicht von der Höhen von Suwayama über Kobe, Japan.
Vista de Kobe desde las alturas de Suwayama, Japón
Видь высотъ Суваіама, черезъ Кобе, Японія.