CHAPTER X. PHYSICAL FEATURES AND PRODUCTIONS AND MATERIAL WEALTH AND RESOURCES OF JAPAN. EFORE discussing, as we observed, the evolutions and progress gen erally of Japan and her relations to this country in latter days, it is fitting that we invite our readers to a brief outline of its physical features and productions and material wealth and resources, with which an area not quite half as large as the great State of Texas, feeds and clothes and maintains forty millions of subjects in peace and plenty, besides an imperial establishment and an army and navy and a great export trade, which in recent years has not only commanded but won the respect of all nations. We shall not go into minute details, giving routes and inklings by the wayside as have the traditional "globe-trotters," flitting on swift wings, drawing skeleton maps, and gleaning from the geographies of the outof-print histories of the Empire of half a century agone. It is rather the headlands only, the important and distinguishing marks of practical interest to our American countrymen that we shall attempt to describe. Brief reference has already been made to the forestry and flora and the fruits and the life sustaining productions of the soil of Japan. Of the forestry growth of Japan, the most important are the indigenous bamboo cane, the evergreen oak, the northern pine and fir tree, and a tree resembling the famed "red wood" of California. Most of the deciduous tree types of our American forests are found here. The cottages of the people, forty millions in number, are erected sometimes of this fine old red. wood, but generally with the bamboo cane. It is used for thatching the roof, for their sliding-panel-doors-for everything, in fine, useful or ornamental for the home. The tender buds are used for food, the large-sized canes for water-pipes and mains, and with the seasoned cane their skilled artisans fashion the most beautiful, as well as useful, household furniture and valuable curios for commerce. In their more northern forests of Yesso, the bear, the largest known to the animal world, is found, and the ape in the lower latitudes. The tiger and the leopard, of a less ferocious type, also exist in the far interor and among the mountains. Of domestic animals, the horses are few, and so as to cattle and sheep, and especially swine, which last, though the great delicacy of Chinese epicures, is never reared or consumed in Japan. |