RAMBLING NOTES.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume LIII, Issue 2799, 18 August 1903, Page 2

RAMBLING NOTES.

(ByG. J. B.)

(Continued)

Punctually to time onr guide turned up. His name is Ah Cum. He epeake good English and ie well known, having piloted three of the Queen's eons and other members of royalty round Canton. We have to go in ohaire, as thtre ie not room for a rickshaw in the streets, and our bearers etirb off at a good rate. The streets are only about 6ft. wide and crowded with pedestrians, so it is quite a job to get along, and the bearers keep up a continual chat of " Hi Iα la lo !" which, I suppose, means "Give us room." This ie Sunday, but every shop is open and every tradesman hard at work. One street we passed through all were busy making coffins. These are made out of % solid log, sawn in two and hDllowed out with the adze, a butt being left at each end. These aro for the common class, and are planted out on the hillsides without any earth over them and last for years. The better class ore buried in a vault on the hillside in the

shape of a horse shoe, and looking down from any height miles and miles of these oen.eteries can be Been, We were taken to see the City of the Dead, where the ctffia* are all exposed and the friends come and mourn over them. You go from room to room and find friends mourning in most of them. One of these cffi-is was an extra good one and coat beivg beautifully lacquered, There are so many things to be aeon in this wonderful city that ib would be impossible to describe them fully. Went up to see the water dock, which is a very old Chinese invention and gives the time to the city. Ib is worked by four copper buckets of water, which by dripping Irom one to the other drive the clock for 24 hours, pushing up a tablet at the bottom, showing the figures in Chinese. Next was bhe cxc cut ion ground ; but there were no victims 10-' Jay. There were four about a week ago. Then we came to the prison, where we eiw a hundred or so prisoners with light chains on their legs and arms. They saem quite phased to see you and don't forget to beg. Ojo of them had heavy irons on him, and was confined in a strong wooden cage so narrow that ho could not sit down. Beyond v the s'storeyed pagoda, a building 1200 years old, from which you have a capibal view of ;the c if y. Looking down upon it you see nothing but the brown tiled roofe of the houses ; not a sign of a s reet ovvin/? to their narrowness. The cily U surrounded by a strong brick wall, and divided into 9 subdivisions, which are closed at night co that you oannob get from one to the other. This ie for d&ferce purposes. Hundreds of old cannon are scattered f.bout the walls. We went next to the examination ground, ■a here scholars from all parts of China came to pass their examinations. Each scholar In the nnmber of 9,000, had a separate com' pai tmeat about sft wide and Bft deep, brick waile, with a email table in centre. Here he had to step without anything to eat u&ti! he passed or failed. No chance of cribbing lure. Shopping is a great attraction here, and when you g?fc out to go into any of the shops you have quite a crowd all round you. Saw there weaving pieces of tilk with a very primitive loom, bub the pattern turned out w»s beautiful. A boy up aloft regulated the flowered device by pulling certain strings which seemed a perfect puzzle. Labour is bo cheap here that you don't sco much machinery at work, and you will see a boy or man at work with a big frame saw on a log of wood, 12 x 12, cutting it into boards single handfd, when the blade of the s>w will only be 2in. wide. Furniture miking is another large industry here,mr>stly made out of blackwood and beautifully carvad. Fan making is also a very big line here, and you can buy them from a to £50 each. Gold and silver smiths, tin and brasß workers, are here by the mile, alt in poky little shops, and mostly sitting on the floor doing treir work, with charcoal fires f< r melting the metal?. Barbers and cook' ing shope abound by the hundred, and the oily greasy looking stuff that they coneume would turn most European stomachs. We must have gone through about 20 miles of these narrow streets, and were glad to get back to our steamer aud watch the moving panorama of boats on the river, for they wero still going as thisk as ever.

A portion of the narrative has been mislaid, in which a description U given of the journey from Canton to Jipan. Writii g from Kyoto the narrator proceeds as i>l , low 3:—

In many of the places no»" they provide you with au txtri large sandal that goes right over the boot and ties. This placo is full of Kinples aad you see the natives pray ing and burning incense at them all day. Oi.e could write a buok on the kind of tools the Japs use ; but the saw is remark , ablo. It ie just the shap9 of a butcher's cleaver, ard as thick as a billhook at the bick, and, with a tool like this, you will see them sawing, single handed, loga up to 3ft in diameter.

We sail for Kobe, through the inland eea for 250 miles, and it is as smooth as a lake, and beautiful scenery anil villages are passed on both sides. The shipping ie immense and thousands of fishing jucke and small boats are passed co close that you would tbiuk we would run them down. To see the number of bo-ts in the fishing trade you would wonder that there is a fish left in these waters. I had the opportu ity of visiting a Government Aquarium at Oβ. ka, and the variety of fish is surprising. Some of them are most bemtituily marked like a z bra, I saw a spider crab over eight feet from leg to leg, The Japanese do quite a large trade in tnuing fish of all kit.dn, and here you may see lar,e gold fith with 12 tails on them. Seaweed has a commercial value here, and is carefully sorted and dried and ptcked in large bundles, as it Is made into soups aud jellies, I believe. Shatk fins arc aleo valuable—about JBSO per ton. Kobe is a large city, about 16,000 iurubi tant f, , It is a great shipping place, and a large number of exports go from here to all parts of the world, for it is the centre of the matting industry, for which there is great sa , e in nil parts of the globe. Stayed here two days and then took trein for Osaka, where the exhibition is now beiag held. This city is the Manchester and Birmingham of /apin, and thy tall chimneys of hundreds of factories can be seen miles away. We puh in five days here, and saw a graa<; deal of the place. I had no idea thai the Japanese were co far advanced, but I just say th»b to compare New Zealand to Japan would be absurd, for, as far as a cation goes in com' parißon with this oountry, we are only euck' ing the bottle yet. The population of Osaka is 822,000, but owing to the icflux of visitors there mu3t be over a million at present. We are quite a novelty to some of the coun , try people who have never seen Europeans before, and ween we stop to make purchases we have a whole troop of men, women, and children around us. To disperse the.il 1 flung a few coppers amongst the youngsters, which made matters ten times worse, as thtj followed us in shoals. It is surprising to see the number of children here. Thf.y art in thousands, and little mites of 7 and 8 have babies strapped on their backs. It was a funny tight to see about 400 pouring out of an infant school the other day, all with big umbtellas ai.d w .oden cloge, mating a great noise on the stone pa emenr. The prpulation of Japan is now 49 millionp, and from what 1 can see if incceasing rapidly The exhibition is on a very large scale com , pared to auything in New Zealand. You can here see the silk being wound from the cocoon, and spun and woven into dress silk; also see the tea being worked up from the green leaf into dried tea. It takes a lot oi handling before It is ready for use. There was a great strike on amongst the rickshaw boys when we arrived for an increaee in fares. It lasted three days and stopped the traffic, and as there are 60,000 rickshaw boys, it was v big strike. Thrre are twenty oil lauuohes on the rivars here running to the exhibition and other plaoee. This city is called the Venice of Japan, as it ie intersected by about 100 canals. I went up one of these in a launch for over 3 miles, vied for the timber trado, and there were millions of logs on both sides piled up 20ft high There are over 200,000,000 acres of forest in Japan, and the timber trade is enormous. The Japanese are the most artistic people in the world, and te see some of the designs on their silk screens and pictures is a treat, for You seldom see eves two designs alike, and the same applies to their ivory carving. Some of the silk picturoa in the exhibition were marked as high as £1,000, The fishe'

lies department was mosb interesticg, and took up a very large space. Every kind of teband trawl was spread out showirg how they were worked, and model* of junka and fisherman at work catching fish. Altogether ; lie fisheries of Japan amounts to some mil" lions a yen , . Tne Japs now make their own railway carriages and engine?, and the rail , way Eorvice is heaps ahead of Ne»v Zealand. There are up to'date dining cars, and a boy to every carriage who waite on you, biuehee your clothes aud Lai before you leave, looks after your luggage, &nd tows down to the ground when you go.