The next morning we were ashore before breakfast to see the fish market, for Nagasaki is one of the largest fishing ports in the world, and it has been proved that there are 600 specimens of fish brought into this market, by a gentleman who has drawn them and written a book on the subject.
Nagasaki has several canals, and is a quaint little town developed from a fishing village, but with nothing of much interest in it. We spend the day as usual in the shops, plunging with a desperation born of the feeling that it is really our last chance of buying in Japan; we are in an agony of fear up to the last minute lest our purchases should not arrive before the steamer sails at 4 o'clock.
And it is in the dull light of a clouded afternoon that we glide out of the beautiful harbour of Nagasaki, and in a few hours even the coast line is lost to us, and fair Nippon, the Land of the Rising Sun (such an appropriate name for the swiftly progressing Island Empire) is a remembrance of the past. Bright memories will linger with us in a medley dream, of rosy sunsets, of clear skies in those marvellous pale washes, of gaudy temples with their moss-grown steps, hallowed by the solemn hush around, mingling with the pictures of those queer, dark little shops, of tiny gardens comprised in tiny courtyards, of gentle little men and women in flapping cotton garments, of golden lacquer, red and black, of gorgeous kakemonos, bronzes, cloisonné, of delicately tinted textures, and above all of solemn gilt Buddhas, seated on lotus-leaved pedestals, and gleaming at us from out dark corners.
We pass out into the grey space of the Yellow Sea.
The turbid orange-coloured waters of the great Yangtze are around us--"the river of the golden sands," far too poetical a name for the muddy waters, that with a strong current swish and eddy against the ship's side.
The spirit of travel that rises strong within you as you approach the landing to a new country, is discouraged by that thin line of flat, ugly land, which is all we see on that dull October morning, through a mist of rain, of the coast of China.
The Yellow Land! Rightly named, indeed. The sea is yellow, the rivers are yellow, the land is yellow, the people, too, are yellow--and the Dragon Flag is yellow. Yellow, too, might China be with gold if only her rulers, the mandarins, would let her people give scope to their abilities, develop the rich resources of an as yet barely touched country, and strike ahead among the nations of the world.