=October 12.=--The hour for rising gets earlier every day. This morning it was 5 o’clock, with the prospect of 12–14 hours in a wretched slow train. I am writing in the train now, at the stoppings, which are never less than five minutes, and often ten or fifteen minutes long, at every station. The whole distance in all these hours of travel will be less than 200 miles. The people in the train are, of course, a little interesting, but far more saddening. Where the train with its Western atmosphere has penetrated, the beautiful and dignified robes, the silken skirts and kimonos of both men and women, though principally of the men, are giving place to a hybrid mixture of all the vulgar and hideous garments of “civilisation.” Only a few of the most cultured Japanese know how to dress in good taste in our things, the others are unspeakable.
Just now the train is skirting a part of the coast of the famous “Inland Sea,” and small islands lie thickly scattered in it, with their pines clinging by great twisting roots on to their rocks. The persimmon trees, with their great golden fruits, look very beautiful beside the pines, and are richly laden with their delicious fruit, so that they are noticeable from quite a distance.
After arriving at Tokuyama in the evening I went at once to the Naval Briquette factory of the Government, who own the coal mine farther on which I wish to see. A most courteous and charming Director, who had been in both France and England, put me on my way.
=October 13.=--I started early by train for Omine, where the mine lies on a little railway built on purpose for it during the last war. The coal is one of the very few smokeless ones in Japan, and therefore very important. Omine is a tiny hamlet, practically composed of miners and mine officials,--where the inn is poor but every one only too anxious to please.
The mines are interesting scientifically, of Rhaetic age. As they belong to the Navy, the surgeon attached to the mines wears the uniform of a Naval Officer, little sword and all, and is very smart. The coal is carried for a long distance by iron baskets on wires across valleys--stretches of wire 200 yards, with no support. It is so strange to find the mixture of modern engineering and science with such primitive native ways.