Here are the waters of the Pacific, and Vancouver (completely destitute of any decent defences) grown out of all knowledge in the last three years.  At the railway wharf, with never a gun to protect her, lies the Empress of India—­the Japan boat—­and what more auspicious name could you wish to find at the end of one of the strong chains of empire?

THE EDGE OF THE EAST

The mist was clearing off Yokohama harbour and a hundred junks had their sails hoisted for the morning breeze, and the veiled horizon was stippled with square blurs of silver.  An English man-of-war showed blue-white on then haze, so new was the daylight, and all the water lay out as smooth as the inside of an oyster shell.  Two children in blue and white, their tanned limbs pink in the fresh air, sculled a marvellous boat of lemon-hued wood, and that was our fairy craft to the shore across the stillness and the mother o’ pearl levels.

There are ways and ways of entering Japan.  The best is to descend upon it from America and the Pacific—­from the barbarians and the deep sea.  Coming from the East, the blaze of India and the insolent tropical vegetation of Singapore dull the eye to half-colours and little tones.  It is at Bombay that the smell of All Asia boards the ship miles off shore, and holds the passenger’s nose till he is clear of Asia again.  That is a violent, and aggressive smell, apt to prejudice the stranger, but kin none the less to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole across the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat went to shore—­a smell of very clean new wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp earth, and the things that people who are not white people eat—­a homelike and comforting smell.  Then followed on shore the sound of an Eastern tongue, that is beautiful or not as you happen to know it.  The Western races have many languages, but a crowd of Europeans heard through closed doors talk with the Western pitch and cadence.  So it is with the East.  A line of jinrickshaw coolies sat in the sun discoursing to each other, and it was as though they were welcoming a return in speech that the listener must know as well as English.  They talked and they talked, but the ghosts of familiar words would not grow any clearer till presently the Smell came down the open streets again, saying that this was the East where nothing matters, and trifles old as the Tower of Babel mattered less than nothing, and that there were old acquaintances waiting at every corner beyond the township.  Great is the Smell of the East!  Railways, telegraphs, docks, and gunboats cannot banish it, and it will endure till the railways are dead.  He who has not smelt that smell has never lived.