a vast capital, rising up around us in one bewildering amphitheater.
Beneath, in the silent waters, another town, also illuminated, seemed
to descend into the depths of the abyss. The night was balmy, pure,
delicious; the atmosphere laden with the perfume of flowers came
wafted to us from the mountains. From the "tea houses" and other
nocturnal resorts, the sound of guitars reached our ears, seeming in
the distance the sweetest of music. And the whirr of the
cicalas--which, in Japan, is one of the continuous noises of life, and
which in a few days we shall no longer even be aware of, so completely
is it the background and foundation of all the other terrestrial
sounds--was sonorous, incessant, softly monotonous, just like the
cascade of a crystal waterfall.




III.


The next day the rain came down in torrents, a regular downpour,
merciless and unceasing, blinding and drenching everything,--a thick
rain so dense that it was impossible to see through it from one end of
the vessel to the other. It seemed as though the clouds of the whole
world had amassed themselves in Nagasaki bay, and had chosen this
great green funnel to stream down to their hearts' content. And it
rained, it rained, it became almost as dark as night, so thickly did
the rain fall. Through a veil of crumbled water, we still perceived
the base of the mountains, but the summits were lost to sight among
the great somber masses weighing down upon us. Above us shreds of
clouds, seemingly torn from the dark vault, draggled across the trees,