through an interpreter.

The public buildings, with their fine gardens, and the broad road
near which they stand, with its stone-faced embankments, are very
striking in such a far-off ken. Among the finest of the buildings
is the Normal School, where I shortly afterwards presented myself,
but I was not admitted till I had shown my passport and explained
my objects in travelling. These preliminaries being settled, Mr.
Tomatsu Aoki, the Chief Director, and Mr. Shude Kane Nigishi, the
principal teacher, both looking more like monkeys than men in their
European clothes, lionised me.

The first was most trying, for he persisted in attempting to speak
English, of which he knows about as much as I know of Japanese, but
the last, after some grotesque attempts, accepted Ito's services.
The school is a commodious Europeanised building, three stories
high, and from its upper balcony the view of the city, with its
gray roofs and abundant greenery, and surrounding mountains and
valleys, is very fine. The equipments of the different class-rooms
surprised me, especially the laboratory of the chemical class-room,
and the truly magnificent illustrative apparatus in the natural
science class-room. Ganot's "Physics" is the text book of that
department.

I. L. B.



LETTER XXII