The English-Built Cars Differ
From Ours In Having Seats Along The Sides, And Doors Opening On
Platforms At Both Ends.
On the whole, the arrangements are
Continental rather than British.
The first-class cars are
expensively fitted up with deeply-cushioned, red morocco seats, but
carry very few passengers, and the comfortable seats, covered with
fine matting, of the 2d class are very scantily occupied; but the
3d class vans are crowded with Japanese, who have taken to
railroads as readily as to kurumas. This line earns about
$8,000,000 a year.
The Japanese look most diminutive in European dress. Each garment
is a misfit, and exaggerates the miserable physique and the
national defects of concave chests and bow legs. The lack of
"complexion" and of hair upon the face makes it nearly impossible
to judge of the ages of men. I supposed that all the railroad
officials were striplings of 17 or 18, but they are men from 25 to
40 years old.
It was a beautiful day, like an English June day, but hotter, and
though the Sakura (wild cherry) and its kin, which are the glory of
the Japanese spring, are over, everything is a young, fresh green
yet, and in all the beauty of growth and luxuriance. The immediate
neighbourhood of Yokohama is beautiful, with abrupt wooded hills,
and small picturesque valleys; but after passing Kanagawa the
railroad enters upon the immense plain of Yedo, said to be 90 miles
from north to south, on whose northern and western boundaries faint
blue mountains of great height hovered dreamily in the blue haze,
and on whose eastern shore for many miles the clear blue wavelets
of the Gulf of Yedo ripple, always as then, brightened by the white
sails of innumerable fishing-boats.
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