scribe from Mr. Chamberlain's version a passage which will give some idea of its character:—
"Now you must know that, as in this country there were no such phenomena as death and disease, none of the people knew what death or disease felt like, though they were much given to speculating on the subject. Some few volumes of the Buddhist Scriptures that had been brought over in ancient times from India and China, described heaven in such glowing terms that they were filled with quite a desperate admiration for death, and distaste for their own never-ending existence, so much so that when, as a rare exception, any of their countrymen chanced to die, he was envied in the same manner as in Japan would be envied one who should have obtained immortality. They studied the 'art of death' as it were the art of magic, retiring to mountain districts and secluded valleys, where they subjected themselves to all manner of ascetic privations, which, however, rarely obtained for them the desired effect. In the matter of food, all such articles as ginseng, wild potatoes, eels, wild duck, &c., which increase the action of the kidneys, and strengthen the spleen and stomach, were feared and avoided as being poisonously life-giving; whereas what people of rank and consideration highly prized and delighted in were such viands as were likely to cause the eater's death. Thus mermaids were unusually cheap and plentiful—plentiful as cuttle-fish on the coast of Idzumi—and you might see slices of them piled up on dishes, as well as whole ones hanging from the eaves of every cook-shop. But nobody who was anybody would touch with the tips of his fingers a fish so apt to poison you to life, and it was accordingly left to the lowest of the populace. The globe-fish was much esteemed,
