THE CHINESE FORM no unimportant part of the foreign community in Nagasaki, and are regarded with much dislike by the Japanese. In ancient times there was a free intercourse and unrestricted commerce between the two countries. But the change produced by former European difficulties and civil wars in the policy of the Japanese government towards the Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch, was extended also to the Chinese mercantile strangers. After the severe edicts against the Christian religion and the prohibition of Christian books, the Chinese were detected importing Roman Catholic publications, and incurred the heavy displeasure of the government. In the year A.D. 1688 they were forcibly confined to a small settlement on the edge of the harbour, and subjected to the same restraints as those endured by the Dutch in the neighbouring scene of their imprisonment in Desima. In the year A.D. 1780 the Chinese trading guild was removed a couple of hundred yards further back from the harbour to a Buddhist monastery lying near the foot of the hill which has already been described as the locality of our Sunday services. Rigidly guarded and watched, the Chinese factory shared with the Dutch the humiliation and inconvenience of a common captivity.

The various European treaties have secured some privileges for those of the Chinese residents who are in any way connected with Europeans and entitled to the benefits of the new system of foreign trade. A Chinese acquaintance from Hongkong, whom for obvious reasons I shall designate with no more distinctive name than the common surname of Mr. Cheung, was often a visitor at my quarters, and supplied me with many details of information respecting the Japanese character, regarded of course from the Chinese point of view.

My Chinese friend gave a decided preference to the habits of cleanliness which pervade a Japanese dwelling over that which prevails in China, asserting that the Chinese custom of small-footed women rendered Chinese wives slow and awkward in their movements, and unable to attend to active household duties with the same effectiveness as their large-footed sisters in Japan. He and the two other Chinese in our own house often discussed in our presence the relative condition of civilisation and morality prevalent respectively in China and in Japan. Even a Chinaman expresses his disgust at some of the customs of the Japanese, which will be noticed in a subsequent portion of my narrative.