Untitled

444 EAST ASIA.
The inhabitants of Liu-kiu
(Riu-kiu), being scattered over the numerous islands
of the archipelago, are mostly concentrated in small villages lying on the banks of the
creeks. The only towns worthy of the name are found in the large island of the
central group, Okinava-sima (Ukima), the Chung-ching-tao of the Chinese. Here
Nafa or Nam, standing on a bay completely sheltered from all winds, has become the
most frequented sea-port in the archipelago, notwithstanding the numerous reefs
obstructing the approach to the roadstead. Its chief exports are sugar, cotton, and
silks, which are shipped by Japanese vessels for the northern islands to a yearly
value of about 40,000. A paved route, one of the finest in the Empire, winds
between wooded hills through a pleasant valley from Nafa up to Shiri (SiuK, S/nii,
Kinching'), capital of Riu-kiu. Standing on a plateau which overlooks the two seas,
this town is regularly laid out, and surrounded by fine plantations of areca and other
tropical plants. One of its buildings bears the title of University.
The large island also contains two other towns, Tomau and Kttmai, and the
urban population numbers altogether 60,000 souls, or half of the population of
Okinava, consisting exclusively of SJz>ikn, or " nobles." All the peasantry are
he'imin, or " plebeians," and are distinguished from the nobles by the bronze pins
worn in their hair.*
THE BONIN ARCHIPELAGO.
Besides Liu-kiu and the numerous islands geographically depending on the
main archipelago of Nip-pon, the Japanese Government also lays claim to a small
group lying in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles in a straight line to the south-south-east
of Kioto. This solitary group is known in Europe as the Bonin Archipelago, Bonin
being a corruption of the Japanese Munin-to, or "Uninhabited Islands." But
having been again occupied in recent times, they should, properly speaking, resume
the name given to them at the end of the sixteenth century, when Prince Sndayori,
driven thither by a storm, took possession of them on behalf of the Government,
and gave them his family name of Ogasavara. At that time they had already been
sighted by the Spanish explorer Villalobos, when navigating those waters in 1543.
A century later on the Dutch Captain Matthys Quast, accompanied by the illus-
trious navigator Abel Tasman, also surveyed the southern islands of the group,
which already figure on various contemporary charts of that part of the Pacific
Ocean. Nevertheless the memory of these discoveries had been completely for-
gotten when the American whaler Coffin visited the southern islands in 1823. Next
year he was followed by his countryman Ebbet, also a whaler, who explored the
central islands of the archipelago. In 1827 the English Admiral Beechey occu-
pied the Ogasavara group, and the English continued to claim possession
the year 1861, when the question was finally settled in favour of Japan.
of it till
Although frequently visited by whalers and others since the hydrographic
surveys of Beechey, Liitke, Collinson, and Perry, the Bonin Archipelago is still far
from being fully explored, and only a very few points have been astronomically
determined. The great discrepancies still prevailing in the outlines and nomen-
* Gubbing, in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society for October, 1881.