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EAST ASIA.
are under tillage, and nothing now remains to be reclaimed except some marshy
alluvial tracts and the slopes of the mountains.
NATURAL RESOURCES OF YESO.
The island of Yeso no doubt presents a vast field of colonisation to the Japa-
nese. Larger than Ireland, and yielding the same description of plants, it might
support a population
of several millions. But it is too cold for the cultivation of
rice, so that the people emigrate reluctantly to a region so much more inhospitable
than their own. Nearly all the Japanese attracted to Yeso by the Colonial Office
regard themselves as exiles, and never fail to seize the first favourable opportunity
to return to their homes. But although offering such limited agricultural advan-
tages, Yeso must soon attract attention in consequence of its vast resources in
timber and minerals. The whole island may be said to constitute a boundless
forest, consisting of various species, amongst which are thirty-six kinds of trees
useful to the carpenter and cabinet maker. Scarcely does the traveller leave the
beaten track when he finds his progress arrested by thickets of creepers, bamboos,
and other undergrowths, overshadowed by trees of great size. It is difficult even
to cross the clearings, where the clusters of the Eulalia Japonica grow in dense
masses to the height of a man on horseback.
Until good roads are opened Yeso must continue to derive its importance exclu-
sively from the coast fisheries. In the abundance of its marine life this island
resembles Oregon, on the opposite side of the Pacific. Some of the nets employed
in the salmon fisheries are 4,000 feet long, and require seventy men to manipulate
them. At the end of the day, after three draughts, as many as 20,000 fish are found
to have been taken in these nets. Even the worst seasons will yield 1,200,000
salmon, with a total weight of 3,000 tons.
Fishing is also successfully pursued along all the coasts of Japan proper and of the
Liu-kiu Archipelago, and fish is far more generally consumed by the people than
meat. Piscicultural establishments have even of late years been formed on a large
number of streams in Central Nip-pon. Mother-of-pearl is collected by divers in the
Liu-kiu Islands, while the rorqual and other species of cetacea are pursued by daring
fishers in the open seas. A favourite subject of pictorial representation is the
fleets of smacks pursuing these large animals, and driving them with the harpoon
towards strong wide-meshed rope nets.
LAND TENURE MIXING INDUSTRY.
The land belonged formerly to the State, under which the peasantry held it as
hereditary tenants. Thanks to this perpetual tenure from father to son, the culti-
vators had at last acquired a certain independence, ranking in the social scale
immediately after the nobles, and above the merchants and artisans, who, however
wealthy, were regarded as their inferiors. The land-tax varied according to the
nature of the crops, the abundance of the harvests, and the caprice of the prince.