To the traveller Tokio and Seoul are no longer two mere geographical express sions which can only be directly associated with one another after encountering some measure of seasickness and the perils of a crazy coasting-steamer; they ban now be linked with " hyphen—the _-marvellous hyphen of' iron rails which lends such distinction and comfort to travel. Seasickness indeed no longer menaces you in any way, for even the leap across the Tsushima straits is accomplished in such comfort by night that itis the ocean which has become a mere geographical expression and is i insignificant, unnoticed.
OF course it is all ordered after prearranged plans; and dutifully and somewhat chastened, as all men must be when brought face to face with an actual expression of the Japanese passion for system and wood block method, you take your place on the pre-arranged days of the week in a Tokio train blazoned with Shimonosekis proclaiming that there is no change whilst you are on the -Mikado's Some men, who. doubtless feel clover, take night trains without any such distinguishing marks in order to escape a burdensome morning rise with the elec-tne lights of the capital still fecting coldly everywhere and everything silent around, But these same men are soon reproved after the soul-wracking fashion of slighted railway arrangements, and never again do they match wits with tom. For the system has been outraged and therefore the system will have none 10 your connections will not con on arrive later on at places merely to wait and to utter impotent curses which are of not the slightest Only when twelve hours have ie vengeance on you does thi mit you to extend your apology and then duly chastened you are swallowed up after the-ordered fashion to whirl onward midst a cloud of soot.
From Tokio to Kobe is some fifteen hours by the night express as everyone knows; by day, possibly because you are in a through train, you must toon hours and more on the It is usually dreary. enough work watehing a landscape flit by; but here if it is long drawn-out you are at least recompensed by a perpetual shifting panorama which has no equal in the world., For when fortune favours you pesness Fuji stays with you for some hours in all its white-capped purity as your train straggles in and out, round and ubout in a grunting effort to rid itself of the count-Joss chains of groan-clad hills which fill the country. First Fuji is looking in at one window, then in another, loathe to Jeave you though you flee ava; Then no sooner-have you lost this Prussi shores along which you swiftly run. Boats there are too, there out on the cloop, prinking themselves in the fresh morning air and flinging aloft their can-vos as they meet the rising breezes. Up and down the entrancing coastline little villages snugly nestle and from thole streets rises all the gay clamour of Japan. Soon the sun is beating down hotly no matter what the season of the year and the cool hill streams which gurgle everywhere bring you refreshment and ease even though your eyes be the eyes of the too-carly riser. Nagoy", where Smirnoff the alleged "never surrender" man of Port Arthur is detained near the castle, is at last reached and passed and the back of the long day' is broken. Kioto with its lights twinkling on every eminence looms up and again disappears; busy Osaka is left behind and now that Kobe is reached and passed and that yon have a straight unbroken ran before you, the sleeping berths slip up.
The morning is finished and another afternoon has come when you glide past Hiroshima, the great camp, so safely guarded by the Inland Sea. This sea is now before you and the colouring is more splendid and the light and shade more clearly cut than ever before because of a certain quality of yellow which stains the land. Once again you run along. the edge of the waters hour after hour with a gladness in the air which. no one can refuse to feel. It is indeed so calm and peaceful here, and there is so little of the bustle of middle Japan, that all thoughts of a war having ever concerned these sun-kissed people is more than absurd. Ithas only been a dream—that is all, At last Shimonoseki is sighted—thirty-four hours from the capital, and here you have hardly time to swallow a cup of tea before you must embark.
Outin the swilling current which rushes through the Bakan narrows, is a trim and powerfully-engined ferry-bent from the Nagasaki yards; brand-new and important is she and in s great hurry to be off. Tt is one of the two railway steamers which will soon provide a daily service across the Corean Straits. Of course you have imagined that although the steerage will be filled to overflowing, as it had been with Japanese immigrants swarming to that land of promise, Corea, since the beginning of the war, the cabins will be empty. But here again you are wrong. There are dozens of first-class people, mainly English and Americans, who have. sprang from nowhere in particulaf and are merely desirous of rushing up the Corean peninsula so as to smell out this newly-opened country and to discover if possible for what reason there has been this great pother during past years. The immigrants have, however, almost entirely ceased to flow across the straits because th of pence is on everything and no one has much enthusiasm left.
seven you start—with a jerk forward that gives you a taste of the fifteen knots the boat can do if a storm necessitates it ig once more begun alt blinking and glaring xt you; this they are ranged along the shores in arc-lamps showing you where ion and much handling of things have finally come.
Out at sea for a moment you thread an island maze which you can dimly discern in the gloom. Then the you are in the open; the appropriately black; you are on Togo's battlefield. re it day four or five hours of this fast running would bring you in full sight of the big island of Tsushima which fille up such a large part of the Corean Straits [and makes such an admirable and menace ing outpost position for an island power. Just to the south of Tsushima is Iki, and standing on these excrescences you can discover for yourself the narrowness and strategical value of these seas. For land lurches up both on the northern and southern skyline, proclaiming on the one hand the mainland of Asis, and on the other the island world of Japan, Do you hold these various points, then are you master of the edge of the continent.
It is hardly daylight before you are in the territorial waters of Corea with cold, ill-clad hills around you, and soon you have cast anchor in Fusan harbour itself, A year ago, when the railway was not yot open, there were no conveniences to get you to your station and a wearisome two miles to the new railway town of Fusan had somehow to be covered. Now. those two miles of road have disappeared both to the eye and for the legs. The intervening space; has been rapidly filled up with houses and buildings and a launch whisks you straight from your ship right up to the railway; wharf where the train is waiting dutifully for you. Here there are even akabo—the red-capped porters of Japan—who will handle your luggage with irritable method; bue these are as yet unaccustomed to great masses of Anglo-Saxon impedimenta, and a howling crowd of white-clad Corean pack-carriers who can transport staggering weights without so much as a tremor have finally to be loosed on you all. In a few eye-winks the masses have disappeared and nggage troubles have ceased.
The trains of Corea with the heaviness and dignity which come of the standard gauge, bulk in one's eyes very big and uncouth after the Japanese pigmies of the narrow gauge. Here there are massive Baldwin locomotives of ninety and even one hundred ton thousand-pound goods with awe you discover that once again you are in carriages in which the soating is so arranged that no amount of inadvertence will cause you to repose your legs on your neighbour's lap, With this momentous discovery affecting you, the qualms of hunger are for a while forgotten; then all too soon you remember that to live you must eat and that this morning air of autwmna) Corea isdovilish keen. But does one eat in these trains or is belt-tightening the order of the day?
A uniformed individual after thought tells you that some coaxing produces food; you imagine from, this that it is not part of the cut and dried system, but he again once more you are di jointed. For right at the end of the car is a wooden screen and behind this sores functions a cook in a kitchen to whom is attached a servitor-boy. Soon it is your proud privilege to be sitting at a patent table which is screwed down just where i wit ably. capsizes choice of the most disagreeable moment surprising in an inanimate thin, As with the akabo, the messing arrang ments are not yet complete, and eggs and beefsteaks that are old and distrustful in the taste are the standby. For broakfast you can have them in the order I have given; for tiffin you vary the monotony by reve: ig the orders and when} night time comes it is wisest merely t think of the excellent dinner you ai doubtless going to eat when you finally arrive. In this way you may be moderately satisfied.
Daring the year which has elapsed since the joining-up of the last rails, the Seoul-Fusan railway has deci im. proved and shows signs that one day it Tay pay its bondholders and shareholders without the government help which is at present given. Corean travellers board the trains with greater and greater willingness; there is s constant if small stream of through traffic coming to or going from Japan; and st a number of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.