Japan and the Japanese

408 JAPAN. A. D. 17751776.
by rotation, were to follow my steps. I was not allowed, indeed,
to go far out of the road, but having been previously used to run
up rocks in the African mountains, I frequently got to a considerable
distance before my anxious and panting followers, and thereby
gained time to gather a great many of the most curious and scarcest
plants, which had just began to handkerchief."
flower, and which I put in my
Among the trees growing in this tract was the Thuya dolcbrata,
planted everywhere by the road-side, tall, straight, and with leaves
of silver-white on their under sides in Thunberg's opinion the hand-
somest of the fir tribe. There were no less than six peculiar species
of maple, all of great beauty. Cedars (Cuprcssus japonica), a
common tree throughout the country, grew here in great perfection.
The straightest and tallest of the firs, their trunks ran up straight as
a candle, and, being both light and very durable, the timber was
employed for all sorts of constructions, and also for cabinet work,
the veins showing to advantage when covered with varnish. The
wood of this tree, next to thePinus silvestris, is that most employed
by carpenters, &c. He also observed several species of oaks, 4 the
common barberry, in full blossom, several species of the Vaccinia,
or whortleberry, a wild pear-tree, a shrub with leaves so rough
that they arc used for polishing by the joiners, the Oryris japonica,
bearing its flowers at the middle of its leaves; also, several beau-
tiful flowering shrubs, Viburna, with double as well as single flowers,
two species of Spirex, the Citrus tripoliata, and the Gardenia
Florida, of which the seed-vessels afforded a yellow dye. The
dragon lily (Arum dracontium), and the edible species of the
game plant (Arum esculentum), the eddo, or tania, of the West
Indies, and taro of the Sandwich Islands (Caladium in more
recent classifications), were cultivated in some spots.
By night the sea-shore was again reached, at Odoirara, whence
two days' journey took them to Jedo, where they arrived, on ac-
count of the delay in the sea voyage, at a period unusually late,
but which Thunberg notes as an advantage, since it gave him, both
going and returning, a better opportunity to observe the vegetation
Kampfer says there are two species peculiar to Japan, the acorns of
which are boiled and eaten