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Where is Japan, and how does it lie on the surface of the globe?

With the aid of the steamship and railway, we may answer by saying that Fuji Yama is about sixteen days from New York, or twelve from San Francisco. Or, from the other point of view, we may say that Japan lies in the Pacific Ocean east of China and Corea, in latitude between Newfoundland and the West Indies ; that is, the ... More

Where is Japan, and how does it lie on the surface of the globe?

With the aid of the steamship and railway, we may answer by saying that Fuji Yama is about sixteen days from New York, or twelve from San Francisco. Or, from the other point of view, we may say that Japan lies in the Pacific Ocean east of China and Corea, in latitude between Newfoundland and the West Indies ; that is, the Japanese climate is very much like our own.

Japan is one of the many archipelagoes in the Pacific Ocean. The number of islands under the sun-flag is nearly four thousand. To inclose the space within the ocean-square thus occupied, we must draw our lines on the globe from the point at latitude 50� 56'. Here our pin, or the surveyor's stake, is driven in at the most northern end of a shima, for that is the Japanese word for island, called Araito. This land formerly belonged to Russia. It is in the old chain or group called the Kuriles, or "The Smokers." Japan from top to bottom is a line of volcanoes. The hot inside of the earth has here a row of vents in the shape of great mountains like funnels turned upside down. From their holes at the top, as out of tall foundry chimneys, gas, fire, smoke and ashes escape from the interior of the earth.

Did you ever see the shell of an awabi, as the Japanese call the haliotis, or sea-ear ? One may compare the shape and nature of the country to the awabi. The living creature beneath the perforated shell is able through its roof-holes lo communicate with the outside world, and make its presence and power known to its prey. The line of apertures reaches along the top from the apex to the bottom level of the shell. So all Japan is a great shell or crust of rock and earth, through which the steam, gas, fire, and lava burst forth at times, just as the tentacles of the awabi leap and twirl through its shell. When, for any reason, one or more of these vents are closed, and the volcanoes become dormant, great earthquakes which twist or wrinkle the skin of the globe, or eruptions, which are boiler-explosions on a vast scale, are sure to happen. Even the rock crust and the granite caps of mountains, unable to imprison the hot subterranean gases, are blown high up in the air.

The little Greek children in old times were told that Jupiter confined the giants under volcanoes, and that earthquakes were caused by their writhing, but the Japanese children think that a great underground catfish makes the mischief in their country, and that no one can stop his floundering but the god Kashima.

Since the Japanese, in 1875, exchanged their half of Saghalin for all the Kuriles, they have called them Chishima, or the Thousand Islands.

Araito, the northernmost tip of the Mikado's empire, is a little to the west of Cape Lopatka in Kamtschatka. To mark the most eastern point of Japan, we must stick a pin on the map at longitude east 156� 32'. The Japanese now use our system of latitude and longitude for surveying and navigation. They are thus able to locate within a few yards on the great earth's surface the position of a moving ship or a thatched cottage. Looking through the lines of a spider's web stretched across the end of a theodolite, they can measure the precise distance from plumb-bob to stake-centre, and fix the exact spot over the centre of a copper bolt driven in the rock. This mark of the national frontier is in the island of Shimushu at

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