indigo, in large quantities, but gold, copper, coal, and petroleum,
has to send most of its produce to Yedo across ranges of mountains,
on the backs of pack-horses, by roads scarcely less infamous than
the one by which I came.

The Niigata of the Government, with its signs of progress in a
western direction, is quite unattractive-looking as compared with
the genuine Japanese Niigata, which is the neatest, cleanest, and
most comfortable-looking town I have yet seen, and altogether free
from the jostlement of a foreign settlement. It is renowned for
the beautiful tea-houses, which attract visitors from distant
places, and for the excellence of the theatres, and is the centre
of the recreation and pleasure of a large district. It is so
beautifully clean that, as at Nikko, I should feel reluctant to
walk upon its well-swept streets in muddy boots. It would afford a
good lesson to the Edinburgh authorities, for every vagrant bit of
straw, stick, or paper, is at once pounced upon and removed, and no
rubbish may stand for an instant in its streets except in a covered
box or bucket. It is correctly laid out in square divisions,
formed by five streets over a mile long, crossed by very numerous
short ones, and is intersected by canals, which are its real
roadways. I have not seen a pack-horse in the streets; everything
comes in by boat, and there are few houses in the city which cannot
have their goods delivered by canal very near to their doors.
These water-ways are busy all day, but in the early morning, when
the boats come in loaded with the vegetables, without which the
people could not exist for a day, the bustle is indescribable. The
cucumber boats just now are the great sight. The canals are
usually in the middle of the streets, and have fairly broad
roadways on both sides. They are much below the street level, and