File:The countries of the world - being a popular description of the various continents, islands, rivers, seas, and peoples of the globe (1876) (14780440845).jpg

Identifier: countriesofworld04brow (find matches)
Title: The countries of the world : being a popular description of the various continents, islands, rivers, seas, and peoples of the globe
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Brown, Robert, 1842-1895
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Publisher: London New York : Cassell, Petter, Galpin & co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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and were then uninhabited. In l^;iO a • rrocccdingt of the Jloi/al Geographical Socitli/, 1S79, pp. 210, 291. 804 THE COUNTKIES OF THE WORLD. motley company of whaling seamen took possession of them, and, claiming Englishprotection, set to work, under rather disheartening circamstances, to cultivate in thecleared bush of Peel Island sweet potatoes, maize, onions, yams, pumjjkiiis, melons,lemons, tobacco, and sugar-cane, and to breed pigs, goats, and fowls for the supply ofpassing ships. The islands are healthy and fertile, though the timber which grows onthem is not large enough for shipbuilding. There is abundance of fish and turtle in thesurrounding sea, and a few edible animals haunt the woods and mountains. The islandsare, however, visited every year by typhoons and earthquakes, and the numerous uprootedtrees bear evidence of the violence of the storms. Of the original colony, formed out ofvery discoi-dant elements. Dr. Kuschenberger* gives an interesting account. It was not, in
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VIEW FROM SHIMOXOSEKI, JAPAN. his da), a well-ordered or a moral community, but it seems to have increased, for thepopulation is now put down at seventy-five, f Of late the Russians have put in a claimto the group, though on what ground it would puzzle even a geographical casuist toimagine. The Japanese, no doubt, were the original discoverers, and for this reasoninclude the islands among the outliers of their empire. They first lighted upon them in1675, but even then there were no inhabitants on the isles: hence the junkmen call themBnttiti Sima, or the islands without people.J The Japanese Island.s. Japan proper, or Nipon, the land of the rising sun, whose name was for ages ashadowy abstraction to the Western world, but has of late years come prominently before • Voyage Round the World (18.38), Vol. II., pp. 295-313.+ Hydrographic Xotice, No. 51 (Washington, 1877).X Chinese Repository, 1835. Tin; j.viAXK.si-: njiru:!:: ,i.\1an Ilioi-Kit. .iii.i it, comprehends four Inrge islands,

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