ABSTRACT
Nagasaki harbor is one of the most beautiful in the world. It lies near the head of a deep inlet, almost steep and narrow enough for a Norway fiord, surrounded by hills several hundred feet high, that are covered with forests of maple and evergreen oak and great camphor trees. If Nagasaki was chosen as the one port for foreign trade with an eye to keeping the strangers well away from the rest of the country, the selection could hardly have been better. The Spanish and Portuguese were finally ousted entirely, and the Dutch alone permitted to trade at the one port of Nagasaki, well out of everybody's way. The people of Nagasaki being less unused to foreigners, there was no great opposition to them there, as at Yokohama, and students soon flocked to the place, eager to acquire all the learning of the West, but particularly languages and science.
