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Since the overthrow of communal feudalism and the establishment of an individualistic social order, necessitating personal ownership of property, and the universal use of money, trustful confidence is rapidly passing away. Everything is being more and more accurately reduced to a money basis. The old samurai scorn for money seems to be wholly gone, an astonishing transformation of character. Since the disestablishment of the samurai class many of them have gone into business. Not a few have made tremendous failures for lack of business instinct, being easily fleeced by more cunning and less honorable fellows who have played the "confidence" game most successfully; others have made equally great successes because of their superior mental ability and education. The government of Japan is to-day chiefly in the hands of the descendants of the samurai class. They have their fixed salaries and everything is done on a financial basis, payment being made for work only. The lazy and the incapable are being pushed to the wall. Many of the poorest and most pitiable people of the land to-day are the proud sons of the former aristocracy, who glory in the history of their ancestors, but are not able or willing to change their old habits of thought and manner of life.

The old king now having given up his kingdom to his eldest daughters, they managed, by artifice and maneuvering, to get every thing else away from him, so that he became wholly dependent upon them, and had to live with them by turns. This was not all; for, at the instigation of their husbands, they put so many indignities and affronts upon him, that his life at length became an intolerable burden, and finally he was compelled to leave the realm altogether, and in his destitution and distress he went for refuge and protection to his rejected daughter Cordiella. She received her father with the greatest alacrity and affection. She raised an army to restore him to his rights, and went in person with him to England to assist him in recovering them. She was successful. The old king took possession of his throne again, and reigned in peace for the remainder of his days. The story is of itself nothing very remarkable, though Shakspeare has immortalized it by making it the subject of one of his tragedies.

By 8.30 in the morning of December 5th we entered the mouth of the Madeira River. I was surprised at the sudden change in the appearance of the two rivers. We saw in the Madeira high, gently sloping banks, covered with verdant grass and neat trees and palms along the top of them; whereas along the Amazon the trees stood almost in the water on the recently formed islands and banks. The left bank of the Madeira was of grey and reddish clay (grey below, red above), cut vertically, sometimes actually in steps. Blocks of a rectangular shape, in getting dried up, split and fell over, leaving the banks vertical. The right bank, on the contrary, was gently sloping, descending with a beautiful carpet of green grass into the stream. The islands were charming, with lovely lawns all round. Blackish and deep red rock, vertical and fluted, and with innumerable perforations, could be seen here and there, covered over with a padding of earth from ten to twenty feet deep.

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