■

•

******* *i*

I I . ■ &

•

I, . i

- ^

1 trW *•

0

OREGON

RULE

CO.

1

]Mfl> ^tatfQ^ •
		EE- US.A. -3
^ 2 -J

4

5

!'[!

1REG0NRULEC0

"> .

1 U.S.A.

•

JyQt

K

	,	■
	1 I
	I'

			.
J	3	5	55 4 1 5	6	5 1111	7	5	8	5	9
w	lllllllllllllllllllllillllliL
H		i""	»»»l||||l»

m |

v ... a : *

HTo"

*> ^

\

*J- ^

%^

V>%

<r

\>

;> ~u ::

r/- ^x

\v

^ -tt

-p.

«5 -U X°°-

.\-

V-

•>.

s

. -^ ^ A*

ov

</- V

V ^

^ •■?,

vO o

^ -7*

v>

cJ-

V . -

->

,0o.

iy

'■-,

% ,#'

V

(0

£ -'*,

■A

^ '

■>-

V

%<£

♦ >

,-v

*K*$

vO o.

, 'c

			j
			'W
->	* i		"Zy

C*^

©0

W>

O 0

<'

.0' \>

-^%

<5>

•P-.

x\ < ^

.

Digitized by the Internet Archive

C0V

in 2011 with funding from

The Library of Congress

s		n>
-^
•

http://www.archive.or

^*$

^ ^

t»

ils/williamhsewardst01 sewa

, >

"</"- M

j^__ /fc/e.

V*

\

,

WILLIAM ffi SEWARD'S

TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD.

TOTTED BY

OLIVE RISLEY SEWARD.

"A mighty maze, but not without a plan."

Pope.

WITH TWO HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS.

NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

549 k 551 BROADWAY. 1873.

%

Entered, according to Act of Coiigress, in the year 1873, by William H. Seward, Jr., Executor, and Olive Eislet Seward, Executrix, of the last Will and Testament of William; H. Seward, deceased, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

L.

■ ^ a

COITEITS.

PART I.

UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN. Chap.

I. Auburn to San Francisco: Mr. Seward's Companions. — His Farewell to his Neighbors. —Western New York. — Niagara. — Canada and its Destiny. — Influ- ence of Immigration. — Africo-Americans. — Detroit. — Chicago. — President Grant. — Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. — Cedar Rapids. — Omaha. — New Classification of States. — Council Bluffs. — Bridges over Navigable Rivers. — Settlement of Western States. — Cheyenne. — The Rocky Mountains. — Influence of Mountain States. — Sherman. — Separation. — Mountain Nomenclature. — Weber Canon — Salt Lake City. — The Mormons, their Doctrines, Secular Priesthood. — Brigham Young's Sermon. — His Family. — Polygamy. — The Irrepressible Conflict in Utah. — The Shoshones. — Destiny of the Indians. — Sierra Nevada. — Reno. — Railroads. — Result of Abolition of Slavery. — Sacramento. — Arrival at San Fran- cisco.— Civilization of California. — Chinese Immigration, .... 3 II. From San Francisco to Japan : The Vessels of the Pacific Mail Line. — Our Fel- low-Passengers.— "The Great Company of the Preachers," — The Chinese Pas- sengers.— The Great Event of the Voyage. — The Moods of the Sea. — A Still Greater Event. — The Loss of a Day. — The Gyascutus. — The Beginning of the End. — The Coast of Japan. — The Ocean-Fisheries, 29

PART II.

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

I. Yokohama and its Vicinity : The Bay of Yokohama. — Natives and Foreigners. — Native Costumes. — Japanese Barbers. — The Tokaido. — Japanese Cemeteries, Gardens, and Temples. — Monks and Monasteries. — Kamakura. — The Great Statue of Buddha.-— The Daibutz," 37

II. Visit to Yeddo. — Interview with the Mikado: Interview with the Japanese Prime-Minister. — Tremendous Storm. — Some Points of History. — The Mikado and the Tycoon. — Japanese Foreign Office. — Minister Sawa. — The Question of Saghalien. — The Tombs of the Tycoons. — A Speck of War. — The Delmonico of Yeddo. — Sketches of Yeddo. — The Interview with the Mikado, . . 49

III. From Yeddo to Shanghai : Hiogo. — The Place of Massacre. — A Japanese Steamer. —The Gulf of Osaka.— A Harem on a Picnic— The City of Osaka.— The Ty- coon's Castle. — Japanese Troops. — Nagasaki. — Beautiful Scenery. — Christians of Nagasaki. — Japanese Character. — Departure for China. — Concluding Re- flections on Japan, ........... 76

O^ U c^> i

iv CONTENTS.

Chap.

IV. The Coast of China: Woosung. — U. S. Ship Colorado. — Shanghai. — European " Concessions." — A Mandarin Procession. — Chi-Tajen and Sun-Tajen. — Euro- pean and Chinese Civilization. — Foreign Prejudices against the Chinese. — The Shan Tung. — The Yellow Sea. — The News from France. — Chee-Foo, the New- port of China. — A Rough Voyage, ........ 94

V. Up the Pei-ho River : Mouth of the Pei-ho. — Chinese Forts. — American Guns. — The Most Crooked and Mean of Rivers. — Chinese Dogs. — A Misunderstanding. —Captain Wang.— Our Flotilla.— The City of Tien- Tsin.— Aspect of the Coun- try.— Our Boat-Life. — Absence of Animals. — A Messenger from Peking. — A Chinese Trader. — Tung-Chow, 109

VI. Arrival at Peking : Passing through Tung-Chow. — Good Behavior of the People. — The Road to Peking. — A Dangerous Highway. — Daniel Webster and John Adams. — A Review of Our Party. — A Grotesque Procession. — The Eastern Gate of Peking. — The Separation of the Party. — Anxiety for Mr. Seward. — In Woful Plight. — An Explanation. — Arrival at the U. S. Legation, . . . 124 VII. Residence in Peking : Aspect of Peking. — The Walk on the Wall. — The Foreign Population of Peking.— Two American Chinese. — Native Wares. — The Foreign Ministers. — The Russian Minister. — The British Legation. — Influence of the United States. — The Hall of Science. — Mr. Seward's Audience with the Imperial Cabinet. — A Ladies' Day. — Chinese Ladies. — A Chinese Mansion, . 131

VIII. Residence in Peking ( Continued) : The Decay of China. — The Temple of Heaven. — The Temple of Agriculture. — The Temple of Buddha. — The Chinese Bonzes. — The Temple of Confucius. — The Religion of China. — A Pleasant Reunion. — The Birds of Peking. — An Official Dilemma. — Interview with Wau-Siang. — In- fluence of Burlingame, ......... 153

IX. Visit to the Great Wall : Preparations for the Trip. — Our Vehicles. — The Summer Palace. — Pagodas. — First Night under a Chinese Roof. — A Chinese Tavern. — Approach to the Great Wall. — The Mongolians. — The Cost of the Wall. — Inquisitive Chinese. — The Second Wall. — The Ming Tombs. — A Mis- guided Mule, 1*72

X. Last Days in Peking : Cham-Ping-Chow. — A Chinese Inn. — The Roman Catho- lics in China. — The Cathedral. — The Tien-Tsin Massacre. — Christian Policy. — Interview with Robert Hart. — A Letter from Sun-Tajen and Chi-Tajen. — Letter from Prince Kung. — Interview with the Prince. — The Prince's Present. — De- parture from Peking, . . . 194

XL The Return to Shanghai : Once more on the Pei-ho. — The Ladies at Tien-Tsin. — The Shan Tung. — Pigeon English. — Tempestuous Weather. — Visit to the Flag-ship Colorado. — Departure of Mr. and Mrs. Randall. — On board the Plym- outh Rock, 205

XII. Up the Yang-tse-Kiang : The Mississippi of China. — Ching-Kiang. — Large Freights. — Nanking. — The Porcelain Tower. — A Specimen Brick. — Abundance of Game. — Scenery on the River. — Ku-Kiang. — Conversation with Mr. Drew. — Policy of the United States. — Han-Kow. — Ascent of the Promontory. — Magnificent View. — Cheerful Aspect of Han-Kow. — Excursion to Woo-Chang. — A Disagreeable

Adventure, 210

XIII. Return to Shanghai : Departure from Han-Kow. — Chinese Military Art. — A Marvellous Echo. — The Imperial Canal. — Approach to Chin-Kiang. — The United States Steamer Alaska. — Running down a Junk. — An Apology from the Viceroy. — The Comprador. — Chinese Ladies. — Embark on an English Steamer, 223

CONTENTS. v

Chap.

XIV. From Shanghai to Hong-Kong : Bad Weather. — Cold Weather. — Variety of Sea- men.— The Ship's Accommodations. — Hong-Kong. — Beautiful Scenery. — Old Acquaintances renewed. — Native and Foreign Population, .-- - . . 230 XV. From Hong-Kong to Canton : The Chinese Coasting-Trade. — Chinese Smugglers. — Canton River-Banks. — Aspect of Canton. — The British Concession. — The American Hongs. — The Consul and the Tou-tai. — The Diet of the Cantonese. — Manufactures of Canton. — The Temples of Canton, . . . 233 - XVI. Canton {Continued): A Chinese Villa. — The Hall of Ancestors. — A Chinese School-Room. — Another Villa. — An Opium-Den. — Extent of Opium-Smoking. — * The Chinese Chronometer. — The Street of Malefactors. — The Place of Exe- cution.— A City of the Dead. — Canton at Night, .... 244 XVII. At Hong-Kong again : Chinese Emigration to the United States. — The Canton Fisheries. — American Houses in China. — A Combination of Gamblers. — A Dinner at the United States Consulate. — Mr. Seward's Speech. — Oriental and Eastern Civilization. — Policy of China. — Prospects of China, . . 253 XVIII. A Glance at Cochin China : The Steamer Provence. — Island of Hainan. — Our Fellow-Passengers. — The Mouth of the Saigon River. — The City of Saigon. — French Aptitude for Colonization. — French Photographs. — The Queen of Cam- bodia, 262

PART III.

THE EASTERN ARCHIPELAGO, STRAITS OF MALACCA, AND

CEYLON.

I. The China Sea, Singapore, and the Straits of Sunda : Our Distance from Home. — Calm Seas and Temperate Breezes. — Singapore. — A Dispatch from Boston. — The People of Singapore. — Their Habitations. — Life in the Tropics. — A Dutch Steamer. — Our Crew. — A Question of Races. — Rather Hot. — Banca and Sumatra. — The Straits of Sunda, . . . . . . 271

II. The Capital op Java: The City of Batavia. — The Hotel des Indes. — A New- England Sabbath. — Malay Servants. — The King's Plain. — Population of Java. — The Queen of the East. — Departure for Buitenzorg. — Manner of Travelling. — The Vice-Regal Residence. — The Climate of Java. — The Baths of Buiten- zorg, 280

III. Excursion into the Interior : A Balking Horse. — Cultivation of Rice. — Tropical

Flowers. — Surabaya. — The Regent Prawiro. — Dutch Colonization. — How Java is governed. — Bandong. — The Regent and the Interpreter. — A Gouty Monarch. — The Regent's Income. — How he spends it, .... 293

IV. Mr. Seward at Bandong : Excursion to the Cascade. — A Perilous Road. —

The Water-Fall. — An Evening at the Palace. — The Bayaderes. — Two Dwarfs. — A Chorus of Peasants. — The Little Princesses. — An Excursion to Tankoe- ban. — Peruvian Bark. — The Top of the Volcano. — An Enchanting Scene. —

The Japanese Prince, . 302

V. At Batavia again. — The Malays: Farewell to Bandong. — A Tropical Break- fast.— A Breakfast in the Botanical Gardens. — A Princely Native Artist. — Dutch Colonization. — Character of the Malay Race. — Chinese Immigration, 310 VI. From Batavia to Madras : An Uncomfortable Steamer. — An Accident. — At Singapore. — British Hospitality. — The Port of Penang. — A Loyal Englishman. -—Bay of Bengal. — Half- Way Round the World. — Arrival at Ceylon. — Point de Galle. — A Short Visit to the Shore. — A Hindoo Crew. — Off Pondicherry, 315

vi CONTENTS.

PART IV.

BRITISH INDIA. CnAP.

I. Madras : Madras from the Sea. — Governor Napier. — The Government House. — A Hindoo Girls' School. — Bishop Heber. — British Dominion in India. — Rear- Admiral Cockburn. — Machinery of Government. — A Meeting of the Executive Council. — Lord Cornwallis. — The Legislative Council. — Hindoo Music, . 327 II. Madras {Continued): An Excursion to Arcot. — Railroads in Hindostan. — Ap- pearance of the Country. — The Homage of Flowers. — Cauvervpak. — The Na- tive System of Cultivation. — Visit to a Bramin. — Schools. — A Car of Jugger- naut.— The Dutch Reformed Mission. — Back to Madras. — The Portuguese Settlement. — Gindy Park. — A Diamond Merchant. — Lord and Lady Napier. — The Normal School, 338

III. From Madras to Calcutta : The Surf at Madras. — On the Bay of Bengal. —

The Lion-Whelps. — The Hoogly. — The Viceroy's Invitation. — Earl and Count- ess Mayo. — Glimpses of Calcutta. — The Baboo. — The Baboo's House and Harem. — The Government House, ....... 350

IV. Calcutta {Continued): The Maharajah of Putteeala. — Oriental Magnificence. —

Kali Ghaut. — The Temple. — Hindoo Idols. — Kali. — Siva. — A Mohammedan Mosque. — The Reading of the Budget. — Indian Finances. — The King of Oude.

—The Prince of Oude, 360

V. Barrackpore and Serampore : Barrackpore Park and its Beauties. — Magnifi- cent Trees. — The Menagerie. — The Lion-Whelps. — Serampore.^-Its Mission- aries and Mission-Schools. — Return from Barrackpore. — Fort William. — The Woman's Union Missionary Society and its Schools, .... 368 VI. From Calcutta to Benares : Courtesy of the East India Railway Company. — Unattractive Scenery. — The Scenery improves. — Aspect of the Country and the People. — A Stop at Patna. — A Tiger Hunter. — The Cultivation of the Poppy. — The Maharajah of Benares. — A Night on the Ganges. — A Brilliant Display. — Glory Hallelujah. — A Compliment to Mr. Seward, . . 372 VII. Benares : The Sacred City of the Hindoos. — The Cradle of Buddhism. — Sarnath. — Remarkable Towers. — The Holy River. — The Ghauts. — Singular Architecture. — The Mosques and their Minarets. — A Picturesque Scene on the River-Bank. — Siva and Doorga. — Manufacture of Idols. — Magnificence of Benares, . 3*78 VIII. Allahabad, Lucknow , and Agra : Allahabad, the City of God. — Cawnpore. — Lucknow, the Capital of Oude. — Extent of the Country. — Arrival at Agra. — A Marvellous Monument of Arms, Arts, and Empire. — Akbar the Great. — His Vast Architectural Works. — The Pearl Mosque. — Futtehpore Sikra. — Its Great Wall.— The Tomb of Sheik Selim Chishti.— The Panch Mahal.— Akbar's Tomb. — His Wealth. — His Horses and his Elephants. — Weighing his Presents, 385 IX. Secundra and the Taj-Mahal : The Tomb of Akbar. — Derivation of the Name of Secundra. — The Taj-Mahal, the Tomb of the Banoo Begum. — Description of the Taj. — The Tomb of King Cotton. — The Inferiority of Indian Cotton. —

Mode of packing it, 396

X. Delhi, the Mogul Capital : A Vivid Contrast to Agra. — Ludlow Castle. — Brief Sketch of Hindoo History. — The Persians. — The Greeks. — The Arabs. — Sultan Mahmoud. — The Mongols or Moguls. — Foundation of Delhi. — Successive Changes of Site. — The Kootub Minar. — A Singular Iron Shaft. — The Mogul Tombs. — The Tomb of Jchanara. — The Jumna Musjid. — The Imperial Palace. — Farewell to Delhi, 404

CONTENTS. vii

Chap.

XI. Umballa and Putteeala : Meerut, the Scene of the Outbreak of the Great Mutiny. — Hindoo Pilgrims. — First View of the Himalayas. — Invitations to Putteeala. — Journey thither. — The City of Putteeala. — Coaches or Elephants ? — Entrance into Putteeala. — A Magnificent Procession. — Our Palace, . 414 XII. Putteeala {Continued) : Oriental Displays and Diversions. — The Menagerie. — The Prisons. — The Heir-Apparent. — An Elephant-Fight. — Jesters and Jug- glers.— The Royal Palace. — Magnificence of the Maharajah. — The Durbar.— The Young Prince. — Superb Presents. — A Magnificent Salon. — The Maha- rajah's Conversation with Mr. Seward. — An Exhibition of Fireworks, . 420

XIII. A Glance at the Himalayas : Departure from Putteeala. — Along the Banks

of the Jumna. — Protection from the Sun. — Reception at Pindarrie. — An Il- lumination.— Kalka and Kussowlee. — The British Commissioner. — A View of the Himalayas. — An Irish Home, . . . . . . . 431

XIV. Allahabad and Jubbulpoor : An Interesting Debate. — Earl Mayo, the Viceroy

of India. — His Murder. — The Vindhya Mountains. — Industrial Activity of Jub- bulpoor.— An Elephant-Ride. — A Night Voyage on the Nerbudda. — Romantic and Beautiful Scenery. — -Hindoo Tenderness for Animals, . . . 437 XV. Bombay : The Ghaut Mountains. — A Cosmopolitan City. — The Natives of Bom- bay.— A Mixed Population. — Chinese, Siamese, Javanese, Cingalese, Sikh, Afghan, and Cashmerian. — The Races of the South and the North, of the East and the West. — Parsee Customs, — Parsee Religion. — Hindoo, Mohammedan, and Parsee Disposal of the Dead. — Admiral Coekburn. — The Great Heat. — An Excursion to Elephanta, ......... 442

XVI. An Excursion to Goa : A Voyage on the Coast of Malabar. — A Perilous Pre- dicament.— Dubious Navigation. — Situation of Goa. — Official Courtesies. — History of Goa. — The Old City.-^-St, Francis Xavier. — Miraculous Cures. — Character of Xavier. — Public Institutions. — The Governor's Villa. — Historical Reminiscences. — A Goa Poet. — A Cordial Farewell, . . . . 451

XVII. Last Days in Bombay : The Byculla Club. — Mr. Seward's Speech.— His Grate- ful Acknowledgments to his Entertainers. — The Indies of the East and the Indies of the West. — Growing Civilization of the East. — A Progress irresisti- ble.— The New Concord. — Policy of the Anglo-Saxon Race. — Miss Wessner.

— Departure from Bombay, 460

XVIII. From Bombay to Aden : Once more at Sea. — The Steamer Deccan. — Mr. Sew- ard's Remarks on India. — Natural Religion. — The Characteristics of the Hin- doo Mind — England's Hold on India. — The Regeneration of India. — The Island of Socotra. — Arrival at Aden. — An Extinct Volcano. — Wise Old England ! — A New Stage of the Voyage. — Red-Haired Negroes, !l 465

PART V.

EGYPT AND PALESTINE.

The Red Sea and Suez Canal : The Gate of Tears.— The Rock of Perim.— The Port of Mecca. — Imaginary Terrors. — Pleasant Weather. — The Coasts of the Red Sea. — The Division of the Races. — A Refreshing Atmosphere. — The Track of the Israelites. — Suez. — The Ancient Canal. — The New Canal. — Its Inauguration. — Its Prospects, ........ 479

viii CONTENTS.

Chap.

II. From Suez to Cairo : The Bedouin Arabs. — A Wady. — Goshen. — Nubian Troops. — A Splendid Sunset, — The Palace of Repose. — The Khedive. — The Popula- tion of Egypt. — The Khedive's Improvements. — A Visit to the Harem. — The Female Slaves. — Egypt and Utah, 488

III. Cairo and the Pyramids : The Road to the Pyramids. — The Style of the Vice-

roy.— Interior of the Great Pyramid. — The Sphinx. — Mariette Bey. — Use of the Pyramids. — Rapacious Arabs. — The Phoenix. — The Site of On. — Ruins of Heliopolis. — The Tree of the Holy Family. — Mohammed Tauphik. — The Amer- icans in Egypt. — The Citadel of Cairo. — A Museum of Antiquities. — Modern Cairo.— The Copts.— The Nilometer.— The Tombs of the Caliphs.— The Ceme- teries of Cairo — The Mosques. — The Dancing Dervishes. — Ghezireh. — Polyga- my.—The Cairo of To-day, 498

IV. Up the Nile : Embarkation at Ghizeh. — The Pyramids of Saccara. — The Two

Deserts. — Siout. — The American Vice-Consul. — Sultan Pacha. — Character of the Nile. — Slave-Boats. — Arab Villagers. — The Birds of the Nile. — The Popu- lation on the Banks. — Domestic Animals. — Personal Arrangements. — A Tip- pling Monkey, 517

V. From Abtdos to Thebes : The Ruins of Abydos. — The Sheik of Bellianeh. — A Misunderstanding. — A Dinner in the Ruins. — A Night in the Temple. — Explor- ing the Ruins. — By whom were they built ? — Germs of Religious Ideas. — The Temple of Dendera. — Mr. Seward's Birthday, ..... 52C

VI. Thebes and its Ruins : What Thebes is now. — A Grand Reception. — A Fed> eral Salute. — The Scenery of the Nile. — The Temple of Luxor. — The Houses of the Consuls. — History of Luxor. — Karnak. — The Hall of the Gods. — King Shishak. — Sphinx Avenues. — We dine with the Vice-Consul. — The Colossi. — The Ancient Tombs. — The Tombs of the Kings. — Animal Worship. — The Ra- meseum. — Grandeur, of Thebes, . . 534

VII. Esneh, Edfou, Assouan, and Phil.2E : The Coptic Convents. — Toussef and his Donkey. — Our Steamer aground.— The Ruins of Esneh. — The Temple of Edfou. — Assouan. — Its Surprising Activity. — Its African Population. — The Ancient Quarries. — Philse and the Cataracts of the Kile. — A Monument of the First

French Republic, . 552

VIIL Last Days in Egypt: The Vice-Consul's Harem. — Kenneh and its Pottery. — The Sugar of Egypt. — Memphis. — Its Ruins. — The Downfall of Idolaters. — Again at Cairo. — Conversation with a Pacha, — Alexandria. — Aspect of the City. — Interview with the Khedive. — Sir Henry Bulwer. — Pompey's Pillar. — The Khedive's Yacht. — Concluding Reflections on Egypt, . . . 563

IX. Jerusalem: A Levantine Coasting-Steamer. — The Green Fields of Sharon. — Jaffa. — Ramleh. — Lydda. — Rural Population. — First View of Jerusalem. — Mr. Sew- ard's Reception. — The Sultan's Firman. — Church of the Holy Sepulchre. — Religious Intolerance. — Mount Calvary. — The Via Dolorosa. — The Mosque of Omar.— The Mosque El-Aksa, 5*78

X. Jerusalem and its Neighborhood : Bethlehem. — The Grave of Rachel. — The City of Jerusalem.— The Mount of Olives.— The Tomb of Zachariah. — The Tomb of Absalom. — An American Jew. — Bethany. — Pilate's Palace. — The Greek Church in Palestine. — The Jews of Jerusalem. — Their Wailing-Place. — The Jewish Sabbath. — Attendance at the Synagogue.— Bishop Gobat. — De- parture from Jerusalem. — Jaffa and Beirut, 594

CONTENTS. ix

Chap.

XI. From Palestine to Greece : Impressions of Palestine. — The Egyptian Race. — Egyptian Civilization. — Phoenicia and Palestine. — The Four Religions. — What we owe to the Jews. — Present State of Palestine. — The Island of Cyprus. — The Cesnola Collection. — Smyrna. — An Excursion to Ephesus. — The Seven Sleepers. — Mr. Wood's Researches. — The Temple of Diana. — The Isles of Greece. — Tinos. — The City of Syra. — An Illumination, . . . 607

PART VI.

EUROPE.

I. Athens and Constantinople : Athens. — The Piraeus. — The Hymettus. — The Ilys- sus. — Mr. Tuckerman. — Queen Olga. — Grecian Ruins compared with those of Egypt and Hindostan. — Modern Greece, the Mexico of Europe. — The Sea of Marmora. — Taking Constantinople by Surprise. — A Cordre-temps. — All's Well that Ends Well. — The Sultan Abdul- Aziz. — A Busy Day. — Excursions. — Charms of Constantinople. — The Old Seraglio. — Fourth of July. — Robert Col- lege.— The Bosporus. — Turkish Women. — The New Palace. — Untimely Visit. — Kiamil Pacha. — Audience with the Sultan. — Departure from Constanti- nople, . . ... . . . .-.-.'. . . 627

II. Hungary and Austria: On the Danube. — Varna. — Rustchuk. — Wallachia. — German Travellers. — What shall we say of Turkey '? — Reflections on the Future of the Turks. — Orsova. — The Iron Gate. — Hungarian Loyalty. — Buda-Pesth. —Contrast of European and Asiatic Civilization. — The People of Pesth. — The Bridge of Buda. — The Buildings of Buda. — The History of Hungary. — The Danube. — Vienna. — John Jay. — Count Von Beust. — Politics of Austria, 654

III. Italy : Venice. — American Knights Templars. — Florence. — Attractiveness of the

City. — Rome. — The Coliseum. — Cardinal Antonelli and the Pope. — Interview with the Pope. — The Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs. — The Schools of Art. — Naples. — Vesuvius. — Early Civilization on the Mediterranean Coast. — Na- ples, the Newport of the Roman Empire. — Genoa. — Susa. — Prospects of Italy, 669

IV. Switzerland and France : Geneva. — The Alps. — The Tunnel of Mont Cenis. —

Passports. — American Fondness for Switzerland. — Berne. — Swiss Statesmen and Politics. — Distress of France. — The Franco-German War. — Lord Lyons. — Mr. Washburne. — Versailles. — The French Assembly. — President Thiers. — A Dinner with President Thiers. — Condition of France. — M. Drouyn de Lhuys. — M. Laboulaye. — Dr. Evans and the Empress Eugenie. — Aspect of Paris. — Pros- pects of France, '._... . . . 685

V. Germany, England, and Home: Belgium. — Berlin. — Mr. Bancroft. — Humboldt. — The German Empire. — Its Rise and Grandeur. — Its Policy. — Hamburg. — A Free City. — A Handsome City. — On the Thames. — Activity of its Commerce- Greatness of London. — Government Machinery in Great Britain. — Its Slow Working. — Rural Beauty of England. — On Board the Java. — Her Passengers. — Moutrose-on-Hudson. — Return to Auburn. — Mr. Seward's Speech to his Neigh- bors, ; 708

Index, 721

LIST OF ILLTTSTKATIONS.

PAGE

Portrait of Mr. Seward (on steel)

Frontispiece

Mr. Seward's Garden at Auburn 1

Mr. Seward's Home 4

New Suspension Bridge, Niagara Falls. 5

Cheyenne 10

Summit 11

Wahsatch Range 12

Leutze's " Course of Empire." 13

Devil's Gate, Weber Canon 13

Pulpit Rock 14

Thousand-Mile Tree 15

Salt Lake Valley 16

Mormon Tabernacle 17

Brigham Young's Residence 19

The Remnant of a Tribe 23

Mouth of Big Cottonwood Canon 24

San Francisco 26

Cliff House, San Francisco 27

Golden Gate 28

Meeting of the Steamers in Mid-ocean. 31

Fusi Yama, Coast of Japan 34

Yokohama, Japan 38

Japanese Barbers 39

Japanese Girls 40

Japanese Cemetery 41

A Japanese Garden 43

Tea-house on the Tokaido 44

Group on the Tokaido 45

Temple at Kamakura 46

Daibutz 47

Japanese Bonzes 48

American Legation at Yeddo 52

PAGE

Japanese Officer of State 55

Japanese Interpreter, in Court Dress.. 57

Interior of Sheba 59

Tombs of the Tycoons 60

Nippon-Bas, Yeddo 61

British Legation, Yeddo 61

Hamagoten „ 63

Japanese Musician 64

A Book-store at Yeddo 66

Daimios' Quarter, Yeddo 69

United States Consulate, Hiogo 76

Temple at Osaka 78

Street in Osaka 80

Entrance to Nagasaki 83

Nagasaki Harbor 84

Temple of Buddha at Nagasaki 85

View of Decima 86

Woosung 94

Mandarin Procession 96

Custom-House, Shanghai 98

Mouth of the Yang-tse-kiang 103

Promontory of Shan-Tung 104

Chinese Fishing-smack 105

Chinese Dogs Ill

Boats on the Pei-ho River 114

Chinese Agriculture 119

Western Gate, Peking 1 32

Lupis-lazuli Cat 135

Ancient Observatory, or Hall of Science 139

Prince Kung 142

Yang-Fang 147

Wife of Yang-Fang. (From a Photo- graph by himself.) 148

LIST OF ILLUSTRATION*

XI

PAGE

Long Nails 149

Yang-Fang's Smoking-room 151

Chinese Gate-way 152

Temple of Heaven 155

Tablet Hall 157

The Temple of Confucius 161

Gate of the Temple of Confucius, Pe- king 162

Image of Confucius 163

Chinese Cart 173

The Litter. 174

Summer Palace. . . 176

Bridge on the Grounds of the Summer

Palace 177

Nan-Kow Pass 180

The Great Wall 182

Gate at Nan-Kow 183

Gate-way at Ming Tombs 189

Avenue to the Ming Tombs 192

Bridge at Nanking, and Porcelain Tow- er before its Destruction 211

The Upper Yang-tse-kiang 212

Little Orphan Island 213

Chinese Theatricals 220

Silver Island, on the Yang-tse-kiang. . . 225

Scene on the Imperial Canal 229

Hong-Kong 231

Trading-Junk 232

Street in Canton 236

Entrance to the Temple of Honan. . . . 240

Poon-ting-gua's Villa 245

Opium-Smokers 247

Chinese Tombs 252

View in Hong-Kong 253

Saigon, at the Mouth 263

Native of Saigon 265

Artisan's House at Saigon 267

Queen of Cambodia 268

Singapore 279

Street in Batavia '281

Married Woman of Java 282

A Javanese Girl 284

Scene in Java 286

Government House, Java 287

Lily Pond, Palace Grounds, Java 288

Tropical Foliage, Java 290

Javanese Fruit 291

Scene in Java 292

The Regent Prawiro da Kedya 296

The Regent of Bandong, with his Offi- cers 300

PAGE

A Hostelry in Java 301

Dancing-Costume 304

Dancing-Girl 305

Bath at Sindanlaya 311

Javanese 314

Government House, Madras 328

Madras 337

The Surf at Madras 349

Residence of Richard McAlister, Cal- cutta 353

The Maharajah of Putteeala, Grand Commander of the Star of India. . 361

Palace of the King of Oude 366

Barrackpore 371

Maharajah of Benares 375

Nautch Girls 377

Benares, from the Ganges 378

Great Buddhist Tower at Sarnath 379

Carving on Buddhist Tower at Sarnath. 380

Ghauts at Benares. 382

Temples at Benares 384

Queen's College, Benares 384

Residency at Lucknow 386

Exterior of the Fort 388

Inlaid Screen, Tomb of Mina Begum,

Agra 389

Scene on the Road to Futtehpore Sikra. 390

Saracenic Gate 391

Pillar in Akbar's Council-Chamber. . . . 393

Panch Mahal 393

Carved Pillars in the Ruins of Futteh- pore Sikra 394

Akbar's Tomb at Secundra 395

Taj-Mahal 398

Cotton-Merchants, Agra ... 402

The Taj, from the Fountain 403

The Kootub Minar 407

Elephants on the March at Putteeala. . 418

A Conjurer at Putteeala 423

Elephants with Howdahs 425

The Prince of Putteeala 427

The Himalayas 436

The Nerbudda 441

Parsee Children 445

Entrance to the Caves of Elephanta . . . 449

Aden 471

Ismailia 484

View on the Nile 489

A Girl of Cairo 497

The Pyramids of Gizeh 499

The Sphinx 501

xn

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

A Street in Cairo 50*7

Street in Cairo 509

Mosque and Houses in Cairo 510

Interior of a Mosque, Cairo 512

Cairo, from the East 516

A Woman on the Nile 524

Temple of Dendera 530

Thebes 534

Obelisks at Karnak 536

Columns at Karnak 539

Gate at Karnak 540

Capitals of Columns at Esneh 551

Youssef and his Donkey 553

Phike 560

Pompey'ts Pillar 5*72

Jaffa 579

Our Caravan 580

Dome of the Church of the Holy Sep- ulchre 586

Mosque of Omar 591

Bethlehem 595

Mosque on the Mount of Olives 598

PAGE

Jews' WailingJ?lace 601

Tower of David, Jerusalem 606

Ancient Syra and Modern Hermopolis. 621

A Greek Official 622

A Group of Heads from the Cesnola

Collection 623

Athens 627

A Greek Woman 628

Bridge at Eieusis 629

The Temple of Victory, Athens 631

Albanian Costume 635

Ancient Pillar at Constantinople 639

Fountain of the Seraglio 640

Turkish Woman in Street Dress 643

Turkish Girl in a Harem 645

Count von Beust 666

Cardinal Antonelli 674

Genoa 683

Drouyn de Lhuys 702

Hamburg 712

A Map showing Mr. Seward's Route

through Asia, Africa, and Europe. . 720

PART I.

UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

"■0-.^- v'v ■-

CHAPTEE

AUBURN TO SAN FRANCISCO,

Mr. Seward's Companions. — His Farewell to his Neighbors. — Western New York. — Niagara. — Canada and its Destiny. — Influence of Immigration. — Africo-Americans. — Detroit. — Chicago. — President Grant. — Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. — Cedar Rapids. — Omaha. — New Classification of States. — Council Bluffs. — Bridges over Navigable Rivers. — Settlement of Western States. — Cheyenne. — The Rocky Moun- tains.— Influence of Mountain States. — Sherman. — Separation. — Mountain Nomen- clature.— Weber Canon. — Salt Lake City. — The Mormons, their Doctrines, Secular Priesthood. — Brigham Young's Sermon. — His Family. — Polygamy. — The Irrepres- sible Conflict in Utah. — The Shoshones. - Destiny of the Indians. — Sierra Nevada. — Reno. — Railroads Result of Abolition ^f Slavery. — Sacramento. — Arrival at San Francisco. — Civilization of California. — Chinese Immigration.

Auburn, August 9, 1870. — Every study must have a beginning

and an end.

These notes begin at Mr. Seward's embowered home,

i UNITED STATES^ CANADA, AND PACIFIC CCEAX.

whence our journey will begin, and they will end here, where, with God's blessing, the journey will end.

Mr. Seward is accompanied by Olive Risley Seward, his adopted daughter, and by her sister, Miss Risley. The former, in writing these notes, records his political, social, moral, and philosophical observations and reflections, in his own words. Hanson A. Risley accompanies him only to the Pacific. Mr. Alexander W. Randall and Mrs. Randall, and Mr. George F. Seward and Mrs. Seward, will join him at San Francisco.

A thousand neighbors and friends are gathered around, whose parting words are made more touching by the fears and anxieties which they express concerning Mr. Seward's impaired strength. His resolute nature suggests the encouragement they need : " Travel improves health instead of exhausting it." " The journey, though long, is now made easy by steam on land and sea." " When I come back, remember to meet me at the eastern door of the railway- station, though we part at the western one."

Niagara Falls, August 10th. — Leaving the pleasant shore of the Owasco Lake, we crossed the Cayuga, passed around the foot of the Seneca, with its beautiful village of Geneva, looked upon the Canandaigua from its encircling hills, and came to a rest at Roch- ester, where the branches of the Central Railroad unite. Thence, this morning, along the shore of Lake Ontario to Niagara.

The plain of "Western New York, gently descending from the lakes to the Hudson, and, under a traditional policy, well improved with canals and railroads, has, from the earliest period of colonial settlement, been a national thoroughfare.

The enlightened political economy, as well as the liberal princi- ples and elevated social sentiments for which the State of New York is distinguished, is strongly reflected in the constitutions, laws, and manners, of the new Western States.

We see, at Niagara, for the first time, the new bridge which has been built just below the great cataract. Like the old one, it is ■graceful enough ; but, " insatiate " bridge-makers, " could, not one suffice ? " George P. Marsh is right. Civilization is a constant

CANADA AND ITS DESTINY. 5

warfare of man against Nature. Nature, however, was made for man, not man for Nature.

Chatham, Canada, August 10th. — It was rather a surprise to meet a United States consul at Clifton when we were less than

NEW SUSPENSION BRIDGE, NIAGAKA FALLS.

twenty-four hours from home. But why do we go through Canada instead of keeping our own lake-shore % Because the Canadian route is the more direct one to Detroit. Moreover, have we not come abroad to see foreign countries, rather than our own ?

Canada, though no less fertile, is more thinly inhabited than the American shore. Immigration obeys political instincts. It prefers the established equality and social security of the United States. It will be long before either Canada or Mexico can realize its invigorating power. This may seem hard, but it is clear that only one great nation can be built on one continent at one time. The remedy for both of those countries is the same — accession to the United States. Canada has hesitated long, but it will see and feel this truth at last — that it is better to be an equal constituent member of a great, powerful, and free nation, than a small, feeble, and isolated state, even though equally free.

At Chatham, mainly a colored settlement, Mr. Seward has been

6 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

received with much respect and kindness by the people, who seem comfortable and respectable. They are fugitives who made their escape from slavery in the United States, years ago, on the " un- derground railway." Now that slavery has been abolished there, doubtless the burden of their song is, "Carry me back to ole Yirginny, to ole Yirginny shore." The Africo-American popula- tion is the last one that will desire to leave our country. A hun- dred freedmen, about Fortress Monroe, were induced by high offers and great persuasion, during our civil war, to colonize the Isle-a- Yache, in Hayti. They complained, moaned, sickened, and lan- guished, and the government was obliged to bring them back.

Detroit, August 11th. — The interesting incident of our stop here, has been a visit to Mr. Seward of a daughter of Dr. Abel F. Fitch, a client of his who died of a broken heart, while Mr. Seward was struggling to save him from an unjust conviction for conspiracy.

In the War of 1812, Detroit was the theatre of a humiliating surrender and capitulation, which were hardly retrieved — -just as Bull Run was the scene of a humiliating rout, the evils effects of which only the mighty issues involved enabled the nation to sur- mount during a four-years' conflict.

The city grows steadily in opulence and refinement.

Chicago, August lAih. — Without a prototype, a marvel not merely of American progress, but of all civilization. We asked an English lady in New York, who had passed two weeks here, which of our sea-coast towns she admired most. She answered, " Chicago." Though an inland, border town, it seems nevertheless a city by the sea. Built in a lagoon like Yenice, it has raised itself high and dry above the flood. As mercantile as Amsterdam or Liverpool, it has neither the hoarding avarice of the one nor the unscrupulous cupidity of the other. Just now grasping, with an iron arm, the broad and fertile shores of the North Pacific, how splendid seems the destiny of Chicago !

We meet here the President of the United States. His charac- teristic modesty has until now been a theme of universal praise.

CEDAR EAPIDS.

But mankind have always expected demonstration of power, pomp, or speecli from their rulers. Will they excuse tile want of it even in the great General of the Civil War ?

&j

Omaha, August 16th.

" It's over the river, and over the sea, And it's over the water to Charlie."

It is over the Mississippi Eiver, and it is over the Missouri Eiver, and over a sea of prairie five hundred miles, from Chicago to Omaha. Seventy years ago, the Mississippi Eiver divided the United States from the dominion of France. Sixty years ago Lewis and Clark found only wild Nature and savage men beyond the Missouri. Fifteen years ago, the States of the Union were politi- cally as well as geographically classified as the Northern States and the Southern States. To-day, it is not a parallel of latitude, but an uncertain and shifting meridional line, that determines their classification.

Of the towns which have sprung up on the plains, we notice Cedar Eapids — not for its superiority to others, but as a specimen of an inchoate Western city. During ten minutes' stay there, we saw the suburban cottages, with pointed roofs, of the Norwegian settlers, surrounded by dark-green meadows, covered with flocks of geese and eider-ducks. We heard airs from " Trovatore " on a Chickering piano, in a dwelling-house not yet painted or plastered. We saw a Mansard mansion of the speculator in city lots, its lawn graced with a bevy of croquet-players. There seem to be all sorts of churches for all sects of Christians — one surmounted with a Catholic cross, and one with dome and minaret borrowed from the Mohammedan mosque. There are restless express-agents, nimble telegraph-messengers, noisy baggage-men and porters. Even the Washington City colored boy is seen there, sauntering lazily through the crowd, and repeating, " Black your boots and shine 'em up ? " with the poetical variation, " A shine for a dime." Two young lady-cousins come into the cars, and soon let us into more secrets of matrimonial engagements and other interesting events

8 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAX.

which are occurring in the "society" of Cedar Eapids than we have room to relate.

Council Bluffs, on the Missouri Eiver, the connecting station of the Eastern railroads with the Union Pacific, is fifteen miles below the historical Council Bluffs, where the first treaty between the United States and the Indians of the plains was celebrated. "Will not Congress its " canon fix 'gainst " this practice of confounding history by transposing geographical names %

There is a fierce competition here between Council Bluffs and Omaha for the transshipment of passengers and freight. The new bridge, which is being built over the Missouri, is likely to decide it by bringing the two flourishing towns into one.

By-the-way, how rapidly the construction of this " mighty maze " of railroads is breaking up the ancient idea of the sac-redness of river navigation against interruption by bridges ! It cost a long and exhausting litigation to ascertain whether the Legislature of a State, or even the Congress of the United States, could authorize the throwing of "a bridge across the Hudson or the Ohio, or even across a boatable inlet of Delaware Bay.

While, however, they are building a bridge here, we must be content to cross the Missouri by a ferry. A huge and heavy steam- boat, a double-ender, starts from a point high above Council Bluffs, and is skilfully steered first downward, then upward, through the dashing, muddy waters, to a landing-place far below Omaha. The passengers of several converging Eastern trains rush promiscuously toward the broad deck with their baggage, movables, and " things." Do you see that little wooden shanty, on the receding bank, with two bottles of whiskey in the window, and the monitory words over the door, "Last Chance?" Everybody tells his business to every- body, and everybody asks everybody his opinions and prospects. Boston, New York, and Chicago merchants, bankers, and printers, are going to establish branches, agencies, and printing-presses, along the railroads in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Cali- fornia; lithe, active, and bright, all-loquacious, and at the same time dogmatic politicians, who fasten themselves tenaciously upon "the stranger," whether lawyer, priest, trader, or farmer, to gain

CHEYENNE. 9

an opinion on the probable result of the presidential election, yet three years distant, of the prospect of an early resumption of specie payments, or of the duration, the immediate result, and the ulterior consequences of the war which broke out only a week ago in Europe. Did not our servant, William Freeman, who has just come to his political rights under the fifteenth amendment, feel his importance when called on to expound these high mysteries % See that group of juvenile Italians, with violins and harps realizing a profuse con- tribution in reward for a rather doubtful performance of "II Bacio." Hear this strong-minded woman narrate to a skeptical audience her successful achievement in establishing woman's suffrage in Wyoming and Utah. An express-agent tells Mr. Seward that he has just sent to Auburn the largest pair of elk-horns in the velvet that could be found in Nevada. That cluster standing near the wheel-house, have sold out their farms in Missouri, and are going to look for new ones in Willamette Yalley or Southern California. This group of Indians, gay with feathers and paint, are Dakota chiefs returning to their tribe, to relate the wonders they saw when sitting around the "big kettle" which the "great father" hung over the fire for them at Washington. This sturdy fellow in blue is an Irish recruit of the United States Army, going to join his regiment at Laramie, accompanied by a wife, six rosy-cheeked chil- dren, a spaniel, terrier, two brindle cats, and a speckled hen. It is altogether too much to expect that the entire family will escape the perils of Indian warfare. It is a notable feature of the motley crowd that it contains not one mere laboring man or Avoman. Whence, then, and how is the labor to come which is to irrigate the deserts, build the roads, and open the mines % We may safely leave the question to its practical solution. American progress and civi- lization "know no such word as fail."

We record our thanks to General Auger for the kind atten- tions shown us at the garrison, and for his orders providing for our safety and comfort through his wide department ; and to the judges, members of the bar, and other citizens for .their public and private hospitalities-

10

UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

Cheyenne, Augiist 17th. — Onward and upward, a niglit and a day in a distance of five hundred miles ; we have gained a height of five thousand feet on the slope of the Rocky Mountains. The country seems, nevertheless, a level plain. There is neither crag, nor rock, nor dell ; and even the flow of the beautiful Platte River, though quick and free, is without cascade or rapids. We have passed almost imperceptibly from a landscape of Indian corn and wheat fields, orchards, and vineyards, to an endless slope covered with short and grayish, but nutritious blue-grass, late the pasturage of countless buffalo-herds, now replaced by scattered droves of lank

CHEYENNE.

cattle, driven here from Texas an.d Mexico. The gopher freely dis- ports himself in our way ; the antelope, as if under a fascination, shyly gazes upon us with his soft blue eyes ; and the prairie-dogs, sitting erect at the doors of their tenements, solemnly review us from their thousand cities. We expected, on arriving here, to see the towering Black Hills, and perhaps the more distant Snowy Range ; but the thermometer has fallen to 36°, and the barometer we know not how low. Heavy clouds rest on the earth all around us, and nothing can be seen beyond or over them.

INFLUENCE OF MOUNTAIN STATES.

11

The Territory of Wyoming, of which Cheyenne is the capital, has a population outside of the town not exceeding two thousand, Cheyenne grew rapidly during the construction of the Pacific Rail- road, but now, suffering a decline, it may number twenty-five hun- dred. It has, however, just been connected by railroad with Denver, and so with St. Louis. The territorial government, there- fore, seems a machine prepared for future rather than immediate use. The army secures the people against intrusion by Indians, and keeps the peace. Governor Campbell, with the Secretary of State and the Surveyor-General, received us at the station, and, apologizing for the straitness of their dwellings, delivered us over to General King and General Bradley, who have cordially conferred upon us the freedom of the mess.

What is to be the political influence of these new mining and mountain States % Their founders are energetic, enterprising and persevering men. Mountaineers are always frugal and brave, as well as intense lovers of freedom.- Their loyalty will never fail, if the Union shall continue to deserve it.

12 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

Sherman, August 19^A.— Sherman, eight thousand feet above the sea ! We have made a winding way between the crests of the Black Hills, and these are only a lower tier of the snow-clad moun- tains. -The pass is treeless, shrubless, flowerless ; the rocks on the mountain-sides massive, brown, monotonous. What were the Eocky Mountains made for? Some of their uses are obvious. A water- shed, they irrigate the continent, while they stimulate human activity by obstructing movement and hiding mineral treasure. Now gently descending the western slope five hundred feet, we come upon the great grassy plain of Laramie, on which civilization is making rapid advancement. Five hundred feet lower, through beds of crumbling red sandstone, we land on a broad floor of cannel-

WAH8ATCH RANGE.

coal. Prudent Nature foresaw the Pacific Kailroad and the mining- shaft. Onward forty miles, downward how many feet we do not know, in the Wahsatch Valley, we come to a settlement which bears the ominous name of Separation. . It is the parting between the tributaries of the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean.

MOUNTAIN NOMENCLATURE.

13

How odd and yet how significant is the nomenclature of the mountain scenery : " Eecl Desert," " Table Rock," " Black Butte," " Bitter Creek ! " Now, slowly by winding grades, we climb the Waksatch Range, only five hundred feet lower than Sherman ; we stand on the eastern rim of the central basin of the continent. We

DEVIL 8 GATE, WEBEE CANON.

recognize and hail the rugged yellow cliff and far-reaching plain,

which, under the light of a gorgeous sunset, Leutze has copied in his

great fresco in the Capitol, " Westward the Course t>f Empire takes

its Way." Hence we hurry rapidly downward toward the reservoir 3

14

UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

of the basin, the broad, blue Salt Lake. The face of the Wahsatch Mountains wears no resemblance to Atlantic scenery. These dis- jointed masses of rocks, fractured and shivered, look as if they had resisted lightning, tempest, ice, and flood, for ages. Sublime devas- tation ! The Weber River, here only a foaming torrent, has worked out for itself an arched passage darker and more majestic than Gothic art ever designed. The mountain-dwellers call it the Devil's Gate. There are miles where a declivity, otherwise unbroken, pre- sents at irregular intervals a high, conical basalt rock, standing like the tower of a castle whose domes and walls have been swept away, and buried in the earth. One of these bears the name of Pulpit

PULPIT EOCK.

Rock, and, though inaccessible, it is believed by the credulous that Brigham Young from its level summit rallied his hosts to repel the army of General Johnson.

In the Weber Canon, at the foot of the Wahsatch Range, the torrent subsides into a quiet stream. On its bank is an old and solitary pine-tree, which bears a board on which is inscribed,

SALT LAKE CITY.

15

" One thousand miles from Omaha." Here all travellers rest and meditate ; and many, proud of the great achievement, record their names. Let no one suppose that, because Salt Lake Plain is called a valley, it is therefore level, smooth, or grassy. The plain is but a table-land, broken by mountain-spurs, and hilly ranges rise from the bosom of the lake itself, affording pasturage for herds of wild-horses.

-

THOTTSAND-MILE TREE

Salt Lake Oil?/, August 20th. — At Ogden, where the Salt Lake Valley Railroad intersects the continuous Pacific Pailroad, and where many other railroads are soon to meet it, we were taken by a special train, which Brigham Young had sent for us. On arrival at the station here, we were received by General De Trobriand.

Wearied and worn with mountain-travel, a hostelry even less neat and cheerful than the Town send House, managed by an Eng- lishwoman, the second of four wives, would have been acceptable to us.

The town, though so unique and isolated, is full of visitors from

16 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

all parts of the United States and Europe, animated by a common sentiment, curiosity concerning the Mormons— how they came to be here ; how they live and act ; with what woes they threaten the nation and mankind, and by what means, moral, judicial, political, or military, the anomalous sect shall be brought to an end.

SALT LAKE VALLEY.

We attended divine service this morning in a small and plain Episcopalian chapel. In the afternoon, we were accompanied to the Tabernacle by Mr. Hooper, Territorial Delegate in Congress. The congregation, composed chiefly of women and children, "with here and there a traveller," must have numbered seven or eight thousand. On the platform were seated the entire hierarchy, con- sisting of the president, the apostles, and the high council, the sev- enties, the high-priests, the elders, the priests, teachers, and deacons. Among these dignitaries we recognized merchants, railroad men, mechanics, and farmers, and it is quite manifest that the priesthood is a shrewd, sagacious body of secular persons. The communion is celebrated every Sunday, every worshipper participating. The

THE MORMONS, THEIR DOCTRINES, ETC.

17

ceremony, though attended with less solemnity, is conducted in the same manner as in the more popular Protestant denominations, with the difference that water is used in place of wine, a special prayer being offered that the substitution may be approved. The first preacher argued that, according to divine promise, the kingdom of God came upon the earth immediately after the departure of the Saviour ; that this kingdom has a key ; that the Church early lost it, and that the Latter-Day Saints have found it ; that it is nothing less than the true principle of marriage, namely, that marriage is not merely a union for earthly life, but a spiritual bond extending through time and eternity : the Mormons having unlocked the gates with the newly-discovered key, are inviting and expecting all nations to enter and build up the kingdom of God.

MORMON TABERNACLE.

During the service thus far, Brigham Toung sat a silent and meditative observer. He now rose, and a profound stillness came over the congregation. He dwelt briefly on the devotion, zeal, faith, constancy, conflicts, and sufferings, of the founders of the

18 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

Mormon Church. From its past triumphs, and its present security, he inferred the favor of the Divine Author of the Christian religion. Like the previous speaker, he seemed to avoid the subject of po- lygamy, while he claimed for the new church a close conformity to the practices of the early Christians, and the enjoyment of new, special, and continuous revelations. ISTo Christian teacher claims for the writings of Isaiah or Jeremiah, or of Matthew, Luke, or John, more divine illumination or infallibility than the speaker demanded for the attested manuscripts of Joseph Smith. After descanting, in a few glowing words, upon the certain acceptance of the new faith immediately, and throughout the whole world, he warned the saints of the danger of falling from the faith, saying, with all the vehemence of prophetic denunciation, " Hell awaits the backslider ! " After a kind allusion to Mr. Seward's presence, the sermon ran to incoher- ent and pointless exhortation. The service ended, Brigham Young greeted Mr. Seward, and asked leave to visit him in the evening.

The veneration which a Roman Catholic, Episcopalian or Method- ist congregation manifest toward a prelate of their order, at whose hand they have received a sacrament, is indifference itself compared with the awe and reverence paid to the President of the Latter-Day Saints as he retired from the Tabernacle.

Brigham Young, accompanied by four sons and three elders, passed the long evening in conversation, religious, political and secular, with Mr. Seward. At the close, with an air as free from embarrassment as the patriarch Jacob might have shown in a like case, he invited Mr. Seward to visit some of his houses the next day, and see his family.

August 22r7. — The President came with carriages, and drove us first to visit his wife Emeline, a matron of fifty, with her ten chil- dren, from the ages of twenty-five downward. Thence to the house of Amelia, who seems thirty-five years. She has been married two or three years, and has no children. She invited the ladies to try her new piano. We then drove to the dwelling of the first wife. This house, the first which Brigham Young built in the city, shows him to be a skilful mechanic, with a considerable knowledge

BRIGHAM YOUNG'S FAMILY.

19

of architecture. She was surrounded by her sons, Hiram Young, Brigham Young, Jr., and their several wives, who all seemed to regard their aged mother with proper filial affection. Thence we repaired to the " Bee-hive," a complex building, or group of build- ings, in which the remaining families of Brigham Young reside. They have different suites of apartments, connected by corridors or piazzas with the garden, a common dining-room, and a saloon used as a music-hall and chapel. The furniture and appointments

BRIGHAM YOUtTG's RESIDENCE.

of the " Bee-hive," like those of the other houses, are frugal but comfortable, and order and cleanliness prevail in them all. We were received here by eight wives and their children. The chil- dren, a large proportion of whom are girls, with blue eyes and flaxen hair, strongly resemble their father and each other. All are educated upon the academic standard of the Western country. All we saw were healthful, intelligent, sprightly, happy and mutually affectionate, without regard to the difference of mothers ; equally free from boldness and awkwardness. The mothers, women of

20 UNITED STxlTES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

sad deportment, are entirely devoted to their children. All the wives are uneducated, except Amelia, who was before marriage an accomplished school-teacher. If there is any jealousy among them, it escaped our penetration. The mind of the first wife is impaired either by age or by trouble. She spoke severely of Gentile censo- riousness. We were served at every house with the choicest of native fruits and native wine. Except the coachman, we saw no servants. At the "Bee-hive," each mother sits with her children at table, and the several families are served in the order in which they are arranged. Family worship is conducted night and morning by the patriarch, and attended by the entire household. Brigham Young's manner toward his wives is respectful, and toward his children dignified and affectionate. In presenting them severally as they came in groups, with a kind smile for the particular mother, he spoke in this way : " This is our delicate little Lucy," " This is our musical daughter," " This is our son George, who has a mathe- matical genius," and so on. At the end of the visit here, Brigham Young said to Mr. Seward : " You have seen eleven of the sixteen wives with whom I live, and nearly all of my forty-nine surviving children."

" But," said Mr. Seward, " you are represented as saying that you do not know how many wives you have." The President explained that, besides the wives who are married for time, the Mormons believe in sealing other wives only for eternity, and, in regard to such women, he may have made the remark attributed to him.

Polygamy, not at first adopted by the Mormons, is an adventi- tious feature of their system. It was authorized by a revelation to Joseph Smith, which was posthumously published. The Church at first desired to suppress it, but it bore the requisite official attes- tation of the prophet, and therefore could not be rejected without shaking the foundation of the whole system. The apologies which they make for it are not altogether destitute of plausibility. It promised to stimulate population when the sect in a Territory, new and isolated, expected no accession by immigration, either foreign or domestic, except of European converts. More women than men

POLYGAMY. 21

came as such converts. Polygamy provided shelter and material comforts for supernumerary women who might otherwise fall into neglect, want, and possible infamy. So far it has not proved in- compatible with the education and training of children in public schools, nor with the maintenance of order and tranquillity among the people. Time enough, however, has not elapsed, perhaps, nor are the conditions of the community sufficiently matured, fully to develop the evils of the institution. Marriage is not exclusively a matter of religious belief. It is a social institution. To ascertain the just and needful relation between the sexes in social life has been one of the experimental studies of mankind, from the earliest ages, in all countries. The marriage of one man with one woman, constituting what we call the family relation, is the result of that great study of civilization. It is universally accepted by Christian nations, the only nations which enjoy a matured civilization. Po- lygamy is antagonistic to, and incompatible with, the existence of the family. "When the two institutions are brought into contact in any country, an irrepressible conflict ensues. In all the nations of the East the harem has hitherto prevailed in that conflict, with the results of not merely the degradation but the enslaving of woman, and the demoralization and corruption of the entire social body. This is the conflict which is just now beginning in Utah. The end is not doubtful, and, with the rapid increase of what is called the Gentile population, coming to develop the mineral and agricultural resources of the central regions of the continent, that end cannot be distant.

The Mormons, as a religious sect, soon to cast off the heteroge- neous and obnoxious institution of polygamy, may survive, and, like other religious and ecclesiastical associations, enjoy a long exist- ence. How long, may depend upon the persecution it may pro- voke. The field of purely religious inquiry is infinite, and the spirit of search is eternal. It demands, and will in all civilized states henceforth command, toleration.

In the aspect of political economy, Utah is a wonderful success. A population of nearly one hundred thousand, doubling every ten years, occupying a soil naturally destitute of vegetation, has, by irri-

22 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

gation and other processes, produced an abundant granary for sup- plying the wants of immigrants on their way to the new mountain States. and Territories on every side. Whatever may be the future of Utah and the Mormon sect, Brigham Young will have an historical character. He was originally an uneducated carpenter, in youth a townsman of Mr. Seward's at Auburn. The latter, while seeing no reason to question Young's sincerity in his eccentric religious faith and practices, deems it unjust to deny him extraordinary ability, energy, and perseverance, as a founder of an American State. His failure, however, in one of his designs, perhaps at the time the most cherished of all, will serve as a warning to future American colo- nizers. Leading his exiled and persecuted band from the banks of the Mississippi across the wilderness, he refused to stop until he had found an asylum outside of the territory and jurisdiction of the United States. Scarcely, however, had he discovered this land of refuge in Mexico, before the Government acquired title, and ex- tended its authority over not only that region, but the whole coun- try to the Pacific Ocean.

ElcJw, August %3d. — Brigham Young, attended by a group of wives and children, took leave of Mr. Seward at the station in Salt Lake City ; and a committee, composed of Mormon elders, came with us by special train to Ogden. There two palatial cars awaited us, which had been sent across the Sierra Nevada by Mr. Seward's friends at Sacramento. These are furnished with a dining-room, well-supplied pantry, kitchen, and sleeping-apartments.

Salt Lake, though fed by saline springs, is the reservoir of many mountain-streams, the Weber River, Bear River, Blue Creek, and others. Its waters are shallow and unwholesome ; but we saw cattle feeding near it, and land-birds flying over it. Its beach is always thickly incrusted with salt, produced by solar evaporation. Large timber grows in the mountain-canons, and the soil, wherever irrigated, is prolific of cereals, grasses, and fruits. The peach, plum, and grape, are unsurpassed, even in California, Our last sunset view of the lake, taken a hundred miles west of Ogden, was one which we are not likely to forget. The great orb, suspended

DESTINY OF THE INDIANS.

23

over the waters, kindled them to a dazzling blaze, while the sky was clothed in a drapery of purple and gold, which extended in broad and graceful festoons across the entire horizon.

Here, at Elcho, we find a wretched and squalid remnant of the Shoshones, once the proprietors of the region we are surveying. Must these Indian races indeed perish before the march of the white man ? It would seem so ; they could only be saved by con- version to the usages and habits of civilization, but all past efforts to that end, from the Atlantic to the centre of the continent, have

TIIE REMNANT OF A TRIBE.

failed. The experiments of the same sort on the Pacific coast are no more promising. The Aztec race, though it has not increased in numbers, has not diminished under Spanish conquest and coloni- zation. Exalted to citizenship, suffrage, and education, the Indians of Mexico may be saved ; but it is noticeable that intermarriages be- tween the pure Indians and the Creoles and European immigrants have practically ceased, and that Mexico exhibits therefore a nation divided bv castes, of which the native one is the most numerous,

24

UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

while the foreign one is the most wealthy and intelligent. One cannot but hope that the Aztecs of Mexico may prove an exception to the elsewhere universal process of extermination.

Reno. — On leaving Elcho, we followed a mountain-pass which is barricaded with basalt columns, more picturesque than the ad- mired Palisades of the Hudson, and this pass brought us out on the bank of the Humboldt River. We have followed its wild and

detank

MOUTH OF BIG i'OTTi >\\V< n .1) CAM.iN.

winding way as it flows over an alkaline bed, destitute of vegeta- tion, two hundred and fifty miles, until it spreads its waters over a broad and sterile plain and sinks into the earth. From this plain we began the eastern ascent of the Sierra Nevada. The poisonous mineral dust, raised by the whirlwind, was excoriating as we passed over this desert of the desert, seeing neither tree nor stream after leaving the lost river.

SACRAMENTO. 25

We declined here a pressing invitation to diverge and visit Virginia City, as we had declined at Salt Lake, Ogden, Cheyenne, and Omaha, to diverge to other points of mining and political in- terest. The frequency of these invitations is strongly suggestive of the rapidity with which branch railroads and common roads are entwining the giant limbs of the new members of the republic.

What is the secret of this sudden and prodigious increase of national energy in the prosecution of internal improvements \ It is one of the first fruits of the abolition of slavery. Conservatism of the constitutional compromises in the interest of slavery, of course in practice, became conservatism of slavery itself, and this principle, developed in 1800, and gaining strength during fifty years, has been effectually obstructive of material improvement and national progress.

Sacramento, August 25th. — The desert is passed at Reno. The mountain scenery becomes fresh and cheerful with plentiful ever- green forests, and, where they have been removed, rich meadows.

Mr. Stanford, Mr. Crocker, and Mr. Mills, met us on the way, and accompanied us down the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, a long journey, though the distance is short. The highest en- gineering skill must have been employed in effecting this passage through mountains so rugged, steep and wild. This morning the engineer whistled " Down brakes ! " to avoid collision with a train which seemed to be coming from the opposite direction, but which proved to be the end of our own train. We left massive brown mountains, deep-blue lakes, and' canons clothed in evergreen, and entered a broad plain, lightly shaded with groups of laurel and live- oak. Newly-harvested wheat-fields, and fields yet covered with native oats, are boundless. Although the engineer had brought us here in advance of the appointed hour, Mr. Seward was neverthe- less greeted with a salvo, and it was not without difficulty that we made our way through the friendly mass who were gathered to welcome him.

A drive through city and suburbs, and over the race-course, a dinner at Mr. Stanford's, and an evening reception at Mr. Crocker's,

26

UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

closed the day, giving us a pleasing acquaintance with the refined and spirited society of the capital of California.

San Francisco, September 1st. — Mr. Seward, desirous to avoid an appearance of seeking a renewal of the hospitalities extended to him here last year, on his tour to Alaska and Mexico, effected a quiet entrance into the town, and we have been the guests, since

SAN FRANCISCO.

our arrival, of his old friend and travelling-companion, Mr. Hastings. We have visited the Cliff House ; and made for all, but Mr. Seward, a first acquaintance with the Seal-Rocks, their amphibious inhabi- tants, and the Pacific Ocean. We could not describe, if we should attempt, the bewildering laud excursion ol two days, and the magnificent entertainment at Belmont, which Mr. Ralston gave us, or our beautiful steam-yacht excursion around the harbor and bay.

CIVILIZATION OF CALIFORNIA.

27

General Scofielcl, late Secretary of War, now at the head of this department, and Admiral Winslow, the hero of the Kearsarge, commanding the Pacific squadron here, have entertained us gener- ously. These and other hospitalities, all crowded into one short week, closed last night with a ball at the house of Mr. Avery.

What caprices have marked the civilization of California ! Wrested from the native Indians, one hundred and fifty years ago, to enlarge the dominion of Spain ; parcelled fifty years afterward, in large tracts, among bookish priests devoted to the conversion of the dispossessed proprietors — hardly had the cathedrals and

CLIFF HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO.

schools been established, when revolution tore the territory from the hold of Spain, and the Republic of Mexico confiscated and seized the entire domain. Then came purchase, conquest, and rapid colonization, by the United States. These have left, with few exceptions, neither Mexican proprietors to occupy, nor Spanish priests to teach, nor Indians to be taught. The Catholic churches were founded chiefly in 1776-78. How little did their builders

28 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN".

understand the mighty revolution that had just then broken out on the other side of the continent — a revolution that was destined to modify not only the civil but also the ecclesiastical systems of the earth !

San Francisco, though only twenty years old, already assumes the aspect, tone, and manners of an inter-continental emporium, a counterpart to the Atlantic metropolis.

The absorbing topic here is, Chinese immigration. Mr. Seward has declined an invitation given him by the anti-Chinese party to explore the Chinese quarter, and see how unfit its inhabitants are to become citizens of the United States ; and also a like invitation from the Chinese settlers to make the same exploration, to see how harmless and profitable that colonization is. The Republican party have lately acquiesced in the policy of exclusion, which has been insisted upon so long and so strenuously by the Democratic party. Mr. Seward protests firmly against this, and teaches that immigra- tion and expansion are the main and inseparable elements of civili- zation on the American Continent, and nowhere more needful or beneficent than on the Pacific coast. He says confidently, to both parties, that all attempts will fail to suppress or stifle either of those invigorating forces.

GOLDEN GATE.

CHAPTER II.

FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO JAPAN

The Vessels of the Pacific Mail Line. — Our Fellow-Passengers. — " The Great Company of the Preachers." — The Chinese Passengers. — The Great Event of the Voyage. — The Moods of the Sea. — A Still Greater Event. — The Loss of a Day. — The Gyas- cutus. — The Beginning of the End. — The Coast of Japan. — The Ocean-Fisheries.

Steamer China, Pacific Ocean, September 1, 1870. — Our party having received its promised accessions, we embarked at noon. More kind friends could not have come on board to take leave if we had been long residents of San Francisco. If Mr. Seward had been thirty years younger, such a parting would even then have taxed his strength.

We passed the sometimes turbulent, but always majestic Golden Gate, with scarcely a disturbance of the ship's balance, and began our voyage on a calm sea and under a bright sky.

September 4:th. — The vessels of the Pacific Mail Line are side- wheel steamers, and in accommodations and appointments are sur- passed only by the palatial boats on the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. The China, four thousand three hundred tons bur- den, is the smallest of them all. We enjoy an uninterrupted promenade seven hundred feet in circuit on the upper deck. We have sixty cabin -passengers, and might carry comfortably twice that number. Among them are General Vlangally, the Russian Minister returning from St. Petersburg to Peking, and half a dozen English civil officers coming from " home " to their posts in Japan and China. "Great," it must be confessed, "is the com- pany of the preachers :" Fifteen American missionaries with their

30 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

wives and children ! — the elder families returning, and the younger going for the first time to fields of labor in Japan, China, Siam, and India ; United States naval officers, on their way to join the Asiatic squadron, four English and as many American youths just emerged from college on an Eastern torn* ; a United States Treas- ury agent, going to inspect the Oriental consulates ; and one Amer- ican office-seeker, at least, proceeding to lay his claims before the Emperor of China at Peking. The gentlemen amuse themselves with gymnastic games, the ladies with music and books. An ex- pert Japanese juggler entertains us in the cabin. In the steerage, are five hundred Chinese returning home. They pay less than half price, and are fed with the simple fare of their country. Knowing no use of beds, they sleep on the floor. In the middle of their cabin they have made, with canvas, a dark room for opium-smoking. "When on deck, they appear neatly clad, and amuse themselves with unintelligible and apparently interminable games of chance. The annual immigration of Chinese to the United States is twelve thou- sand. They are invariably successful. Half the number go back to China, either on visits or to remain. Our freights consist of Mexican silver dollars, manufactured goods, agricultural machines, carriages, furniture, flour, butter, fruits, drugs, and patent medicines. These go in exchange for teas, silks, rice, and Chinese emigrants.

September 6th. — The great event of the voyage occurred this morning. All were on deck, in a state of pleasant excitement. At seven o'clock, precisely the hour which the captain had fore- told, the ship America, eighteen days from Yokohama, appeared in a direct line before us, under full pressure, and with square sails set. Signals were promptly exchanged, and, to avoid colli- sion, each ship turned slightly from its course and stopped. The America has eighty cabin-passengers and four hundred Chinese. The cabin-passengers on either vessel cheered loudly, the Chinese looking on silent and thoughtful. A well-manned gig, with an officer in the stern, came bounding over the waves, and deliv- ered to us Chinese and Japanese (European) newspapers, with a bag of letters from her passengers. We, in return sent on board

THE GREAT EVENT OF THE VOYAGE. 31

tlie latest American newspapers, and a mail well charged with letters to our friends at home. The America's boat was then hoisted to its davits, the walking-beams of the two giant ships

MEETING OF THE STEAMERS IN MID-OCEAN.

gracefully bowed to each other, the wheels gently revolved, the passengers repeated their cheers, and a gun from either deck an- nounced that the meeting was over. Each vessel resumed its course, and in a few moments not even a spy-glass could discover the waving of handkerchiefs or other signal on the deck of the America.*

If we gave to the eastern-bound travellers the first news of the European war, and of the death of Admiral Farragut, they in ex- change gave us intelligence of an expected war between .the Euro- pean powers and the Chinese Government, in consequence of the recent dreadful massacre at Tien-Tsin. Every one is astonished that Mr. Seward persists in his purpose of visiting Peking. He says that France, in her present disabled condition, cannot make war against China, and, without the lead of France, no "Western nation will.

* The telegraph from Shanghai reports that the America was burned in the harbor of Yokohama, August 25, 18*72.

32 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

September lUh. — Those who would know the sea, have need to study its varying moods and aspects. They must see it in the later hours of cloudless night, when it reflects the bright stars and con- stellations; they must see it in the morning twilight, when its broad surface seems .contracted to a small, dark lake, and then un- der the illumination of the dawn it resumes its illimitable expanse. Doubtless it is terrible in its more serious moods by reason of its vastness, darkness, and powerful agitation, all elements of the sub- lime. Happily for us, we have not yet witnessed those moods.

September 16th. — It was a mistake to pronounce our meeting with the America, on the 6th, the event of the voyage. A greater one has just occurred. Our last date is the 14th. This note is written on the 16th. The former entry certainly was made yesterday. The chronometer marked eight o'clock at night at Greenwich, at the very hour when our clock, which keeps the running time, marked eight o'clock in the morning. We are half-way around the world from Greenwich, and have lost just half a day. It is quite clear that, if we should continue onward making the same discrepancy of time, we should have lost a whole day on arriving at Greenwich. "We might postpone the readjust- ment of our ship's time until we reached Greenwich, but the scientific world has wisely decided that this readjustment shall be made in every case by compromise on the 180th meridian, and therefore, instead of striking out a half-day here, we strike out a whole one.

If the absolute loss of one whole day out of our lives is a dis- tressing thing to think of, we may console ourselves with Red Jacket's profound reflection. When a missionary had delivered be- fore the Seneca nation, in council, a homily in the usual style on the shortness of life, and the necessity of improving its fleeting hours, he called on them for an expression of their sentiments on that important subject ; Red Jacket, having duly consulted with the chiefs, head men, women, and warriors, responded in their be- half: "Red men have all the time there is going; they do not see that white men have any more."

THE COAST OF JAPAN. 33

September 20th. — Four thousand miles from San Francisco. The sea has come down from the long, surging swell of a few days past, and is now smooth and glassy. We have entered the outer belt of the hot circular current which warms the coasts of Japan, Siberia, and Alaska.

A brig under full sail is seen, though at a great distance, mov- ing eastward. Everybody tries the spy-glass to make her out. When all have failed, a passenger, noted for controversialism, pro- nounces that the brig is the Gyascutus, from Macao, bound for Valparaiso, freighted with coolies. We all start at once, and ask, "How do you know?" "I assert it to be the fact," he replies ; "let him prove the contrary who can. If this is not sufficient proof, it is at least the same form of argument that our preacher used in his sermon last night."

September 23d. — The beginning of the end ! Every inch of the deck, bulwarks, stanchions, rigging, and boats, has been scoured, tarred, or painted, and the whole ship is clean as a Shaker meeting- house. Our five hundred steerage-passengers are confined within a rope-enclosure on the forward-deck — they appearing in new and shining cotton clothes, with pates freshly shaven. A dozen women are seen for the first time. All are engaged, especially the women, in dropping handfuls of rice and small pieces of colored paper into the sea, to propitiate the gods for a safe arrival. Flying-fish sur- round us ; one white-breasted gull has come to attend us into port ; and a whale, the only one we have seen on the voyage, is spouting in the distance.

t

September 2Mh. — The coast of Japan rises in a long, gray outline over the dark sea, but Fusi Yama veils his head, and refuses to take notice of our coming.

We have crossed the Pacific Ocean. How much it is to be re- gretted that we must make such long stretches, and yet see so little ! How profitable it would be to study the North-Pacific American coast, the shores of Puget Sound, the Territories on the Columbia River, and Alaska, in a near future the great fishery, forest, and

34: UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND PACIFIC OCEAN.

mineral storehouses of the world ! — the Aleutian chain of islands hereafter to be the stepping-stones between the two continents. "We have lost a sight, also, not only of the Sandwich Islands, but of Australia, a fifth continent on which a kindred people are devel-

FUSI YAMA, COAST OF JAPAN.

oping a state that may at some future day challenge comparison with our own republic.

The Northern fisheries known in commerce are chiefly above the 34th parallel. The United States and Russia own more than half of the coast on both sides of the Pacific, north of that parallel. Mr. Seward left, as a legacy in the State Department, an inchoate negotiation of a treaty for reciprocity in those fisheries. Its im- portance may be estimated by recalling the controversies and con- flicts between the United States and Great Britain, during the last hundred years, which have arisen out of the fisheries on the Atlan- tic coast.

PART II. JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

CHAPTER I.

YOKOHAMA AND ITS VICINITY.

The Bay of Yokohama. — Natives and Foreigners. — Native Costumes. — Japanese Bar- bers.— The Tokaido. — Japanese Cemeteries, Gardens, and Temples. — Monks and Monasteries. — Kamakura. — The Great Statue of Buddha. — The Daibutz.

Yokohama, September 25th. — Night closed with more than moonless darkness. With a trne seaman's solicitude for the good name of his ship, Captain Freeman still promised that we should anchor before midnight. Who could think of sleeping when the lights of our first Asiatic port were so near ? We walked the deck around and around, from stem to stern ; we tried whist, we drew uncounted symphonies from the piano — but no consolation. The ship scarcely moved, and the equinoctial 24th day of September became the longest of all the days in the year. Time lagged more and more tediously between the hours of eleven and twelve. At last we gave it up, and went to rest. We were wakened by the ship's gun, and the slow dropping of the anchor. The morning brought an explanation. The ship's clock had been retarded, and did not announce the hour of twelve until the chronometer marked half-past two.

The bay of Yokohama is as spacious, and its surroundings are as beautiful, as those of Hampton Roads. The landscape recedes gracefully from the shore, and high above the beautiful scene Fusi Yama's sacred brow reflects the glowing smile of the morning sun. The hills and valleys wear all the freshness of spring. It is Sun- day ; the harbor is gay with the flags of many nations on men-of-

38 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

war and merchant-ships, and is made more animated by the quaint Japanese craft and their shouting, grotesque, native managers.

Yokohama, September 2Qth. — The United States minister, Mr. De Long, Captain McCrea, of the Asiatic squadron, Mr. Shepard the consul at Yeddo, Mr. Walsh, and other American citizens, came on board, and after kind expressions of welcome and congratulation conducted us to Mr, Walsh's residence.

Captain McCrea received Mr. Seward and his friends with na- tional honors on board the United States steamship-of-war Monocacy.

Accustomed at home to the intermingling of all classes, condi- tions, and races, in subjection to one system of laws and tribunals, with common standards of morals and manners, we are as yet un- prepared for the different constitution of society we find here : instead of one community, two, standing side by side, each inde- pendent of the other — the one native, the other foreign.

The native population of Japan is forty millions, all of the Mongo- lian type ; * the so-called European population, five thousand, tempo- rarily residing here from various nations, including the United States. These foreigners are gathered upon tracts of land, one, three or six miles square, called concessions, adjacent to native cities in the chief ports of this maritime empire. These foreign settlements are cor- porations, regulated and protected by the several foreign nations, and are copied in all respects from Western models, while the unpaved native cities, built of firs and cedars, thatched with bamboo and cane, are as perfectly Japanese as if a European had never touched the coast.

It may be conceived that it is difficult for the transient traveller, who always sojourns among his countrymen, and speaks with the natives only through an interpreter, to study Japan or its people. The Japanese, however they may have been heretofore, are not now jealous or suspicious. They labor cheerfully on the wharves, serve faithfully in foreign families within the concessions, and manufac- ture, in their own districts, articles of furniture and fancy goods for foreign markets. They are polite, sagacious, and skilful traders.

* The Prime-Minister informs Mr. Seward that the census recently taken gave thirty- five (35) millions, but that it was erroneous. He estimates the population at fifty millions.

NATIVE COSTUMES.

39

September 27th. — The representations of native costumes on the Japanese porcelain and lacquer-work, which are found on our tables and in our parlors at home, are not less accurate than spirited. The coarse, black hair is a chief object of pride and care. The

JAPANESE BABBEES.

barber with his scissors, combs, razors, and pomatum, is seen at all hours of the day in the most public places. The women brush the

40

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

hair away from the temples a la Pompadour, and gather it up under a small smooth puff at the back of the head with gilt and vermilion pins. The hair of the men is shorn entirely off the crown, leaving enough at the sides and back to be drawn upward and fastened in a graceless and meaningless knot. The effect is simply shock- ing. The barber-work being performed only three times a week, care is taken to prevent disarrangement in the intervals. They use, instead of a pillow, a wooden block adjusted to the shape of the neck. The pomatum so lavishly applied is extracted from an herb, which, growing in the eaves of the houses, makes a pretty green fringe for the brown thatched roofs. They say that one of the em- perors, for sumptuary reasons, forbade the cultivation of this plant in the fields. Thus the people, while evading the law, beautify their dwellings.

Here, as in Alaska and in ancient Mexico, civil economy re-

»** mmw^i

JAPANESE GIRLS.

quires that the married and unmarried women shall wear distin- guishing badges. The girl, with full hair tastefully arranged, with white teeth, and with the free use of cosmetics, and a scrupulously modest costume, is attractive ; when married, her eyebrows are immediately shaven off, her teeth are stained jet-black, the orna- ments are removed from her hair, and she becomes repulsive.

JAPANESE CEMETEEIES.

41

Wherever a city of the living is, there is also a greater city of the dead. The Japanese bury on the hill-sides. Though cremation

--■"-':".-

JAPANESE CEMETERY.

is sometimes practised, the body is more generally interred in a sitting posture, cramped within a plain, white, square box, borne to the grave on men's shoulders. All who attend, wear white mourn- ing-badges. "Women do not appear in the processions. Burial is without pomp and pageantry. A black or gray stone obelisk is raised over the grave.

All the cemeteries are crowded, but doubtless this is due to the economy of land required by so dense a population. They are, however, always shaded and green.

42 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

Septeiriber 28th. — We made an excursion, by boat, to-day, on the bay of Yeddo, to Kanagawa, and its precincts. The Tokaido, the high-road which traverses the island of Niphon, passes through the town. A crowd of both sexes and all ages gathered and stared at our landing. The architecture of Japanese towns and villages is monotonous. The buildings, public and private, are small and huddled together. It was a pleasing surprise to find the railroad to Yeddo in process of construction. It is undertaken by a native company, using only Japanese capital, credit, and labor. By-the- way, the projectors are becoming timid in prosecuting the work, under an apprehension that, when it shall be completed, foreigners will base extortionate claims on any accidental injuries they may suffer.

Ascending a high hill, just beyond the town of Kanagawa, we enjoyed our first interior view of Japanese rural scenery. Thence- forward we had a path only five or six feet wide, which winds across the plains and around the hill-sides, not on any principle of road-making, but simply for the convenient use of the soil. The hill-tops are covered with majestic cypresses and yew-trees, inter- mingled with the chestnut, holly, pine, persimmon, and camphor. At their bases are thick groves of the slender bamboo, which, be- sides being highly ornamental, is the most variously useful of all the woods in the East.

The althea, the lily, the japonica, the arbor-vitse, the wisteria, the passion-flower, and many other shrubs and creepers, which re- quire so much care and labor in our gardens and greenhouses, are luxuriant here. There is no waste, either by rock, marsh, or jun- gle ; every hill is terraced, every acre irrigated, every square foot of land covered by some tree, cereal, or esculent. Instead of farms, there are small plots, and each is tilled with cotton, flax, wheat, barley, sugar, beets, peppers, sweet-potatoes, cabbages, turnips, and other vegetables, by a single family, with care equal to that which is bestowed on our flower-beds. ]STo allowance is made for even accidental waste of the crop. The individual wheat-stalk which is bent down by the storm is restored and supported. Each head of rice, each particular boll of cotton, is kept in its place until care-

A JAPANESE GARDEN.

MONKS AND MONASTEKIES. 43

fully removed by the husbandman's hand. There is no loss of time in gathering the crops into garners ; as fast as the product ripens, it is harvested and immediately prepared for the market. Despotism, though often cruel, is not always blind. A law of the empire obliges every one who fells a tree to plant another. In the midst of this rich and beautiful landscape, within an enclosure of two hundred acres, stands a Buddhist temple, with an adjoining monastery, surrounded by groves such as Downing might have designed. We came upon the base of the temple by successive nights of steps, each reaching from a platform below to a more con- tracted one above. The edifices are constructed of wood, which is generally used in Japan, for greater security against earthquakes.

The temple has an overhanging roof and portico, which are unique and graceful. The columns, architraves and cornices are elaborately, though grotesquely carved. The bonzes received and conducted us through the sacred edifices with ceremonious polite- ness, requiring us to leave our boots at the door, not as a re- ligious observance, but as a regulation of domestic economy. These priests are vowed to celibacy and temperance, and in their ton- sure and habit they resemble Carmelite friars, except that their spotless white raiment is not of wool, but of soft silk. The monas- tery is divided into numerous apartments by sliding paper doors, but all these were thrown open to us. A fine, clean bamboo mat, two inches thick, is spread on every floor, and serves for " bed and board." There is no other furniture. While we were enjoying our collation in one apartment, the bonzes were taking tea and smoking in the next one. Each bonze, before lifting his teacup or bringing his pipe to his lips, brought his head half a dozen times to the floor by way of compliment to his several companions. We inferred that some of the party were pilgrims, enjoying the hospitali- ties of the house. The temple is a square enclosure, with an open corridor on every side. Nearly the whole floor is covered with a dais, in the centre of which is a large altar, with a. smaller one on either side. Over each a carved image — the middle one, Buddha ; on his right, the mythological mikado, on the left an apostle or lawgiver. !No space is allowed for worshippers. They prostrate

44

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

themselves at the porch, and are content with throwing small coins into the treasury just within the door. A cemetery near the tem- ple is crowded wTith monuments of pilgrim princes and saints. Take away from this temple its pagan devices and emblems, and the whole place would seem to be pervaded with the very spirit of religious devotion. It combines seclusion, repose, and silence with solemnity. The good monks dismissed us with many blessings, after having obtained Mr. Seward's leave to visit him at Yokohama. On our return, we found the bay highly agitated. Discarding the life-boats of the Monocacy, we crossed in a native craft, rowed by a vigilant and active though excited and vehement crew.

September 30th. — A second excursion, this time overland to Kanagawa, southward on the Tokaido. A hundred years ago, no part of the United States, perhaps few countries in Europe, afforded a road equal to this in firmness and smoothness. At intervals, hot

TEA-HOtTSE ON THE TOKAIDO.

tea in tiny cups, with cakes and sugar-plums, was brought out to us by pretty girls,' artistes in dance and song. The beverage might not be declined, though we were not allowed to pay for it. In many places we found circular benches arranged under trees five hundred

GROUP ON THE TOKAIDO.

45

years old. This frequent provision for rest and refreshment is due to the circumstance that travel in Japan is principally performed by pedestrians, with the occasional use of chairs. Daimios have always used horses, and recently foreigners have introduced vehicles.

•rt,*

GEOUP ON THE TOKAIDO.

The Japanese are a busy as well as a frugal people. Thickly- clustering houses, booths, and work-shops nearly close the road on either side, making it difficult to distinguish where a rural

Occasionally a vacant space opens a beau-

district begins or ends

46

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

tiful vista. At the end of twenty miles we sent our carriages back to Yokohama, and proceeded in chairs by a narrow path over a lofty hill, and then came down on the ocean-beach. The feet of our coolie bearers sank deep in the sand, but we enjoyed the re- freshing spray which dashed in our faces. Then leaving the shore, and following a rugged mountain-path, we came upon a high plain, where once stood the renowned ecclesiastical capital, Kamakura. Practically speaking, Japan has no ruins. An extensive and hand-

TEMPLE AT KAMAKURA.

some temple, which still maintains its prestige, is the only monu- ment of the ancient city. A few miles beyond this temple, we left our chairs, and, diverging from the road, we confronted a high wooden arch, fantastically painted with bright green, blue and yel- low colors. On either side of the arch is a carved bronze demon, fifteen feet high, protected by an iron railing. These figures, de- signed to be terrific, are simply hideous. They are plastered over with moistened paper pellets, which have been cast on them by pass- ing pilgrims. The adhesion of the pellet is taken as an assurance

THE GREAT STATUE OF BUDDHA.

47

that the monster is appeased, and consents to the visit of a votary. Trusting that the missiles which our bearers had thrown upon the demons had propitiated them in our favor, we boldly en- tered the gate. Ascending a solid flight of steps, we reached a paved court, three sides of which are graced with monumental shrines of stone and bronze. On a pedestal six feet high, in the centre of the square, is the gigantic statue of Buddha (famous as the Daibutz), sitting with crossed legs, on a lotus-flower. Though description by measurement is not poetical, we must use it to con- vey an idea of this colossal idol. It is fifty feet high, a hundred

feet in circumference at the base, and the head is nine feet long ; the hands are brought together in front, with thumbs joined ; the head is covered with metallic snails, which are supposed to protect the god from the sun. Some travellers find in the face an expres-

48

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

sion of sublime contemplation ; to us it seems dull and meaning- less. The statue being made of bronze plates, is hollow; the interior is shaped and fitted as a temple. We are inclined to be- lieve that the Japanese have lost their early reverence for the Daibutz ; we find the walls covered with the autographs of pilgrims and travellers. The bonzes invited us to register our own names, and they offer to sell the god to any purchaser for the price of old copper.

JAPANESE BONZES.

CHAPTER II.

VISIT TO YEDDO.— INTERVIEW WITH THE MIKADO.

Interview with the Japanese Prime-Minister. — Tremendous Storm. — Some Points of History.- — The Mikado and the Tycoon. — Japanese Foreign Office. — Minister Sawa. —The Question of Saghalien.— The Tombs of the Tycoons.— A Speck of War.— The Delmonico of Yeddo. — Sketches of Yeddo. — The Interview with the Mikado.

On hoard the Monocacy, Bay of Yeddo, October 1st. — On Mr. Seward's arrival at Yokohama, the Japanese Government at Yeddo invited him to a banquet in the palace of the Hamagoten. The Japanese ministry, with other official persons, in all six hundred, were to be present, and the prime-minister was to preside. Mr. Seward excused himself on the ground that the condition of his health and his habits oblige him to forego large assemblies. He wrote, at the same time, that he intended visiting the capital in a private manner, and that it would afford him pleasure if allowed to pay his respects to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. This morn- ing, we set out on the excursion thus proposed, in the Monocacy, accompanied by Mr. De Long ; we arrived at the anchorage before Yeddo, at five o'clock, expecting to land immediately, under the ship's salute.

Since our arrival at Yokohama the weather has been intensely hot, and everybody has been predicting some fearful convulsion of earthquake or tempest. A wind with heavy rain gave us a rough voyage ; but the sea has now calmed, though the rain continues. Mr. Seward, protesting against delay, asked for boats when the anchor dropped. The ladies shrank from exposure; even the

50 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

United States minister became demoralized, and Mr. Seward was overruled ; so here we are, lying five miles from Yeddo, under the guns of a long line of Japanese forts, built on shoals, midway be- tween our anchorage and the city. The naval officers are to give up their quarters to us for the night, in expectation of a calm sea and cloudless sky to-morrow ; an expectation which Mr. Seward desires it to be distinctly understood he does not share. In the mean time they are entertaining us with music and conversation.

Yeddo, October 2d. — Mr. Seward was right. "We retired at eleven o'clock, to the very narrow " regulation berths," imprisoning ourselves with close mosquito-nets, in the smallest of state-rooms, looking through the open ports at a very silvery moon, bright stars, and a smooth sea, the ship drawing nine feet on an anchorage of

0 three fathoms. Between us and the forts, the harbor was covered

1 with vessels, including a large number of Japanese steamers and (/) other boats, as well as Chinese junks. Some of these lay quite near

to us. There was no sleep. At four o'clock in the morning, a phos- phorescent wave, pouring through the open ports, deluged our state-rooms. At this juncture, the order came down the hatch- way, "Close the ports " The steward informed us that there was " something of a high sea." Wrapping ourselves in our now thoroughly-wetted garments, we rushed into the dark cabin, and there overheard low conversation on the deck, which expressed apprehension of a fearful storm.

We were on deck at break of day. The sky wore a copper hue ; the air grew intensely hot ; the barometer fell from 30° 50' to 28° ; a violent wind seemed to come from all quarters, and, in the midst of a deluge of rain, blew the sea from underneath the ship, causing her continually to bound and rebound on the sandy bottom. It was the typhoon ! Nevertheless, we remained on deck, lashed fast in our seats, preferring the open tempest there to the close and nauseating cabin. The captain was self-collected ; he ordered the top-masts down, and every spar well secured. Three anchors, the ship's entire ground-tackle, were thrown out ; every vessel, and every other object on sea and land, now disappeared from our view.

STORM IN THE BAY. 51

With confused fears that some ship might be driving against us, or that we might be dragging toward a lee-shore, we put our engines in motion, to keep the Monocacy up to her anchors. The more juvenile officers, of whom, of course there were many, enlivened the dark and dreary hours by whispered accounts of all the ships which had been wrecked, or escaped wreck, in all the typhoons, and all the tidal waves, and all the earthquakes that have raged in Asiatic waters, or in any other seas, within the memory of man.

% At twelve o'clock, we were driven from the deck by alarms that the guns were breaking loose from their fastenings, that the bul- warks and stanchions were giving way, and the bending masts and spars would crush us. We took refuge once more in the cabin, uncertain whether the ship was parting her anchors, or breaking to pieces in her berth. All the hatchways being closed, exclud- ing air except through a convoluted funnel, a lethargy came over us, which made some helpless, and nearly all hopeless. About two o'clock, an officer, anxiously and carefully consulting the glass, said in a low voice, "It is rising," and, after a few seconds more, he ex- claimed, " It is the end ! " And so it was.

In half an hour we were on deck again. The sky was bright, and the sea, though yet rolling, had lost its violence. But the vessels which had been moored in such dangerous proximity were no longer there. The lee-shore was so near that we wondered at our presumption in having anchored there. At five o'clock, a full boat's crew manned a prize-gig, and with bright and merry oars rowed us around the forts to the wharf of the consulate at Teddo. On the way we passed a crowded steamer, broken directly in the middle, and hanging across the rampart of the upper fort ; while a dozen vessels were seen half out of water in the shallow and treach- erous bay. When we saw the broken walls, overturned trees and fallen buildings on the shore, we were convinced that our anchorage in the bay was the safer refuge, notwithstanding all its terrors. The Monocacy had neither parted a rope nor started a nail, while the consulate had been beaten and shattered on all sides and in every part.

Sunset came on ; while there was no rainbow, all the prismatic

52 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

colors and hues were painted on the broken and rolling clouds, as brilliantly and as distinctly as they are ever seen in the " arch of promise " itself.

With what grateful emotions did we reflect that the tempest which so often breaks and destroys the stanchest of ships in the Eastern sens, had been in this instance withheld, not only until we had crossed the great ocean, but even until we had found an anchor- age from which we had beheld the terrific phenomenon without disaster !

Monday, October 3d. — The Monocacy having done her best to rouse the sleepers of the capital by a salute to Mr. Seward, returned down the bay to Yokohama. Thanks to her brave officers and no- ble crew, with earnest wishes for their health and promotion.

The damages of the consulate have been repaired sufficiently for our comfortable accommodation. We are guests of the minister and the consul. At an early hour an officer came from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to learn when Mr. Seward would make his promised visit. He appointed ten o'clock, to-morrow.

Before we go to the foreign office, it may be well to recall some points of history, in order to make our observations on Yeddo intelligible.

The people of Japan, whether indigenous here or derived from Siberia, assumed political organization, according to their own records, about twenty-four hundred years ago, in the two islands of Niphon and Kiusiu. They were governed by an emperor, who, being descended from the gods, was divine and absolute on earth, and when he died was worshipped. Not only was his person too sacred to be looked upon by a stranger, but even the sun must not shine on his head. It was sacrilegious to touch the dishes from which he ate. At his death, his twelve wives and all their attend- ants committed hari-hari. These attributes are still popularly con- ceded to him. As vicegerent of Heaven, he wears the title of Tenno ; as sovereign in temporal affairs, he is the Mikado or Emperor.

Miako, some thirty miles inland, was his ancient capital, and

THE TYCOON AND MIKADO. 53

Osaka its seaport. Tlie Emperor by divine right owned the lands in the empire, and in time graciously divided them into provinces ; retaining five or more of these for himself, he parcelled out the others among great lords or princes, called daimios. In the thir- teenth century, a rebellion arose in the empire, and the Mikado, remaining at Miako, committed the defence of the state to the richest and strongest one of these daimios, who wore the title of " Tycoon." This military commander, after a short time, absorbed the temporal sovereignty and reigned absolutely. Yeddo thus be- came a third capital of the empire.

The Tycoon, nevertheless, paid homage to the Mikado, who re- tained his titular rank, and unquestioned spiritual authority and preeminence. Besides the proper revenues of his own five prov- inces, the Mikado enjoyed, for the support of his dignity, an annual allowance made by the Tycoon, out of the general revenues of the empire. As he cultivated religion and such science as the age allowed, Miako became the centre of intelligence and learning. It still retains this distinction. Osaka being an alternate residence of the Mikado, it partook of the sanctity of the capital.

By degrees the Mikado, free from all responsibility for admin- istration, grew in the affections of the people, while the Tycoon, exercising his power despotically, and held responsible for all na- tional disasters and misfortunes, became an object of public jealousy and hatred. It was at this juncture that the United States, through Commodore Perry, and the European powers afterward, made their treaties with the Tycoon, in ignorance of any pretensions on the part of the Mikado to temporal power. It was the Tycoon who sent two successive embassies to the United States, one in 1860 and the other in 1868. In 1865, the ministers of the Western powers, residing at Yeddo, wrote alarming accounts of popular discontents with the Tycoon's administration, and of frantic appeals made to the Mikado to resume the sovereign power, annul the treaties, and expel foreigners from the empire. For this object, a party was formed by powerful daimios and fanatical ecclesiastics.

While matters were in this situation, a young daimio, son of the powerful Prince Satsuma, was improving an academic vacation

54 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

in England, to visit tlie United States. He went to Mr. Seward, in tlie Department of State. He inquired of the prince to which of the local parties in Japan he belonged. To Mr. Seward's sur- prise, he answered, "to the Mikado's." "What," said Mr. Seward, " is the cause of the civil war, and what question does it involve? " He replied : " The Tycoon, who has no title to the throne, but is only a general in the imperial service, some time ago usurped the gov- ernment, and claims to transmit it to his heirs. This usurpation is intolerable." " How long," said Mr. Seward, " since this usurpa- tion was committed % " " Oh, it is very recent — it is only six hun- dred years since it occurred."

The revolution was successful, the dynasty of the Tycoon was abolished, and the heaven-descended Mikado in the year 1868, leaving his spiritual seat at Miako, repaired to Yeddo, and fully resumed the throne of his ancestors. He promptly confirmed the treaties, and of course was duly recognized by the Western powers.

October kth. — At nine this morning a cavalry-escort was placed at Mr. Seward's command. It is attentive and orderly, although, according to our Western ideas, not particularly well mounted or disciplined.

After a diligent exploration of the two or three European livery- stables in the city, the consul succeeded in procuring three well- worn English carriages, drawn by native ponies, like those of our escort. Taking no hesd of the suggestion that women are forbidden in Japanese society, and unknown at court, Mr. Seward proceeded to the foreign office with the ladies, the minister, Mr. Randall and the consul. (Mr. George F. Seward and Mrs. Seward have gone forward to Shanghai.) As we drove through the streets, we found them filled with gayly-dressed and merry crowds, and thus learned that Mr. Seward's appointment had fallen on one of the numerous national holidays.

The foreign office is in the centre of a paved court, which is enclosed by a stone-wall twelve feet high. The gates were wide open ; Mr. Seward and his friends were received by hundreds of

JAPANESE PRIME-MINISTER.

55

official persons, with profound demonstrations of homage. The inner building is of wood, one story high, surrounded by a broad corridor. The corridor itself is separated from the court by sliding sash-doors, with oiled-paper and silk instead of glass. On the inner side the corridor opens into a succession of chambers constructed like those of the monastery we have before described ; the apart- ments small, the ceilings low and the partitions movable panels. The floors are- covered with matting.

We were conducted through the corridor to a room a little larger than the others, perhaps eighteen feet square. Some furni- ture had been extemporized here. There was a European centre-

f _^,mB Ai „ 1 .:, Oil.'

JAPANESE OFFICER OF STATE.

56 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

table covered with an ornamental cloth, a small Brussels rug spread under the table, and upon it a lacquered box filled with cheroots, and a rich bronze brazier containing live charcoal. We sat on stools in the order indicated by the Japanese usher, Mr. Sew- ard being next the seat reserved for the host. Presently, with great rustling of silks, Sawa, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, entered. He bowed many times very low. He then gave his hand to Mr. Seward in the American fashion, and afterward to the. other visitors, as they were formally presented, manifesting, however, some slight embarrassment in exchanging this form of courtesy with the ladies. Well he might, for " be it known unto all to whom these presents shall come" that they are the only women, of whatever nation or race, who, within the memory of man, have been received in an official circle in Japan. The Japanese Government is not behind the ancient court of Haroun-al-Kaschid, in the opinion that " women have little sense and no religion." The porch of a temple in the interior has this inscription : " Neither horses, cattle, nor women, admitted here."

Sawa is live feet ten, and stout. He has the features of the Mongolian, with its complexion a little relieved, clear, mild eyes, and an expression at once intelligent and amiable ; his hands and feet very small and delicate, his hair gathered up from all sides, elaborately oiled, and brushed and fastened in a knot. On the top of his head rested a curiously-carved jet-black lacquered cap, which by its shape reminded us of a toy-boat. This ornament was fast- ened under the chin and behind the head, by heavy purple silken cords with tassels large enough for modest window-curtains. His dress was double — an under-tunic and trousers of dark silk reps ; the upper garments, of the same cut, though more full and flowing, were of gold and white brocade. He wore spotless white shoes and stockings — the shoe and stocking of each foot being of one piece ; at his side a single sword, highly wrought, with hilt and scabbard of ivory and gold. Some show of awkwardness gave us an impression that he found his magnificent toilet, on this occasion, inconvenient and uncomfortable. Looking at Mr. Seward, Sawa, in a very low voice, pronounced, in the Japanese language, what

THE JAPANESE INTERPRETER.

5T

sounded like not one speech, but a succession of distinct sen- tences. The interpreter Ishtabashi, kneeling at his side, at the close of each sentence signified his understanding of it by the aspirate " Hi ! hi ! hi ! " Sawa having finished, Ishtabashi gathered

JAPANESE INTERPRETER, IN COURT DRESS.

up the sense of these fragmentary speeches, and rendered the whole into English, as follows :

"Mr. Seward, all the ministers of Japan proposed to receive you on your arrival at Yeddo, at such a time as you would appoint. But this is a holiday in our country. It is our custom that at this hour, on every holiday, all the ministers repair to the castle, and pay their homages to his Majesty the Tenno. The other ministers have gone there for that purpose. I have obtained from.

58 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

his Majesty the indulgence to remain here, and receive you in behalf of my associates."

Mr. Seward thanked the minister, and expressed regret that he had unwittingly chosen so unsuitable a day for his visit.

Sawa resumed : " I have heard of you much, and I know you by character. I see your face now for the first time, and I am happy to see it."

Mr. Seward answered, that it afforded him great pleasure to see Japan, and become acquainted with its government.

The Minister: "I am happy that you have arrived safely after so long a journey. I see that you are very old and very hand- some. Yon show high resolution in making so great a voyage. All of us will be glad to avail ourselves of your large experience as a statesman."

We are not a practical reporter, and therefore cannot detail the long and interesting conversation which followed. It was highly deferential on both sides. Some parts of it showed that the pro- fession of politics is the same in Japan as in other countries. Sawa was asking Mr. Seward's good offices to obtain a mediation by the United States Government, to effect an adjustment with Russia of the boundary-question which involves the title to the island of Saghalien. Mr. Seward, hardly willing to assume so grave a responsibility, tried to divert Sawa's attention from it, saying that the United States and Russia were once near neighbors on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, and that a dispute arose between them concerning the right of American seamen to take fish in Russian waters. The controversy, just at the moment when it was becoming serious, was happily brought to an end by the United States purchasing the entire Russian possessions on the American Continent. "What would you think," he added, playfully, "of a suggestion that Japan shall, in the same way, purchase Saghalien ? "

The minister hesitated, cast his eyes on the floor, and medi- tated ; then, looking up with a smile of conscious satisfaction, he answered : " All our histories agree that the entire island of Sagha- lien belongs to Japan now. We could not buy from Russia terri- tory which we own ourselves ! "

THE TOMBS OF THE TYCOONS. 59

" That is so," replied Mr. Seward, " and, if the people of Japan are like the people of the United States, yon will very soon find out that yon can no more sell yonr own territory to others than yon can buy it from them."

During the conversation, tea and cigars, and afterward cham- pagne and cakes, were served by attendants who crouched on the floor whenever they received or executed a command. After an hour and a half passed, Sawa mentioned the places of special inter- est in Yeddo which he thought Mr. Seward ought to see, and ex- plained the arrangements which had been made for that purpose ; then, stipulating a private interview with Mr. De Long for the afternoon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs rose and took a graceful leave by bowing and shaking hands cordially with the whole party.

Yeddo is a singular combination of compactly-built and densely- inhabited districts, with intervening gardens and groves, appropri- ated to civil and religious uses. "When in one of those populous districts, it is difficult to conceive that the whole vast city is not built in the same way ; and when in one of the deeply-shaded parks, it is impossible to realize that you are in the heart of a great city.

As Sawa had suggested, we proceeded first to Sheba, the spa- cious grounds which contain the colossal tombs of the Tycoons who ' ruled in Japan so many centuries. Some of the tombs are of granite, others of bronze. They surpass, not only in costliness, but in impressive effect, any imperial or royal modern cemetery in the West. The sarcophagus, the obelisk, and the shaft, forms familiar in Western monumental architecture, equally prevail here. The monuments bear no epitaphs, but each is surrounded with many lantern-bearing votive shrines, covered with inscriptions commemorative of the virtues ' and achievements of the dead, and expressing the affection and gratitude of the princes by whom the tributary structures were erected. The domain is planted with great taste. Each particular tree and shrub has been formed and trained into a shape suggestive of religious sentiment.

By the side of the cemetery stands the Temple of Sheba. What with hideous devices of the great red dragon of Japan, with his forked wings, flaming mane, and powerful claws, the monstrous

•-•

60

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

TOMBS OF TIIE TYCOONS.

transformations of Buddha into lions rampant and roaring, pea- cocks proud and strutting, and sagacious storks stalking and prophesying,' the interior of the temple is a weird combination of the mythic and the terrific.

Though we have experienced neither menace nor insult, our guard is nevertheless indispensable to protect us against intrusive curiosity. The crowds gather around, and follow us wherever we alight and wherever we go. Perhaps the escort might be needed in case of sudden excitement or tumult, such as is liable to happen in every great city.

That was not only, a seasonable but a pretty and pleasant break- fast which Sir Harry and Lady Parkes gave us at the British lega- tion. It did not need the after divertissement of native legerdemain. The zeal and efficiency of Sir Harry Parkes, as minister, are well known. Lady Parkes is not less distinguished for the spirited man- ner in which she sustains him in his diplomatic studies and labors.

We left the British legation in compact procession, as we had entered it, Mr. Seward and Mr. De Long leading in a pony-carriage,

BRITISH LEGATION AT YEDDO. 61

Mr. De Long driving. Three other carriages followed, attended by the consul, and the whole surrounded by the escort. For a time the carriages in the rear had the forward one in full view, while its occu- pants, frequently looting back, exchanged greetings. Mr. Seward and Mr. De Long at length reached the high stone bridge, built

BKITISU LEGATION, YEDDO.

across one of the canals, and famous in Japanese history as the Mppon-Bas. There they became aware that the other carriages had fallen out of sight. The street which intervened was filled with holiday crowds, drawing huge, painted idols, mounted on low

62 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

trucks. These crowds were rapidly moving in the direction of the missing carriages. The guards who surrounded the forward car- riage gesticulated, in a manner betokening alarm. Mi\ De Long, a Western gentleman, becoming excited, said to Mr. Seward, " There is a fight ; the ladies are attacked ! " "With this exclamation, he sprang from the carriage and rushed back at the top of his speed, his long whip in his left hand and a Colt's revolver in his right, determined to effect a rescue. Mr. Seward remained sitting in the little pony-carriage on the Nippon-Bas, attracting a constantly in- creasing native crowd. Mr. De Long, scattering the natives right and left, found the carriages in the clear, open street, a hundred rods distant from the bridge and vacant, while, upon the matted floor of a silk-merchant's "go-down," he found the ladies with the consul, sipping tea, a ceremony always introductory here to the cheapening of Japanese crapes and gauzes. Without saying a word, the minister pocketed his revolver, and, lowering his whip in the most pacific manner, walked quickly back to Mr. Seward, whom he found safe on the bridge. Even at this hour of writing, it remains uncertain what was the sentiment which overpowered Mr. De Long at this discovery, whether it was one of satisfaction at finding his protegees in safety, or of mortification at having so impulsively yielded to groundless alarm. Neither the advance-guard, nor the main body of the procession, has been able to discover what was the occasion of the Japanese excitement which produced so much trouble.

October 5th. — A busy day, but less eventful. We have visited the Hamagoten and its palace, where Mr. Seward was to have been feasted. The palace, built and ornamented in Japanese style, is luxuriously furnished in the European. One of the saloons is ap- propriately called the Cool -room, its walls and ceilings being deco- rated exclusively with huge pictured fans, in many different posi- tions, and so well executed that you might fancy that you feel the air stirred by their motion. The grounds are as extensive as those of Central Park in New York, and not less elaborately embellished. There are quaint bamboo summer-houses, with pretty scroll roofs,

THE JAPANESE PELMONICO'S. 63

covered with hundreds of creepers, known to us only in our green- houses, standing in the midst of lakes well stocked with gold-fish. There are groves of mulberries, chestnuts, persimmons, and oranges. Stately shade-trees, cut and twisted into the shapes of animals, castles, and ships, crown hundreds of high knolls which overlook the smooth bay of Yedclo.

From the Hamagoten, we drove to old Osakasa, where we wonderingly examined a temple which surpasses all the others we have seen. Superstition, though abating in Japan, is nevertheless far from being extinct. They show at Sheba, in the court of the temple, a bowlder, in the top of which a deep, smooth, circular basin has been made, which is filled with water, and kept carefully cov- ered with a stone lid. It is an accepted belief that this water rises and falls with the ocean-tide. At Osakasa we were required to look with reverence upon two native ponies (one cream-colored, the other brown), both nicely trimmed and groomed, and superbly caparisoned, occupying apartments neat as a parlor. They remain in perpetual readiness for the equestrian exercises of the gods. The beasts are maintained by pious contributions of pilgrims. Ecclesias- tics in Japan, as sometimes they do elsewhere, resort to questionable expedients for raising money. The highly-ornamented grounds of Osakasa are rented for tea-houses, theatrical exhibitions, jugglers' entertainments, and other popular amusements.

A dinner was ordered for us at a tea-house— the " Delmonico's " of Yeddo. Leaving our carriages with the escort in the streets, and our boots at the door, we were ushered up a very steep, but highly-polished wooden staircase into a chamber, or rather a dozen chambers divided by sliding-doors. Here we sat down on the clean matted floor. A lacquered table was set before each person. It was eight or ten inches high, and large enough for two small covers. Tea in little cups without saucers was served, clear, and piping hot. After the tea, saki, a liquor distilled from rice, fiery and distasteful, was poured from a porcelain vase into such small, shallow, red, lacquered vessels as we sometimes mistake for tea-saucers. Our hostess, a middle-aged matron, was assisted by eleven pretty girls, their ages varying from twelve to sixteen.

64

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

These attendants, by the elegance of their costume and abundance of white cosmetics, had enhanced their beauty to the degree that, in Oriental speech, it would be said that " every one of them was a temptation to the servants of God." One of them went down on her knees beside each guest, and remained there until it was time to bring on, with the tiniest of delicate hands, a new course. Their actions were graceful and modest, their voices bird-like. They manifested childish delight at every compliment we gave them, and their pleasure seemed to rise to ecstasy when permitted to examine our watches, fans, parasols and other articles of dress or ornament.

JAPANESE MUSICIAN.

A SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE. 65

The dinner, however, was rather a self-denying ordinance. There was a vegetable soup flavored with soy, raw fish in thin slices with horse-radish, petty bits of game, various preparations of rice, and many dishes whose composition was unascertainable. These courses were intermingled with sweetened fruits and confec- tionery. Sahi was offered with every course, and always with great ceremony. All the dishes had one common flavor, which we could not analyze. Even the sugar had this raw, indescribable taste. After the entertainment, the girls, sitting on the floor, each with a rude instrument, in form a compromise between the banjo and the guitar, played and sang, and at intervals rose and danced. Though the airs were not without melody and harmony, they were so crude and monotonous that the highest expert in the "heavenly art"' could find no musical meaning in them. The posturing and ges- ticulation were artistic, though the dancing was conducted on no rules of the ballet. Great skill was displayed in the dance, the long and heavy dresses of the performers always covering the feet, and most of the time even the hands. Night overtook us before we left this " haunt of delight," and the performers accompanied us from- the banqueting-floor to our carriages in the dark street. Their grateful gestures and speaking smiles were intelligible, though their soft and gentle words were not.

We needed to drive with much care through the crowded streets, now dimly lighted with an occasional paper lantern. But our dragoons were men " dressed in brief authority ; " they dashed furiously forward, and, with shrieking shouts and screams, startling myriads of bats from the thatched roofs, they drove the people, returning from their daily occupations, or listening to theatrical amusements, into the open doors or alleys.

October 6th. — The day began at Yeddo with an audience given by Mr. Seward, at the consulate. The visitors were Japanese who have acquired some knowledge of foreign nations. Mr. Seward inquired for the Tycoon's ambassadors, Ono Tomogoro and Mats- moto Judaiyu, with whom he had negotiated in Washington. But

there has been a revolution. The Mikado, then onlv a nominal

7

66 JAPAN", CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

sovereign, is now absolute at the castle. The Tycoon is a prisoner of state ; Ono Tomogoro is also a prisoner, nobody knows where, and Matsmoto Judaiyu is a fugitive — some say at Shanghai, others at San Francisco. It seems to surpass Japanese comprehension that a new administration of the Government of the United States has come in, and that Mr. Seward has gone out of place without losing his head or public consideration.

While Mr. Seward was holding his audience, the ladies shopped. The Japanese artisans contrive to produce exquisite articles of taste and vertu from cheap materials, and with an infinitesimal proportion of the precious metals. Their modern porcelain is inferior to the Chinese, but they excel in ornamental lacquer-work and fans of all sorts. Their designs in bronze are exceedingly curious, but their execution inferior to that of Europeans. In painting they are unsurpassed in the imitation of all forms of animal life. With a keen sense of the ludicrous, they may yet come to be employed as caricaturists in our presidential elections !

There is no special manufacture at Yeddo. It is an emporium for the whole empire. We have found it impossible to ascertain the districts in which particular classes of articles are made. The shops are small and closely packed with wares. The indifference assumed by the merchants would be provoking, if it were not for their extreme- politeness. If the buyer means to obtain a fair bar- gain, he must affect equal reserve and indifference. The entire family look on, half a dozen men and three or four women busying themselves in every sale. Indeed, the house and the shop are one. Four feet square of matting in the centre of the shop is the common dining-room and bedroom. Must they not eat and sleep by turns \

The United States minister was recalled to Yokohama last night. Captain Bachelor put the reins of two fine American horses into our hands, to drive in a light New-England phaeton down the Tokaido to Yokohama. Mr. Eandall conveyed the other ladies in a carriage drawn by Mr. De Long's mottled native ponies. Each car- riage was attended by two hettos, quick-footed boys, whose service is to run like coach-dogs by the side of horse or carriage, warning everybody out of the way, and they are. ready to seize and hold

ON THE ROAD TO YOKOHAMA. 67

the horses at every stopping-place, or in any case of alarm. The road was literally crowded, and hilarity and merriment displayed themselves on all sides. The crowds were labyrinthian. The activity and songs of the bettos, and the ejaculations and impreca- tions of our mounted guard, with the clangor of their arms, made our rapid drive a very exciting one, while a bracing air with genial sunshine was exhilarating. But all pleasures have their draw- backs. Neither the bettos nor the dragoons were capable of under- standing our requests or remonstrances. They wanted rest at every tea-house, or, what was the same thing, they sought favor at the tea-houses by bringing us up at the doors. The guard dis- mounted, and, with the bettos, took the refreshments profusely of- fered them, while we, though declining any, were obliged to wait. When we had made twelve miles, half the distance to Yokohama, we brought up at a hostelry, with a stable. Our horses were taken out to be fed and groomed. From open windows in an upper chamber we saw in the court a huge brass caldron sunk in the ground over an oven. The horses were brought to it. Four grooms took possession of each horse, and rubbed him thoroughly from head to hoof with wisps of straw dripping with hot water, and afterward dried him with as much care as the human patient re- ceives when he comes out of a Turkish bath. We improved the time by a Japanese dinner, which, when we were completely sur- feited, we left unfinished, very much to the disappointment of the music-girls. Once more on the road, we indulged a faint hope of reaching Yokohama before midnight. We came, after three or four miles, to the bank of a river twenty rods wide. There was one rough flat-boat on the other side, worked by an endless chain. Wc awaited its tedious arrival and delivery of passengers multitudinous and various. Then our beasts were led separately into the boat and crossed. It returned to our shore, and, as in the riddle of the fox, goose and peck of corn, took the dragoons and the carriages. " Last came joy's ecstatic trial." We hurried on board, and, reach- ing the opposite bank, found the vehicles there, but not the horses. We were obliged to walk forward a quarter of a mile, to a place where the bettos and cavalry were taking tea and smoking, as if they

68 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

had fasted the whole day. Then they went back and brought up the impedimenta. A brilliant, full-orbed moon expanded into majestic size every object that we passed, and lit up the waters of the bay as we approached Kanagawa. Mr. De Long's native ponies, after frequently giving out on the way, fell in climbing the sharp, high hill, and it taxed our own horsemanship to get over this dif- ficult part of the road. The other carriage was drawn over the hill by the bettos and dragoons, and. the ponies were then re- attached. Meantime bettos and dragoons lighted each his varie- gated paper lantern. They made the suburban streets of Yoko- hama resound with vociferous shouts, thus exciting the astonish- ment and perhaps the fears of this inoffensive people. "We arrived at Mr. Walsh's hospitable gate, much to the satisfaction of our friends within, who, owing to the lateness of the hour, had become apprehensive for our safety.

Steamship New York, off the Coast of Japan, October 8th. — "We have embarked, without having had time on shore to record the latest and most striking incidents of our visit at Yokohama. Mr. Seward was not allowed to leave Japan without a marked dem- onstration from the government, as well as an expression of respect from the foreign residents. On our return from Yeddo, on the 6th, he received an invitation to an audience of the Mikado. This ceremony is usually distinguished by procrastinations and formalities even more tedious than in European courts. The time being shortened, however, in this case, the invitation was accepted. Yesterday morning, we were awakened from sleep, which was quite too short after our drive on the previous day, by an infinite clatter of mechanics, upholsterers, and decorators, who were engaged in constructing with canvas, all around Mr. Walsh's very large house, a broad suite of saloons, dancing-halls, waiting-rooms and supper-rooms. The whole was completed during the day, decorated with flags and tropical shrubbery, and flowers, and softly lighted by fanciful lanterns. The band of the German naval squadron played " Hail Columbia," and the ball was opened at ten o'clock. All the diplomatic and consular corps were present, as well as the naval

INTEKVIEW WITH THE MIKADO. 69

officers of the United States and other nations, and foreign resi- dents. Of course, not one Japanese of either sex was there, for, as we have before intimated, there is no social intermingling of the two populations. Caste and race are unrelenting antagonists to univer- sal civilization. This beautiful ball crowned most gracefully the generous hospitalities of which we were recipients during our so- journ with Mr. and Mrs. Walsh.

At two o'clock yesterday morning, while the merry dance was yet going on, Captain Bachelor brought to the wharf, in front of Mr. Walsh's compound, then so highly illuminated, a little steam- yacht and received Mr. Seward on board, who, against all remon- strance, persisted in keeping his engagement, although in the midst of a driving wind and rain. He was accompanied by Mr. De Long, Mr. Shepherd, and Mr. Walsh, and at six o'clock, after ground- ing three or four times on the way, they were safely landed at Yecldo. At eight o'clock, Mr. Ishtabashi appeared in rich official Japanese costume, and, profoundly bowing, said, with measured words : " I am waiting for the honor of conducting Mr. Seward to the great castle, where he will be received by his Majesty the Tenno ; not in the customary official manner, but in a private audience, as an expression of personal respect and friendship. I am particularly commanded to make this explanation of the character of the pro- posed audience."

At nine o'clock the party proceeded in two carriages, with an enlarged mounted escort. They were conducted, whether by design or not, through streets bordered by immense walled en- closures, which are the strongholds and barracks of the several daimios who, under the Tycoon's administration, were required to reside during alternate periods, with their armed retainers, at the capital. The discontinuance of this usage, since the restoration of the Mikado, is a singular illustration of the same advance toward a more popular system of government which was made by the kings of Europe when they reduced the feudal barons to subjection. The barracks vacated by the daimios' soldiers are now occupied by imperial battalions. The feudal soldiers of the Tycoon must have been a ferocious crew, if they were more savage than these rough

70 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

and ill-looking guards of the Tenno. The citadel, called " The Great Castle," crowns an eminence in the centre of the city. It is a triple fortification, nine miles in circumference, consisting of three con- centric forts, each by itself complete, with rampart, inner embank- ment, ditch, bastion and glacis, parapet and double gates. The outer fort stands on a level with the plain, the next higher, and the central one higher still, overlooking the country and the sea. The walls of each are fifty feet high, built of granite blocks, more mas- sive than those of the Rip-Raps, off Old Point Comfort. The impe- rial palace is in the centre of the inner fort. It is a low structure, differing from the temples and monasteries which we have before described, not in material or style of architecture, but in the ar- rangement of its apartments. The area which surrounds it is tastefully planted and adorned with lawns, winding gravelled walks, small lakes, and what we would call summer-houses, and tenements for attendants and servants. The areas of the other two fortifications are similarly embellished. In any past stage of mili- tary science, the citadel must have been impregnable. We cannot learn its history.

When Mr. Seward and his friends had reached the gates of the outer fort, they were received with a salute at each of the double portals, and were permitted to pass through in carriages to the gates of the second. They were received here with similar hon- ors, and passed to the gates of the third. Entering these with salutes as before, they were received by one of the eight Ministers of Foreign Affairs, who, having requested them to dismiss their carriages, conducted them, with much obeisance, across the lawns to a sheltered place, where they rested on lacquer stools. Here a second Minister of Foreign Affairs joined the party, and, making new compliments, led them to seats on the shore of a small lake. Here the minister informed Mr. Seward that Mr. Walsh, being an unofficial gentleman, could proceed no farther, and that the same rule excluded Freeman. They stopped. At this juncture Sawa, chief Minister of Foreign Affairs, met Mr. Seward, and conducted him to a summer-house more spacious than the others, which over- looks a larger and deeper lake. On the way thither, he obtained a

INTERVIEW WITH THE MIKADO. 71

view of a part of the imperial stud. A rail twelve or fifteen feet long is fixed three feet above the ground, on supports. Several iron-gray Japanese ponies, unattended by grooms, stood at this rail, in readiness for his Majesty's use at the close of the proposed audi- ence. When the party had arrived at the summer-house, the prime- minister, the Chief Minister of Finance and the heads of the other departments, were found waiting, and they were severally presented by Sawa to Mr. Seward. The whole party then sat down a't an oblong table, the prime-minister presiding, and Mr. Seward and the other visitors on his left hand, the Japanese ministers on his right. The prime-minister first, and after him each of his associates, ad- dressed Mr. Seward in words of courteous welcome, to which he briefly replied. A pleasant conversation now ensued, during which tea, cakes, confectionery, cigars and champagne, were successively brought in by attendants, who prostrated themselves on the ground at every offer of their service. The prime-minister then, in a very direct but most courteous way, said to Mr. Seward : " It is the custom of his Majesty the Tenno to receive official visits upon busi- ness affairs in an edifice which is built for that express public pur- pose, and called among us a court ; but his Majesty on this occasion recognizes you as a special friend of Japan, and a man devoted to the welfare of all nations, and he therefore proposes, by way of showing his high respect for you, to receive you, not at a public court, but in a private lodge of his own, to which he will come clown from his palace to meet you."

Mr. Seward answered that he appreciated his Majesty's conde- scension and kindness. While this conversation was e-oinjr on, Mr. Seward, looking through an open window, saw at a long dis- tance his friend Mr. Walsh, and Freeman, walking within the pre- cinct which had been appointed them. Presently, an officer came hurriedly into the presence of the grave international council at the summer-house, and announced an intrusion. The prime-minister, upon Mr. Seward's explanation, directed that the supposed eaves- droppers should not be interfered with, but they must come no farther.

When half an hour had passed, a chamberlain announced his

72 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

Majesty's arrival at the summer-house. Sawa and Ishtabashi re- mained with Mr. Seward ; all the other ministers took leave to join the Mikado. A final summons came to Sawa ; he rose and con- ducted the party some distance along a smooth, narrow walk, till they came to a high, shaded knoll, conversing by the way. The minister and Ishtabashi now stopped, and, making low genu- flections, announced, in subdued and almost whispering tones, that his Majesty was to be in a summer-house directly behind this hill. After this, there was no word spoken. When they had gone round the knoll, the lodge which now contained the heaven-derived Maj- esty of Japan came to view. It stands five feet above the ground, is one story high, and consists of four square rooms of equal size, with sliding partitions, the ceilings six feet high, and the whole building surrounded by a veranda. All the rooms were thrown open, and were without furniture. The visitors entered the apartment, which was at their left, and, looking directly forward, saw only Ishtabashi surrounded by a crowd of official persons, all crouched on the floor. Having reached the exact centre of the room, Mr. Seward was requested to turn to the right. He did this without changing his place. The United States minister and the consul stood at his right hand. In this position he directly confronted the Mikado, who was sitting on a throne raised on a dais two feet above the floor. The throne is a large arm-chair, apparently of burnished gold, not differ- ent in form or ornament from the thrones which are used on cere- monial occasions in European courts. All the cabinet ministers and many other officials had arranged themselves below the dais, and behind and around the throne. The Mikado was dressed in a voluminous robe of reddish-brown brocade, which covered his whole person. His head-dress differed in fashion from that which was worn by Sawa in our audience with him, only in this, that a kind of curved projecting prong was attached to the boat-shaped cap, and bent upward, the corresponding appurtenance of the minister's cap being shorter, and bent downward. What with the elevation of the dais, and the height of his elongated cap, the emperor's per- son, though in a sitting posture, seemed to stretch from the floor to the ceiling. His appearance in that flowing costume, surrounded

INTEEVIEW WITH THE MIKADO. 73

by a mass of ministers and courtiers, enveloped in variegated and equally redundant silken folds, resting on the floor, reminded Mr. Seward of some of the efforts in mythology to represent a deity sitting in the clouds. His dark countenance is neither unintelligent nor particularly expressive. He was motionless as a statue. He held a sceptre in his right hand, and at his left side wore one richly- ornamented, straight sword. What the Mikado and his court thought of the costumes of his visitors, with their uncovered heads, square, swallow-tailed dress-coats, tight white cravats, tighter panta- loons, and stiff, black boots, we shall never know. "Who shall pro- nounce between nations in matters of costume % The Mikado raised his sceptre, and the prime-minister, kneeling, then announced to the United States minister, by the aid of Ishtabashi, also kneeling, that he might speak. Mr. De Long advanced a step or two, and, bowing three several times, said : " I hope I find your Majesty in good health."

The prime-minister, kneeling again, presented to the Mikado a written paper, open, and as large as a sheet of foolscap. The Em- peror, after looking at its contents, touched it with his sceptre. The prime-minister read it aloud in Japanese. Ishtabashi, again kneeling, brought his bead to the floor, and, then raising it, read, from a translation which lay before him on the floor, his Majesty's gracious answer : " I am very well ; I am glad to see you here."

Thereupon Mr. De Long, thus reassured, said in a distinct voice, worthy of a Western orator as he is :

" I have the honor to present to your Majesty, William H. Sew- ard, a citizen of the United States. Your Majesty having been pleased to invite him to this audience, it is unnecessary for me to speak of the achievements or of the character of this eminent Ameri- can statesman."

The interpreter, having rendered this speech into Japanese, Mr. De Long resumed his place. In accordance with an intima- tion from the prime-minister, Mr. Seward now advanced, and said : " I am deeply impressed by this gracious reception by the sovereign, at the capital of this great, populous, and emulous em- pire. I desire to express earnest wishes for your Majesty's per-

71- JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

sonal health and happiness, and for the peace, welfare, and pros- perity of Japan."

The prime-minister held before his Majesty another paper, which, being read by him, was then rendered by the interpreter as follows :

" I am glad to see yon now for the first time. I congratulate you on your safe arrival here, after the very long journey you have made. The great experience which you have had must enable you to give me important information and advice how to promote the friendship that happily exists between your country and my own. If you would please to communicate any thing in that way, you are requested to make it known to my prime-minister, and I invite you to express yourself frankly and without reserve."

Mr. Seward replied : " I thank your Majesty for this gracious permission to confer with the prime-minister on international affairs. A citizen of the United States, I am visiting Japan and the adjacent countries on the Pacific coast, as a traveller and ob- server. I wear no official character, and I bring no message. The President, however, and all my countrymen, will expect me not to leave any thing undone which I can do, to promote a happy under- standing between those countries and the United States, as well as also the advancement of civilization in both hemispheres. With this view, I shall, with great pleasure, avail myself of the privileges which your Majesty has granted me."

The Emperor, with his entire court, remained in place until the visitors had retired, after an exchange of salutations. They were conducted back to the summer-house. All the Japanese ministers soon entered and resumed their places around the table. Refresh- ments were served, and Mr. Seward was informed that his audience was the first occasion on which the Mikado has completely unveiled himself to a visitor. Not only the prime-minister, but all his asso- ciates, discussed with Mr. Seward at much length the political re- lations of Japan with foreign powers. The minister desired him to take notice that the government, in dealing with the vanquished Tycoon's party in Japan, at the close of the late revolution, had copied the example of toleration given them by the United States.

INTERVIEW WITH THE MIKADO. 75

They carefully inquired concerning the machinery employed in the United States in taking the decennial census, and also the details of the system of collecting and disbursing public revenues.

They wrote a letter on the spot, addressed to their ambassador at Peking and, delivering it to Mr. Seward, solicited his aid of their interest at that court. Mr. Seward was deeply impressed on two points : First, that although the administration of justice in Japan is conducted in a manner widely different from that of the "Western nations, yet that the public mind entertains not the least distrust of its impartiality. Second, that the administration of the Mikado is sincerely emulous and progressive. Again, if there is any danger in the near future, it will arise, not from a retarding, but from a more rapid acceptance by the government of "Western ideas and sentiments, than a people so rude can at once understand.

The ministers had assigned the whole day for the high consulta- tion. They expressed much regret when Mr. Seward announced that he was obliged to depart at the earliest moment for Yokohama, where the steamer was waiting. "Waiving invitations to examine the citadel and the imperial palace and grounds, Mr. Seward re- turned to the Consulate, and thence proceeded down the bay, directly to this steamer, bound for Hiogo.

A box followed him which contained all the cake, fruit, and con- fectionery, which remained from the entertainment at the Castle. The ladies noticed that the varieties of cakes were not merely col- ored externally, but through and through — crimson, yellow, purple, and indigo. The supply sufficient for the voyage to Shanghai.

It ought not to mar the effect of the Mikado's courtesy, if we state that the audience, in its minutest details, was projected and perfected in the Japanese cabinet, with the concurrence of Mr. De Long. All European governments, and even that of the United States, adopt a similar precaution in regard to official executive audiences.

Japan has especial reasons for prudence. The empire is a soli- tary planet, that has remained stationary for centuries, until now it is suddenly brought into contact with constellations which, while they shed a dazzling light, continually threaten destructive collisions.

CI1APTEE III.

FROM YEDDO TO SHANGHAI.

Hiogo. — The Place of Massacre. — A Japanese Steamer. — The Gulf of Osaka. — A Harem on a Pic-nic. — The City of Osaka. — The Tycoon's Castle. — Japanese Troops. — Nagasaki. — Beautiful Scenery. — Christians of Nagasaki. — Japanese Character. — Departure for China. — Concluding Reflections on Japan.

Hiogo (Kobe), Monday, October 10th. — A voyage of thirty-six hours, in which night and rain have prevented all observation, has brought us to this southeastern port on the island of Niphon. The United States Consul, Mr. Stewart, and the agent of the Pacific Mail Line, came on board in the early morning. They were sur- prised when Mr. Seward pointed out to them with minuteness and accuracy the several places of interest in the port. " This," he said " is the European settlement, that place behind it the native town of Hiogo : the road which divides them is the one on which the Mikado's army was moving northward at the time when it fired upon and massacred the foreigners in 1884 : this is the field through which the foreigners were pursued by the Japanese soldiers on that occasion : it was in the bay here on our right that the natives massacred the French naval surveying party in their boats : was it not in the building which I see on that hill that the Mikado's officers, who were condemned to death for those atrocious outrages, committed hari-kari, and that the foreign ministers interposed after seventeen such self-executions, and said, ' It is enough ? ' On this knoll is the place where the offenders were buried."

The official reports of those painful transactions which Mr. Van

OSAKA AND HIOGO. 77

Valkenburgh, the United States Minister, made to the Department of State, had left this distinct and ineffaceable impression on Mr. Seward's mind. It is five years since those massacres occurred. We now find that the people, obeying the instinct of nationality, have erected a monument over the grave of each of those victims, and on that monument have recorded his voluntary death as an act of civil and religious martyrdom. So true to country and to God are the impulses of our common nature everywhere.

Hiogo is twenty miles distant from Osaka, and bears the same relation to that great southern metropolis of Japan that Yokohama bears to the central one of Yeddo. Hiogo, opened quite recently to foreign commerce, is not especially successful. Since the opening of Japan, the population of Yeddo has been reduced from three millions to one million, chiefly by removals to Yokohama. On the contrary, Osaka has not materially declined, nor has Hiogo consid- erably increased. The foreign population of Hiogo is at most two hundred. The importance of its harbor is due to its double advan- tages as a port of Osaka and a gateway to the Inland Sea of Japan.

October 11th. — We dined yesterday with Mr. Senter's amiable family, and slept in the Japanese bungalow, now occupied as the Consulate, by the side of its pretty lotus-garden. Although the lotus has been held sacred from time immemorial as a divine symbol throughout the whole East, it is nevertheless indigenous only in tropical and semi-tropical climates. We now for the first time see in perfection on its native soil this magnificent flower, of which, " whosoever eateth wishes never again to depart, nor to see his native country, if it groweth not there."

Here the intelligent Japanese governor passed two hours with Mr. Seward, explaining the system of provincial administration, which seems very effective. He learns also that education of all classes is compulsory, and that the schools are maintained by taxa- tion, which is remitted in behalf of the poor.

We went, this morning, on board a small coasting steamer, which was built in the United States for Japanese owners, and is managed exclusively by natives. The gulf of Osaka has pictu-

78

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

resque shores, thickly studded with villages, clustering at the water's edge. The sloping hills are terraced and irrigated, and their sum- mits are planted with forests. The Temple of the Moon, standing on the highest peak of the mountain, reflected the morning sunlight

:fe^

TEMPLE AT OSAKA.

from gilded roofs, resting on snow-white columns. The moon in Japan is a masculine deity. Is this exceptional idea due to the native jealousy of the gentle sex \ Or is it owing to the fact that

A HAREM ON A PICNIC. 79

it is a man's face and not a woman's that is seen in that benignant orb ? Quien sabe ?

It is the bar at Osaka which forces the ocean-trade to a harbor so distant as Hiogo. Our countryman, Admiral Bell, lost his life two years ago, in sounding it. Our steamer could not cross, though drawing only four feet.

Osaka, as early as the sixteenth century, became a great com- mercial city. Its temples, surpassing those of Yeddo in number, vie with those of spiritual Miako. As we approached the bar, we saw a gay Japanese yacht, of perhaps two hundred and fifty tons, moving slowly out to sea under a light wind. The sails were quaint, like the form of the vessel they impelled, which was brilliant with scarlet and blue paint and gilding. A daimio sat at the stern on the upper deck, gorgeously arrayed in silks and lacquer, sur- rounded by numerous retainers and a bevy of highly-painted and elegantly-dressed young women, who were entertaining him with a concert of guitars, flutes, and drums. Manifestly the daimio was giving his harem a picnic.

We were transferred here to a small, neat, flat-bottomed bamboo barge, with a canopy overhead and a deck covered with mats, in which we floated over the bar, and up to the great sea-wall of the city.

The confluence of two rivers with the sea makes the harbor of Osaka, like that of Charleston. The rivers are formed into canals, and connected at convenient intervals by cross-canals. Yenice is not more noticeable for its gondolas and barges, nor Amsterdam for its pleasure-boats, than Osaka for its picturesque shallops cov- ered with bright awnings of various colors. It is perhaps from the amusements of the regatta that the women in Osaka have ac- quired the fame of being the prettiest in the empire. Time served us to traverse only three or four of the thirty or forty canals, but sufficient to enable us to reach the more important monuments and institutions of the metropolis, to notice the regularity of the streets, the grace and lightness of the hundred cedar bridges, and to wonder at the immense traffic carried on by families who dwell in the vessels they navigate. The wealth and enterprise of Japan being

80 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

in the southern part of the empire, Osaka is the domestic main emporium.

While, for centuries, state policy required the daimios to reside a part of each year with their armed retainers at Yeddo, the po- litical capital, the same daimios made their metropolitan homes in commercial Osaka. Here, on the banks of the canals, th>ey erected palaces, with storehouses and wharves and offices. Here they re- ceived their rents in kind, and exchanged them in trade.

Between these palaces the canals are lined with cheaply -built dwellings, two stories high, with a veranda around the first story.

STREET IN OSAKA.

The lower story is a mercantile convenience, being washed with the tides and floods. The people seen in the streets here, as well as elsewhere in Japan, wear wooden shoes and dress coarsely. The nudity, so frequent at the north, becomes here more common and offensive. Crowds followed us with a curiosity Avhich shows that few foreigners visit Osaka. Notwithstanding the mean appear- ance of dwellings and people, the city contrasts favorably with

THE CASTLE OF OSAKA. 81

Yeddo, in show of prosperity and affluence. Some of the temples are built within the areas of the princely palaces. More commonly, however, they are independent and spacious, and, like the palaces, accessible through canals and basins. They are on the same model with those at Yeddo, but more lavishly ornamented with allegorical carving, and statuary in granite and bronze. Men are seldom seen in or about the temples in Japan, but woman, poor, meek and rag- ged, though forbidden, steals in there, reverently paying her devo- tion to the gods and pitifully asking alms. How could woman en- dure existence anywhere on earth without the solaces of religion %

" From all ancienty to the present time," as a stump-orator, we once heard, expressed it, the Japanese have made their irregular and grotesque coins with the use only of the hammer. The govern- ment has just now established a mint at Osaka, with machinery of the latest invention, and equal, it is claimed, to the Philadelphia Mint. Here they are making new coins similar in form and de- vice to those of the Western nations, the value being based on sub- divisions of the Mexican dollar.

Livy has given us what he says was the speech of Eomulus when he had founded Eome : " If all the strength of cities lay in the height of their ramparts or the depths of their ditches, we should have great reason to be in fear for that which we have now built." The Japanese might be excused if they should reverse this senti- ment, and speak with great confidence of the security of the empire derived from ramparts and ditches. As with Yeddo, so with Osaka. Its boast is its castle, an imperial residence and fortress of mikados and tycoons. We tried ineffectually to obtain a measurement of some of the granite blocks of this structure. We think it safe, how- ever, to say, that one of them is thirty feet long, fifteen feet high and five feet thick. JSTo one knows where, when or how, such im- mense stones were riven at the quarry, and brought to the summit of the lofty hill, which overlooks the city of Osaka. The Tycoon in the late civil war, however, took possession of the castle with his forces, only to find it a prison, and insecure at that. He was dis- lodged by the Mikado's army, and made his escape on a United States steamer. Before leaving the citadel, he destroyed its defensive

82 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

works, so as to render it unavailable to the conqueror. Now used as a camp of instruction, it is as jealously closed against visitors as the castle at Yeddo. Instructions having come down from the capital to the Governor here, as well as to the one at Hiogo, to show consideration to Mr. Seward, we were conducted through the castle, and allowed to witness the drill, and at the same time were honored with a serenade from the trumpeters, which consisted 'of European artillery and cavalry calls jumbled together on French horns. The din and discord may be imagined. The bronze-faced native Japanese troops, lower than European in stature, and bow- legged, but dressed in French uniforms, recalled our recollections of the first organization of negro troops in the late civil war. The Japanese are not less docile and orderly, and they went through evolutions and drill, according to French tactics, commendably.

The Japanese umbrellas are the best as they are the cheapest in the world, but they could give us no protection from the rain-storm which overtook us in the dilapidated castle. Captain Kinder's family being the only European one in Osaka, took us in and dried our clothes, and gave us all we had time to take, " a hasty plate of soup." When we reached our yacht, black night with high winds shut out from us the beautiful gulf-shores, and so passed away Osaka, to be seen no more by us, for we have taken care not to eat of the '"'fruit of destiny," the lotus. The heaving.of the steamer on the now roughened sea was uncomfortable, but the tossing and pitching of the small boat which conveyed us from the yacht to the side-ladder of the New York was dangerous and frightful.

Nagasaki, October lUh. — As Hiogo commands the southeast, so Nagasaki commands the northwest entrance of the Inland Sea. That sea is a tortuous passage, flowing between the North Pacific Ocean on the east and the Yellow Sea or Straits of Corea on the west coast of Japan, separating the northern island of Niphon from the southern islands of Toksima and Kiusiu. How and when was this channel made? Were the three mountain-islands which it separates once compact land, and did the ocean force its passage through? Was all Japan once submerged, and were the islands

ENTRANCE TO NAGASAKI.

83

thrown up in their present form ? Who can say % Not we. Per- haps Agassiz might. We must content ourselves with writing that,

ENTRANCE TO NAGASAKI.

like most inland seas, this of Japan is marvellously beautiful. Four hundred miles long, of varying width, everywhere deep, it washes the shores of the main islands in some places, while in others it is broken into twenty narrower channels which break on the shores of uncounted lesser islands. In this the Inland Sea re- sembles our own Lake of the Woods, which takes its strange name from the fact that the island-surface enclosed within its shores exceeds in area the water-surface of the lake. These islands of the Inland Sea are said to be three thousand, but we are inclined to think that islands in groups like these are never accurately counted. Everybody speaks of the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence, without remembering that they are reckoned at eighteen hundred.

84 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

The channel twists around and among the islands in all direc- tions, so that the headlands which we pass seem as fleeting as the clouds, producing ever-varying scenery. During one hour, we arc making our gloomy way under the deep shadow of a naked preci- pice four thousand feet high. In the next, we are passing terraced hill-sides, covered with sunlit orchards, flowery plains and fields, and forests in which the bamboo, the tulip and the cypress commingle. It seems as if the busy population of the whole empire has clustered on these romantic shores. Manufacturing towns alternate with

f^r.

^PflpS^fls^l^S^w^^^^ "'

NAGASAKI nAKBOR.

fishing-villages, and every nook is filled with quaint and miniature shipping.

Night set in, and the bell summoned us to dinner as we were beginning to round a jutting promontory of the western shore. Shall we ever forgive Mr. Eandall for beguiling us with his humor- ous stories until we were brought suddenly to our feet, by the

THE HARBOR OF NAGASAKI.

85

dropping of the anchor, and the firing of a gun, which announced to us that we had arrived in port ?

A moonlight view of Nagasaki ; fitting sequel of a two-days' voyage through the Inland Sea. We forgive Mr. Randall; the first view of Nagasaki ought to be by moonlight. The bay is small ; we almost know, without being told, every object around us. These vessels on the larboard are Japanese ships-of-war. This steamer directly before us is a German man-of-war ; this ship on our star- board quarter, with its black funnels and its stubbed masts, is the British admiral's flag-ship ; and this long, narrow steamer is a Rus- sian corvette. Beyond the area thus occupied by armed vessels are two American merchant-ships and forty awkward but sea- worthy Chinese junks. On encircling hills, which rise two thou-

TEMPLE OP BCDDHA AT NAGASAKI.

86

JAPAN", CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

sand feet out of the sea, are the temples and groves of Buddha. Those dark shades below them are hanging gardens in which the consulates and the merchants' residences are embowered. This ravine which, stretches from the shore upward on the hill-side is the ancient native town ; this quay on our right is the seat of active trade ; this island just before us, hardly broader than a flat-boat, is the famous Decima, for two hundred years the mart and the prison, the boast and the shame of the Dutch traders in Japan ; those ter- raced hill-sides opposite the town are the city of the dead ; and this

VIEW OF DECIMA.

high, conical rock, which seems to close the passage to the sea, is Papenburg, memorable as the scene of the martyrdom of the early Jesuit teachers and converts in Japan.

What does this scene want to perfect its magic? Only music! Instant with the thought, the band on the German frigate de- livers its national hymn, " Des Deutsche Yaterland ; " then come swelling forth from the British flag-ship the inspiring notes of " God save the Queen ; " and these only die away, when the solemn

THE JESUITS IN JAPAN. 87

national anthem of Russia, " Thou pious and gentle leader, shield of the church of believers, God be the protector and defender of our great Czar," grander than all, rolls over the sea.

Is not this glorious concert, under the flags of these great Chris- tian nations, in these distant and lonely waters, suggestive ? Mr. Seward answered, "Yes, but deceptive." The German is here lying in wait for his French enemy ; the British admiral is here to intimidate the semi-barbarous races ; and the Russian admiral is guarding the eastern gate of his master's empire, which towers be- hind and above Asiatic and European states on both continents. So it is that jealousy and ambition breathe in the notes of this ma- jestic serenade.

October lMh. — It is because we cannot swim that we fear the deep. It is because we delight in climbing that we admire the high. While the flat is dull, the circle is our chosen form for the beautiful. Thus the amphitheatre, with its circular and lofty walls, was adopted for the Pantheon as well as for the Coliseum ; though it has since been sometimes discarded from the temple, it remains nevertheless universally associated with the stage and the hippodrome. If we must live in a town, give us one which, like Nagasaki, is an amphi- theatre, whose base is the sea, and whose towering walls are green and terraced mountains. It was under an inspiration like this that Peter on the mount said : " Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias." The preaching of Christianity here by St. Francis Xavier, in 1549, was followed by such success that, within fifty years afterward, Nagasaki was surrendered by its native prince to the Portuguese, and became at once the see of an episcopate, and an emporium of Portuguese trade. But Xavier little apprehended that the Order of Jesus, which he was introducing, would become so arrogant and ambitious as to contest with the. native sovereign absolute dominion within the empire. The Portuguese Chris- tians thus becoming obnoxious to the government, all foreigners were within the first hundred years excluded from Japan, under pain of death, while persecutions more cruel than those of Nero

88 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

were visited on the teachers and converts alike. A few Protestant merchants from Amsterdam, renouncing their religion, joined the government in the persecution of the Christians, and were per- mitted, under humiliating surveillance, to replace the Portuguese at Nagasaki. This truly pitiable colony was found here on the arrival of the United States squadron in 1853. It was understood, at that time, that the Christian faith had been effectually extirpated by the massacres at Papenburg. The world was astonished, how- ever, in 1867, by a discovery that the Christian religion was still living in the province of Nagasaki, and that a large number of natives were condemned to death or servitude for their clandestine adherence to that faith. The Western nations interposed in their behalf. The government contented itself with forcibly deporting twenty-seven hundred of the offending Christians from their homes, and distributing them through the more distant provinces of the empire. This new persecution being thus arrested, it is manifestly the intention of the government now to adopt the principle of uni- versal toleration.

It would be pleasant to dwell on the hospitalities of Mr. and Mrs. Mangum, and on the courtesies of the foreign fleets.

Yellow Sea, October 15th. — Leaving Nagasaki yesterday morn- ing, we carefully examined Coal Island and the other islands which close the magnificent harbor. Nor did we omit to notice that marvellous rock, which, having been dropped nobody knows how or from where, is lodged like a wedge between two naked natural abutments. Our parting view of Japan was a sunset glimpse of the Goto Group, the western outpost of the Island Empire.

It is hardly more satisfactory to quit Japan after a residence of only twenty days, than it would have been to leave it altogether unvisited ; nevertheless, there is Peking before us, " a bourn from which no traveller " can " return " later than November, and so we must onward. Let us set down our memories, such as they are, while they are fresh.

Although society in Japan is divided, as it is in every other coun- try, into high classes and low classes, classes wearing two swords,

JAPANESE CIVILIZATION. 89

classes wearing one sword, and classes wearing no swords at all, yet the people are universally docile and amiable. We saw not one act of rudeness, and heard not one word of ill-temper, in the country. Heaven knows that, in the arrogant assumption by foreigners of superiority among them, the people have provocations enough for both ! One of the Japanese ambassadors to the United States in 1867 was robbed at Baltimore of a richly-mounted sword. Neither he nor his government made any complaint. Mr. Seward for- tunately recovered and restored it, with a national apology. Foreign residents in Japanese cities are often timid, jealous, and suspicious. Some are prone to exaggerate inconveniences into offences. Others are dogmatic and contemptuous. Even one of the most generous of American citizens, when driving Mr. Seward through the streets of Yeddo, could not forbear from cracking his whip over the bare heads of the native crowd. Mr. Seward endured this flourish silently, but he vehemently and earnestly implored his impetuous friend to spare a litter of sleeping puppies which lay in the way. Women and children shrieked as they caught up the mangled brutes behind the carriage- wheels, but the relentless charioteer only said : "It will never do to stop for such things ; let them learn to keep their streets clear." Intimidation and menace naturally provoke anger and resentment. European and American fleets are always hovering over the coasts of Japan. Though the eye of the Japanese is long and curved, it sees as clearly as the foreign eye, which is round and straight. Human nature is the same in all races. Who could wonder if the Asiatics fail to love, where they are taught only to fear ?

It would be manifestly unfair to judge the Japanese by the standard of Western civilization. Measured by the Oriental one, it cannot be denied .that it excels the Asiatic states to whose system it belongs. The affections of family and kindred seem as strong here as elsewhere. There is no neglect of children ; there is no want of connubial care ; no lack of parental love or filial devotion. Nor is it to be forgotten that, in regard to domestic morals, we are giving the Japanese some strange instructions. On this very ship on which we have embarked, there is a German merchant who, after a

90 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

short but successful career in Yokohama, is returning rich to his native land ; with him his child, a pretty brunette boy, two years old. The father brings him to us to be caressed. "We ask, "Where is the Japanese mother \ " "I have left her behind ; she would not be fit to bring up the boy, or to be seen herself in a European country."

No one denies that the Japanese have both the courage and the politeness which belong to an heroic people. They are ac- cused of practising fraud, cunning, and cruelty in war. Are they more vicious in this respect than other pagan or even Chris- tian nations ? Do not the records of war on our own soil contain a melancholy catalogue of similar crimes? Are not the pages which record Napoleon's great campaigns sullied by deeds alike unworthy of our race? The Japanese are sanguinary in civil war. Are they more so than the French were in their first great Revolution ?

The painstaking culture which extends from the water's edge to the mountain-verge ; the tedious manipulation practised in mech- anism ; and the patient drudgery of the coolies in the cities, in labor elsewhere performed by domestic animals, show that the Japanese are industrious. Though the empire has, from its earliest period, been isolated from the civilized world, yet the silks of that country were found among the richest freights of Venice. A Japanese bazaar is seen in every modern European city; and there is no drawing-room, museum, or palace in the world, which is completely furnished without Japanese fabrics.

.They have no legislature, yet they have uniform laws, and these laws are legibly inscribed on tablets at every cross-road and market- place. Although science and literature in the West have borrowed little or nothing from these islands, the Japanese are nevertheless a reading and writing people. We hardly know whether Boston, Philadelphia, or New York shop-windows display greater number or variety of maps, books, charts and pictures, than the stalls of Yeddo, Osaka, or Miako.

Japan is populous, whether we allow it twenty millions, as some of our missionaries do, or fifty millions, as the prime-minister

A RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. 91

claimed in his conversation with Mr. Seward. Nevertheless, men- dicity, though unrestrained by law, is less offensive than in Naples, or even in New York.

It would be a curious study to inquire how and when the se- vere feudal model of the middle ages of Europe obtained a place in Japan, or how it has continued so long among a people so mer- curial, and yet so thoughtful. While in theory the Mikado is sov- ereign proprietor, the whole domain practically belongs to the daimios, who are rich. The revenues of many of them are not less than the public revenues of some of the States of our Federal Union. Though the peasantry are poor, we no vv here heard a complaint against rents or taxes, or the price of labor. Moreover, the Japan- ese, while they encourage immigration, never emigrate. "We infer from these facts that, if not a happy people, they are at least a contented one.

They were a religious people when they accepted the Mikado, and gave him their reverence. They must have been a religious people, when they accepted from the Mikado the teachings of the Sintu sect ; they must have been a religious people, when the doc- trines of Buddha supplanted so generally the dreamy mysticisms of the earlier faith. Xavier found them a religious people, willing to accept the teachings of Christianity. But the religious age in Japan has passed. Confucian philosophy has undermined all myth- ological creeds, and left the Japanese a nation of doubters. Gov- ernment now makes no provision for the support of religious orders. Their revenues, derived from ancient foundations, are diminishing. The priesthood is as inoffensive as it is poor. It may be expected that under this toleration the Christian faith will now, for the first time, come into public consideration in Japan in the way it ought to come, that is to say, in connection with the science, literature, and art, and the political, moral, and social institutions of the Western nations.

The Japanese are less an imitative people than an inquiring one. They are not, however, excitable concerning the events of the day, but rather diligent in studying what is useful. All their dramatic representations are didactic ; and, though they have a fondness for

92 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

legerdemain, they enjoy it not because it is amusing, but because it makes them think from power to product, from cause to effect.

The most unpropitious feature of Japanese society is the gross- ness of the popular sense in regard to woman. Among the com- mon people neither sex maintains decency in dress, and they use the public bathing-houses promiscuously. In Japan, as elsewhere throughout the East, there indeed is marriage, but it is marriage without the rights and responsibilities of that relation. This de- basement of woman has tainted and corrupted the whole state. We are obliged to conclude that domestic virtue has not a promi- nent place in the morals of Japan, although some glimpses which we have had of life in the upper classes have inclined us to believe that among them vice is not altogether free from restraint.

Japanese history derives many of the institutions and much of the science, literature and morals of the country, not from China, but from ancient Corea, which seems to have taken precedence of China in civilization, as the Pelasgian civilization took precedence of the Grecian. The Japanese may, however, be considered as a distinct and independent Mongolian race, which has matured its own civilization, without having been deeply affected by intrusion from any quarter. In this respect the Japanese seem to have en- joyed a fortune like that of the Aztecs of Mexico. That people had developed a unicpie civilization, and were maturing it, when they came into conflict with European nations. The Mexican nation went down under the violence of the shock, and altogether disappeared. The Japanese had in like manner effected and were maturing a civilization of their own when they were reached by the "Western nations. More advanced than the Aztecs, they more clearly apprehended the danger of the contact, and with great promptness and decision they effectually resisted and defeated European intervention. Having thus isolated themselves, they remained so nearly three hundred years. If they did not advance during that time, they did not fall back. That isolation, however, has at last come to an end ; steam, the printing-press, and the electric telegraph, have brought the Western nations on all the shores of Japan. It is manifest that the two distinct and widely-

PROSPECTS OF JAPAK 93

different civilizations cannot continue in such near contact. The great problem now is, whether the European civilization can be extended over Japan, without the destruction, not merely of the political institutions of the country, but of the Japanese nation itself. The Japanese are practically defenceless against the West- ern States. If they are to be brought completely into the society of those nations, it must either be by the application of force, or by that of persuasion and encouragement. The interests of both re- quire that the latter mode should be adopted, but it yet remains to be seen whether Western civilization has reached such a moral plane as to secure its voluntary and peaceful adoption.

There is much of discouragement in the prospect. Few station- ary or declining nations have been regenerated by the intervention of states more highly civilized. Most such have perished under the shock. On the other hand, there are some reasons for hope. Man- kind seem at last to have risen equally above the theory that uni- versal conquest is beneficent, and above the theory that it is pos- sible. Commerce has largely taken the place of war, and it is now universally felt that interest and humanity go hand in hand. It is the distinction of the United States, and we may hope fortunate for Japan, that they have come to the front of the Western states as tutors of the decaying Asiatic nations.

If the tutorship of the United States in Japan is to be made successful, it must be based on deeper and broader principles of philanthropy than have heretofore been practised in the intercourse of nations — a philanthropy which shall recognize not merely the distinction of strength and power between nations, but the duties of magnanimity, moderation and humanity — a philanthropy which shall not be content with sending armies or navies to compel, but which shall send teachers to instruct, and establish schools on the American system, in which philosophy, politics and morals, as well as religious faith, are taught, with just regard to their influences in social and domestic life.

CHAPTER IY.

THE C0AS1 OF CHINA.

Woosung. — U. S. Ship Colorado. — Shanghai. — European " Concessions." — A Mandarin Procession. — Chi-Tajen and Sun-Tajen. — European and Chinese Civilization. — For- eign Prejudices against the Chinese. — The Shan Tung. — The Yellow Sea. — The News from France. — Chee-Foo, the Newport of China. — A Rough Voyage.

Woosung, October 17th. — A respite from politics, philanthropy and morals. Why should we not allow ourselves to see things in the natural way, not to say that there is little more to be learned of the nature of the millstone, by looking into it, than there is by studying its surface ?

A great ocean-sight was reserved for us on the Yellow Sea. Just at sunrise this morning, unnumbered whales appeared off the larboard bow, first throwing up glittering fountains of spray, then rolling their great, glossy, black backs upward, then with their huge forked tails waving adieu as they plunged under the waves. The shoal waters of the Chinese coast have the hue of the Missouri, and give the Yellow Sea its name.

We have crossed the great estuary of the Yang-tse-kiang, and arrived at Woosung, the outer haven of Shanghai, fourteen miles below that city. The country is on all sides a low plain, without landmark. Only three days ago, we left Japan, green as if it were June ; here the fields are dry and brown. We have October with- out its mellowness, and yet Shanghai is only one degree south of Nagasaki. Are islands always warmer and more genial than con- tinental shores? Did Sancho Panza understand this when he

THE "CONCESSION" AT SHANGHAI. 95

stipulated for an island instead of a government on the main- land?

Many American and European merchant- ships are riding at anchor around us, while the river near its banks is crowded with native junks and fishing-smacks, not to speak of a fleet of thirty or more high and awkward, lazy-looking, small Chinese sloops-of-war, iu all carrying two hundred guns. They display at their mast- heads figured and ornamental yellow bunting enough to cover their decks. How pleasant it is to us to recognize the United States flag-ship Colorado, sitting gracefully in the midst, as if calmly sur- veying the naval array ! We have counted her guns, though we have no need to count her stars and stripes — we know that they are all there. Our glasses have failed to discover our old friend Admiral John Rodgers, but we know that he must be there. Who else could have ordered that double line of seamen in dark blue to cheer Mr. Seward as we are passing, and that band to strike up the inspiring strains of " Hail Columbia ? "

Shanghai, October 18th. — Consul-General Seward and a dozen other Americans, with kind consideration, took us from our anchor- age, and brought us by steam-yacht to the " Bund."

Let no one, however, infer from this date that we have arrived in China. Shanghai, as we have thus far seen it, seems to us less like an outpost of the Central Flowery Kingdom, than a town on our native shores. This hospitable mansion of Kussell & Company, all the other houses, this quay, this street, all the streets, this bridge, these churches, these banking-houses, warehouses, and steamers, these carriages and horses, these men and women, all that we have seen on the river or on shore, are European ; for so they call here whatever is foreign, whether it has come from one side of the Atlantic or from the other. This is, in short, the " Concession."

We have enjoyed our first drive in the country, that is to say, an excursion of six miles through the " Concession." Is the air of constraint which the natives here wear in presence of foreigners due more to fear than to hate ? These contracted concessions, made

96

JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

by the government to foreigners, remind one of " the liberties," so called, which were drawn round jails in Europe and the United States before the abolition of imprisonment for debt. " You are safe within them ; we guarantee nothing outside of them." Neither party looks with pleasure on "the Concession." The foreigner wants it enlarged ; the native dislikes it altogether.

While writing these not very profound reflections, we were summoned to the great gate of " the Compound," to see for the first time a mandarin procession.

MANDARIN PROCESSION.

It is the custom of a mandarin, when he moves abroad on social or official visits, to be attended by as many retainers as he has, or can hire. He proceeds, dressed in silken robes, in a sedan-chair,

CHI-TAJEN AND SUN-TAJEN. 97

with a square, glaring, scarlet canopy, borne by coolies, over his head. Fantastic groups go before and behind the chair, dressed in faded finery, carrying umbrellas of all forms and colors, huge gilded maces and staves, banners, flags, and pennons, incomprehen- sible, but fiery red and ragged. A straggling company of musi- cians leads the procession, while others mingle with it promiscu- ously, all beating and banging on noisy gongs, clattering sticks, and deafening drums. The procession in the present case was of double dignity and importance : it conveyed two mandarins instead of one. Falstaff's "tattered prodigal," although he had "misused the king's purse," was less grotesque. We thought that as the man- darins approached they appeared unbecomingly eager to show them- selves. "We did them injustice. Leaning from their chair- windows they bowed low and gesticulated reverentially as they passed us. To our surprise, we recognized in their persons Chi-Tajen and Sim- Taj en, survivors of the late lamented Burlingame in the great Chi- nese embassy which visited the United States in 1868, and which took final leave of Mr. Seward at his residence in Auburn.

" Wot I look at," said Samuel Weller, " is the hextraordinary and wonderful coincidence." Chi-Tajen and Sun-Tajen, since they parted with us, have spent two years in accomplishing their eastern voyage around the world, and they have reached Shang- hai on the very day we have arrived here in our western circum- navigation !

The pageant passed quickly by, and we returned to our cham- ber. How absurd this exhibition had seemed ; how differently it made the ambassadors appear here, from the show they made abroad ! " Yes," said Mr. Seward, " it is even so ; it is an evi- dence of the decay of the empire. States, like individual men, re- tain their pride long after they have lost the means to support it."

Somehow it happens that, wherever we go, the resting-places of the dead attract our attention before the homes of the living. The peculiarity of burial here is, that the tombs rise in great hil- locks, everywhere in the cultivated fields, and even in the gardens. So far as we have observed, the monuments are few, cheap, and inelegant-

98 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

Shanghai, October 19th. — Shanghai is immensely agitated con- cerning the recent massacre at Tien-Tsin. We find European vol- unteers, a hundred strong, drilling for defence against an appre- hended Chinese invasion of " the Concession." Mrs. Seward, the consul general's wife, has just presented those volunteers with a standard of colors. Everybody is astonished at Mr. Seward's rash- ness in going to Peking at the very moment they understand that all the foreign legations there are coining to this port for protec- tion, under the guns ol their respective nations. Admiral Rodgers, with his staff, called upon Mr. Seward to-day. Although it is im- possible for the Colorado to ascend the Pei-ho to Tung-Chow, he considers it his duty to visit the capital personally. He has ar- ranged to accompany Mr. Seward there next week.

Mrs. Warden, our hostess, last night had the entire foreign society of Shanghai at a ball, which, although given in honor of Mrs. Seward, the bride, had been postponed until our arrival.

Gentlemen largely predominate in European Shanghai. The recent arrival of so many American ladies was deemed a social event. Our lady-friends at home will be interested in knowing that all China furnishes not one mantua-maker or milliner. The dresses for the ladies come on orders from Paris, London, or ISTew York. Native women have no need of European costumes. The work here of the seamstress and tailor is done exclusively by men. They come to your house and execute your commands quickly, patiently, and cheaply, and in doing so they faithfully copy every pattern you give them, and omit nothing. We are inclined to think that the story of the American merchant who ordered a dozen pairs of yellow nankeen pantaloons, and, sending as a pat- tern a pair which had been torn and patched, received twelve pairs similarly patched in execution of his order, is not altogether an invention.

• The contrast between European and Chinese civilization was presented sharply to us this morning in our passage from open European Shanghai, with its population of three thousand, to the native town of Shanghai, with its one hundred thousand inhabit- ants, shut up within a circular wall twenty-five feet high, and two

lillli, III!

'

NATIVE SHANGHAI. 99

and one-third miles in circumference. We do not think that any vouth of our own day, however vigorous his arm, however strong the sling or heavy the pebble he might use, could reduce that wall, which was built doubtless in the time of Kublai Khan, but we would not answer for its standing against such an arm or weapon as that which brought down the giant of the Philistines. The town was easily captured by the English in 1843. When we had passed within the gates, and saw the narrow streets, and the crowded structures, built of the most combustible materials, we wondered what can be the Chinese idea in keeping up the wall, which, in case of conflagration, must render escape impossible. Native Shanghai, like the foreign settlement, is built on an alluvial soil, and is insa- lubrious, though reclaimed many centuries ago. This city is the seat of an immense inland trade, in which the tropical products of Southern China, with the hardier ones of Central China, are ex- changed over the Yang-tse-kiang and the Imperial Canal for the tim- ber, cattle, cereals, wool, and other products of Northern China, Mon- golia, Mantchooria, and Russia. The annual exports of the town exceed in value the whole mineral production of the United States. It need not be said, therefore, that its merchants are shrewd, in- dustrious and prosperous. It is marvellous how they have crowded so small an area with warehouses, manufactories, shops, gardens, theatres, dwellings, and temples. All these are built on a scale so small and mean, that, though each structure proves adequate to its purpose, it is only a miniature model or a toy. Nevertheless, the people of the town manifested much pride in showing us their con- tracted dwellings built or exquisitely ornamented with cedar and other fragrant woods, their miniature lakes filled with dwarf moun- tains which sometimes rise to the enormous height of thirty feet, and which the Chinese imagination magnifies into a range of Him- alayas. We found there, besides tea-houses vastly finer than any in Japan, numerous guildhalls elaborately ornamented, in which boards and other associations of merchants and manufacturers daily congregate to discuss matters of trade, and such politics as they have. With all this, there is not' one street accessible by car- riage of any kind. The visitor is even obliged to leave his sedan-

100 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

chair at the gate, and make his way through crowded lanes at most six or eight feet wide. Surface drainage is used, and the streets are so offensive and disgusting that every European in the " con- cession " warns the stranger against going there.

Contrary to what we saw in Japan, the native Chinaman shows not the least emulation or imitation of Western customs and man- ners. All his ways manifest a spirit of self-assertion and indepen- dence, if not a contemptuous one. We now comprehend the puzzle of the Chinaman in San Francisco. The scenes which the European avoids here by taking refuge within the " concession " are con- tinually present with him wherever he moves in San Francisco. It is probable that the contact will work an improvement in Chinese morals and manners there, sooner than the separation will bring out that result here.

But we eschewed philosophy for to-day, and here we have fallen into it again.

Shanghai, October 20th. — A renewal to-day of yesterday's Chinese procession, but with a sequel. Chi-Tajen and Sun-Tajen visited Mr. Seward, and announced to him the success of their diplomatic labors in Europe, condoled with him on the death of Mr. Burlingame, thanked Mr. Seward over and over again for the aid they had received from him in their mission, and dwelt long and gratefully on the hospitalities which they had enjoyed in the United States. Mr. Seward inquired their lodgings, and expressed his intention of returning their visit. They thanked him, but insisted that he should not do so. They said, " We are living in a Chinese inn, in the old city. Neither the tavern nor the city is worthy or fit to receive you." When he persisted, they replied : "No, no, we will come to you here, but we are unable to entertain. Even when we were with you at Auburn, and you promised to come to China, Ave thought how unworthy we were to receive such a visit. Now, since we have compared so much that we have seen abroad with what we are at home, we know this better."

It is a disappointment to 'us. What we want to do is to study China and Chinese ways. This study is the last one that can be

FOREIGN" PREJUDICES. 101

made among the foreign population of Shanghai. In that circle, Chinese affairs are generally ignored. With the exception of an occasional philanthropic observer, they talk in that society chiefly of French defeats and German victories, of London fashions, Oxford boat-races, and American inferiority to Europeans in diplomatic and consular etiquette. If they talk at all of China, it is against the Burlingame Treaty, with asseverations that it is an utter absurdity to expect any good thing to come out of China, except through blockade and bombardment. Possibly, this is an exaggeration resulting from the massacre at Tien-Tsin, and represents the tran- sient rather than the settled opinion of the foreign population. ■ Happily this distrust of the Chinese does not affect or disturb trade. A large part of the coasting-trade of China is in foreign hands, and is conducted chiefly by the Shanghai Steam-Navigation Company. That company has built wharves one thousand feet long, which are covered with warehouses, here called "go -downs." From these wharves the company dispatches eighteen coastwise steamers, an average of one per day. These are chiefly American- built, and they enter all the treaty ports of the empire. How miserable the prejudices to which we have adverted seem to us, in view of the fact that this immense development of foreign naviga- tion and commerce is not only permitted by the Chinese Govern- ment, but is encouraged by it ! It seems the more unreasonable when we reflect that now, after more than twenty years of international intercourse, the United States have not one griev- ance against the Chinese Government unredressed, or one demand unsatisfied.

It is pleasing to meet, here, " John Brown's soul marching on." At Mrs. Warden's ball, a colored man named Butler was received on a footing with the other guests. This ' Mr. Butler, who is equally modest and intelligent, is a native of Washington, and was born a slave of Commodore Rodgers, the father of the present admiral. He is here superintendent of the "go-downs," and charged with the entire freighting business of the Shanghai Steam- Navigation Company, receiving for his services a salary of four thousand dollars.

102 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

Steamship Shan Tung, October 22c?. — " Situated as we are and circumstanced as we are," it seems to us that we are out on a picnic, which, though it threatens to be long, promises much of interest. We have left Mr. and Mrs. Randall at Shanghai. At eleven o'clock last night, Mr. Warden, whom we have found as wise as lie is kind, drove us to the " Bund," where we were received by the aforesaid superintendent Butler, who had set ship and shore ablaze with an illumination of Chinese lanterns in honor of Mr. Seward. With this magnificent display, we were brought on board this pretty steamer which remains still attached to the wharf. It is one hun- dred and fifty feet long and twenty-four feet across the beam ; its state-rooms and cabins are more spacious than those usually found on our rivers and lakes at home, and we enjoyed in them a sounder sle3p last night than the excitement and hilarity at Shanghai had before allowed us.

At six this morning —

"The ship was cheered, The harbor cleared, Merrily did we drop — "

down the river to Woosung, where a friendly summons from the Colorado brought us to, and Mr. Seward received her salute of fifteen guns. Under this friendly fire, Admiral Rodgers came on board the Shan Tung with an attendance of seven officers, a guard of twenty-seven marines, and the brass band of his flag-ship. With this gallant accession, we have crossed the bar at the mouth of the Yang-tse-kiang, here thirty miles wide, and are once more afloat on the Yellow Sea, bound for the now much-dreaded colder regions of the north.

Taking up the Shanghai newspaper, we read the news of the overthrow of the Second Empire of France, and the establishment of a provisional government at Paris.

Everybody asks Mr. Seward, "Will France now restore the Orleans dynasty, or. will it be the elder branch of the Bourbons? " He answers, " I think France will henceforth be a republic, not because the country is prepared for it, but because it has at last

ON THE YELLOW SEA. 103

both sufficiently tried and exploded monarchy and imperialism." " This," said one of our friends, " is a bold prophecy to make under the shadow of an empire which is five thousand years old, while the

mffSWfK1 . ' i

MOUTH OF THE YANG-TSE-KI.VM, .

republic is only an experiment of one hundred years in America and in Switzerland." He replied : " The first Napoleon predicted that, within fifty years, Europe would either be Cossack or repub- lican. Monarchies and empires are of the past. The republic is the institution of the present and future."

"By the deep, twenty -four fathoms." Deep water this, though the waves still glisten with the yellow sands of the great river. The ship rocks, and we rest.

Yellow Sea, Latitude 34° 30', Sunday, October 2od. — Although we certainly did lose one whole day on shipboard on the Pacific, and although it seems to us that we waste much time on shore, we find nevertheless, on counting the weeks, and measuring the dis- tances, that we are moving rapidly. Only last Sunday, we entered the Yellow Sea from Japan. To-day, after a week of observation and festivity at Shanghai, we have made one-third of our long 10

104 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

projected voyage to Tien-Tsin. Who can reckon on the seasons ? We came on board, prepared with furs and blankets, and shrinking . with fear of tempests. Nevertheless, the heavens are smiling, and the Yellow Sea is smooth as Owasco Lake. The band, perhaps because we are travelling in the hemisphere of the heathen, has brought no sacred music. Happily, it has not forgotten its lessons from the opera. So we were awakened and brought to the deck this morning by the " Dies Irse " chorus from " Faust." For even- ing we have stipulated for the prayer in " Der Freischiitz." Al- though we have no missionaries on board, we have come to regard Sunday at sea as a day of rest, even more privileged and happy than at home. We have offered from the deck thanks for our own preservation as grateful, and prayers for friends at home, we trust, as fervent, as those which may be made there to-day, "for per- sons going to sea." We have just passed the mouth of the Hoang-ho — the Yellow River — the second of the two great rivers of China.

Steamer Shan Ttmg, October 24:th. — We rounded this morning the noble granite promontory Shan Tung, which is the most eastern landmark of China proper, and gives its name to one of the most extensive of the eighteen provinces which constitute the empire. It is the water-shed between the Gulf of Pe-chee-lee and the basin of the Yellow River. It is across the western end of this promontory that the Imperial Canal bears the exchanges of Southern and Central China with those of the metropolis and the outlying prov- inces of Mantchooria and Mongolia. Besides some fishermen's huts on the beach, we saw only one structure on the promontory, a Buddhist temple. The whole coast of the promontory is held sacred in China as pertaining to the birthplace of Confucius.

The appearance of a troop of soldiers winding down the moun- tain-side reminded us that the Tien-Tsin massacre has been followed by profound apprehensions of foreign war. A lonely, basaltic rock towers above the sea at the foot of the promontory — a monument that the land once came there, and that the wasting ocean has cut it off. But this monument, like all those erected by human hands,

vm

CHINESE JUNKS.

105

is not destined to endure. It is already broken, and the sea is flowing through it. Fishing-smacks flock like gulls around the base of the promontory.

The junk is an odd-looking affair. It lies low in the water. All its timbers are quaintly carved, and it is painted as gayly as if designed for a regatta. Practically speaking, it is a double-ender, and its awkwardly-rigged and ill-shapen rudder distinguishes it

gss •-

CHINESE FISHING-SMACK.

from all other sea-craft which have been built since Noah's ark. On either side of the bow there is never wanting a huge eye. We asked a Chinese seaman the significance of that ornament. He promptly replied, " Junk no have eye, no can see ! " It is a re- markable coincidence that not only the boats but the houses of the Alaska Indians are furnished with eyes. Although China has never been a maritime power, and is not likely soon to become

106 JAPAN, CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

one, it has an internal navigation which lias never been and never can be equalled elsewhere.

Personal coincidences thicken. This morning, one of the marines communicated to Admiral Poclgers, through the offices of William Freeman, that he was not unknown to Mr. Seward. The admiral promptly instituted an inquiry, which resulted in the marine's coming to the quarter-deck, and being recognized there by Mr. Seward as a soldier who served on the escort which attended him through Alaska last year, and that his knowledge of Mr. Seward had begun in his having been put on guard at his house in "Washington, on the night of the President's assassination. Need we say that he was glad to renew his acquaintance with one who had been a defender on two such memorable occasions %

Steamer Shan Tung, October 26th. — Bearing westward from Shan Tung, we after some hours entered the harbor of Chee-foo, nearly surrounded by hills. Thus far we have seen nothing sub- lime, nor even any thing picturesque in China. The northern shores are only more pleasing than those about Shanghai, because they are slightly elevated and slightly undulating. Naked and barren at this season, one might well mistake the region about Chee-foo for the California coast.

The United States war-steamer Benicia saluted us as we entered the harbor, and her officers came on board. Chee-foo is one of the last-opened ports of China. The foreign settlement numbers only one hundred. The native population is variously estimated at twenty-five thousand to eighty thousand. The agent of the Steam- Navigation Company received us on a well-constructed stone wharf, and has entertained us in the kindest manner. We have made an excursion in chairs to an eminence that overlooks the town and harbor, and found there a ruin, but were unable to deter- mine whether the structure was a temple, an observatory, or a watch-tower. Prom its dilapidated walls we counted two hundred vessels of all sorts and sizes anchored in the bay, although Chee-foo confines itself exclusively to the coast-trade. In this trade, pressed tea prepared for the Russian market in the form of bricks, and

A STORM AT SEA. 107

scarcely more nutritions, is the chief article. A large and delicious native grape cultivated here is highly esteemed in all the cities of China, but no wine is made.

Descending the hill, we enjoyed the walk on the smooth sand- beach. Chee-foo is a summer resort of foreigners — the Newport of China. The bungaloos, however, are now vacant. One of them, which was built by a missionary, cost ten thousand dollars.

The gentlemen of our party, having recovered their land-legs, and been furnished with stout native ponies, made a scrub-race on the beach. The admiral, " who carries weight for age," was dis- tanced by the consul-general. Our friends at home will be pleased to learn that the whole party furnished themselves here with pon- gees, suitable for wear in the tropics, at twenty-five cents a yard.

We left Chee-foo at eight in the evening, and at eleven o'clock we " caught it." As we kept near the coast, the sea was shoal and sand-colored. A strong land-wind arose and blew the water into ridges thirty or forty feet high, and our course obliged us to travel continually in the trough. The wind increased to a gale, and the steamer rocked. How she did rock! Those two of our naval friends who were left in a condition to do any thing, declare that they counted twenty-four rollings of the steamer from one side to another in sixty seconds. It must be confessed, however, that Lieutenant Wheeler and Mr. Pillsbury are somewhat suspected of waggery. But it must also be remembered that, at the time they made this solemn declaration, they supposed themselves to be very nearly in articulo mortis. Only the admiral kept his feet, Mr. Seward, with feet braced, being lashed in his chair to strong iron stanchions at the centre of the middle deck. The ladies were packed, wedged, and wadded in their berths. u Admiral," asked Mr. Seward, " is this rolling and tumbling a customary experience of yours ? " " No," answered the admiral with not less than his usual gravity, " this vessel has a motion entirely unknown to me." " Captain," said Mr. Seward to the master of the Shan Tung," is this rolling a chronic habit of your ship ? " " No," replied the captain, " she only practises it in the Gulf of Pe-chee-lee." Most of the Colorado's marines, and all the musicians except two, were

108 JAPAN", CHINA, AND COCHIN CHINA.

helpless. Nothing that was loose remained in place ; furniture, trunks, bags, and boxes, bundles of pongee and baskets of Chee-foo grapes, went sliding and jamming and punching, backward and forward, and every way, until our pretty dancing-room gave a heterogeneous clattering worse than a seance of the Davenport brothers. In all this noise, confusion, and danger, it may well be imagined there was no sleep at night, no breakfast in the morning, and no lunch at noon. The storm abated and the sea began to subside at three o'clock. At four, the good admiral required such of the musicians as were sound or convalescent, to play selections of Offenbach, by way of enticing sea-sick passengers from their state-rooms. But even "La Belle Helene" and "La Grande Du- chesse " alike failed in this sad and trying emergency. There was neither talking, nor dining, nor wining, until we dropped anchor at nine o'clock in the open roadstead of Taku. Here in that