Newfoundland to Cochin China

I was glad that to the end the enchantment continued, and we shall carry away the memory of that last evening in Japan on board the Japanese Mail Company's steamer, the Saikio Maru. This line is excellent and the ships the perfection of comfort.

We saw the sunset from the deck, behind the peaked mountains of Kobe, with their dragon-armed fir trees outlined atop, and against the hundred masts of a fleet of sampans, the pale grey-green sky so deliciously soft and milky. There was a little white Japanese man-of-war mysteriously covered over, and ships of all nations coming from all parts of the world, in port; and from over the dark waters of the harbour, comes the low crooning chant from the sampans, towing in a huge junk.

As the darkness gathered the lights from Kobe, came out against the sable background of lofty mountains clustering thickly along the Bund, and reflecting shining dots in the water, whilst arcs of light march up the ascending roads. Black monsters, marked by red and green eyes, are darting about the harbour, whilst puffing steam launches, black lighters, and oar-propelled sampans are dimly seen. Over this bewitching scene rises a crescent moon, with a trailing path of silver on the waters, and in our last view of Japan, as is only right, there are the jinrikisha lights on shore, drawn by their patient human horses, their soft quivering lights running swiftly, hither and thither, up and down.

We have been for the last twenty hours on the Inland Sea of Japan. I have spent the whole day on the bridge or in the bows of the Saikio Maru, and the sea in its incomparable beauty surpasses all ideas formed by written pictures. It is a succession of the most perfect inland lakes, varying in breadth from forty miles to a few yards, and with mountains rising around the shores. These mountains have a peculiar look that I have seen nowhere else so marked. They have great zig-zags of sands running up and down their sides, indicated by a sparse vegetation. It gives to them a mottled and zebra appearance, and this feature is common to them all. Many of their castle-like crags are fringed with fir trees, whilst often their sides are deeply terraced to the water's edge, and planted with paddy and sweet potatoes. Little brown thatched villages, with their big roofs crowding down over the mud walls, lie hidden up the many inlets and winding channels, or nestle on the beach of the sea-shore.

Time and again we look back on the undulating track of our course, and cannot see the winding entrance now shut out by islands. We look forward; there is a rounded shore. It is a perfect lake. Just as we enter the narrowest and therefore most beautiful passage, the Captain points out a barren cone, well ensconced behind several mainlands of islands. Not so very long hence we shall be passing underneath, but on the other side of that mountainous peak, and so it goes on, one intricate strait succeeding another.

The Inland Sea is a long procession of islands. The Japanese reckon several thousands, but it would be an impossible task to count them, as one by one they unfold themselves to us, as we steam among their fantastic shapes. For there are islands of every imaginable form and size, square and round with sugar-loaf cones, or extinguisher tops with castellated summits, or small and four-sided like a floating haystack. Some are so large that they are like the mainland, and others mere thimble points. Here, there are three tiny islands formed of three little rocks, with a tuft of palms, and joined by a spit of sand; there, a barren heap of sand with a solitary fir tree on the top; or, again, it is a mountain island with deep evergreens.

Hundreds of junks come sailing by, with the pleasant swish of the water against their keels, whilst even here they have screens of paper, covering the wooden trellises of their sides. They are a perpetual delight, these curious whimsically-fashioned vessels, with their ancient prows standing high out of the water, recalling as they do the old prints of the fleet of the Spanish Armada, of which they are exact reproductions. Their one square sail is attached to a single mast, and pulls up and down like a curtain on running strings, and the black patch sewn on it denotes the owner's name.

What makes the Inland Sea so beautiful? The Japanese themselves have no name for it, nor have their poets ever sung its praises. I suppose we must say it is the innumerable islands, though many of these are the reverse of beautiful in themselves. Or is it the great ocean steamer threading so swiftly the successive intricate windings and snake-like passages? No. I think it is perhaps the ceaseless variety. Every minute the scene changes; it is never the same for more than a few seconds, and is often so beautiful that you want to look on both sides at once. Certainly in the course of our many wanderings, we have never been more pleased than with this Inland Sea. All the morning the sky was overcast, and a purple haze rested lightly on the mountains, and the sea was pale green. But in the afternoon, just as we reached the most charming part by the northern course, the sun broke through, and we had the long afternoon shadows, with softened sunlight, on this scene of rare beauty.

We have had, too, a wonderful conjunction of pleasures in a superb sunrise, and a more exquisite sunset in one day. This morning at Kobe I saw sunrise. At six o'clock the sky was heralded with crimson glory. To-night the sun, as it always does in these Eastern latitudes, sinks suddenly—a golden ball into an orange bed. It is going, going slowly, until gone behind that purple range, and just as it is dying the symmetry of the orb is cut into and spoilt by a jutting rock on the mountains. Then, whilst darkness falls over the land, the golden bed begins to glow and palpitate with colour, and spreads and spreads, until the exquisite pink, and lilac and green, melt into the cobalt vault above. The sea is extended in a tremulous sheet of dazzling gold, and the black prows and the figures on the junks are cut in Vandyck relief out of this gilded background. The silver moon rises over a lighthouse on the other side of the ship. Soon little mackerel clouds separate themselves, and float over the sky, and as we watch a ruddy glow succeeds, growing blood-red, and bathing sky and sea in a crimson flood, which dies, oh! so lingeringly and wistfully into purple darkness.

Nor is this all, for by-and-by, as we are looking over the bulwarks, perhaps still a little awe-bound by this superb display of nature, a great, green, electric wave rises up from the dark sea, thrown aside by the ships' bows, and breaks away in gleaming particles. It is the brilliant phosphorescence of the spawn of the sardine, which in daytime is spread out like red dust upon the waves. Sometimes it is so bright that the whole sea is alight, and in passing a channel ships have to stop, being unable to see the coast.

At two o'clock in the morning we stop to coal at Shimonoseki, in the straits between the main island of Nippon and that of Kyushu. A party of geishas, or dancing girls, come on board and go over the ship, and I get up in time to see a row of little policemen with their coloured lanterns going down the gangway.

The next day, at midday, we again come into an even more beautiful inland channel. Islands of emerald green are seen across a white-flecked sapphire ocean on a glorious day—a line of white creamy foam denting the black rock-bound coast, above which rise volcanic strata of grey and black cliff of the most wonderful formations, deformed and twisted into spinular columns and basaltic contortions, and the unwieldy mass of the huge ship is made to double round sharp angles, and avoid the conical islands sticking so irritatingly out in the mid-ocean passage. In one place there is a lighthouse towering on a rock so rugged and steep, that no path can be cut in the cliffs, and we see the derrick and the basket which are used for letting people up and down, from the boats to the platform of the phare.

We are pointed out the place, where, in this far-distant island of Japan, François de Xavier, in 1549, first landed to try and Christianize the natives. We are in an inner channel. Far, far away, beyond two grey islands on the sky line, lies Corea. Whichever way we look there is a dotted circuit of islands, always of those whimsical shapes. Occasionally, miles ahead, one little island will stand all solitary amid the ocean, or in another you can see the half that has fallen away, leaving a clear cut scar, an abrupt termination to the island. But the most curious of all is an enormous bell-shaped rock, standing erect in the ocean with a perfect arch through it.

Captain Connor, the best and most genial of commanders, puts the ship about that we may "kodak" it, and by degrees the slit of light opens out into a perfect archway.

Over the archipelago of islands, under a green mountain, lies Nagasaki, and we find an entrance—a blind and mysterious one—into its harbour.

The harbour of Nagasaki is very beautiful. It is "long and narrow, winding in among the mountains like a Scotch firth." Every separate mountain is terraced in green circles down to the water's edge, and in each little conical hill the circles get narrower at the top. In some, there are wooded knolls crowned by a chapel, with winding stone steps, that lead up from the black torii on the banks, where prayers are offered for sailors and the safe return of the fishing junks. We pass at the entrance the round island of Pappenburg, where we can still see the flight of steps, down which the Christians were thrown into the sea 300 years ago. We get safely past the quarantine station, pitying a British ship lying bound, with the yellow flag hoisted on her mast. There are red lights, in the shape of a cross, strung from the masts of a sunken vessel across our passage, for last week the captain of this 400-ton brig took out the ballast, and a few hours afterwards she suddenly heeled over and sank, drowning the captain's wife, who was in the cabin, and the first officer.

As we breast this landed-locked harbour, under the opal hues of a delicate sunset, we give to it the palm (always excepting Sydney) over all other harbours. At the head of the bay we see the town and the handsome houses of the consulates on the Bund, and above that again many more pleasantly situated houses, equally handsome and belonging to missionaries.

I do not wish to make any observations on the missionary question, which, without special knowledge, it would be wrong to speak of, but I must say that we have never heard any resident of any foreign country speak a single word in favour of the missionaries. On the contrary, we are struck how they generally condemn them, I hope unjustly, as mischievous, idle, and luxurious.

As we come to our buoy opposite the town, thousands of lights, running out in zig-zag lines into the harbour, seem to come out with one accord, creeping in scattered dots of fire up the mountain sides, and there with these myriads of twinkling lights, winking and blinking at us like a thousand eyes, and with the dull splash of oars in the water, we get such unrestful sleep as is possible on a ship in port. Now we can well imagine the scene described thus:—

"Every year, from the 13th to the 15th of August, the whole population of Nagasaki celebrate the Bon Matsuri, or the Feast of the Dead. The first night all the tombs of those who died in the past year are illuminated with bright-coloured paper lanterns. On the second and third nights all the graves without exception are so illuminated, and the families of Nagasaki install themselves in the cemeteries, where they give themselves up, in honour of their ancestors, to plentiful libations. The bursts of uproarious gaiety resound from terrace to terrace, and rockets fired at intervals seem to blend with the giddy human noises the echoes of the celestial vault. The European residents repair to the ships in the bay to see from the distance the fairy spectacle of the hills, all resplendent with rose-coloured lights.

"But on the third night, suddenly, at about two o'clock in the morning, long processions of bright lanterns are seen to descend from the heights, and group themselves on the shore of the bay, while the mountains gradually return to obscurity and silence. It is fated that the dead embark and disappear before twilight. The living have plaited them thousands of little ships of straw, each provisioned with some fruit and a few pieces of money. The frail embarkations are charged with all the coloured lanterns which were used for the illumination of the cemeteries; the small sails of matting are spread to the wind, and the morning breeze scatters them round the bay, where they are not long in taking fire. It is thus that the entire flotilla is consumed, tracing in all directions large trails of fire. The dead depart rapidly. Soon the last ship has foundered, the last light is extinguished, and the last soul has taken its departure again from this earth."

The next morning we were ashore before breakfast to see the fish market, for Nagasaki is one of the largest fishing ports in the world, and it has been proved that there are 600 specimens of fish brought into this market, by a gentleman who has drawn them and written a book on the subject.

Nagasaki has several canals, and is a quaint little town developed from a fishing village, but with nothing of much interest in it. We spend the day as usual in the shops, plunging with a desperation born of the feeling that it is really our last chance of buying in Japan; we are in an agony of fear up to the last minute lest our purchases should not arrive before the steamer sails at 4 o'clock.

And it is in the dull light of a clouded afternoon that we glide out of the beautiful harbour of Nagasaki, and in a few hours even the coast line is lost to us, and fair Nippon, the Land of the Rising Sun (such an appropriate name for the swiftly progressing Island Empire) is a remembrance of the past. Bright memories will linger with us in a medley dream, of rosy sunsets, of clear skies in those marvellous pale washes, of gaudy temples with their moss-grown steps, hallowed by the solemn hush around, mingling with the pictures of those queer, dark little shops, of tiny gardens comprised in tiny courtyards, of gentle little men and women in flapping cotton garments, of golden lacquer, red and black, of gorgeous kakemonos, bronzes, cloisonné, of delicately tinted textures, and above all of solemn gilt Buddhas, seated on lotus-leaved pedestals, and gleaming at us from out dark corners.

We pass out into the grey space of the Yellow Sea.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE YELLOW LAND

The turbid orange-coloured waters of the great Yangtze are around us—"the river of the golden sands," far too poetical a name for the muddy waters, that with a strong current swish and eddy against the ship's side.

The spirit of travel that rises strong within you as you approach the landing to a new country, is discouraged by that thin line of flat, ugly land, which is all we see on that dull October morning, through a mist of rain, of the coast of China.

The Yellow Land! Rightly named, indeed. The sea is yellow, the rivers are yellow, the land is yellow, the people, too, are yellow—and the Dragon Flag is yellow. Yellow, too, might China be with gold if only her rulers, the mandarins, would let her people give scope to their abilities, develop the rich resources of an as yet barely touched country, and strike ahead among the nations of the world.

We had anchored at the Saddles, some little Islands with a fancied resemblance to that equine article, and then moved up with the tide, opposite to the fleet of sampan masts at Woosung; but still the water on the bar is too low, and they whistle for a steam tug to take us off the Saikio Maru, and up fifteen miles of the deadly uninteresting reaches of the Wung-Poo—the last tributary of the Yangtze—to Shanghai.

What a mighty river this Yangtze is. The name signifies the Child of the Ocean, and the Chinese have various others for it, such as "The Father of Rivers," "The Girdle of China." "It is the richest river in the world—richest in navigable waters, in mighty cities, in industrious human beings, in affluent tributaries, in wide margins of cultivated lands of inexhaustible fertility. This vast expanse of turpid fresh water is saturated with the loam of fields 1500 miles away." The Yangtze rises in Central Asia, and drains an area of 600,000 square miles of Midland China.

We pass hundreds of junks, the quaintest ships afloat in the world, with their sides decorated with brilliant blue and red frescoes, and sails of bamboo matting; the all-seeing black and white eye is in the bow of the boat, for no Chinese junk would sail without this occult protection.

Lost to us are the beauties of the palm and flower-covered Bund, the pride of Shanghai (on this first occasion), for we land in a drenching rain, and seek shelter in a dirty jinrikisha lined with green and red oilskin, and drawn by a feeble coolie—and this began the first of our disadvantageous comparisons between China and Japan. By all means let everyone visit China first, with its dirty mud villages, devoid ever of picturesqueness, its swarming, grasping, sullen people, and leave Japan—dear, clean, little Japan, with its picturesque streets, and charming, willing little fairies to the last. From that moment of landing I took a repugnance to China, and the more I saw of it the more the dislike grew.

An hour after reaching Shanghai, we were told of a steamer leaving for Tientsin immediately—a cargo boat, it was true, but the captain was willing to take us. The last bale of goods was being lowered into the hold, the Blue Peter flying at her masthead; a hasty decision being necessary without more reflection, and, being most anxious to push on to Peking, we embarked on board.

The Chïng Ping is a Chinese collier of 500 tons, trading between the coast ports, and with a single cabin for a chance passenger. A glance was sufficient to show us the fate in store for us for the next few days, but it was then too late. As we scudded out into the Yellow Sea, in a storm of wind and rain we began to suffer. The horrors of that long night are yet like a bad dream. We heard bell after bell strike, and thought that dawn would never break, for the Chïng Ping rolled to desperation, shipping heavy seas, whilst the wind blew like a hurricane through the "alloway" under which was our cabin, blowing showers of spray in at the door, while on closing it we were suffocated. We were unable to move, for it was impossible to stand, and in total darkness, for the matches had early disappeared amid the chaos of articles on the floor, which we helplessly heard rolling about and bounding against the walls. Nor was this the worst; for the rain and spray leaked through the woodwork of the cabin, and soon our berths and clothes were saturated, and deadly sick, with no dry place in which to place our heads, we lay drenched through the weary hours of that dreadful night.

It was a sorry sight, a scene of wreckage and despair, that good Captain Crowlie looked in upon the next morning, when we begged to be put ashore anywhere, at any cost, rather than spend such another night on board. He was so kind to us, taking us up and establishing us in his own cabin on the hurricane deck, where we passed the remainder of the voyage.

For the past few days we had been crossing the stormy Gulf of Pechele, with the now grey, now purple, coast-line of the great province of Chihli to port. It is late on the fourth afternoon that we are on the bridge with the captain, all anxiety to know whether we shall cross the bar at the mouth of the Peiho to-night, for he fears that we are just two hours too late to catch the flood tide.

The entrance to the Peiho is most extraordinary; for there is no sign of land, no banks visible to indicate that it is a river, but only the bulbous buoy of the lighter opposite the bar, rising above the horizon, growing clearer every minute. It is determined to make a desperate effort, and everybody is on the alert; officers at their various posts, the engineer putting on all steam, the steering-gear connected to the upper bridge, whilst the leadsman, a quaint Chinese figure perched out on an overhanging gangway, is set to work. At each call the water gets shallower, and decreases at every throw from fifteen feet to thirteen feet down to nine, and then the flat bottom of the Chïng Ping ensconces itself comfortably on the bed of mud, and the fatal "Let go anchor" sounds from the bridge. We stay there for the night, a sudden silence falling on the ship in the silver moonlight, save for the convulsive sobbing of the engines, giving forth their last oppression of steam. Alas! we shall not sleep in Tientsin to-night.

At 2 o'clock in the morning the commotion, as we get under weigh, begins afresh, and no sleep is possible after that, for there is the frantic whirring of the steering-gear just outside the cabin, as the sharp commands from the bridge, make the wheel race from port to starboard. We stop opposite the Taku Custom House, and whistle ever louder and more angrily for the sleeping officer, who eventually comes reluctantly on board. And then in the moonlight we glide by the crumbling banks, past mud villages, silent as the grave, lying in deep shadows, until morning glimmers in the purple red of the sky, and we pay our morning orisons to the rising sun, in its glory, over the well-cultivated, intensely flat plains, and the cracked mud banks of the great Peiho.

The navigation of this river is the most wonderful series of nautical evolutions. The steamers are especially built with flat bottoms for the service, and must not draw more than ten feet of water. It is without exception the most exasperating bit of navigation, calling forth the anathemas alike of captain and passengers. There is first of all the bar, where at high water there is often only from ten to eleven feet. Here it is possible to wait for several days before there is enough water for a steamer to cross, and in most cases the cargo has to be taken out to lighten the ship on one side, and replaced on the other, or again sometimes it may be too rough for the lighters to come alongside. Then commence the windings, so sharp that steam is shut off, whilst the bows of the ship are across the stream, and the stern is all but on the bank, the dangers of going aground being considerably increased by the shallowness of the water. To give an idea of the serpentine course of the river—a steamer which we passed in a bend on the port side, two hundred yards further on will be to starboard. The effect produced by this is, that the large sails of the sampans are a succession of ships sailing inland, in contrary directions.

We pass the mud forts of Taku, where the great battle of 1860 took place, when the allied forces were on their march to Peking. The Chinese idea of fortifications, as a rule, consists largely of walls of mud with a hard battened surface, and these forts are intended for the protection of the Peiho, but really their best one rests in the bar at its mouth. There is the embankment yonder of China's only railway. It runs from Taku to Tientsin. Fancy a country of four million square miles, with a population of as many millions as there are days in the year, with but one single railway of a few miles! Yet such is the case; China is still in the shadow of the dark ages.

The morning mists gather into a thin vapour and roll upwards, showing miles of fields, cultivated like kitchen gardens, interspersed with mud villages, where the houses are made of wattles plastered over with the earth they stand on, with chimneys formed of a cone of mud, and paper windows. In wet weather and floods these houses often partially dissolve, or subside altogether. But then they are so easily rebuilt. Here the urchins come out and revel in the murky wash in our wake, whilst the sampan propellers push hurriedly off from the bank, lest we land them, as indeed we did one, high and dry after our swell had subsided. Hundreds of coolies are trudging along, with their bamboo poles slung across their shoulders, whilst others squatted on the ground occupied with that B.C., or ancient Eastern method of irrigation, the automatically worked water-wheel.

We now have the disagreeable excitement of going aground, a gentle bump on a flat bank, where we stick fast, and recall all the stories which we have been hearing, of steamers staying aground for a week or ten days. Meanwhile the screw churns away at the liquid mud, and a crowd collects on the causeway above, and yet we remain fast. It is after half an hour's manœuvring that we get off and proceed through the few more perilous bends still left, with a few more hair-breadth escapes. We see the tall chimneys, covering a large area, of the Arsenal, and then the Pagoda, with its white umbrellas, overlooking the fort and military exercise ground for the troops, and then we are nearing Tientsin. It is pleasant in the first view of Tientsin to be greeted by a familiar remembrance of England, in the towers of a miniature Windsor Castle, the Victoria Hall of the English Settlement, that tower above the dust-coloured hovels. It is in strange contrast to the two cages on the banks, fixed on the top of tall bamboo poles, where are seen the heads of two criminals. Doubtless they were executed on the spot where the crime was committed, as is the Chinese custom.

We anchor in the river, and amid a deafening roar, and the shoving, scraping and pushing of hundreds of filthy sampans, we land on the Bund of Tientsin, and are settling into the somewhat uninviting quarters of the Astor House, when Mr. Byron Brennan, H. M.'s Consul, kindly sends for us, and in an hour we are installed in luxury, and have washed away the unpleasant reminiscences of our journey across the Yellow Sea in a collier.

The English Consulate looks out over the Bund, but it is such a different Bund to the usual one of handsome houses and gardens touching the water's edge. This one is piled up with merchandise; great bales of goods, covered with matting, are stacked under the trees or strewn about the ground, and through the wide-opened windows come all day the shouts and cries of the strong-limbed coolies, as they lade and unlade the ships. A strange silence falls over the busy scene of the day, at night. But in another month or two the Bund will be a model of neatness, swept and clean, and all this bustling scene will be hushed under the spell of winter, for the Peiho freezes in the end of November or beginning of December. Merchants are now hurrying to send away the last of their merchandise, and residents are receiving their last supplies before the river is closed. During those winter months Tientsin is entirely cut off from the outer world, save for the mails which are brought overland. No one can enter or leave the town to go south, and business is at a standstill until spring breaks up the ice. This isolation comes suddenly, for we heard of a steamer that went aground below Tientsin, and in one night was frozen in by a coat of ice a foot thick. A British gunboat is anchored under the Consulate, sent up since the late riots at Wuhu, and it is a great comfort to the English residents to feel that she is to spend the winter here.

We passed a quiet forenoon with a regular feast of the Times and of home news. Then in the evening Mrs. Brennan took me for a walk round the European Concession, down Consulate Road, where the consulates of the various nations are situated, to the Gordon Hall and Victoria Gardens. Five years ago this was a mud-dried waste—strange contrast to these pretty zoological gardens, with its tennis courts, and well laid out paths, and Chinese band playing. The Hall is the centre of social life, where dances and public entertainments are held, and it has a capital Library and Reading-room. At the entrance are stands of guns, belonging to the Volunteer corps of foreign gentlemen, who are ready to come to arms should necessity arise.

Like so many other places of this kind, Tientsin has but one drive out into the country, and along this we go up on to the city wall. We stand on the high elevation of the deeply arched bridge, and look out on the flat swamps of mudland, on the surrounding marshy and unhealthy pools. It is mud in some shape or form whichever way you look, it is seen alike in houses, walls and roads, and it is certainly very like what I pictured China from reading books of travel.

The Europeans on their small spotty Chinese ponies, or driving in their cabriolet carriages, are returning from their evening exercise. Tientsin seems to be a pleasant place socially, particularly in the cold though bright winter, when business is slack on account of the frozen river, and the little community join together to amuse themselves with skating and sailing of ice-boats. And so soon as the first dust storm spoils the river ice, they enclose this pond we are passing, and make a covered skating rink.

My husband has just returned from a visit to the great Viceroy, Li Hung Chang, who sent soon after our arrival to say that he would be glad to see him. So at five o'clock he and Mr. Brennan started out in state-green palanquins, the official colour being green in distinction to the ordinary blue, with a numerous retinue and an outrider on a white horse to clear the way, and present the Chinese card, a single sheet of long pink paper. On arrival at the Viceregal Yâmen, exterior and surroundings of which were little in keeping with the high offices of state held by His Excellency, the chairs were carried into an inner courtyard, flanked by wooden shields, bearing all the titles of the Viceroy. The visitors were conducted to the small foreign reception rooms, where His Excellency immediately joined them.