SEAS AND LANDS Seas and Lands REPRINTED HY PERMISSION OF THE PROPRIETORS OK THE " DAILY TELEGRAPH " FROM LETTERS PUBLISHED UNDER THE TITLE "BY SEA AND LAND" IN THAT JOURNAL BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, M.A., K.C.I.E., C.S.I. AUTHOR OF "THE LIGHT OF ASIA," ETC., ETC. WITH IL L I S TRA TIOA 'S NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN. A X D CO. 15 EAST 16 th STREET 1891 r A-OA Copyright, 1891 BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD %l>e Carton (press 171, 173 Macdougal Street, New \'ork TO MY DAUGHTER, KATHAEINE LILIAN ARNOLD, :hk dear companion of my wanderings, Zbeee pages ARE DEDICATED. CONTENTS CHAP. I. IN MID-OCEAN II. THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE III. MONTREAL AND TORONTO IV. NIAGARA V. AMERICAN SOIL VI. MEN AND CITIES VII. BOSTON . VIII. HARVARD IX. OCEAN TO OCEAN X. SAN FRANCISCO XI. THE PACIFIC . XII. JAPAN . XIII. A JAPANESE CITY XIV. RURAL JAPAN XV. TEMPLES AND SHRINES XVI. POETRY AND PLAYS XVII. A JAPANESE DINNER XVIII. THE RANGE OF MODERN 1 XIX. SAKE AND TEA XX. AT HOME XXI. NATURE AND ART . XXII. COURT AND COMMERCE XXIII. THE JAPANESE HEARTH XXIV. " KWAJI ! KWA.JI ! " . XXV. DAILY LIFE XXVI. MILITANT JAPAN LEDGE PACK I 16 28 41 59 72 84 97 1 1 1 128 142 173 186 20? 2 1 229 244 2 5 9 271 29 1 307 320 346 3~?n Vlll CONTENTS. CHAP. XXVII. JAPAN AND FOREIGN POWERS xxvni. japan and foreign powers {continued) XXIX. A JAPANESE EXHIBITION XXX. THE JAPANESE SHAMPOOER XXXI. A DAY IN FLOWERLAND . XXXII. A JAPANESE HEALTH RESORT . XXXIII. THE DAY OF THE DEAD IN JAPAN XXXIV. A JAPANESE LOVE-STORY XXXV. ASCENT OF FUJI-SAN XXXVI. IN THE JAPANESE MOUNTAINS XXXVII. EASTERN FORTITUDE XXXVIII. AN AFTERNOON WITH THE MIKADO XXXIX. THE FIRST ASIATIC PARLIAMENT XL. HOMEWARD BOUND . . 368^ nued) 378 391 401 . 409 418 428 ■ 435 . 446 ■ 462 . 47i ■ 479 • • 49° o • 5°3 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FL 'LL-PA GE ILL USTRA TIOXS. Our Garden at Azabu, Fronti Washington : The Capitol . Washington : The White House University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia : I n d e p en - dence Hall Boston : City Hall San Francisco The Hatoba and Grand Hotel, Yokohama . Yokohama A Japanese Lady . A Maid Servant . Fuji-San .... The One Hundred and One Steps The Castle Moat, Tokio Japanese Children Rice Fields ... Temples at Shiba . TnE Red Bridge, Xikko Dan.ttro, the Actor The Hara-Kiri PAGE piece The Samisen . . . . 60 At a Private Dinner . After the Banquet 64 The Lotus of Buddhism 72 Bringing Sake Tea and Tobacco . 74 Tea and Music S 4 Light Refreshment 12S The Bath-House . Washing . . . . 1 5* A Temple < Iate 160 Road to ( )da\vaka . - 163 The Musume C And (in her 164 head," &c.) 1 68 A Japanese Garden Japanese Coolies Wearing 170 Mino . . . . 173 A Country Woman: Fuel 176 and Flowers . 194 A Bamboo Grove . 196 The Jinrikisha 204 Ceylon, ( olombo • 220 See/. ( anai PAGE 224 230 ^ 2 5 S 260 266 26S 270 2SO 2S4 308 3IO 4IO 450 402 468 482 516 5 2° LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT. PAGE PAGE A Geisha . 162 At the Yoshiwara 324 A Country Girl . I64 Inn-Servants 326 The Baby I67 A Japanese Lady . 328 A Musume . I69 The Kago .... 332 The Tokio Cab 182 The Author's " Han " . 335 Waiting Maids 234 The Daily "Tub" . 35i Dancing Girls 236 Invitation to the Emperor's Coolies .... 274 Evening Party at Nagoya 353 My Teacher . 276 354 My Pupil 277 In Winter Dress . 366 The Sisters 279 Hakonp: Lake 423 The Gardener's Wife . 28l Grave of Ko-Murasaki 43i A Woman Sleeping 283 Invitation to the Emperor's Dancing Girl 287 Garden Party . 482 Japanese Village 289 Japanese Poem of Fare- Mat-making . 292 well INSCRIBED TO SlR Girl of the Yoshiwara . 322 Edwin Arnold . 504 SEAS AND LANDS, CHAPTER I. IN MID OCEAN. South-westerly squalls and blinding sheets of rain, relieved occasionally by gleams of pale, unwilling sunshine, were troubling the busy tide-way of the Mersey, when we embarked, on Thursday, August 22, at Liverpool, for Quebec and Montreal. Those who take this very interesting route to the American Continent forego the swift passages made to New York by the great racing vessels which fly across in little over six days. On the other hand, the traject from land to land by the St. Lawrence line occupies only five days — at least with anything like fair weather — and at its termination there is, further, the delightful voyage up the great Canadian river, some 700 or 800 miles of quiet and picturesque navigation. True, also upon this Canadian track, should the nights be dark, there is always some risk from icebergs in and about Belleisle Straits, and a certain amount of anxiety must haunt the captain, if, as is generally the case, fogs cover the Gulf of the St. 2 SEAS AND LANDS. Lawrence. But during the summer and early autumn months the attractions of the Dominion route are pre-eminent, and our good ship was full to the last berth with Transatlantic tourists returning from the Paris Exhibition, with homeward-bound Canadians, and emigrants. On a fine and well-found steamer these last- mentioned people no longer suffer as in the old bad days of sailing ships. Yet they still go through so much misery of all sorts that one marvels how some among them ever plucked up courage for the adventure. They come on board, crowded together in the steam tender, like the herds of red and black oxen which are seen crossing from Birkenhead to Liverpool, or vice versa, in those capacious cattle- boats with the bluff bows. Frightened • women, tearful children, and moody men — nobody would suppose them to be modern Pilgrim Fathers — were starting to fill up the waste fields of a mighty empire, and to make, with luck and industry, their fortunes. Nobody cheers them with music or any sign, of public approval or encouragement. They look as melancholy and uncared for as the doomed cattle ; and might almost be going to as tragic a destiny. In ancient Greece the intending colonists marched down to the sea's edge with pipes and dances, the " Prytanis " going proudly first with the sacred fire from the municipal earth, girls bearing flowers and foliage, and boys portions of the paternal soil, while libations and offerings were joyously made to Deities of Land and Water. No painter or poet could elicit any gay Greek colour or grace of IN MID OCR AX. 3 hope and gladness out of those dejected and dis- jointed groups, unless it were from the Scandi- navian contingent, which seemed cleaner, brighter, and more composed than the Irish, Scotch, and English. These, especially the Celts, melt into pathetic hopeless grief when the hour of parting arrives ; and truly it was a sorrowful time for many among them when, heavily as the chill showers fell, there were more tears than rain-drops on their faces. One knew, besides, that there was so much coming for them to suffer upon the rough sea, and in the unaccustomed ship-life. The Mersey was all grey and white with the wind-lashed waves as the anchor was got up and the crew hauled in the gangway away from the puffing, snorting steam tender. It looked, indeed, as if evil weather was brewing for us all outside the bar. War being at the moment raging between Admirals Tyron and Baird, the Cyclops and Gorgon, coast-defence ships, lay in the river guarding the seven wealth v miles of Liverpool docks from the arrogant invader, with the aid of a flotilla of torpedo-boats. Even these, however, were all moored high up the fairway, avoiding the stress of the wet and wild south- westerly gale outside. Yet it proved not nearly so bad at first for the emigrants as might have been expected. Down to Crosby Eight the estuary was sufficiently protected, and, running out for the south end of the Isle of Man and towards the north passage between Ballycastle and the Mull of Cantyre, the wind softened a little, and the great steamer — too heavv with coal and cargo to vield much to the 4 SEAS AND LANDS. short billows — made no very formidable movements. Grievous, of course, was the havoc which sea-sick- ness, following upon sorrow, wrought even thus upon the poor emigrant families. Children were soon prostrate, mothers reduced to limp maternal help- lessness, and fathers sometimes not greatly better. But there were no waves breaking over the vessel to soak them to the skin — they had all -good shelter from cold and spray under the after-deck, and in the morning had gained a little respite from their first hard sea lesson, as we threaded a passage under the heights of Slieve Slaght and the basaltic crags of Dunaff Head, entering Lough Swilly to pick up the Londonderry mails. " Green," truly, as any emerald, does Erin appear to one who passes up this nothernmost inlet of the island, between Coleraine and Donegal. On the western side of the lough many pretty mansions and villas, all snow white, deck the verdant wood- lands and hanging meadows. Inland rise the Scalp Mountain and Mamore Pass on the left, and on the right the Knockalla Hills, and, far off and massive, the Glendowan and Derryveagh Ranges, overhang- ing Mulvoy Bay and Milford, where Lord Leitrim was murdered. The anchorage for mail steamers is far away from Londonderry, but Lough Swilly, which leads thither, naturally calls to mind the famous siege of the city in 1689, when the Irish army of King James, under Rosen and Hamilton, beleagured the place during more than one hundred days, but could not force the gallant Protestant garrison to succumb, although famine and pestilence IN MID OCEAN. 5 were their close allies, and the traitorous Lundy, who was the Governor of the city, attempted to sell the gates. That post, as all have read, was taken out of his false hands by a renowned and valiant parson, the Rev. George Walker, Rector of Donaghmore, whose courage and piety preserved the faithful Derry. Up these waters proceeded to her rescue those stout merchantmen of Kirke's relieving fleet, the Phoenix and Mount joy, which, filled with stores, broke through the chains and booms placed across the Foyle, and brought comparative abundance to Londonderry, and despondency, ending in despair, to the besieging forces. The blockade was thus triumphantly ended on July 30, 1689; and a volume in the ship's library supplies to hand the eloquent passage in which Macaulay writes of the famous siege and fortunate relief. " Five generations," says his History of England, " have passed away, and still the wall of Londonderry is to the Protestants of Ulster what the trophy of Marathon was to the Athenians. A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore during many w T eeks the heaviest lire of the enemy, is seen far up and down the Foyle. ( )n the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, in the last and most terrible emergency, his elo- quence roused the fainting courage of his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible; the other pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of bis famished audience to the English topmasts in the distant bay. Such a monument was well deserved ; yet it was scarcely needed; for, in truth, the whole city is to this day a monument of the great deliver- 6 SEAS AND LANDS. ance. The wall is carefully preserved, nor would any plea of health or convenience be held by the inhabitants sufficient to justfy the demolition of that sacred inclosure which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race and their religion." " The summit of the ramparts form a pleasant walk. The bastions have been turned into little gardens. Here and there among the shrubs and flowers may be seen the old culverins which scattered bricks cased with lead among the Irish ranks. One antique gun, the gift of the Fishmongers of London, was dis- tinguished during the 105 memorable days by the loudness of its report, and still bears the name of ' Roaring Meg.' The cathedral is filled with relics and trophies. In the vestibule is a huge shell — one of many hundreds which were thrown into the city. Over the altar are still seen the French flagstaves taken by the garrison in a desperate sally ; the white ensigns of the House of Bourbon have long been dust, but their place has been supplied by new banners, the work of' the fairest hands of Ulster. The anniversary of the day on which the gates were closed, and the anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised, have been down to our own time celebrated by salutes, processions, banquets, and sermons. Lundy has been executed in effigy, and the sword said by tradition to be that of Maumont has, on great occasions, been carried in triumph." How is it possible that a race with such memories could ever allow themselves to be governed from Dublin, or to take laws and to bear taxation at the hands of IN MID OCEAX. 7 the less industrious and less educated moiety of the Irish community? The mails duly arrived, and were brought along- side in the tossing steam-tug; the anchor was got up out of the waters rendered so illustrious by the fortitude and patriotism of Ulstermen, and our good ship screwed her way forth from Lough S willy, and rounding Fanad Plead, coasted for awhile along; by " Frenchman's Rocks," and the huge cliffs of Horn Head, which tower 620 feet above the rest- less surf, to the sound running between Tory Island and the promontory which bears the emphatic title of " The Bloody Foreland." The black rocks of that evil-named cape, and the high white lighthouse on the isle which has christened a great historical party, were the last landmarks for us of Ireland. If it be forbidden " to speak disrespectfully of the Equator," prudence must combine with politeness to repress any expressions of discontent or disgust at an ocean. While you are writing you are its waif and stray. Otherwise it would be a positive relief to the voyager imprisoned upon the dull, discon- solate, and inhospitable surface of this sub-Arctic sea to utter but a small part of the personal feelings with which its gloomy violence and hideous lack of life and colour and its bitter blasts of spiteful, icy wind, fill his mind. Justly did Lord Beaconsfield dub it a "melancholy ocean," and ascribe to its dreary continuity most of the troubles of tearful Erin. A man must be, indeed, fond to passion of the sea if he can take pleasure in passing over such 8 SEAS AND LANDS. a cold, leaden-hued, sullen, sleepless, wild and wind- scourged expanse as stretches, screams, foams, rolls, and rages around the. ship where these far from un- measured words are being written. If the wet and chilly gale does not blow right ahead, pelting the pale waves against the steamer's stem, so that her whole vast weight of 5300 tons comes every minute squattering down into the inky waste, churning it into green and white sea-cream for furlongs, then that same hard, cold wind shifts a point or two northwards or southwards, so as to sweep one side or the other of the deck bare of shivering and staggering passengers. The inky waves dance high on either side, as if to see how we like it, but instantly have their crests lopped off and torn into spindrift by the wind, and sent in clouds of thin salt mist astern. Black are these billows, not " darkly, deeply, beautifully blue," as the ocean out of soundings should be ; for the steamer has now gone clear of that long gradual slope of the sea bottom which stretches out 230 miles from Ireland, and which only falls six feet in the mile throughout all the distance. She has, indeed, logged nearly 1000 knots by this time, and there must be two or three miles of salt water under her keel, yet the ugly, wind-lashed, weltering North Atlantic keeps its sad leaden-hued look, vainly hissing and howling, as it were, at the brave pro- gress of our stout steamship. Not that the weather is so very particularly bad' for such an ocean. Our excellent captain merely enters it day after day as " strong head winds and heavy sea ". Old IN MID OCEAN. 9 hands at crossing say that the passage is, indeed, rather a fair one for the latter part of August, and the ship accomplishes each twenty-four hours her 320 miles on an average. Christopher Columbus would never have had the desire to traverse a sea like that which has wallowed and spumed under us from the Bloody Foreland to the present longitude, where the quartermaster is dipping the thermometer overboard, to see if the Polar current has yet been reached. The ocean seen, and conquered for its beauty and light and mystery by the grand Genoese, was that bright expanse which stretches in majesty and splendour from the sunny coast of Cadiz ; and carries the glory of the orb " West from Numancoes and Ba^ona's hold " to the lovely Antilles and the lively Caribbean main. That was the vast water originally named after the golden Atlas Range, and the graceful Atlantides, the immortal Ladies of the Wave: not this mournful, waste, desolate, and sailor-hating wilderness of wild grey crests and wandering winds, which pinch and scourge the faces of the poor emigrants, and freeze the warmest blood, and flap spray and coal smoke into the eves, and make the chairs of many fair passengers dis- mally vacant at table, dinner after dinner. Our emigrants are particularly touching. The men, and some of the children, have found their sea legs, but many of the women still remain limp and listless bundles of spray-soaked gowns and wraps, cowering into the corners where the wind can perse- cute them least. They will never find the heart to io SEAS AND LANDS. come back over this murky waste^ until they have made fortunes, and can take cabin berths like ladies, aud have beef-tea brought to them at all hours by attentive stewardesses. If anything like reckless terms have been employed above about the ugliness, the cruelty, and the stupid sombre violence of the North Atlantic, it was chiefly because of the brutal and bitter way in which it has added to the sorrows of these simple and honest exiles. They are of all sorts and conditions as regards place of origin, and will look better, no doubt, ashore, with their hair no longer blown about like tow, and their hands and faces, which have been unwashed for days, restored to decent cleanliness. The sea has taken, for the moment, all the coquetry and smartness out of even the Irish lasses. One of the Swedish maidens has tied her white pigtail up with a rope-yarn, the rude gale having stolen her cherry-coloured ribbon. A Belgian matron, too miserable to be particular, wore one stocking blue and one green yesterday, and her children will evidently not see soaj3 and water until the St. Lawrence is reached. Yet it was exemplary to note how the Methodists and Moravians among this suffering and self-banished crowd picked up their self-respect and courage, and shook off the depressing demon of mat de mer on Sunday afternoon, when an improvised service of hymns and prayer was held by some clergymen upon the main deck. One by one, all, except the most dilapidated and forlorn, drew towards the little congregation, standing bareheaded under the driving sea-clouds. The voice of him who read the supplica- IN MID OCEAN. ii tions, and pronounced a brief discourse to his some- what shattered batch of empire-builders, could hardly be caught, except occasionally, in the gusts of chill wind. But when an enthusiastic worshipper, with an accordion, made his instrument give forth the tune of "Shall we gather at the River?" all seemed to know it, and struck in with a chorus as sweet as it was dauntless, which fairly vanquished the unkind wind and uncivil howling billows — so that from end to end of the great steamship one could hear the voices of these men and women — nay, even of the children, heaped about on the tarpaulins, all raising together the pious refrain of hope and faith. " Yes!" rang out the chorus, " we'll gather at the River — the Golden River! that flows by the Throne of God." A gentle lady, leaning upon the rail overhead, and watching this service of praise performed in dis- regard of the elements, dropped kindly tears under the stress of tender and human thoughts inspired by the spectacle of adventurous hearts unite* 1 for one exalted moment in an ecstasy of belief. Assuredly Sophocles was right when he said, " Many things are wonderful — but none is so wonderful as man." Coming past the Bloody Foreland we were in danger of being made captives of war. We were chased for a time by one of the armed cruisers from Admiral Baird's fleet. The pursuing vessel had very much the appearance of the Oifj/pxo, and put out to catch and capture us from behind Tory Island. But she was a long way to leeward when she first sighted the steamer; which, albeit no racing liner, can easily 12 SEAS AND LANDS. do her fourteen knots ; so, after an angry spurt of half-an-hour, during which she could not come within cannon range, as we would not heave-to, and as " a stern chase is always a long chase," our enemy put his helm down and let us go on our watery road in peace. Two whales, blowing afar off, diversify for an hour the immense monotony of this heaving black wilderness of waters, over which a chilling and detestable north-westerly breeze is now fast turn- ing into a positive gale. They are not quite the only visible inhabitants of the dark sphere on which we float, for every day we see playing round the ship, and skimming up and down the wave- hollows, companies of lovely little terns and sea- swallows, the latter no larger than thrushes. These fearless people of the waste have not by any means followed us from the land, living, as gulls often will, on the waste thrown from the vessel. They are vague and casual roamers of the ocean, who, spying the great steamship from afar, have sailed close up, to see if we are a rock or an island, and will then skim away again on their own free and boundless business. Yonder tiny bird with purple and green plumage, his little breast and neck laced with silver, is distant a thousand miles at this moment from a drop of fresh water, and yet cares no more for that fact than did the Irish squire who "lived twelve miles from a lemon." If his wings ever grow weary it is but to settle quietly on the bosom of a great billow and suffer it for a time to rock and roll him amid the hissing IN MID OCEAN. 13 spindrift, the milky flying foam, and the broken sea-lace, which forms, and gleams, and disappears again upon the dark slopes. When he pleases, a stroke of the small red foot and a heat of the wonderful wing launch him off from the jagged edge of his billow, and he flits past us at 100 knots an hour, laughing steam and canvas to scorn, and steering for some nameless crag in Labrador or Fundy, or bound, it may be, homeward for some island or marsh of the far-away Irish coast. Marvellously expressive of power as is our untiring engine, which all day and all night throbs and pants and pulses in noisy rhythm under the deck, what a clumsy imperfect affair it is compared to the dainty plumes and delicate muscles which will carry that pretty, fearless sea-swallow back to his roost. Our steamer is to make the land at Belleisle, entering the Straits between Labrador and New- foundland, and, after passing through these, will cross the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and thread for TOO or 800 miles the great river of the Dominion. This land-fall and the approach by the Belleisle Straits are held dangerous by all navigators because of fogs and icebergs which are constantly encountered there together. A vessel of the line — the Montreal — was quite lately cast away on the rocks of the Straits, and our admirable and very popular skipper, Captain Lindall, will be all to-night on the bridge. and all to-morrow night also, conning his ship and taking heed for the 800 sleeping folk who make her a small floating town. Rolling and toss- i 4 SEAS AND LANDS. ing on this gloomy, chilly, and unlovely ocean day after day, there must be few amongst our company who do not by this time long to see the light gleaming at Belleisle — icebergs or no icebergs. To- morrow, if the sea-gods favour, we shall be in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But let it not be imagined for a moment that the unfriendly gales and uncomfortable rollers have suppressed the spirit of making the best of things which is common to the Anglo-Saxon blood, whether it flows in British or American, or " Blue-Nose " veins. The North Atlantic has not prevented — except very occasionally — our resolute promenading on the deck, our concerts in the saloon, our games at quoits and deck shuffle-board, nor the alternating hymns and waltzes of the pilgrim fathers, sisters, cousins, aunts, &c, who throng the after part of the ship. And if it be thought that we starve, because " the stormy winds do blow," here is the dinner menu for one day of the voyage, when it was really a hard north- easter, with a driving sea, and the " fiddles " were on every table : — August 24. — Soups — Julienne, mutton broth. Fish — Cod and oyster sauce. Entrees — Stewed kidneys, haricot ox tail, fricassee rabbit. Joints — Roast beef and horse radish, roast lamb and mint sauce, roast turkey and cranberry sauce, roast goose and apple sauce, boiled mutton and caper sauce, boiled fowl and pars- ley sauce. Entremets — Ox tongue and vegetables. Vegetables — Boiled and baked potatoes, green peas, vegetable marrow. Pastry — Sago pudding, apple, plum, and rhubarb pies, rock cakes. Dessert — Plums, pears, melons, grapes, oranges. Coffee. IN MID OCR AX. 15 Some apology is, moreover, now due to the North Atlantic, for, as the brave ship has drawn nearer the American shores, the wild weather has greatly relaxed, and the dark waves have run in pleasanter measure, and with more grace of colour, under a sky not wholly without patches of azure and gleam- ings of sunshine; so that society on board has largely resumed its gaiety and content, and both forward and aft we are all inclined to forgive the " many-sounding sea." In Mid- Atlantic, Aug. 26, 1889. CHAPTER II. THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE. " Ice on the starboard bow ! " The watch on the forecastle sang this out early in the day before our steamer made the Belleisle Lights, and many on board had then their first opportunity of beholding that lovely but terrible peril of the sea — a floating ice- berg. This particular specimen glimmered on the distant surface like a huge sea-beryl, with a pale- greenish glow, and was perhaps as large as Salisbury Cathedral, with five or six times as much bulk below water as what was visible. Near to it floated some smaller hummocks and pieces of floe — the avant- garde of the frosty flotilla which might now be expected upon our path. Save for this danger 01 icebergs, and of the fogs which too frequently beset the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it is per- fectly evident to any competent observer that this route would become not only a favourite highway to the New World, but would formidably and per- manently threaten the popularity of the direct roads pursued by other lines. The icebergs are a great drawback, and they are unfortunately most to be expected in those summer months when alone the navigation is open. The first heats of the brief but THE GULE OF ST. LAWRENCE. 17 hot Arctic sunshine set in rapid motion the glaciers of Labrador and Greenland. These vast storehouses of gathered and con- solidated snow glide to the edge of the tremendous ice-precipices of the Winter Lands, and, falling over them in monstrous masses, crash into the deep water with shocks which send thunder-peals through the still Polar air, and perturb the ocean far and near with rolling waves. Then, committed by so awful a launch to the southward-going cur- rents, the great broken glittering mass goes solemnly sailing away in the unwonted sunshine. As it floats, the water, warmer than the air, melts its lower portion gradually, and detached pieces also fall from the visible part, until equilibrium becomes destroyed, and the colossal block capsizes with a second shock, startling the ocean for leagues around. But a vast number of these bergs are flat, and there are, besides, immense detached fields or floes which carry on their surface, without upsetting, 'boulders of rock, and mud, and detritus, scraped up by the cosmic chisels of the ice, and these, it is believed by many geologists, have borne from the Frozen circle, and deposited on the banks of Newfoundland, the vast deposits which have created those extensive shallows — the feeding ground offish, and the breed- ing place of mists. The loftier bergs drive slowly down inside and outside the Gulf of St. Lawrence. and haunt it with phantoms of destruction. Very weird, indeed, it is to catch, in the rays of the stars or new moon, or in the faint twilight never absent from the rim of the sea, that pallid 1 8 SEAS AND LANDS- ghostly glare, as dim as a corpse-light, which draws from the look-out man this sudden cry of " Ice on the weather bow." The distant aspect is as though a gleam of greenish phosphorescence shot, afar off, from the ocean-depths, but very soon, the gaunt and glittering berg displays its splintered pinnacles and ledges of snow-clad crystals, and shows its fantastic shape full to the mariner. The clouds take no such variety of forms with which to engage the imagina- tion. Sometimes it seems a sea temple of sculptured ice which floats by, all complete with dome, and porch, and archways. Sometimes it is of haystack outline, as if the spirits of the Pole had been harvesting their glassy crop of winter. Sometimes you might swear it was a full-rigged ship frozen to white death, or a fortress of the impregnable north, cut adrift from the Arctic ramparts. But, met with in the darkness, and not, perhaps, perceived until the glare of the ship's lamps is reflected back from its stealthy and silent onset, what peril can be more deadly ? At full speed the fated vessel dashes against that brittle but ruinous mass. Her stem pierces its outlying layers, only to be crumpled up against the unyielding heart of the cold floating mountain. Her fore-part is all crushed in, the sea fills her, and in fifteen minutes there will be, perchance, nothing to tell of the great and gallant vessel, except a boat or two crammed with hopeless castaways and the floating riff-raff of the decks and gear of the victim whose epitaph must be, " Not since heard of." Save for this contingency of collision with ice- bergs, no gateway could be nobler, no approach THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE. l 9 to the American Continent more suitable and attractive than that which our good ship lias pursued. Passing safely, and free of any serious fog or ice alarm, through the narrow inlet of the Belleisle Straits, the Vancouver steamed swiftly into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which expands immediately into a prodigious inland sea. It is an estuary of a river; but what an estuary, and what a stream! Truly a magnificent preface to the grand volume of geography which now opens to the eye and mind of the voyager. Did he deem — oblivious of his maps — that, once thus land-locked, he might consider the sea section of his passage terminated? The basin of the great St. Lawrence river receives him into waters' so capacious that for 300 miles he will hardly again espy dry land, and will not see the current reveal to him both its shores until at least 400 miles have been traversed. Hour after hour — day, indeed, after day — we skim on at full speed across the shorter but still lively waves of an expanse half as big as the Mediter- ranean, and although five days were sufficient to take us from continent to continent, the seventh day arrives before we reach Gaspe, and see dimly the coast of Xova Scotia. Further on lies, ragged with pines, the long island of Antieosti, full of bears, and dreaded by skippers for its dangerous reefs and shoals, and only long after its desolate uplands have faded away astern, does our steamer come in sight of the New Brunswick littoral about St. Anne des Moots. We are now in the true mouth of the St. Lawrence, and shall coast alonu; 2o SEAS AND LANDS. the southern lip, " keeping the land in board." But the other lip is still 100 miles distant, and Rimouski must be passed and the Mille Vaches and Sault au Cochon breasted, before at last two shores are seen to this superb and unequalled channel, and we can j:>erceive and know that every wave beneath the keel of the vessel is mingled with sweet water which has flowed forth from the great American lakes, and dashed in glory and in fury over the wild and white chasm of Niagara. You do not know at home — at all events, you do not realise — the magnificence -of this your Canadian Nile, or the imperial importance of that Dominion of which it is the sustaining artery. We have now steamed at full speed for nearly three days up the never-narrowing green bosom of the great St. Lawrence, and are but just arrived at our destination of Montreal, after nine days of voyaging. And, from the moment when both banks of this splendid waterway aj)peared together, until our arrival at the head of navigation in this hand- some city, there was visible on either shore an almost continuous line of little white cottages and humble, but evidently prosperous farmsteads, making, as it were, one long water-street of the river. Wherever these dwellings clustered thickly a pretty church would raise its pointed spire, cased in shining tin or zinc tiles, above the piles of sawn planks, the well-filled barns, and the dark forests of spruce and hemlock. Everywhere solid tokens of well-being and social tranquillity ; but everywhere, also, to the observant THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE. 21 eye, signs of priestly domination and postponement of civil progress to the interests of the Altar — for along all this littoral, and far inland, over the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec, the country re- mains intensely French and unchangeably Roman Catholic ; and you will note that the churches and chapels, the priests' houses and the convents, ab- sorb most of the peasants' money, and cause the cottages to remain of one insignificant and submis- sive pattern. The names of the towns, villages, and tributary streams are all French; all the Saints in the Gallic Calendar seem to have contributed their holy appel- lations to christen Lower Canada. Up to Quebec, high uplands of rolling and folded hills, fringed with the spiky firs, shut in the broad shining channel, and at every five or six leagues these suddenly part, and let down, between dark, forest-clad crags and grey cliffs of limestone, streams which in smaller countries would be a Thames, a Rhine, or an Ebro, but which here count well-nigh for nothing, as they pour their unregarded tribute of mountain water into this stupendous outlet of the lake system of North America. Only a few sails and boats are encountered; small schooners and broad timber and cattle craft, propelled by huge square sails, occasionally relieve the silence and comparative solitude of the glorious river, and the crews of these, as well as the denizens of the shores, appear immensely interested in the passage of our great mail steamer, saluting us with shouts and waving kerchiefs, and sometimes with a coup dc f 11*1 1. 22 SEAS AND LANDS. Our big steamer answers such homely welcomes with a snort or two upon her unmelodious fog- whistle — which, let it be mentioned, was never so much as once sounded on all the route across — not even in Belleisle Straits, where fogs are almost a matter of expectation. After the cold and tossing North Atlantic, imagine how agreeable and composing is the bright tranquillity of this broad and unruffled current. The ladies, who were wrapped a day or two ago in sombre hoods and ulsters, like grey and brown chrysalids, have now emerged, like brilliant butterflies, in summer toilettes. Many of them are returning home from the wonders of the Paris Exhibition and the delightful fatigues of an European tour, and know every reach and pro- montory of the sreat stream. " There is the best river for salmon ! Yonder, at the ' Pig's Jump,' is the place for strawberries and bears, and over those hills is the Cascapedia valley where his Ex- cellency the Governor-General goes to fish." On the northern shore — behind the nearer uplands clothed with endless spruce, hemlock, sumach, and birch — runs along, with the full dignity of a moun- tain range, the long ridge of the Laurentian rocks, the primitive foundation-stuff of the globe, which we shall not drop from view until far above Montreal. At the island of St. Louis we are so far up the stupendous river that, though the tides push its current back, the water is now almost or quite THE GULE OE ST. LAWRENCE. 23 fresh; and so, gliding hour after hour along the still scarcely diminished channel — for ever passing the little white houses, the well-stuffed 1 tarns, the churches, the convents, the small jutting piers with their beacons, the tiny red lightships moored in midstream to guide the nocturnal voyageur, the herds of grazing cattle, the green patches of potatoes, rye, barley, and melons, the lumber-yards, the sawmills, the beaches covered with canoes, and the groups of French-looking residents — our stout ship steams placidly at last along the " Island of Orleans," and comes in view of the stately Citadel of Quebec, with the ancient French houses at its foot, and the masts of much shipping. She snorts a reverence to her Majesty's war-ship the Bcllerophon, lying at anchor off the Point Levi, and dips her en- sign, which salute the handsome man-of-war returns, for we are the mail-boat, and of high importance. Then, our skilful captain brings his 5000-tonner alongside the new docks as softly and steadily as if she were an eight-oar finishing practice, and we are moored stem and stern under the " Heights of Abraham." Quebec, conquered by the military genius of Wolfe in 1751), has remained iinvan<|ui.-Iied in regard to her language and population. She is still almost as much France as St. Malo or Rouen, and the first indigene whom you address in English for guidance will reply, " jki* mi* purler Amjlmxt ." If you remember, as a Briton must, the debt of Empire due to the great soldier of King George, you will 24 SEAS AND LANDS. bend earliest steps to the eminence on which frowns the impregnable citadel. Yon will have in your mind those noble lines of Cowjoer — " Time was when it was praise and boast enough, In every clime, and travel where we might, That we were born her children ; fame enough To fill th' ambition of a common man, That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue, And Wolf's great name compatriot with his own." The ancient city — as a local authority justly observes — gives the impression as though a frag- ment of the Old World had been transferred to the New, and carefully hidden away in this remote corner for safe keeping. Owing to the strength of the defences, and the steepness of the hill, Quebec is rightly called the " Gibraltar of America." Whether seen from below, or when ascending the river, or from the railway station or steamer-landing, the view of the town and citadel is equally novel and impressive. Yet how changed in all except nature, since the wild woods and towering rocks were first visited in 1535, by Jacques Cartier, and the founda- tion of a town laid by Samuel de Champlain, in 1608. This was on the site of the Indian village of " Stadicona," at the confluence of the St. Law- rence and St. Charles rivers. Note as you climb the Champlain steps the old French names on the shops, the dark eyes and hair which tell of French de- scent, and the great blocks of ice which are being- deposited from a cart at every door, as the milk THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE. 25 is left, or the newspaper, at home with us. The Canadian summer is still fervid here, and the " habitants " have caught the dangerous American taste for cooled drinks. By a massive portal you enter at length the fortress, leaving on one side the Parliament House in Grande Alice. Standing in any one of the river bastions, and gazing over the ramparts and the glacis, your glance takes in one of the noblest prospects of the globe. To the right the interminable river sweeps down from Ontario and Niagara. In front Point Levi frames the picture with a background of woodlands and buildings, and under your feet is the quaint old- fashioned French town and the crowded shipping. All is as tranquil as the stream itself; but to remind you of old scenes of carnage, and the changed con- ditions of modern warfare, the Belle rophon at this moment fires a torpedo for practice, blowing some 500 tons of the St. Lawrence high into the air, and making in the river a huge circle of mud and dying fish, which goes whirling and expanding down the current. The thunder of the explosion rolls back from Point Levi to Cape Diamond, and dies away high up among the fir-woods on the left, where Wolfe, after delivering his feint attack, landed his forces at night, by a flotilla of boats, and surprised the unsuspecting Montcalm by appearing suddenly on the plateau. The chivalrous Frenchman, instead of confiding in his stone walls, came rashly forth to fight in the open for the possession of Canada. and yonder obelisk marks the spot where Wolfe fell in the instant of victory, and where Montcalm also 26 SEAS AND LANDS. received his death-wound. It is good to find the names of both heroes linked together upon the memorial here, as well as lower down in the Des Carrieres Street. The latter bears a nobly epigram- matic inscription — MORTEM VIRTUS COMMTJNEM FAMAM HISTORIA MONUMENTUM POSTERITAS DEDIT which, for the sake of all patriotic Englishwomen, may be translated — Their valour gave a common fate, Their worth a common fame ; English and French, we here inscribe In common love, each name. They say, as the surgeon drew the fatal musket ball from the wound of Wolfe, he exclaimed, " Why, this is not the bullet of an enemy ! " and that the gallant general answered with a faint smile on his dying face — gay even in extremity — " Well, Doctor, I don't think it could be the bullet of a friend ! " Wolfe has a proud and ornate monument in West- minster Abbey — but here is his true mausoleum, in the fair meadows and forests, the fair pine-clad ranges, the broad, majestic river, the peaceful, prosperous Dominion, and, above it all, the flutter and the glitter of that Union Jack upon the flagstaff in the Bastion, which marks it all " British America," a territory one-fifteenth of the whole earth's surface, larger by one-tenth than all the United States, and THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE. 27 only smaller than all the Continent of Europe by the area of Spain ; a gift to the British Empire bought with most generous blood, and worth retain- ing, while it is willing to be retained, with all the energies and resources of that empire. Montreal, Sept. 1, 1889. CHAPTEK III. MONTREAL AND TORONTO. It was impressive to watch the excitement and interest of our emigrants at the moment of reaching the quay at Montreal. This is their port of dis- embarkation, and being Sunday evening, when all the population not in church and chapel was dis- engaged, " the city cast Its people forth upon us." We drew up alongside the wharf, and in close proximity to her Majesty's men-of-war Tourmaline and Pylades, amid a flutter of welcoming hand- kerchiefs and a forest of waving hands. Everybody on board seemed indeed to have friends on shore, except one humorous and lonely Irishman, who, vexed to be "out in the cold" amidst such a genial display of sentiment, was heard to say to another Hibernian, " Dennis, honey, just go over the gangway and rowl your hat round and round towards me, for it's mighty quare and solithary I'm seeming at this minute ! " Truly it was an instant of natural emotion with all these poor people to come thus to their new home, safe and sound, but each with an uncut tome of life's three- volume MONTREAL AND TORONTO. 29 novel before him or her, and all these new faces, new- places, new scenes, and new circumstances ashore to encounter. Yet the glorious "elbow-room" of this Dominion, its boundless fields and forests, its free air and immense future capacities, made one wish that they were a whole army of East-end Londoners we were throwing ashore instead of a mere detachment. There is room here for all who will come with the will to work hard ; but those most sure to succeed are immigrants knowing a trade, and possessing a little capital. There arc no poor visible about the streets of Montreal ; a beggar is an unheard-of phenomenon — crackers and pork, eggs and melons, fish and meal are too cheap for hunger to be ever felt by anybody with a pair of hands. Especially good and pleasant it was to see Lady Stanley of Preston on the wharf looking after the welfare of the newcomers to her husband's Viceroyalty. Another people besides beggars of whom you see nothing in and about the stately and vigorous city of Montreal are those Red Indians to whom the land originally belonged. A little village near the "Royal Mount" harbours, indeed, a remnant of half-breeds, a feeble folk, living by the sale of bead- work and models of bark canoes, representative, in a melancholy, flickering manner, of the Algonquin* and Hurons and such like, who were the landed proprietors hereabouts when the Kings of France first cast eyes of desire upon the region. How far away in date, and farther still in events, that historic act when, on March 7, 1004, two vessels 3o SEAS AND LANDS. set sail from the Old World bearing Pierre de Gast, the well-beloved friend of King Henry IV. of France, who had by royal patent the previous year granted to the Sieur Des Monts all the American territory between the fortieth and forty-sixth de- grees of north latitude, with the royal authority to colonise and govern it according to his own judgment ! With the expedition came Samuel Champlain, pilot, one of the earliest discoverers of the country. After an ocean voyage of two months the fleet landed on the southerly side of the peninsula of Nova Scotia. From this point they sailed along the shore of Nova Scotia, explored the Bay of Fundy, and thence proceeded to the waters of Passama- quoddy, which Des Monts and his men called a " sea of salt water." This was the first expedition to these waters. Passing through the outer fringe of islands, the ships crossed the bay, and ascended the Schoodic (St. Croix) River, near the present town of St. Andrews. In the same quiet and almost furtive style arrived the other pioneers — earlier and later — the Cabots and Cartiers, and the rest ; laying hold gradually of this magnificent region, as the "white man's foot," a plant which you see in the Canadian clearings, has stolen into the flora of the woods and thrust the Indian grasses aside. Yet none of these original colonists could have imagined, even in their wildest dreams, a city to be so large and complete as Montreal, the commercial Queen of the Dominion. Montreal is situated on an island, at the confluence of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence MONTREAL AND TORONTO. 31 rivers, containing 197 square miles, which, from its fertility, has been called the garden of Canada. The St. Lawrence is li miles wide opposite the city, and the whole river front is lined with massive walls, quays, and terraces of grey limestone, which is rather of a depressing colour, unless lighted up by the sun. There is, however, a warm red sand- stone hereabouts, largely and skillfully employed by the Montreal masons, and this produces excellent effects, and makes one wish Montreal had found it out before, for she might have then rivalled Jeypore or Futtehpore Sikri — the Indian cities — in richness of general tint. Nevertheless, it is a really hand- some and imposing capital, commanding the trade of the great river, albeit 800 miles from its mouth. Built chiefly on the level ground between Mount Royal and the river, it climbs far and wide over the high ground near Mount Royal, where are to be found many charming private residences, and a fashionable drive extending round the mountain, bordered by gardens and ornamental enclosures, and affording fine views in all directions. The public buildings are fine, especially the church of the Jesuits. The Cathedral of Notre Dame is of great size, and the view from one of its towers, in which hangs " Gros Bourdon," the great bell, singularly extensive and interesting. It is characteristic of the passion here to save time and trouble that you mount to the top of the highest church-tower in Montreal by a lift — and very convenient is the innovation, if not strictly canonical. Montreal has pretty public gardens, copious and pure supplies of 32 SEAS AND LANDS. mountain water, and unlimited privileges in the way of electric lighting, telephones, and telegraph wires ; but these involve, unfortunately, the universal presence of those odious and hideous poles which rear their gaunt, rough, unpainted nakedness along every street. Huge fir trunks they are, half-dressed from the forest, enormously thick and tall, and in Montreal, as in so many another town and city of the Dominion and of the States, they spoil the most charming and stately vistas. Leaving behind in this agreeable place many new and pleasant friends, we plunged deeper yet into the " Queen's America " by taking train, on the Grand Trunk Line, for Toronto. The voyage by river from Belleisle Straits goes all the way steadily south- wards, and we had now come into the last and hottest days of the Canadian summer. With 85 degrees in the. shade, and a cloudless sky overhead, the broad and fair land on either side of the track seemed almost to • smoke with heat ; but plentiful recent showers had left it green, and it was difficult to realise that in a short time all that glowing landscape would be covered with deep snow, the forests glittering with frost-crystals, and the streams locked in ice. Yet the Canadian winter is not spoken of as any hardship. The snow keeps the seeds and the soil warm with its white blanket ; it makes roads for the lumbermen in the woods, and for the merry sleigh-parties in the towns ; and the still atmosphere, bracing and salubrious, renders not only tolerable, but even positively pleasant, tempera- tures so much below zero, that brandy freezes at MONTREAL AND TORONTO. ^ them; and the milk, and pork, and butter are sold in icy blocks, cut off with a hatchet. Now, at the beginning of September, it is high summer-tide, the fair Canadians go about in muslins, and the farm labourers work in a thin jersey, while we must keep open all the windows and doors of the Pullman ear, which is flying along the northern shore of Ontario, to obtain air enough this sultry noon. Suddenly transported hither, a careless observer would hardly know he was not in England. The population, of course, is largely British, the names of the stations are occasionally very much so, for we stop successively at Brighton, Whitby, Scarborough, as well as at spots with Indian titles, and others christened after French saints or local points of interest, or bygone pioneers of civilisation. There are, it is true, everywhere the " snake fences," those abominations of ugliness and wasted material, which wriggle and bristle all over the otherwise pretty landscape, raggedly dividing the fields and spoil- ing their trimness and agricultural "-race. It is so deplorably easy to build these straggling horrors, and the stuff is so cheap, that we must expect to encounter them everywhere; but they would mar the look of any country in the world, and make one think with new affection of the green hedges of England. Elsewhere it is all English enough. The wild blossoming herbs, noticeable along the line, are old acquaintances. We note the golden rod, the cornflower, the purple thistle, the Michaelmas daisy, the dragon's mouth, the dock, plantain, and other 34 SEAS AND LANDS. familiar friends ; but no daisies and no ivy. Large levels and uplands, fringed with woodlands of fir and spruce, meet the eye — sometimes in pasture, sometimes covered with crops, just ripening, of buckwheat, barley, rye, and Indian corn. Con- stantly the primitive forest comes down to the line, and we dash through leagues of dark, cool undergrowth, amid the dense columns of pine stems, entering now and then a clearing, now and then a space made black and open by reason of forest fires, and then the farms, the pastures, and the barley- fields once more. Almost all these fields are full of the stumps of felled trees, for it has been less labour to plough, sow, and reap round and round these relics of the youth of the colony, than to remove them; and thus a considerable part of the region wears the look of an interminable cemetery, where these black and grey roots are the, gravestones of the ancient universal pine-woods, and of their Iroquois and Huron owners. But that we may not forget Ireland among these unusual impediments of agri- culture, our train has just swept across the Ottawa River, at the pretty station of St. Anne. This locality — the "Bout de PIsle" — is much frequented by Montrealists ' in the summer season, and possesses an ancient church, revered by the Canadian boat- men and voyageurs. The Ottawa is here crossed by a fine railway bridge, and the famous rapids of St. Anne are flanked by a canal. And here, of all places in the world, it was that Moore wrote his well-known Canadian boat-song begin- ning — MONTREAL AND TORONTO. 35 •' Faintly as tolls the evening chime, Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time. Soon as the woods on the shore look dim We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn. Row, brothers, row; the stream runs fast, The rapids are near, and the daylight's past." It is pleasant to think that good songs live when great forests vanish and races pass a way. These 300 odd miles of Canada, traversed by the Grand Central Railway, are diversified, as lias been remarked, by rocks and streams, by lonely villages and populous towns, by plains broad and open, covered with crops, and tracts as wild and untouched as when the red man's mocassins alone trod them. The immense expanse continually astonishes, and its endless, abundance of rough pasture and forest. And yet all this is only a fringe and fragment of the vast Dominion. Our 330 miles run to-day through such a region is but a kind of drive from one home- stead to another. But it shows us Canada busy and prosperous — train after train goes past, laden with lumber, grain, fruits, agricultural machinery, and eattle. Especially notable is the "Hog-express," laden with unhappy pigs in a state of unwieldly obesity, which have now to expiate unlimited rations of maize and swill in their happy Western styes, by this fatal journey to Montreal, or Quebec, or Halifax, where they will be slaughtered and salted down. One train- passing us contained more than 10,000 of these ill-starred animals, grunting and squeaking at every blast of the steam-horn, and each new shock of the buffers. The chorus of porcine protest was 3 6 SEAS AND LANDS. loud and sad ; and, indeed, only a Mussulman could have refrained from pitying the plaintive snouts pressed close to the iron bars of the trucks for fresh air, and the eloquent tails, which protruded through them, and were twisted into perfect corkscrews of astonishment and despair. Some of these fattened hogs are shipped for England alive at the Dominion ports, as it is found to be the cheapest way of transporting to Great Britain the eight or ten quarters of maize which each pig represents, and the pork-butchers of Liverpool rather prefer to drive the carcasses themselves. But large consignments of the swine go over, slaughtered and salted ; and we saw — but would not enter — those sanguinary estab- lishments where a minute and a quarter of merciless machinery converts hog after hog, to the number of thousands in the day, from such earthly pleasures as a pig can know, to the posthumous honours of bacon. Toronto sits splendidly on the western extremity of her lake, which presents, even here, the unwonted spectacle — to the British eyes — of a boundless ex- panse of fresh water. Gaze as far and as steadily as you will into that south-eastern horizon, and deepen your search with the aid of the glass, yet no faintest loom of land arises over the placid light grey wavelets. You would have to sail seventy miles in that direc- tion to reach the American shore, and one hundred miles to get back into the narrows near Kingston, where nestle the thousand islands with their green and varied beauty. This fair, free, inland sea has, no doubt, the fault of lying enclosed by a low coast, MONTREAL AND TORONTO. 37 so that it suggests the idea of shallowness, and lacks the first element of lake scenery. But with Niagara at one end of it and the Great St. Lawrence at the other it can afford, like the little Sea of Galilee, which is also very far from beautiful in its surroundings, to « - o without the usual romantic accessories. Its bosom is dotted with steamers, coming and going, with well built schooners, two and three masted, as well as pleasure yachts and boats of all sorts, moored or moving in the city harbour, which is formed by the -washings from the sandstone ridges eastwards. Huge red grain elevators rise on the shore, which sweeps round in a flattened crescent towards the mouth of the Niagara River, and that famous cleft where Erie pours the waters she has received from Huron, Michigan, and Superior, into Ontario. ( )n fine days the cloud formed by the spray from the great cataract, and always hanging over it, can be discerned from the tower of Toronto University, albeit forty miles distant. Anybody might be contented to reside in this charming city, which was once called York, but has now the pretty Indian word for its " married and settled name." Its streets are broad, well-paved, and regularly laid out. The principal public and private dwellings are substantially built, and de- lightful villas abound in the environs. At " The Grange," where this is written, the pleasant resi- dence of Professor Goldwin Smith, we have old English lawns, and might be at Oxford. The leading thoroughfares are King, Queen, and Yonge Streets; the most important building is the I 11 1 — 38 SEAS AND LANDS. versity, in a large park, approached by College Avenue, which is over half a mile long, lined by a double row of trees. The University — over which the learned President, Sir Daniel Wilson, did us the honour to be our guide — is really very imposing architecturally, and well equipped for its important functions. But, thus far, Canada does not seem to have given birth to any unique local genius in scholarship or art. She still too much imports her literature and learning, albeit the land is one well fitted to inspire patriotism with new poetic colours, and capacity with original ideas. The city lies between the Don and the Humber rivers, and really on dirait du veau I you would think you were in an English town as you walk its streets. For the matter of that, illusions are easy. You may travel a little way westward, and come to London itself. The Canadian London stands quite properly in the County of Middlesex, overlooking the valley of the Thames, and has its Piccadilly, its Regent Street, its Pall Mall and Westminster Bridge, as well as a Cathedral and very seriously built public edifices. But, at present, it only numbers 20,000 Londoners — the rest are to come when Canada has settled the two great pro- blems which agitate her bosom, that of the French- speaking and Jesuit-ruled population, and that of the proposed commercial union with the States. The only objects which strike the eye at all strangely as the Englishman strolls the wide streets of Toronto will be the planked side-walks, the fans revolving in the confectioners' windows to keep MONTREAL AND TORONTO. 39 the flies away, and the eternal eyesore of those huge poles for the telephonic and telegraphic wires. In this bright and lively city everybody chatters all day long by electric current, every respectable resi- dence and shop has all the ears of Toronto open to it. In the midst of a conversation at lunch you start up to seek by the telephone the views of a friend a mile oft', and inquire if people are at home by scientific whispers, before setting forth to call upon them. London is an age behind her little namesake of Ontario in electrical conveniences. Of Canadian politics nothing has been or will be here said. It is an unpardonable arrogance for a man to imagine that he — a human bird of passage — however well accustomed to " bird's eye views " of public life and public problems, can pick up information worth imparting upon national ques- tions as he speeds through the societies of a land. Perhaps the profound mystery has been privately dispelled, which lurked at first in the words, read in a local journal, " The East London Grits have fallen back upon Mr. Smith." Perhaps an explana- tion has been given secretly why the Premier of a Canadian province, who as our shipmate was of such admirable courtesy, intelligence, and social charm, should be described in another local journal as "equally impervious to considerations of public and domestic morality." We may have come to understand a little better than at first, the genial ferocity of politics here; and certain small mole- hills which figure in them for mountains; but the broad facts are that Canada is alive, robust, and 4 o SEAS AND LANDS. loyal, and wants only plenty of English and Scotch and Welsh immigrants, who will stop in the colony and develop) its natural resources, to settle and to control the French element, and then — without the des]3erate expedient of burning down the house of her commercial independence in order to roast the Gallic pig — she will do well enough. Toronto, Sept. 7, 1889. CHAPTER IV. NIAGARA. Before the balcony in which this is written the Great Cataract of America is thundering, smoking, glittering with green and white rollers and rapids, hurling the waters of a whole continent in splen- dour and speed over the sharp ledges of the long- brown rock by which Erie " the Broad " steps proudly down to Ontario " the Beautiful." Close at hand on our left — not indeed farther removed than some GOO or 700 yards — the smaller but very imposing American Fall speaks with the louder voice of the two, because its coiling spirals of twisted and furious flood crash in full impulse of descent upon the talus of massive boulders heaped up at its foot. The resounding impact of water on rock, the clouds of water-smoke which rise high in air while the river below is churned into a whirling cream of eddy and surge and backwater, unite in a composite effect, at once magnificent and bewildering. But if yon listen attentively you will always hear the profound dia- pason of the great Fall — that surnamed the horse- shoe — sounding superbly amid the loudest clamour and tumult of its sister, a deeper and grander 42 SEAS AND LANDS. note; and whenever for a time the gaze rests with inexhaustible wonder upon that fierce and tumult- uary American Fall, this mightier and still more marvellous Horseshoe steals it away again with irresistible fascination. Full in front lies that wholly indescribable spectacle at this instant. Its solemn voice — an octave lower than the excited, leaping, almost angry cry of fervid life from the lesser cataract — resounds through the golden summer morning air like the distant roar from the streets of fifty Londons all in full activity. Far away, between the dark grey trees of Goat Island and the fir-woods of the Canadian shore, the Niagara River is seen winding eagerly to its prodigious leap. You can discern, even from this balcony, the line of the first breakers, where the Niagara River feels, across its whole breadth, the fateful draw of the Cataracts, where its current seems suddenly to leap forward, stimulated by a mad desire, a hidden spell, a dreadful and irresistible doom. You can note far back along the glided surface of the upj)er stream how these lines of dancing, tossing, eager, anxious, and fate-impelled breakers and billows, multiply their white ranks and • spread and close together their leaping ridges into a wild chaos of racing waves as the brink is a]3proached. And then, at the brink there is a curious pause — the momentary peace of the Irrevocable. Those mad upper waters — reaching the great leap — are sud- denly become all quiet, and glassy, and rounded, and green as the border of a field of rye, while they turn the angle of the dreadful ledge and hurl NIAGARA. 43 themselves into the snow-white unit' of noise, and mist, and mystery underneath. There is nothing more translucently green, nor more perennially still and lovely, than the actual hanging brow of Niagara the Greater. At her awful brink the whole architrave of the main abyss gleams like a fixed and glorious work wrought in polished aquamarine or emerald. This exquisitely coloured cornice of the enormous waterfall — this brim of bright tranquillity between fervor of rush and fury of plunge — is its principal feature, and stamps it as far more beautiful than terrible. Indeed the whole spectacle of the famous cataracts is one of delight and of deepest charm, not by any means of horror or of awe ; since nowhere are the measureless forces of Nature more tenderly revealed, more softly and splendidly clad, more demurely constrained and docile between its steep confines. Even the heart of the abyss, in the recess of the Horseshoe, where the waters of Erie and Superior clash together in tremendous conflict — the inner madness and miracle of which no eye can see or ever will sec, by reason of the veils of milky spray and of the rolling clouds of water-drift which for ever hide it — even this central solemnity and shudder-fraught miracle of the monstrous uproar and glory is ren- dered exquisite, reposeful, and soothing by the lovely rainbows hanging over the turmoil and clamour. From its crest of chrvsoprase and silver, indeed, to its broad foot of milky foam and of white stunned waves, too broken and too dazed to begin at first to float away, Niagara appears not terrible, 44 SEAS AND LANDS. but divinely and deliciously graceful, glad, and lovely — a specimen of the splendour and wonder of water at its finest — a sight to dwell and linger in the mind with ineffaceable images of happy and grateful thought, by no means to effect it either in act of seeing, or to haunt it in future days of memory, with any wild reminiscence of terror or of s;l oom. It was impossible that a country like Canada, full of such magnificent natural scenes and spectacles, should not have inspired some of her native-born children ; and it has been wrongly stated in a j)revious communication that the "Land of the Maple-leaf" had produced no local poets. Better opportunities of information and of study correct this erroneous view, and the present letter shall contain a brief conspectus of the indigenous poetry of the Dominion, with samples enough of the Canadian Muse to prove that the thunder of Niagara, the softer music of the river and rapids of the upper regions, and the placid ripple of the Sweet- Water Seas, have found echoes in Canadian hearts. Mr. Lighthall, of Montreal, says well in his " Songs of the Great Dominion " — " Here are voices cheerful with the consciousness of young might, public wealth, and heroism. Through them, taken alto- gether, you may catch something of great Niagara falling, of brown rivers rushing with foam, of the crack of the rifle in the haunts of the moose and caribou, the lament of vanishing races singing their death song as they are swept on to the cataract of oblivion, the rural sounds of Arcadias just rescued NIAGARA. 45 from surrounding wildernesses by the axe, chrill war-whoops of Iroquois battle, proud traditions of contests with the French and the Americans, stern and sorrowful cries of valour rising to curl) rebellion. The tone of them is courage; for to hunt, to fight, to hew out a farm, one must be a man ! The delight of a clear atmosphere runs through them too, and the rejoicings of that Winter Carnival which is only pos- sible in the most athletic country in the world ; with the glint of that Ice Palace of illumined pearl, which makes the February jrilgrimage of North America." Canadian poetry is full of the canoe, as Australian verse begins and ends with the horse, or the French chansons of the Lower Provinces with love. The note of the paddle is constantly heard, as in this verse by Mr. James D. Edgar — " A cooling plunge at the break of day, A paddle, a row, or sail ; With always a fish for a midday dish, And plenty of Adam's ale ; With rod or gun, or in hammock swung, We glide through the pleasant days ; When darkness falls on our canvas walls, We kindle the camp-fire's blaze." And Mr. Bliss Carman's ode to his favourite canoe, "The Red Swan," is worth remembering in almost every line. Here is a sample — " Through many an evening gone, Where the roses drank the breeze, When the pale slow moon outshone Through the slanting trees, I have dreamed of the loni: Red Swan. 46 SEAS AND LANDS. How I should know that one Great stroke, and the time of the swing Urging her on and on, Spring after spring, Lifting the long Red Swan, Lifting the long Red Swan ! How I should drink the foam — The far white lines from her. swift Keen bow, when burning to come, With lift upon lift, The long Red Swan flew home ! " But perhaps the most striking writer of Canadian verse is the late brilliant Isabella Valancey Crawford. This remarkable girl, living in the " Empire " pro- vince of Ontario, early felt the influence of the natural wonders around her, and had she lived longer might have made a name. But in 1884 her modest volume came out, and the sad story of unrecognised genius and death was re-enacted. " Malcolm's Katie, and other poems," almost dropped stillborn from the press. Scarcely anybody noticed it in Canada. It made no stir, and in little more than two years the authoress died. She was a high- spirited, passionate girl, and there is very little doubt that the neglect her book received was the cause of her death. Afterwards, as usual, a good many people began to find they had overlooked work of merit. Miss Crawford's verse is, in fact, exceptional. Here, for example, is good writing for a settler girl listening to the lumberers — " Bite deep and wide, O Axe, this tree ; What doth thy bold voice promise me? NIAGARA. 47 I promise thee all joyous things, That furnish forth the lives of kings! For ev'ry silver ringing blow, Cities and palaces shall grow ! Bite deep and wide, O Axe, the tree ; Tell wider prophecies to me. When rust hath gnaw'd me deep and red, A nation strong shall lift her head ! Her crown the very Heav'ns shall smite, iEons shall build her in their might ! Bite deep and wide, Axe, the tree ; Bright Seer, help on thy prophecy ! " Very good work again is seen in Miss Crawford's '* Malcolm's Katie." In proof, let anybody read these lines, redolent of the night-waving pines and the hunter's life — "My masters twain their tent-fire lit, Streamed incense from the hissing cones; Large crimson flashes grew and whhTd, Thin golden nerves of sly light curl'd, Round the dun camp, and rose faint zones Half-way about each grim bole knit, Like a shy child that would bedeck With its soft clasp a Brave's red neck ; Yet set's the rough shield on his breast, The awful plumes shake on his crest, And fearful drops her timid face, Nor dares complete the sweet embrace. They hung the slaughter' d fish like swords, On sapling slim, like scimitars 48 SEAS AND LANDS. Bright, and ruddied from new-waged wars, Blazed in the light — the scaly hordes. They piled up boughs beneath the trees Of cedar-web and green fir tassel ; Low did the pointed pine tops rustle, The camp fire flush'd to the tender breeze. The hounds laid dew-laps on the ground, With needles of pine, sweet, soft, and rusty — Dream'd of the dead stag, stout and lusty ; A bat by the red flames wove its round. The darkness built its wigwam walls Close round the camp, and at its curtain Press'd shapes, thin woven and uncertain, The white locks of tall waterfalls." Moreover, to show what fine and delicate songs the Canadian Sappho could indite, let this sweet and almost perfect little lyric be rescued for general admiration from the gloom of the backwoods — " O Love builds on the azure sea, And Love builds on the golden strand ; And Love builds on the rose-wing'd cloud, And sometimes Love builds on the land. O if Love builds on sparkling sea, And if Love builds on golden strand, And if Love builds on rosy clouds — To Love, these are the solid land. O Love will build his lily walls, And Love his pearly roof will rear On cloud or land, or mist or sea ; Love's solid land is everywhere ! " One peculiar feature of Canadian verse, indeed, is its strength in lady singers. The number who NIAGARA. 49 have produced good, or fairly good, poetry, is headed by the gifted girl just cited, but Mrs. Sarah Anne Curzon writes with power and spirit. The best war songs of the late half-breed rebellion were written by Annie Roth well, of Kingston. " Fidel is " (Agnes Maude Machar), who is frequently called the first of Dominion poetesses, excels in a graceful subjectivity. Then there are Kate Seymour Mac- leur, authoress of " The Coming of the Princess ; " " Seranus," of Toronto (Mrs. Harrison), whose "Rose Latulippe " is quite charming; Miss Pauline Johnson, of Indian descent ; Miss Ardagh, Mrs. Leprohon, with many others, among whom may again be quoted " Fidelis," for her spirited lines in answer to the Laureate, and in vindication of the loyalty of Canada — Canada to the Laureate. " ' And that true North, whereof we lately heard A stain to shame us ! Keep you to yourselves, So loyal is too costly ! Friends, your love Is but a burden : loose the bond and go — Is this the tone of Empire ? ' [Tennyson 's Ode to the Queen.) "We thank thee, Laureate, for thy kindly words Spoken for us to her to whom we look With loyal love, across the misty sea ; Thy noble words, whose generous tone may shame The cold and heartless strain that said Begone, We want your love no longer; all our aim Is riches — that your love can not increase ! ' Fain would we tell that we do not seek To hang dependent, like a helpless brood That, selfish, drag a weary mother down ; 50 SEAS AND LANDS. For we have British hearts and British blood That leap up, eager, when the danger calls ! Once and again our sons have sprung to arms To fight in Britain's quarrel — not our own — And drive the covetous invader back, Who would have let us, peaceful, keep our own, So we had cast the British name away. Canadian blood has dyed Canadian soil, For Britain's honour, that we deemed our own, Nor do we ask but for the right to keep Unbroken, still, the cherished filial tie That binds us to the distant sea-girt isle Our fathers loved and taught their sons to love, As the dear home of freemen, brave and true, And loving honour more than ease or gold." Next comes a whole cohort of Canadian poets who sing principally of Imperial Federation, the new nationality, the Indians, the Voyageurs, and Habitans, settlement life, historical incidents, places, and seasons. Canadian history, as all acquainted with Parkman will know, teems with noble deeds and great events, of which only a small part have been sung. The North- West and British Columbia — the gold-diggings province, the salmon rivers, the Douglas firs, which hide daylight at noonday — have yet to find their chroniclers. The poetry of the Winter Carnival, splendid scenic spectacle of gay Northern arts and delights, is to come also. Those who have been present at the thrilling spectacle of the nocturnal storming of the Ice Palace in Montreal, " when the whole city, dressing itself in the picturesque snow-shoe costume and arraying its streets in lights and colours, rises as one man NIAGARA. 51 in a tumultuous enthusiasm," feel that it should inspire fitting verse. As for the climate of Canada, winter is not perpetual, but merely, in most parts, somewhat long. It does not strike the inhabitants as intolerably severe. It is the season of most of their enjoyments; gives them their best roads; is indispensable to some industries, such as lumber- ing ; and the clear nights and diamond days are sparklingly beautiful. " Furthermore, the climate is not one but several. In British Columbia it is so equable the whole year round that roses some- times bloom out of doors in January, and the cactus is a native plant. In the Niagara penin- sula grapes and peaches are crops raised yearly in immense quantities, and the sycamore and acacia flourish. On the plains temperature grows milder in proportion as you approach to the Rocky Moun- tains." As Mr. William Wye Smith writes about the " Canadians on the Nile " — " the East is but the West, with the sun a little hotter ; And the pine becomes a palm, by the durk Egyptian water : And the Nile's like many a stream we know, that fills its brimming cup — We'll think it is the Ottawa, as we track the batteaux up ! Pull, pull, pull! as we track the batteaux up! It's easy shooting homeward, when we're at the top ! " Sometimes the dark mysterious glades and rushing, nameless streams of the Dominion have inspired worthily her indigenous minstrels, as in these striking verses of Mr. Wilfred Campbell on a backwood channel named the "Restless River"- — 52 SEAS AND LANDS. " Men say, at noon of clay, In thickets far away Where skies are dim and grey, And birches stir and shiver, That out of the gloomy air A voice goes up in prayer From the shores of the Restless River. Whatever its sin hath been, Its shores are still as green, And over it kindly lean Great forests heavenward growing ; And its waters are as sweet, And its tides more strong and fleet Than of any river flowing. But for all its outward mirth, And the glow that spans its girth, Its voices from air and earth, Its walls of leaves that quiver ; Men say an .awful curse, As dread as death, and worse Hangs over the Restless River. And the dreamy Indian girl When she sees its waters curl In many a silver whirl, Hath pity on Restless River ; For she knoweth that, long ago, Its tides, that once were slow, By reason of some dread woe Went suddenly swift for ever : That a dread and unknown curse, For a sin, or something worse, Was laid on the Restless River." Sometimes it is the stateliness and splendid growth of their young eities which stirs their NIAGARA. 53 imagination, as in this sonnet by Mr. Lighthall to Montreal — " Reign on, majestic Ville-Marie ! Spread wide thy ample robes of state ; The heralds cry that thou art great, And proud are thy young sons of thee. Mistress of half a continent, Thou risest from thy girlhood's rest ; We see thee conscious heave thy breast And feel thy rank and thy descent, Sprung off the saint and chevalier, And with the Scarlet Tunic wed ! Mount Royal's crown upon thy head ; And past thy footstool, broad and clear, St. Lawrence sweeping to the sea : Reign on, majestic Ville-Marie ! " Sometimes their fancy lingers over the vanished tribes of the Iroquois, Algonquin, Chippewa, and Sioux, whose recollection lives in the musical nomenclature of Canada — " The memory of the Red Man, It lingers like a spell On many a storm-swept headland, On many a leafy dell ; Where Tusket's thousand islets, Like emeralds, stud the deep ; Where Blomidon, a sentry grim, His endless watch doth keep. It dwells round Catalon's blue lake, 'Mid leafy forests hid — Round fair Discourse, and the rushing tides Of the turbid Pisiquid. 54 SEAS AND LANE'S. And it lends, Chebogue, a touching grace To thy softly flowing river, As we sadly think of the gentle race That has passed away forever." Constantly, too, the glories of the great St. Law- rence load the verse and fascinate the imagination of the youthful and, so far, little-known singers of the Dominion. Miss K. L. Jones has an excellent ode to the mighty stream, which thus concludes — " Stretching her arms to the world, Glad, as a maid to her lover ; Coyly, with banners unfurled, Welcoming argosies over ; Wearied, her life's journey done, Grateful to God, the life-giver, Her goal on the ocean's breast won, Rests the great river. And, again, speaking of the old pioneers — " He told them of the river, whose mighty current gave Its freshness for three hundred leagues to ocean's briny wave ; He told them of the glorious scene presented to his sight, What time he reared the cross and crown on Hochelaga's height; And of the fortress cliftj that keeps of Canada the key ; And they welcomed back Jacques Cartier from the perils of the sea." It would give many a hard-working head of a family in England new and good ideas to read some of these joyous and free Canadian songs, even when they are not of the highest poetic art ; for always they breathe the spirit of happy independence, and of a life lived face to face with Nature, who pays NIAGARA. 55 honest toil in this large land with almost certain prosperity and comfort. " Here's the Road ! " cries Mr. A. M'Lachlan, under title of Acres of Your Own. " Here's the road to independence ? Who would bow and dance attendance? Who, with e'er a spark of pride, While the bush is wild and wide, Would be still a hanger-on, Begging favours from a throne, While beneath yon smiling sun Farms, by labour, can be won ? Up ! be stirring, be alive. Get upon a farm and thrive? He's a king upon his throne Who has acres of his own ? " Enough has now been written to prove that Canada has produced agreeable and accomplished singers, male and female, as well as lumber and grain, cattle and canned salmon. Yet one word more must be said in reference to the French por- tion of the population, who have a pretty native minstrelsy of their own, best studied in M. Ernest Gagnon's " Chansons Populaires du Canada." But here, too, information must be drawn from Mr. Lighthall's excellent volume, which deals sym- pathetically with the topic. The number of the little French lilts floating in the air of Lower Canada is incalculable. One, almost universal, is " A la Claire Fontaine." "From the little child of seven years up to the man of silver hair, all the people in Canada know 56 . SEAS AND LANDS. and sing the ' Claire Fontaine.' One is not French- Canadian without that." In Normandie they have a similar chanson, but the air, which here is mono- tonous but attractive, is different. The original commences thus — " A la elaire fontaine M'en allant promener, J'ai trouve l'eau si belle Que je m'y suis baigne." Then there comes a charming little chorus — " Lui ya longtemps que je t'aime' Jamais je ne t'oublierai." Ma mi-e ! ' Ya longtemps que je t'aime Jamais je ne t'oublierai." One verse thus addresses the nightingale — " Chante, rossignol, chante, Toi qui as le coeur gai, Tu as le coeur a rire Moi, je l'ai-t-a pleurer.' Lui ya longtemps que je t'aime ; Jamais je ne t'oublierai." " C'est la Belle Francois " is a livelier but very common Quebec song — " C'est la belle Francoise, bon gai, C'est la belle Francoise, C^ui veut s'y marier, ma lurou, lurette, Qui veut s'y marier, ma luron, lure." The lover goes on to comfort her with a promise to marry her on his return from the war, "Si j'y suis NIAGARA. 57 respecte." ending always with the flippant " Ma luron, lurette; ma luron, hire!" Several belong particularly to the raftsmen and lumberers of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers. Such is — " Via l'bon vent, v'la l'joli vent Via, l'bon vent, ma niie m'appelle, Via l'bon vent, v'la l'joli vent, Via l'bon vent, ma niie m'attend." Sung from a huge raft, with shanties on it, descend- ing one of these broad open rivers, by the rough and jolly crew, this has a genuine inspiration of free life about it. Of a wild character, too, is " Alouette," whose very beautiful air has made it a favourite college song. The gaiety of France marks almost all of them ; and this has a touch of humour — " ' Ma mignonnette, embrassez-moi.' ' Nenni, Monsieur, je n'oserais, Car si mon papa le savait.' " But who would tell her papa? Why ! "the birds of the woods " — " ' Les oiseaux parlent ils? ' Ils parlent franeais, latin aussi.' 'lis parlent franeais, latin aussi.' ' Helas, ijue le monde est maliii D'apprende mix oiseaux le latin ! ' ' Lastly, here is a French chanson which prettily repeats the " ' Nobody axed you, sir ' she said " — 'Qui done etes-vous, ma eharmante, Pour refuser mi chevalier! 58 SEAS AND LANDS. Quelque dame riche et j)uissante ? — Je suis la fille du meunier. Quoi ! du meunier ' Dieu nie pardonne ! J'en suis marri pour ton bonheur : Je ne puis t'epouser, ma bonne. — Qui vous a demande, seigneur?" But with this enough and to spare has been collected to prove that Canada is by no means songless. At Niagara, Sept 10, 1889. CHAPTER V. AMERICAN SOIL. Washington has been called, not without reason. "the city of magnificent distances" — for its wide, well-paved, interminable vistas of stately buildings and handsome residences of white and grey stone, or red brick, lead the eye everywhere towards a vanishing point. And America herself might well be styled " The land of magnificent distances." The immense network of railroads, everywhere covering the States, seems to have abolished the sense of space for this people. They fly about hither and thither without regard for a few hundred miles of journeying more or less, and the stranger within their gates soon learns to share their in- difference to extended locomotion. Moreover, the system of travelling is very good and well-arranged. The American passion for equality will not permit our categories of first, second, and third class; but there exists on all trains a "parlour car," for which a moderate excess fare is paid to a special conductor. and while this is practically a first-class carriage by day, at night it develops, under the skilful necro- mancy of the " coloured person " charged with this duty, into a series of entirely commodious sleeping 60 SEAS AND LANDS. berths, stretched in one of which the traveller slumbers well enough through the dark hours. If a nervous temperament, he may shudder to observe that the rails are merely fastened down with staple-heads to the sleepers ; but, on the other hand, these sleepers are very thickly planted in the ballast, and the fish-joints are strong and good. The American luggage system, as is generally known, is perfect in its way. So soon as you have " checked " your impedimenta by seeing the official hitch brass tickets upon the several boxes and trunks, the exact duplicates of which he hands to you, all care is over. As you approach your destination an " express-man," perambulating the long carriage, will make note of your hotel, or residence, take the brass tickets, for which he hands you a receipt, and your belongings will then be delivered almost as quickly as the carriage or omnibus can deposit yourself. Under such arrange- ments it was not fatiguing or difficult to make the run from Niagara Falls to Washington, something like 550 miles in distance. The first portion of this journey was performed in daylight, and re- vealed a district resembling the Ontario region, and naturally enough, since this part of New York State lies along the southern shore of the lake. But you could note a difference between the comparatively old settlements and the new, by the absence of tree stumps from the fields, and the fact that those fields were everywhere being manured for the autumn and winter sowings, a AMERICAN SOIL. 61 necessity to which Canada, with her unexhausted soil, has not yet generally come. Our train ran along the Erie Canal by Rochester, famous for flour-mills and spirit-rapping ; by Canan- daigua, known for its pretty lake, 1(5 miles in length ; by Elmira, busy in manufacturing steel rails and boilers for locomotives, and Troy, which hardly evokes the reminiscences of its classical namesake. Night fell as we entered the picturesque valley of the Susquehanna River and ran down by the dee}) Seneca Lake, and its still stream glittering under an almost full moon. Harrisburg, enshrining the name and memory of one John Harris, who founded it in 1735, was traversed shortly after midnight, and with dawn we come into a region familiarised by recollections of the Secession War, for here lay Hanover, with the dreadful held of Gettysburg not far off, and York, reached about G a.m. — on the southern border of Pennsylvania — situated upon ^ Cordorus Creek, which was occupied for some time by the Confederate Army. Shortly afterwards the train entered Maryland, the coloured population largely increasing by this time in the villages and farms on either side of the track. At Baltimore, where the Patapsco River approaches Chesapeake Bay, and makes the well-known port, there was a stop for breakfast, and then we ran forty-four miles in forty-eight minutes into the administrative capital of the United States, the very handsome and agree- able city of Washington. In point of public gardens, parks, and trees, planted along the streets, Washington is specially 62 SEAS AND LANDS. and nobly embellished. Planes, sycamores, limes, ehesnuts, and American elms, set in double rows along almost every thoroughfare, give the city a green and umbrageous beauty hardly seen elsewhere. It seems a pity that such charming boulevards and avenues should be distinguished merely by letters of the alphabet, and the cross streets only numbered. In regard of civic and urban nomeclature, however, the American imagination appears to have recoiled in despair from the task of christening towns and streets, and while the latter are lettered and numbered, the former either reproduce a foreign title — Syracuse, Utica, Ithaca, Cairo, Delhi, and the like — or preserve an old Indian word, or glorify some otherwise forgotten citizen. Yet, already, historical recollections, sombre and glorious, are numerous enough about Washington to suggest appellations for her spacious ways. Take only the quarter where these lines are written, that of the Arlington Hotel. We occupy the apartments where Charles Sumner passed the closing days of his patriotic life. Near at hand, at the corner of the park, stands the little red house where the assassins tried to kill Minister Seward on the same night when President Lincoln was done to death. Not far off is the railway station in which President Garfield received a mortal wound from his cruel murderer — the spot is de- signated by a silver star let into the floor of the waiting-room — and the statues of Jackson, of Farra- gut, and other heroes of the Republic gleam through the leaves of the maple trees, and might most AMERICAN SOIL. 63 worthily give names to the wide ways adjoining. In the same vicinity is a whole group of noble buildings, including the Treasury, the Pension Office, and the War, Navy, and State Department-. Far and wide over the green expanse of the cits- tower the dome of the Capitol, and the tall obelisk built up to the imperishable memory of George Washington; while the "White House" — where I have just had the honour of a special audience and a very interesting conversation with President Harrison — rises near the Treasury, the heart and centre of the Great Commonwealth. The simplicity of American State is well illus- trated by the utter absence of any formality or ceremony in and about the precincts of the official abode of the President. The executive Mansion, or " White House," stands west of the splendid edifice of the Treasury. It is in the Ionic style, having several porticoes. The facade is 170 feet long, and is occupied on the ground floor by the reception and representation rooms. On the upper floors are the offices and private apartments of the President. Its foundation-stone was laid in 1792, and the first President who tenanted it was Adams, in 1800. In 1814 it was burned by the English, but was rebuilt in 1818. The grounds, which arc laid out in gardens, occupy about seventy-five acres, of which twenty are railed in as the President's private demesne. Here, then, is the central spot of this vast Republic, the very adytum of its civic life, and vet no i^uard of honour, no sentinel, no sign oi 64 SEAS AND LANDS. special import, not even a Washington police- man, marks its character, or protects the gate- way. Anybody may enter ; everybody who wishes does enter — in carriage, hack-cab, or on foot — and will no more be questioned in passing through the gardens and mounting the marble steps than if it were an American Army and Navy Store. True, there is an usher, in evening dress, at the door, but he seems put there merely to open and shut it for convenience of citizens, who do not even take off their hats on entering unless they please, and unless the weather be very sultry. These, however, must at least wait for an audience until the President has finished with his morning council, except on certain days of the week, when he descends to the corridor, and shakes hands with all who like to grasp the presidential palm. This corridor, which is shut off from the hall by a screen of stained glass, has no exceptional grace or grandeur. A score of private houses in London and a hundred hotels in great cities could be named which would dwarf it to insignificance. Indifferently lighted, it conceals rather than reveals the portraits of the bygone presidents and wives of presidents suspended in gilt frames along the wall. From this corridor open three principal rooms. The first is the " Green Parlour," a moderate-sized apartment, with green furniture and hangings, where you see the kindly, rugged features of Abraham Lincoln, Jackson's strong countenance, and Washington's well-known face among the pictures. Next to this is the " Blue Parlour," an oval " piece," small, but AMERICAN SOIL. 65 not inelegant ; and thirdly, the " Red Dining Room." At the baek of these is a ball or reception salon, comely, but not costly, nor in the least degree magnificent. Above are chambers which hold the attention more. One is that in which President Lincoln habitually held his councils, and from the bow-window you look far away over the pretty gardens and the park to the glimmering current of the Potomac and the distant uplands of Virginia. How often in the great and fateful war must the gaze of "Honest Abe" have wandered southward towards Richmond, which his armies were not able to reach for three long and bloody years. I seemed to feel the shadow of that prodigious anxiety still lingering about the beautiful prospect in all those heavy masses of gloom cast on the sward by the maples, and all those dark patches falling from the flying clouds. Moreover, in this apartment, at this very plain green table, sitting in this same old- fashioned and common-looking armchair, the good captain and leader of his people signed the memor- able Proclamation which for ever broke the fetters of the slave, and redeemed at one noble stroke the glory of the conflict, and the much-suffering negro. Crowds of the joyous, pleasant, chatty negroes are passing under the historic window. Washington is as full of them as a strawberry garden is of black- birds ; and the plain chamber seemed indeed in become a temple, and its air to be full of the true incense of the golden " thurifers " of liberty, when one reflected upon the victory of the great and free nation over its first historical danger, and upon 66 SEAS AND LANDS. that epoch-making decree which " ransomed the African." A few steps lead from Abraham Lincoln's cus- tomary council chamber to an inner official apartment, where at this hour President Harrison was sitting in debate with certain of his ministers. On receiving my card he did me the signal honour to receive me at once in the inner Council Chamber. Rising from a group of Secretaries of State, the President approached with a cordial welcome to Washington on his lips — a courteous, kindly, shrewd, and busi- ness-stamped gentleman, of middle height or less, with light hair, beginning to ' " catch the snow," simple in style as were his surroundings. After some very friendly words, our dialogue took some such shape as this : — " You are pleased, I hope, with the States." " Who could fail to be pleased, Mr. President, having eyes to see and mind to appreciate? Any reasonable Englishman must be proud and glad, I think, to be able to wander over so splendid a country, and never feel himself otherwise than at home in this your Transatlantic England." " We know you have always been and are a true friend to America." " I consider myself half an American. Two of my children bear the American names of ' Emerson ' and ' Channing ; ' my late wife was an American. I represent in a very humble way the bond of blood and language which I hope will grow ever stronger and closer between the countries." " We hope that, too, most sincerely ; and my son, A ME RICA X SOIL. 67 who has just returned from England, assures me that good-will and good-wishes towards America are more and more felt in England." " I venture to say, sir, that that is so. A con- stantly increasing number of Englishmen — and 1 trust and believe of Americans also — ardently hope that no question will ever again arise between us which cannot and will not be settled by Reason and by Right — the only proper arbiters between two such peoples." " That ought to be so, and will be so, if we make proper mutual allowances for each other. What has impressed you chiefly in your journeys here?" " The ' magnificent distances ' Mr. President ! I see a large terrestrial globe standing by your chair. It makes me think rather ruefully of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes' line, when he describes the Western giant as 'Twirling the spotted globe to find us.' " "Ah! we do not measure Great Britain by her acres ! She also is really so large that we never could have remained under one Government even if the War of Independence had not happened." "Yes! Still it is sad to think that that stupid affair of the Boston Tea Chests was caused by a majority of a single vote in the House of ('ominous." "Well, if we had remained one people geographi- cally, you would have had to be governed from Washington, perhaps; since we are preponderant in numbers and area." "As to that, sir, you must put Canada and our 68 SEAS AND LANDS. Colonies in the scale, and India. However, I hope that, together, England and America will some day dictate peace, in the interests of universal humanity, to the world, and that the language of Shakespeare w T ill become that of the globe." President Harrison smiled, and said gently he hoped such a day would arrive ; whereupon, after some further general remarks, the pleasant interview terminated. Yet, if the White House is modest in its own character and in that also of its distinguished occu- pants — who address Emperors and Kings as " my good friend," and are so addressed by them — the Capitol is grand enough even for the great Republic. Among the many imposing buildings of Washington, this huge edifice is the handsomest and largest in the town, and, indeed, on the whole American Continent. It is situated on Capitol Hill, a mile from the Potomac River, and has a length over all of 750 feet, with a depth of 120 feet, and wings of 140 feet. It covers an area of 3i acres. The materials used are light yellow stone for the centre, and white marble for the wings. The buildings face eastwards. In front of them stretches a wide space, and beyond is a well-laid-out park. The structure was commenced in 1821, and the wings were added to it in 1851. The corner-stone of the structure was laid by Daniel Webster. It was finished, inclusive of the new dome, in 1865, at a cost of 15,000,000 dollars. The main front is orna- mented with three grand porticoes of Corinthian columns. The centre is approachod by a flight AMERICAN SOIL. 69 of stairs, embellished with statues by Persico and Greenough. On the esplanade towers the colossal statue of Washington. The building is surmounted by a lofty iron dome, on which stands a statue of Liberty, 19i feet high. Tall marble statues are to the right and left of the entrance. You enter through bronze doors, evidently imitated from those of Ghiberti, at Florence, into the Rotunda. These doors illustrate the life of Columbus and the dis- covery of America. The rotunda is 96 feet wide and 108 feet in height. Marble bas-reliefs over the doors and paintings on the wall illustrate American history. The dome rises finely above, with a painted frieze and pierced clere-stories. Through the western door of the Rotunda, and at the end of that corridor, is the Congress Library in three large halls, all thoroughly fireproof. They contain, people said, above 050,000 books, pamphlets, brochures, &c. The north door of the Rotunda leads into the Senate House ; semicircular, commodious, practical in every detail. But in the corridor, is the door leading into the Supreme Court, the highest tribunal in America. The Chamber of the Senate is 114 feet by 82 feet, and 30 feet in height; an iron roof with stained lights, and galleries seating IOOO citizens. But the Supreme Court most interests the in- telligent stranger. Here is the real "omphalos" of the Republic, the metacentre which keeps the Ship of State balanced on a safe keel, the Power which is above State-rights, Congress, Senate, and all. Persons who rashly quote the federation of tin- Sovereign States of America as a precedent for all 7 o SEAS AND LANDS. sorts of perilous experiments with older institutions in other lands forget this Supreme Court, which keeps the stars of the Spangled Banner together by a force akin to gravitation, silent, secret, and irresistible. It is easier to admire that great inven- tion of the fathers of the Republic than to imitate it elsewhere. Meantime it is somewhat trying for a patriotic Englishman to wander round the ample floor of the Rotunda of the Washington Capitol. The pictures adorning its walls recall principally British disasters. Here is my Lord Cornwallis, in scarlet and gold, sadly surrendering his sword ; and there Commodore Perry is gaily and gallantly sinking his Majesty's ships upon Lake Erie ; and elsewhere you shall gaze on the untoward incidents of Tieonde- roga and Lexington Ford. It cannot be denied that a promenade about the halls and corridors of the imposing structure, where the American eagle keeps its legislative eyrie, is calculated to convey the sensation known here as " twisting the tail of the British Lion." Under the auspices of General Greely, of Arctic fame — the hero of the desperate adventure in the icy North — I visited what is called " the Signal Office," where the meteorological work of the States is done. Here — supervised and harmonised by the General — come together those reports from all parts of the Continent, which enable the " clerks of the weather," employed by Brother Jonathan, to send word of those storms which come only too often upon our shores across the Atlantic. The system, and its equipments and appliances, are creditably complete, and we were AMERICAN SOIL. 71 able to trace the history of a storm which had just ravaged the eastern seaboard, from its birthplace in the West Indian islands to its howling disappear- ance off Cape Cod. Telegraphic communication with Bermuda is greatly needed to make the net- work of "storm-catchers" complete. That affected, mariners, farmers, and the world in general would almost always know what kind of time was coming. The institution possesses a perfect record of the weather all over the continent of North America during the past fifteen years. It ought to be denominated the " Temple of the Winds." Washington, Sept. 12, 1889. CHAPTEK VI. MEN AND CITIES. From Washington to Philadelphia is an easy run through the green country drained into Chesapeake Bay by many sylvan streams. Heavy rains had flooded the low-lying farmsteads around Baltimore and northward — so that many fields of maize, tomato, and melon were lying drowned in the too abundant tribute of the Delaware and its confluent channels. The negro population — which rapidly diminishes as you come north from Mary- land — looked positively " blue-black " in the chilly weather and amongst the damp enclosures. There are plenty of coloured waiters and " helps," of course, at the north ; but the sun-loving Sambo is evidently much depayse there, and naturally gravitates to the warmer States. What will be the future of that vast dark alien population forms one of the great puzzling problems for the American Republic. From time to time sanguinary collisions between blacks and whites occur, and the diminishing number of half-breeds proves that " miscegenation " will never prevail to settle the matter. Immensely fecund among them- selves, although unskilful in rearing children, the MEN AND CITIES. 73 sons of Ham are seriously multiplying in the South, where in some districts they quite swamp the white vote. Will they absorb and altogether possess certain regions? Will there some day happen a Black Exodus to Africa, or to Mexico, or to South America? Free as birds, lazy as pigs, joyous as crickets, the negroes darken all the South with their political presence, and enliven it by their inborn cheerfulness. What an army another Tous- saint TOuverture might raise among them with which to conquer an Ebony Kingdom on the Gold Coast ! Philadelphia is a truly splendid city, and covers more ground than New York, Chicago, or any of its greatest sisters. There are 950 miles of paved streets there, the busiest and longest being " Market," up and down which, while London is merely talk- ing about "electric cars," those vehicles, silently and safely propelled by batteries, daily carry scores of thousands of citizens. Nor have we anywhere in England a Town Hall nearly as magnificent as the huge pile of white marble, reared in Re- naissance style, which is called "The Public Buildings," and glorifies the corner of Broad and Market Streets. It contains the municipal offices, law courts, &c, and measures 4863 feet by 170 feet, being almost a square, while its tower when completed will be 535 feet high. It covers an area of about 4h acres, without including the court- yard in the centre of 200 feet square. (Jirard College is another magnificent building of white marble, in the Corinthian style, imitating the Par- 74 SEAS AND LANDS. thenon at Athens, erected out of Stephen Girard's munificent gift of 2,000,000 dollars to provide gratuitous instruction and support for destitute orphans. Theology is rigorously excluded from its lectures, and no clergyman, priest, or missionary is allowed to set foot within it, according to the testamentary conditions of the founder. In Lsetitia Street is Penn's cottage, built before Penn's arrival in the settlement, and truly the historic Quaker might be proud of the city sprung up around it. In a court on the south side of Chestnut Street is Carpenters' Hall, the meeting- place of the first Congress of the United Colonies ; but Independence Hall, between Fifth and Sixth Streets,- is justly considered the most interesting building in Philadelphia. It has brilliant historical associations, and several of the rooms contain still the very furniture of the time when the Declara- tion of Independence was there made. In front of it stands Bailey's statue of Washington, and at the back is Independence Square, laid out as a small park. All these, and many other notable sights in the Pennsylvania capital, we had the good fortune to study, under the auspices of one of the best known, as he is also one of the most j^Wic- spirited and liberal of Philadelphia citizens — Mr. G. W. Childs, proprietor of the Public Ledger, a journal eminent amid its contemporaries not alone for literary talent and political independence, but for a dignity and propriety in tone and in con- tents by no means universal among the American nil i.adki.i'iii \ : iNin:i'i:Ni>r.N< i: n \ i 1 MEN AND CITIES. 75 press. For twenty . years the bosom friend and neighbour of Ulysses S. Grant — the famous soldier President of the Republic — Mr. Childs enjoys an influence natural to his experience, wealth, and patriotism, and it was no secret that Mr. Wana- maker, now the Postmaster-General in President Harrison's Cabinet, and proprietor of the most immense " universal providing store " even in the States, owed his portfolio largely to this gentle- man's recommendations. The astounding establish- ment of the Minister employs 4000 hands, covers 18 5 acres of ground, and is worked by the most elaborate organisation. It must be almost a re- laxation, indeed, after governing " Wanamaker's," at Philadelphia, to take in hand the business of conducting " Uncle Sam's " postal system. Yet it was not to any superb public edifice, or to any famed historical spot, or even to Wanamaker's, the mighty and manifold — where a whole hall, full of revolving wheels and Hying wires, was buzzing with countless cartridges of money coming up, and of endless change going; down — to none of these were my earliest steps bent on arriving in Phila- delphia. In a suburb of the city, called Camden, beyond the broad Delaware, which, with the Schuyl- kill, or "Hidden Stream," bathes her long wharfs, resides that original and grandly gifted poet, Wall Whitman, assuredly one of the chief personages of American literature in his own strange and unre- strained, albeit most musical and majestic style. It is held, no doubt, in some quarters an eccentricity to admire Walt Whitman ; in others even an im- 76 SEAS AND LANDS. propriety ; but it may be doubted if those who so lightly dub this Tyrtaeus of America " rugged " or " immoral " have really read, with close and due study, his remarkable pages, or are competent to judge of the finest and most daring ranges of poetic art. To him who writes these words, the Poet of " Drum-Taps " and of " The Voyage to India " has long seemed a singer nobly and perfectly native to the New World, profoundly philosophical, and one to be certainly regarded with reverence and affec- tion, for his humanity, his insight, his faith, his courage, and the clear, sonorous, and ofttimes ex- quisite melody of his rhymeless, but never un- rhythmical, dithyrambs. No living singer has ever composed any English lines more divinely musical than those of the " Invocation," which begin, " Come, lovely and soothing Death." No poet- philosopher has ever proclaimed loftier veracities of life and religion than could be gleaned, thickly and richly, from " The Leaves of Grass ; " and, as to the charge of impropriety, it is often made by people who have not understood his main thesis and state- ment, " I swear I am no more ashamed of the body than I am ashamed of the soul." At all events, for me Walt Whitman has long appeared the embodiment of the spirit of American growth and glory — the natural minstrel of her splendid youth — the chief modern perceiver of the joy and gladness in existence too long forgotten or forbidden; and, of all men in Philadelphia, he it was whom I most desired to see and to thank for my own share, at least, in the comfort and wisdom MEN AND CITIES. 77 of his verse, which, for one who can read it with sympathy, has the freshness of the morning wind blowing in the pines, the sweetness of the sea-air tumbling the wave-crests. You go down the long Market Street in an electric car, which is driven from a wire overhead, the connector-rod and the wheels emitting Hashes of blue fire all the way, which seem, however, to do nobody any harm. These novel tramcars are checked, stopped, and started again with the utmost certainty by a button and a string, and the over- head wire illuminates the vehicle as well as drives it. Arrived at the edge of the Delaware River by the aid of this yoked and tamed lightning, a pro- digious ferry-steamer receives passengers, carts, wag- gons — anything and everything — and puffs across to the other bank, amid multitudinous small and large craft. Here is New Jersey, where, for a while, nobody could be found who knew the habitat of America's lyric veteran. But, at last, an ancient flyman was discovered who was acquainted with the abode of "the old poet," and many a winding way and devious plank-road brought us in the end to an obscure street, where our modern Tyrtanis re- sided. The humble tenement which represented the poet's " bower " stood between two retail stores, and was about the most unlikely spot in the world to search in for a bard. Vet a sweet-faced woman. darning stockings and swinging too and fro in a rocking-chair, assured me that "Mi-. Whitman" was truly within, and a very handsome brown-faced 78 SEAS AND LANDS. boy of nineteen in shirt-sleeves volunteered to call him. Soon the famous dithyrambist descended the stairs, clad in a light holland coat, with open shirt ruffled in the neck, walking very lamely with the help of a stick, but certainly one of the most beautiful old men ever beheld, with his clear keen eyes, sculptured profile, flowing silver hair and beard, and mien of lofty content and independence. In a very few minutes, I may venture to say, we were like old friends. I told him how he was honoured and comprehended by many and many an Englishman, who knew how to distinguish great work from little, in ancient or modern tongues. I told him how many among us found the freedom of the broad prairie and the freshness of the sea in his pages, and loved them for their large humanity and superb forecasts of human development. The handsome youth fetched down the " Leaves of Grass " from upstairs, and we read together some of the lines most in mind, the book lying upon the old poet's knee, his large and shapely hand resting on mine. The sweet-voiced woman dropped her darning needle to join in the lyrical and ami- cable chat, the handsome boy lounged and listened at the doorway, a big setter laid his soft muzzle on the master's arm, and the afternoon grew to evening in pleasant interchange of thoughts and feelings. He laughed joyously at the vastness and vitality of this Republic, of which I admiringly spoke, and said, " Yes, we are truly — as they say West — very ' numerious.' " " But have you reverence enough among your MEN AXD CITIES. 79 people?" I asked. "Do the American children respect and obey their parents sufficiently, and arc the common people grateful enough to their best men, their statesmen, leaders, teachers, poets, and ' betters ' generally ? " "Allons, comrade!" Walt Whitman replied; "your old world has been soaked and saturated in reverentiality. We are laying here in America the basements and foundation rooms of a new era. And we are doing it, on the whole, pretty well and substantially. By-and-by, when that job is through, ire will look after the steeples and pinnacles." He bade me " give his love to the boys in London," such as cared for him. Some of them, he said, had been " very good to him in past days, and had pulled him out of a quagmire." But there was no tone of complaint in his cheery manliness, and lie looked the picture of self-content and happy old age. In a strong round hand he inscribed mv name in the volume we had discussed, gave me some precious pictures of himself at different epochs of his life, and bade me farewell with an affectionate warmth which will never be forgotten. A short run carries a wanderer northwards from Philadelphia to New York ; but long before Jersey City is reached, the lines of frame tenements abutting on the woodlands and marshes tell of the proximity of the great city. It is not necessary to say anything about the vast, noisy, restless, stately, business Metro- polis of the Republic, with which so many are perfectly well acquainted. Paved everywhere with cobble-stones, riddled below bv tramways, and above 80 SEAS AND LANDS. by " elevated " railways, pierced and permeated with electric wires, and full all day and all night of rattling, pounding, ponderous cars, waggons, and cabs, New York City is the least reposeful place in the world, and wants wood-pavement everywhere, if sleep be necessary to human existence. The only quiet spots observed in Manhattan, were those about the handsome and tasteful Central Park, whose green knolls and shady uplands look prettily and pleasantly enough upon the Hudson River gliding down from West Point and the Palisades. On one of the most commanding points of this well-ordered park, whence the eye could range far over the roofs and towers of the city in one direc- tion, and away to the hills and the country in the other, we found the grave of Ulysses Grant, under the fluttering Stars and Stripes,- guarded by a limping veteran of the Federal Army. The chest or " casket," containing the remains of the re- nowned General and President — foremost among those who saved the Republic — could be discerned through the gilded bars of the little mausoleum. It was nearly hidden in a mound of funeral wreaths of honour, but showed the name and date of demise of the illustrious soldier. It is the intention of the New York citizens to raise an imposing monu- ment here to the immortal memory of Grant, and the necessary funds have already been collected by public subscription. It was my good fortune to make at New York the close acquaintance of another, and hardly less re- nowned soldier of the Republic, General Sherman — MEN AXD CITIES. Si ^ince, alas ! dead; nor could any conversations have been more interesting than those in which he did me the honour to describe and discuss, among many other matters, that wonderful and memorable march led by him, which pierced the Confederate States like the thrust of a rapier, and helped largely to bring- about the collapse of " Secession." The General was evidently and justly discontented with certain criti- cisms which have appeared in England from a high military source, upon the conduct of the campaign. "We had," he said, "to create armies before we could use them in the established and scientific way, and it is unfair and illogical to judge the first two years of our war as if we had been commanding trained and seasoned troops. In the third year we had regiments to lead as good and skilled as commanding officers could ask for ; and to the movements then made, the rules of military science may be properly applied." General Sherman spoke of the quality of courage in soldiers, and men generally, distinguishing it impatiently from brutish and irrational reckless- ness. "True courage," he said, "is founded on presence of mind. The man who, in the face of imminent peril, can hold up his hand, and count the fingers on it quite calmly, is the brave, self-pos- sessed, serviceable individual. Moreover, true courage goes with unselfishness. I have seen an officer fight on unflinchingly in my presence, bleeding from many wounds, of which he was disdainfully heedless, and, in later life, have witnessed the same gentleman turn deadly white while he held the hand 82 SEAS AND LANDS. of his child, that a surgeon might operate for some trifling abscess." Many were the thrilling episodes and adventures of the great war which fell in fas- cinating recital from the lips of General Sherman, but they are either recorded in the pages of his autobiography, or are too long and discursive to set down here. One little flash of humour is, perhaps, worth preserving from all the war talk which we enjoyed. "General Thomas," said he, "junior to me in rank, but senior in service, was a stern discipli- narian. He had received many complaints about the pilfering and plundering committed by one of his brigades, and, being resolved to put this offence down, he issued some very strict orders, menacing with death any who should transgress. The brigade in question wore for its badge an acorn, in silver or gold, and the men were inordinately proud of this distinctive sign. Several cases of disobedience had been reported to the General, but the evidence was never strong enough for decisive action; until one day, riding with an orderly dowm a by-lane outside the posts, Thomas came full upon an Irishman, who, having laid aside his rifle, with which he had killed a hog, was busily engaged in skinning the animal with his sword-bayonet, so as to make easy work with the bristles, &c, before cooking some pork-chops. " ' Ah,' cried the General, ' you rascal ! at last I have caught one of you in the act. There is no mistake about it this time, and I will make an example of you, sir ! ' MEN AND CITIES. 83 "'Bedad! General, honey!' said the Irishman, straightening himself up and coming to the salute, ' it's not shootin' me that you ought to be afther, at all, at all, but rewardin' me.' "'What do you mean, sir?' exclaimed General Thomas. " ' Why, your honour ! ' the soldier replied, ' this disperate baste here had just been disicratin ' the rigimental badge ; and so I was forced to despatch 'urn. It's 'atin the acorns that I faff /id him at/' Even General Thomas was obliged to laugh at this, and the soldier saved his life by his wit." General Sherman spoke with much attachment of many English officers, his friends, and recalled with evident pleasure the receptions he had met with in English garrisons at Gibraltar, Malta, and elsewhere. Albeit then verging on his seventieth year, the illustrious leader appeared perfectly hale, strong, and almost fit, if necessary, for another such campaign, as when, at the head of that tough and fearless column of Federal troops, he disappeared from sight at Atlanta, to turn up again, irresistible ami victorious, under the ramparts of Savannah, which fell to him without a shot, crowning the perfect success of the memorable march. New York, Sept. 20, 1689. CHAPTER VII. BOSTON. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and the sea- board States comprising New England, well deserve that name in regard of good harbours, busy coasts, and beautiful inland scenery. In leaving New York for Boston, by what is called the " Air-line Railway," the traveller journeys along the northern shore of Long Island Sound, and passes through a score of towns and " cities " with very familiar names, such as Chester, Stamford, Southport, Bridge- port, Milford, and New Haven. This last is an important centre, full of dark-foliaged trees, which have given it the title of " Elm City," and famous as containing numerous educational institutions, among which is Yale College, not so old as Harvard and not so richly endowed, but enjoying a well-merited reputation. It was founded in 1700. It has over 100 professors, its students number- ing over 1000. It has a School of Fine Arts, a Law School, a Medical, Theological, Scientific, and Academic Department ; and its buildings cover, including ornamental grounds, over nine acres, among the most important of them being the Library, with over 140,000 volumes. Situated at s 4 flOSTOiW S 5 the head of New Haven Bay, the largest town in Connecticut and a port of entry, New Haven is a great railway centre, and has a considerable? home and foreign commerce, principally with the West Indies. Tts manufactures are in the hardware line. jewellery, and India rubber. When the railroad diverges from it, we plunge into a charming country on the way to Hartford and AVillimantic, a country resembling that around Kendal and Ambleside, with folded verdant hills, pretty lakes and lakelets shut within them, and streams or rivers which shine as they wind under the dark fir woods, or emerge into the valleys decked with maple and birch, just now beginning to put on their autumn glory of burning colours. As we ascend glimpses are again obtained of Long Island Sound, and of many a smart-looking schooner — two, three, and even four masted — in the construction of which American shipbuilders excel. Everywhere the "golden-rod," covering the deal- ings with its spikes of bright blossom ; everywhere the sumach, with dark-purple seed-vessels and crimson leaves; everywhere the frame-houses, gaily painted in blue and red and saffron, with "piazzas" and well-filled barns; everywhere, apparently, ac- tivity and prosperity, a region — this Yankee-land — of solid well-being. Then we arrive at Boston — "Hub of the 1'iii- vei'se " — most English-like of all the cities of the Eastern States, and in the highest degree a plea- sant, fair, cultured, and stately city. Its lower and business portions, indeed, curiously resemble those of many a large place in its old namesake; but the 86 SEAS AND LANDS. suburbs are prettier, and more tastefully laid out and built than almost any in England. Brookline, es- pecially, and the long vistas of villas leading to Cam- bridge, and thence to Mount Auburn and along the Charles River, have a singular charm by reason of the variety in the style of the residences — half stone or brick, and half wood — which are planted on well- kept lawns, not shut out from the public road by iron railings or walls, as with us, but quite open, and presenting the most charming diversity of design and colouring. The passenger traffic of the city is all done by cars — mainly electric — which hiss and rattle along, always crowded, emitting as they go sparks of white light from their rumbling wheels, and from the conducting-rod which runs against the overhead wire. For five cents you may ride any- where, but there is no law against overfilling, and the chances are that you will have to stand up all the way. Far and wide above the great city shines the gilded dome of the State House, 116 feet high ; and nobody who notices its happy effect, overhanging the roofs like a perpetual sun, could doubt of the excellent result which would be achieved if London were to cover with gold-leaf the far more majestic dome of St. Paul's. " Boston Common," just underneath the State House, is really a fine but small park and ornamental garden, upon which Beacon Street looks, with an aspect irresistibly recalling the familiar front of Piccadilly and the Green Park at home. No handsomer group of buildings, hotels, and fine mansions can well be seen, than where Boy 1st on BOSTOX. 87 Street opens out in front of the Museum of Fine Arts; and there is a graceful climbing plant — the Ampelopsis — which drapes almost every church, public edifice, and private abode with its bright green trails of thick verdure — changing to a rich russet and purple as "the Fall" approaches. North of the spacious city soars into the sky the ugly granite obelisk, marking Bunker Hill, on the site of the battle fought June 17, 177o, the only monument, perhaps, ever raised to commemorate a defeat ; for it is matter of history, as is well con- ceded in Dr. Oliver W. Holmes' delightful ballad. "Grandmother's Story," that the British gained all the honours of the day in that memorable con- flict. The most beautiful of the many cemeteries round about is undoubtedly Mount Auburn, with its winding walks thronged by the tombstones — all the pretty paths named after different flowers ; its glorious views across the Charles River; its groves of stately trees and parterres of bright blossoms, kept so trimly and piously as to render the spot a veri- table "Garden of Death;" its galaxy of great names hallowing the air — Longfellow, Story, Winthrop, Adams, Channing, Margaret Fuller, Dana, etc. And the most interesting, as well as, on the whole, most picturesque of its suburbs, is, of course, Cambridge, the home of Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, and other noted American citizens, and the seat of Harvard University. It was first called Newtown, and settled soon after the Boston colony. But subsequently chris- tened Cambridge in honour of the University in Eng- land, where John Harvard, the founder of the Fni- 88 SEAS AND LANDS. versity, and other leaders had studied. Established in 1636 by Rev. John Harvard, and incorporated in 1650, it is the oldest and most richly endowed seat of learning in America. Besides its collegiate de- partment, it has departments for law, medicine, science, art, and theology. It has 220 teachers, and about 1400 students. The University lands com- prise over sixty acres, and contain twenty or more academical buildings, shaded with fine elms and other trees. The noblest is Memorial Hall, in recollection of the students who fell in the war of Secession. It is large and well-proportioned, and 200 feet high. The Great Hall is its principal apartment, 164 feet by 60 feet. In the vestibule are the tablets of the students (136) who died for their country. The Theatre holds 1300 persons. The University Library, a Gothic building known as Gore Hall, in form of a Latin cross, has a groined roof 35 feet high, and possesses about 200,000 books, while the University contains about 100,000 more in other detached halls. The governing bodv of the University consists of one president and six fellows, and a board of overseers, who meet in University Hall. There are forty-seven professorships. The course extends over four years, and the great insti- tution is ruled by a dignitary, Dr. Charles Eliot, super-eminently qualified by his learning, suavity, strength of character, and devotion, for the high charge which he bears amid universal popularity and esteem. Tt was our privilege to become the guests of President Eliot at his pleasant official abode in the BOSTON. 89 centre of the American Oxford, and in this way a very ample and agreeable acquaintance was made with Harvard men, manners, and systems. But Boston and its environs contained many friends beside, and connections by marriage, who had to be visited ; and there was, moreover, an American wedding at which we had the happiness to assist, peculiar in that it was celebrated within the drawing- room of the house, the very charming bride and her procession of attendants passing between lines gar- landed with flowers, held by little pages, to the grand piano, beside which two clergymen performed the brief rite. There was a festal gathering, too, of " American cousins " — extremely gay and cordial — to attend ; and one of our earliest days was devoted to a visit to Oak Knoll, Danvers, the residence of the esteemed poet, Whittier. The venerable singer lives in a comfortable and characteristic dwelling, surrounded by a small park, left much as Nature made it, and as the pre- Adamite glaciers chiselled out its dells and hil- locks, which are shaded by large oak, elm, maple, and magnolia trees, amid the boughs of which the American robins pipe, and chipmunks and grey squirrels play. Mr. Whittier is now verging upon eighty years of age, but his tall, lithe figure is still erect, his clear penetrating deep gray-blue eyes undimmed ; and albeit shy and reserved by habit, he unbends sweetly and genially to accepted friends. A stuffed bald-headed eagle, mounted as if grasping a small star-spangled banner, testified — if that were neeessary — to his patriotism ; an old tailless sheep- 9 o SEAS AND LANDS. dog, which nestled its muzzle on the master's knee while we talked, to his love of animals. His conversation, which was of the Quaker fashion, full of " thee's and thou's," was pointed, animated, and marked by the felicity of his printed works ; nor can any cultured person need to be told how classic, and lucid, and happy are many of Whittier's best lines. He smiled, half sadly, when I expressed the wish that he could come across the Atlantic to see, under the memorial window to Milton, in St. Margaret's Church at Westminster, his own admirable verse — " The New World honours thee, whose lofty plea For England's freedom made her own more sure. Thy page, immortal as its theme, shall be Their common freehold, while the worlds endure." He dropped a bright epigram in the course of our chat. I had been praising Emerson, and lamenting that a great authority — known to us both — dissented, and compared the Concord philosopher's style in prose to " the shooting forth of stones from a sack." " Ah ! but," replied instantly the old poet, " thou knowest well, friend, they are all precious stones." And I w T as happy enough to obtain an interesting avowal from his lips. He had been speaking of the enduring and gloomy influence of the old-accustomed Puritan doctrines upon the minds of New Engianders, of their pernicious darkening of life and literature, and how T that he himself had come under the cloud of Calvinism and its terrors. " But you," I said, " Sir, born in the purple of the Muses, never were, and never could have been a Calvinistic Puritan." BOSTON. 91 " Nay, thou'rt right," he answered, " the world was much too beautiful and God far too good. I never was of that mind." I made another delightful pilgrimage — this time to the shrine of a life-long regard and attachment. We passed a perfectly delightful day at the house of Emerson, in Concord, some twenty miles from Boston, entertained by Dr. Emerson, his son, who closely resembles his illustrious father in lineaments, and Miss Ellen Emerson, his daughter, whose sweet and benign countenance still more completely per- petuates the philosopher's serenity and radiant charm of expression. Judge Hoar, a well-known citizen of Concord, captured us for a time at the Concord Station, and drove us round to see the bridge, where the first musket was fired in the Revolu- tionary war. Is there any spot in ancient or modern lands more replete with sad, and yet lofty recollec- tions, than this where " Th' embattled fanners stood, And tired the shot, heard round the world." You recall the facts ? General Gage, commanding at Boston, had ordered the destruction of stores and guns collected near the river by the malcontents, and a column of some hundreds of British troops marched secretly to Concord to execute the order. They were met and checked at the little stream by a band of American "minute-men" under Major Isaac Bruddick, and, being resisted, they opened fire. The shots wounded a Revolutionary or two, and then Major Bruddick cried out, " fire, in God's 9 2 SEAS AND LANDS. name, fellow-soldiers !" himself discharging his piece. Two British grenadiers fell to the ensuing volley, and that which replied from the King's ranks killed the rebel officer and one Abner Hosmer. The first blood of the struggle had been fatally spilled ; the sorrowful but inevitable conflict had begun. At sound of those unhappy volleys the whole district rose — the British column was mobbed, harassed, decimated with ambuscades, as it drew back towards Boston, and must have been destroyed, but for Lord Percy's appearance and succour with 1200 men of the garrison. A bullet-hole in a neighbouring cottage still shows how hot the fight was, and how well these frame-buildings last. The bridge itself now presents the most peaceful sylvan scene imaginable — a grove of elm and maple leading to the wooden arches, a placid glittering rural river, and to mark its historical significance only a statue and a grave. The statue, by French, in bronze, spiritedly represents a Concord farmer turning from his plough, flint-lock gun in hand, and with eager, angry look, to the entrance of the bridge. The roadside inscription runs, " Grave of two British soldiers," and I bared my head in respect to those honest victims of a mistaken policy, who died doing their duty as much as George Washington's " minute-men." It was good to hear that when, in 1875, on the centenary of that hapless April 19th, America celebrated "the shot heard round the world," the resting-place of our poor fellow-countrymen was covered with flowers. 1 am proud to add that those votive blooms were deposited, with the kind approval of the Celebration Committee, by some BOSTON. 93 English workmen of the Waltham Watch Factory. If I could have met these worthy fellows I would have thanked them for all England. We may regret Lord North's policy and the King's obsti- nacy, but our British soldiers did their devoir, as always, in that quarrel ; now, happily, hard to remember. Hawthorne's house — scene of " Mosses from an Old Manse " — stands nigh the bridge, and Emerson's is not far away. The rooms in it are kept exactly as the poet-philosopher left them. There are his books, well marked ; the engraving, " Aurora of Guido," given by Carlyle for a marriage present ; the blotting pad with its latest ink impressions, the horsehair sofa on which he lay nigh to death, the wood-pile, the trees — in their branches the " g a y> polite titmouse " is immortalised — the simple "homely" home, with its low-pitched farmlike apartments and old-world furniture, all sacred and unchanged. I traced in more than one volume of his modest library the footsteps of his serene and radiant mind, especially the Indian translations. I saw where he had lighted on the passage from the Bhagavad-Gita, which struck him so, " When the red slayer saith, I slay." At dinner it was my distinction to conduct to the table and to sit beside his venerable widow, a lady now very aged and infirm, but still retaining marks of the beauty of " Queenie." Mrs. Emerson walks and converses with difficulty, but retains her clearness and sweet- ness of mind. A bouquet of wild blossoms sug- gested the question — 94 SEAS AND LANDS. " What flower of all the garden do you like best?" " Oh, I should be ashamed to give you any other answer, Sir Edwin, except ' The Rose.' " " But you know that is the flower, par excellence, of England ? " " Well, I do not love it a little bit the less on that account." In fact, the dear old lady was wholly delightful, but did not once speak about her great husband. After the repast we drove in Emerson's " carry-all " through the wild pine-woods to Walden Pond, the spot of all others dearest to his heart, and that where he was accustomed to meditate day after day, trudging the league of sandy road thither and back again. Those who know Emerson's poems will recall the verses — " If I could put my woods in song, And tell what's there enjoyed, All men would to my garden throng, And leave the cities void. My garden is a forest ledge, Which older forests bound ; The rocks slope to the blue lake edge, Then plunge to depths profound." It is, in truth, an unique spot, wild as when Red Indians alone trod it, where the deep lakelet .slumbers under the boughs of beech, hemlock, and " savage maple," and the solitude-loving Thoreau was content to build himself a hut. AVe sate under the white pines where Emerson was wont to pass BOSTOX. 95 the lonely hours, and then drove the sure-tooted American horse up and down neck-breaking wood- land alleys, over tree-stumps and hollows full of wild asters and yellow "touch-me-not," to cadi point of the sequestered pool which had been his favourite haunts ; and evening came upon us before we could return from the fascinating influences of the place, to the little white wooden house with green shutters consecrated by the genius of America's chief thinker and teacher. One other Boston pilgrimage must be mentioned. On the road from Cambridge to Mount Auburn stands a spacious and comfortable wooden house — everything almost is built from the forests in Xew England — looking over fields and gardens towards Brighton, and standing in pleasant grounds. There Washington lived; and there also Longfellow, the greatest of American poets, dwelt for many a year. By the kind invitation of the poet's daughter — the "grave 1 Alice" of his well-known line — a happy afternoon hour was passed reading the original MSS. of " Evangeline," and other world-known works, in the exquisitely neat handwriting of the author, in- specting the domestic treasures of his home, the pictures he loved, the pens and desk he used. Here was the armchair where he wrote the " Come to me, O my children ! " there the "Clock on the Stair" which ticked the " Never! For ever! " His portrait. on which a laurel-wreath hung, stood side by side with that of Emerson ; and the present gentle mistress of Craigie House told us many a trait and habit of her great and famous father, whose Ivries are to-day 96 SEAS AND LANDS. on every lip. A handsome girl was among the com- pany — a student in the Female Annexe at Harvard — from South Carolina. Her father's estate, near Savannah, had been desolated by Sherman's march, of which we spoke. I asked, " Have you all forgiven and forgotten that, and the war, down South ? " " We have forgiven," the Southern lady replied, " but we have not forgotten." Going home we crossed the bridge over the Charles River, where were conceived those tender lines beginning, " I stood on the bridge at midnight," and, full of thoughts about the waste of warfare, and the efforts of poets and philosophers to redeem and exalt, the ripples of the salt water seemed to murmur — " And, for ever and for ever — As long as the river flows, As long as life has passions As long as life has woes — The moon and her broken reflections, And the shadows, shall appear- Like the symbol of love in the heavens, And its wavering image here." Boston, Sept. 25, 1889. CHAPTER VIII. HARVARD. Ax agreeable sojourn in Boston — the greater part of it passed under the hospitable roof of the Presi- dent of Harvard University, Dr. Charles W. Eliot — enabled me to study with advantage the chief educa- tional centre of the United States. A walk of two miles — which may be performed by the electric or the horse car — brings you, bv busv streets first, and then by pretty villas and gardens, to Harvard Square, in the vicinity of which the buildings of the University congregate. The principal of these, alike architec- turally and in point of interest, is the Memorial Hall, recently erected to commemorate the Harvard students who gave their lives for their country's safety and integrity in the Secession War. This structure of red brick and stone, with a lofty and ornate campa- nile, contains, beside a very large dining-hall and a commodious Theatre for Lectures, i£c, a central corridor, imposingly adorned with marble, polished woods, and stained glass windows, the walls of which exhibit tablets bearing the names and places of death of all those devoted alumni. Near and far around about this stately building are scattered others, well reared in granite, masonry, or brick, dedicated to 9 8 SEAS AND LANDS. Law, to Medicine, to Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Classical Studies, Gymnastic Exercises, &c. The Gymnasium is a particularly fine and well-equipped erection, and is scientifically conducted with a view to give Harvardians the corpus sanum which is so indispensable to the mens sana. Round about, or among these various and numerous edifices of the University, the " Hall " and " Houses " used by the students as residences cluster — built mainly of red brick, in a plain substantial style, and harmonising well enough with the marble and stone- work of the other structures, and the groves of elm, ash, hickory, maple and oak, everywhere liberally bestowing shade and verdure to the New England Academe. The President's House stands pleasantly in one of the open grassy spaces characteristic of Harvard, Brookline, and all the Boston suburbs, nor can I forbear repeating how agreeable a sense of good order and goodwill is imparted by these un- fenced gardens, open to all alike, but never tres- passed upon. There are no distinctive colleges in Harvard, but only " Halls and Houses," which do not produce any esprit de coips, as with us, as they are merely large common dormitories. It is a common practice for two students to occupy one apartment, with two small sleeping-rooms attached, or sometimes only one with two beds. The follow- ing table exhibits four scales of annual expendi- ture, the expenses of the long vacation not being included : — HARVARD. 99 Least. 8150 Keollolliirul. 8150 Moderate. 8150 Verv I.ilM-rul. Tuition .... 8150 Books and stationery . 28 35 45 01 Clothing .... 70 120 150 800 Room .... 22 80 100 175 Furniture (annual average) 10 15 25 50 Board . . . . 183 152 152 804 Fuel and light . 11 15 30 45 Washing .... 15 20 40 50 Societies and subscription to sports (annual average) 35 50 Servant .... 25 Sundries .... Total . 45 55 86 150 8484 8502 8812 81,3(50 Members of any department of the University can board at cost by joining the association which uses the great dining-hall of Memorial Hall. The cost of board to the members of this association is expected not to exceed S4.2") a week. It will he perceived that the Republic offers a high collegiate education and degree for less than £100 per annum. The " men " wear no distinctive collegiate dress whatever. Harvard College was founded in 103(>, bv the General Court of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, the vote reading as follows — "The Court agree to give £400 towards a school or college, whereof £200 shall be paid the next year, and £200 when the work is finished, and the next Court to appoint where and what building." In the following year John Harvard, a nonconforming clergyman of Eng- land, died at Charlestown, leaving half of his whole property and his entire library (about o00 volumes) ioo SEAS AND LANDS. to the institution. The value of this bequest was more than double the entire sum originally voted by the Court, and it was resolved to open the college at once, and to give it the name of Harvard. The first class was formed in the same year. In 1642 the Act was passed establishing the overseers of Harvard College with this modest preamble — " Whereas, through the good hand of God upon us, there is a college founded in Cambridge, in the county of Middlesex, called Harvard College, for the encourage- ment whereof this Court has given the sum of £400, and also the revenue of the ferry betwixt Charles- town and Boston, and that the well ordering and managing of the said college is of great concern- ment." Assuredly it was of " great concernment," and has grown by nobly generous donations and personal devotion more than by any munificence of the Government, to its present wealth and usefulness, maintaining a splendid and erudite staff of sixty-six learned professors, besides numerous assistant-tutors, and being able to bestow on indigent but meritorious scholars as much as $45,000 a year in scholarships, " beneficiary funds," monitorships, and the like. A " parietal committee " looks after the discipline of the institution, which seems, however, to an Oxford man extremely lax, there being few or no restrictions as to hours, attendance at lectures or chapel, or roll- call ; and a general freedom as to coming and going, working or playing, which, however, appears to agree with the Democratic Muses; for no one could desire to see a more gentlemanly or reasonably decorous set of students. The statutes sav — HARVARD. 101 The respective Faculties have authority to impose hues and levy assessments for damage done to property ; to inflict, at their discretion, the penalties of admonition, suspension, dismission, and expulsion, and to use all other appropriate means of discipline; hut no student shall be separated from the University, either temporarily or permanently, by a vote of less than two-thirds of the members of his Faculty present and voting thereon. Sus- pension is a separation from the University for a fixed period of time. It may be accompanied with a requirement of residence in a specified place, and of the performance of specified tasks. Dismission closes a student's connection with the University, without necessarily precluding his return. Expulsion is the highest academic censure, and involves final separation. Much, under such an easy regime, must obviously depend upon the character of the Principal, and Harvard is fortunate in possessing a head at present, perfectly blending the suaviter and fortiter in his just, commanding, and sympathetic sway. The regulations of the Gymnasium arc very practical and wise — Upon entering the University, each student is entitled to an examination by the director, in which his physical proportions are measured,' his strength tested, his heart and lungs examined, and information is solicited concerning his general health and inherited tendencies. From the data thus procured, a special order of appropriate exercises is made out for each student, with specifications of the movements and apparatus which he may hot use. After working on this prescription for three or six months, the student is entitled to another examination, by which tin- results of his work are ascertained, and the director enabled t" make a further prescription for his individual case. The Astronomical Observatory is most intelli- gently and sedulously carried on by its gifted 102 SEAS AND LANDS. director, Mr. Edward Pickering, under whose kind guidance I inspected admirably designed apparatus of registration and observation, and saw some of the most interesting examples of stellar photography and planet pictures. A perfect treasure-store has been accumulated of the spectra of stars, &c. The Arnold Arboretum is another special and excellent department. It was founded for the purpose of scientific research and experiment in arboriculture, forestry, and dendrology, and as a museum of trees and shrubs suited to the climate of Massachusetts. The arboretum occupies a por- tion of the Bussey farm in West Roxbury, 160 acres in extent, and under a special arrangement with the City of Boston is open to the public every day in the year from sunrise to sunset. The living col- lections are supplemented by an herbarium, museum, and library. These occupy temporarily the "Dwight" House, at the corner of Warren and Cottage Streets in Brookline, until a suitable library and museum building can be erected on the arboretum grounds. There is an admirable college library — where I saw the original MS. of Shelley's " Ode to a Skylark " — managed by a devotee to his duties, Mr Justin Winsor, open for use to all students, who may have three volumes at a time for four weeks. The most singular and characteristic feature of the University is, perhaps, the arrangement under which preachers and ministers of all sorts of denominations take it by turns to officiate in the College chapel, or sometimes officiate there simultaneously, in a way which would suggest the Scotchman's definition of HARVARD. 103 the haggis, viz., that it was " fine confused eating." On June 14, 1886, on the unanimous recommenda- tion of the preachers and the Plummer Professor, the President and Fellows voted "That the statute numbered lo, concerning religious services, be amended by striking out the clause ' at which the attendance of the students is required,' " and on June 10 the Board of Overseers concurred in this vote. Attendance at the religious services of the University was thus, by the advice of those who conduct these services, and to the satisfaction of all concerned in them, made wholly voluntary. Oriental languages are not neglected, and Sanskrit especially is faithfully advanced by its accomplished professor, Mr. Charles R. Lanman, while the name of Professor Charles E. Norton, holding the chair of the Fine Arts, is known to all students of {esthetic literatures. Speaking of the splendid benefactions bv which the buildings of Harvard have been reared, and its large educational staff endowed, President Eliot said, last year, in an address delivered before the " Phi Beta Kappa " Society — The endowment of institutions of education, including libraries aud museums, by private persons in the United States is a pheno- menon without precedent or parallel, and is a legitimate effect of democratic institutions. Under a tyranny — were it ,that of a Marcus Aurelius — or an oligarchy, were it as enlightened as that which now rules Germany, such a phenomenon would he simply impossible. The University of Strasburg was lately established by an Imperial Decree, and is chiefly maintained out of the revenue of the State. Harvard University has been 250 years in growing to its present stature, and is even now inferior at many points to the new University of Strasburg ; but Harvard i.- the 104 SEAS AND LANDS. creation of thousands of persons, living and dead, rich and poor, learned and simple, who have voluntarily given it their time, thought, or money, and lavished upon it their affection ; Stras- burg exists by the mandate of the ruling few directing upon it a part of the product of ordinary taxation. Like the voluntary system in religion, the voluntary system in the higher education buttresses democracy ; each demands from the community a large outlay of intellectual activity and moral vigour. The subjoined further remarks from the same eloquent lips cannot but be read with profit, as they give the views of one who is the chief scholar and highest dignitary of learning in the States, upon this phenomenon which every observer must note — the gradual uprise in America of three aristocracies, those of historic descent, of culture, and of wealth. In politics the successful statesman founds nothing ; his gens often sinks back into the ocean of general existence, like a collapsed bubble. But the names of Dana, Cabot, Channing, Lothrop, Higginson, Endicott, Adams, and the like keep in front, like those of Cossus, Claudius, Appius, and Flavius in ancient Rome, and education Hows constantly in the same channels generation after generation. The President's words were — In the future there will undoubtedly be seen a great increase in the number of permanent families in the United States — families in which honour, education, and property will be trans- mitted with reasonable certainty ; and a fair beginning has already been made. On the quinquennial catalogue of Harvard Uni- versity there are about 5(>0 family stocks, which have been represented by graduates at intervals for at least one hundred years. On the Yale catalogue there are about 420 such family stocks ; and it is probable that all other American colleges HARVARD. »°5 which have existed one hundred years or more show similar facts in proportion to their age and to the number of their grad- uates. There is nothing in American institutions to prevent this natural process from extending and continuing. The college graduate who does not send his son to college is a curious ex- ception. American colleges are, indeed, chiefly recruited from the sons of men who were not college-bred themselves; Un- democratic society is mobile, and permits young men of ability to rise easily from the lower to the higher levels. But, on the other hand, nothing in the constitution of society forces men down who have once risen, or prevents their children and grand- children from staying on the higher level if they have the virtue in them. The interest in family genealogies has much increased of late years, and hundreds of thousands of persons are already recorded in printed volumes which have been compiled and published by voluntary contributions or by the zeal of individ- uals. In the Harvard University Library are 415 American family genealogies, three-quarters of which have been printed since 1860. Many of these families might better be called clans or tribes, so numerous is their membership. Thus of the North- ampton Lyman family there were living, when the family genealogy was published in 1872, more than 4000 persons. When some American Galton desires in the next century to study hereditary genius or character under a democracy, he will find ready to his hand an enormous mass of material. I must quote my distinguished friend and host once more upon a subject of universal interest — that of whether the democratic form of government necessarily breeds democratic manners. Assuredly an Englishman misses in the States the deferential tone of old civilisations, the habitual regard of rank or position, the readiness to serve. But lie finds as much or more goodwill, as much or more real serviceableness, as much or more of frank manly IxmJioniir, among these Wi nestlings of the Bird of io6 SEAS AND LANDS. Freedom." Here is what President Eliot said on the matter, and there can exist no higher authority, or more equitable if patriotic judge — The highest education might exist, and yet the highest types of manners might fail. Do these fail ? On this important point American experience is already interesting and, I think, con- clusive. Forty years ago Emerson said it was a chief felicity of our country that it excelled in women. It excels more and more. Who has not seen in public and in private life American women unsurpassable in grace and graciousness, in serenity and dignity, and in effluent gladness and abounding courtesy ? Now, the lady is the consummate fruit of human society at its best. ' In all the higher walks of American life there are men whose bearing and aspect at once distinguish them as gentlemen. They have personal force, magnanimity, moderation, and refine- ment ; they are quick to see and to sympathise ; they are pure, brave, and firm. These are also the qualities that command success, and herein lies the only natural connection between the possession of property and nobility of character. In a mobile or free society the excellent or noble man is like to win ease and in- dependence, but it does not follow that under any form of govern- ment the man of many possessions is necessarily excellent. On the evidence of my reading and of my personal observation at home and abroad, I fully believe that there is a larger propor- tion of ladies and gentlemen in the United States than in any other country. This proposition is, I think, true with the high- est definition of the term "lady "or " gentleman ;" but it is also true, if ladies and gentlemen are only persons who are clean and well-dressed, who speak gently and eat with their forks. It is unnecessary, however, to claim any superiority for democracy in this respect ; enough that the highest type of manners in men and women are produced abundantly on democratic soil. It would appear, then, from American experience that neither generations of privileged ancestors, nor large inherited posses- sions, are necessary to the making of a lady or a gentleman. HARVARD. 107 What is necessary? In the first place, natural uif'ts The gentleman is born in democracy, no less than in a monarchy. It was my privilege and honour to lecture twice before the University of Harvard by special invita- tion ; and the extreme consideration of the audience rendered easy and pleasant an otherwise formidable task. The lectures were delivered in the Sander's Theatre of the Memorial Hall, holding 1400, a large portion of whom were students of Harvard. In the first address I sought to expound the three main philosophical ideas found in the Upanishads, or religious treatises of the Vedanta ; and in the second I had upon the table a printed and a manu- script Sanskrit text of the colossal Epic Poem of India called " The Mahabharata," of which I ex- plained the leading incidents and general character, reading my own translation of the concluding por- tions. I only mention this to record that no one could have had a more intelligent, attentive, or sym- pathetic audience than the University furnished, and that the success of one so ill-qualified to speak upon such great topics — topics, moreover, promis- ing so little general attraction — was a convincing proof of the eagerness of these young educated American gentlemen for expanded ideas. And since the last periods of the second lecture em- bodied ideas which I had formed as to tin 1 great utility of philosophical studies — and particularly of Oriental metaphysics and literature — for the American student, I shall venture to append here the peroration of that address. After terminating 108 SEAS AND LANDS. the descriptive and recitative part of what I had to say, these words were added — Since I am happy enough to find myself face to face with the students of this renowned University, I would venture, not on the impertinence of advice, of which I am incapable, but on the privilege of a few friendly, respectful remarks, encouraged by your generous reception to-night. As I have seen in Washington, with great interest, the Capitol, and in it the' Supreme Court which is the heart of your political life, so I recognise here, in the seat of learning so worthily ruled by my valued friend and gracious host President Eliot, the intellectual centre of your vast com- munity. It is not because Oxford is older than Harvard that an Oxonian sees any further into the future than a Harvard man, or has any right to give himself prophetic or archaeological airs. It is true that my grandfather served King George before your Constitution was even drawn up, and that my own particular college was founded by King Alfred the Great. But we have no record in our ancient seats of learning so wholly noble and so unspeakably exalting as the building in which I am addressing you. When first I entered it I read, with feelings of admiration, and I may say of irrepressible envy, the Latin inscription over its gateway, "In memoriam eorum qui his sedibus instituti mortem pro patrid oppetiverunt." I have found with pride and pleasure, greater than any aristocratic ties could ever give me, the names of friends, and even of kindred by marriage, inscribed among those illustrious dead whom Harvard offered on the shrine of a pure and lofty, and a justly victorious patriotism. Passing through your Memorial Hall, and reading that imperishable cata- logue of youthful worthies, who suddenly learned the highest lessons that life can teach at the knee of Duty, and by the light of the flash of cannons — fresh, moreover, from journeying through your rich and fertile States — I have realised, as never before, the meaning of Lowell's lines, where, speaking of America, he wrote — " Binding the gold of war-dishevelled hair On such sweet brows as never other bore." HARVARD. 109 At Concord Bridge I have seen the now peaceful and sylvan spot where "the embattled fanners stood, And tired the shot, heard round the world," and I bared my head, as much to them, as at the adjacent grave of King George's soldiers, who also died for duty, defending a mistaken policy. At Gettysburg I have passed near the spot where the peach-trees now cover with bright con- ciliating verdure the field whereon North and South met in de- plorable but inevitable conflict. You have had by the strange and stern decree of Destiny, to contend with and to vanquish first your fathers, and next your brothers. I think you have still one more great combat, and one more consummating victory to win, which will be over yourselves! If I were a Harvard man my dream and desire would be to help to continue that brilliant galaxy of intellect which glitters already with the names of Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Irving, and many another such. If I were a Harvard man I would hope and strive to give to that statue of Liberty which towers aloft over your New York harbour, as Pallas Athene once looked majestically over Sunium, the golden a'gis of great and high ideas, leavening the practical pursuits of life; the ivory, carved and chased, of an ever-aspiring Republican ait and litera- ture, signal alike for courage, elevation, and refinement. I would aspire to have America regarded abroad as large-hearted as she is liberal, as equitable as she is fearless, as splendid in the service of all mankind as she is strong for her own security and progress. And among the minor means to this I would wish to see culti- vated those fields of Eastern philosophical thought which I have here so feebly and hastily traversed, as affording a sweet and sovereign medicine against the fever of a too busy national life. I would ask the days as they pass to bestow, as Lmerson simrs, not merely material gifts, not alone natural development, not the (),(.)( H) souls, and ranks third after Chicago and Milwaukee' in the Lake grain and shipping trade. But here, (putting Ohio, the train flies through the north of Indiana State, crossing the lower end of that vast peninsula of Michigan, which lies between the lake of the same name, and Lake Huron. Chicago is reached late in the evening, and at this point a transfer must be made across the city from the " depot " of the Boston and Albany Railway to that of the Chicago and North- Western Company. Now we obtain seats and sleeping-berths which will only once be changed until arrival at San Francisco, and one settles down for the four nights and four days which are to finish the transcon- tinental journey with all the feelings of tenants secure from eviction. The glories of Chicago have been sufficiently sung by others, and everybody knows what a Phoenix among modern cities she is. Organised as a town in 1833, and incorporated in 1837, she then had 4170 inhabitants, increased in 1880 to 503,304, and now over 700,000. The great conflagration took place in 1871, destroying 17,500 houses at a loss of almost 200,000,000 dollars. In 1874 another lire destroyed about 5,000,000 dollars worth of property. The new city, which rose superbly from the ashes. has buildings in its business parts unsurpassed by any other of the large towns on the continent. It ranks next to New York in commercial importance, and in 1854 was already the largest grain shipping n8 SEAS AND LANDS. port of the world. Its cattle, pork, and timber trades stand pre-eminent over any similar market in the world. Manufacturing is also very largely carried on, employing above 150,000 hands in pro- ductions very varied. The storage capacity for grain and other produce is about 40,000,000 bushels. It is the greatest railway centre on the continent, having a water frontage of thirty-eight miles, taking in the river and its branches. This is not includ- ing the lake front, where an outer harbour is now finished. Traversing Illinois by night the Mississippi is crossed, here only a little river, and one of sand- banks and scant water, compared to what she is destined to become when " Mighty Missouri " further west has added her sister wave. Beyond the Mississippi the State of Iowa stretches out to view interminable fields of maize, which is now chiefly standing in shocks, with pumpkins, shining like helmets of gold, intermixed in the bountiful crop. The channels traversed here all drain south- ward to the Mississippi, and the country continues rich and green by reason of their waters, while the train steams forward past Boone, on the Des Moines River, past Loveland, where it dips into the Missouri Valley, to Council Bluffs, seat of Pottawattamisc County, built upon high cliffs overlooking the Mis- souri Valley. Here a prodigious iron bridge, more than a mile long, lifts the traveller across the great stream to Omaha, in Nebraska State, on the farther bank. Planted half on the river bed, half on the lofty brows ranging along it, Omaha looks, OCEAX TO OCEAX. ■ i 9 as .she is, a "big place," with a thriving business. We shall go on hence, all night, along the Platte River, where the towns and townships still cluster quite thickly as far as Grand Island. Then the veritable prairie begins, which has for some distance past been announcing its advent by- vast stretches of grassy plains interlocking with the maize-fields and pumpkins, the clover and the beech groves. All day long, this hot and blue Sunday, have we steamed through the rolling hillocks and widespread, sea-like levels of a measureless expanse, wherein grow nothing but grasses, burned to drab by the bright, rainless weather, yet maintaining, and evidently even fattening, hundreds of thousands of fine cattle and droves of horses. Far and near roamed these beautiful oxen and shapely steeds, grazing ; and apparently as much untended as the bygone buffaloes, their predecessors, whose natural food, the " buffalo grass," covers every hollow. Yet now and again you would see emerging from some dusty hillside the figure of the Cow-boy, with which South Kensington made us all familiar. He would suddenly appear, mounted on a wiry buck-jumper, with heavy spurs and whip, controlling the herd. We have by this time left behind upon the wooded hills and valleys the large centres of population. The latest stragglers of the many pines and maples have gradually yielded to the prairie, which will show no trees, or hardly any. The knots of shops and huts occurring here and there along the line call themselves "cities" still, but are merely villages for the ranchers to shop at, and whence they niav i2o SEAS AND LANDS. entrain their produce. A little wooden church, painted red and green, with three graves only in its churchyard of an acre, testifies to the newness of one settlement which we pass. At another, Ogallala, a frame and wattled building, proudly inscribed "Opera House," might perhaps hold one hundred people. The real and almost innumerable inhabitants of the Prairie, as we now behold it, are those singular creatures the prairie-dogs, to be seen in thousands all through Nebraska from the windows of the train. Everybody has read descriptions of these odd little animals, and many, no doubt, who peruse these lines have had opportunities of examining them to better advantage than when natural history is studied at twenty-five miles an hour. But you may certainly see as many as ever you please to watch in the Nebraska prairies, since the "dogs" have grown entirely accustomed to the passing- locomotive, and regard it and the cars from their "cities" with as calm a nonchalance as suburban dwellers in London exhibit, smoking in their back gardens. At intervals of three or four miles all along the track, for as far as one hundred miles, these "cities" are encountered, groups of hillocks and burrows, where the light soil of the prairie has been scratched out, and heaped in a neat mound over the excavation. On the top of this, or near at hand, sit the prairie-dogs, or stand — for they have a rabbit-like fashion of rising upon their hindquarters and folding their fore-feet, in a meditative manner, across their wdiite breasts. Their general colour is OCEAN TO OCEAN. 121 sandy-brown, with a dark collar. When they run it is in a style partly resembling a dog, partly a rat, and they cock aloft a short tail which they possess in a most comically important way. Once or twice I observed the small owl perched on a prairie-dog's hillock, which is well known to be a joint tenant of his burrow, together with the rattlesnake; but no specimen of the latter, of course, came under such rapid observation. The wind blows all the line dust away from the stuff turned out by the " dog," leaving a pile of smooth pebbles, so that he seems to have taken to mining operations for gold or jewels. There will be from fifty to three hundred burrows in a "city," and two or three "dogs" visible on or near each ; and, seeing that they are generally located far from water, the prairie-dog must either be indifferent to drinking, or must find what moisture he needs in roots and succulent stems. Near Cheyenne we leave Nebraska, and, touching a corner of Colorado, enter Wyoming, the southern regions of which we traverse all Sunday night, finding ourselves on Monday morning amid the wild granitic mountains, called Wahsateh and Uintah. These are offshoots of the Rocky Range, and gaunt avant-gardes of the desolate, arid, and yellow upland basin in which lies the great Salt Lake, now very near. It seems strange that, after painfully crossing the interminable plains and ranges which the " Union Pacific" now so lightly traverses, Brigham Young and his Mormons should have finally halted in the forbidden region here reached when the green sierra 122 SEAS AND LANDS. lay not far beyond. Grim, bare weather-worn boulders of red and drab granite of enormous size line the dusky track, melancholy basins of dark ochreous sand, dotted with the everlasting " sage-brush " alternate with awful crags opening into gloomy canyons — a land of exceeding loneliness and de- pressing apparent barrenness, where a ring of stones and a wooden cross now and again marks the grave of some forgotten pioneer, and plentiful bleached skeletons of cattle and horses show how difficult and costly was the overland voyage of the old time, for the " prairie schooner," as the emigrant's waggon was styled. A happier record is to be observed painted on the granite rocks at Summit, where " Troy Jack " and " Jemmy Kidd " have inscribed their honest names on the occasion, as they let us know, of fixing the highest rails in this part of the over- land line, and the difference between steam and the ancient fashion of crossing the continent is illustrated, to the honour and glory of those good workers, as we run by more than one slow party of settlers " on the trail." Thundering down the in- clines, toiling laboriously with two engines up the heavy grades, the " Paraiso " — as our car is named — rattles finally into Ogden station early on Monday morning. A batch of cow-boys in the station-yard shows that ranching goes on even in these seeming deserts. A group of lied Indians, in parti-coloured blankets, hangs disconsolately about the place — the first yet seen of the former owners of the land. The huge hills round the hot town are smoking with OCEAN TO OCEAX. 123 brushwood fires, lighted to improve the pasturage. The Great Halt Lake lies near the depot, glittering green in colour, under the strong sunlight, and belted with a dazzling border of the white alkali. which covers every flat and lowland in the vicinity. Now we coast the northern shores of this Dead Sea of Central North America, which recalls all the features of Lake Asphaltites in Palestine. The same parched red mountains are ranged around it, from whose sides and from the adjourning " wadis " is washed the bitter saline efflorescence which glistens all over the face of the plain and girdles the emerald water with a border of silver. But that water is poisonous as vitriol, and the silver- edged banks are fatal to all animal life. Nor can there exist any more dreary little settlements than these which cluster round each isolated station. Skirting for some hours the shallows of the great dismal sea, our train plunges into the upper portion of the Utah Desert, and hence, for many hundreds of miles, the track lies through a bleak, barren, mono- tonous region of naked mountains and treeless, hungry, stony plains, for ever glistening with the bitter alkali, for ever covered with the brittle, brist- ling, dull-grey "sage-brush,*' unredeemed by the wing of a single bird or the footmark of a solitary furred creature. All day long, and all night long, and all day long again, the overland train thunders on, hurtles through the canyons, and rattles over the basins of this lonely land, where the pioneers of the line had to wasre fierce battle with the lied Indians i2 4 SEAS AND LANDS. more than once in order to get their sleepers laid and their rails fixed. Now and then, at the way- side stations, a group of the aboriginals may be observed, with gay blankets and grimy, savage faces, subdued into dazed acquiescence with the new order of things, which has taken from them their desolate uplands and the buffalo-grazing grounds below. If they wish to travel by the fire- horse, which, along with the fire-water, has doomed their tribes, the administration permits them to squat on the tail-boards of the cars, where they enjoy the dust, and jar, and smoke of forty miles per hour, as a perfectly delightful • luxury. Not until Reno is reached, about 280 miles from San Francisco, do we emerge from that awful wilder- ness of Utah and Nevada, which the Union Pacific has pierced, and rendered a bridge between the Atlantic and Pacific. At Reno a little mountain stream, the Truckee, transforms the waste into a garden of green crops and poplar groves, showing that nothing is needed except water to give to all those silent glistening alkali flats and red naked uplands the harvests of Iowa and the pastures of Nebraska. One learns the immeasurable value of a river in noting how the little Truckee, as far as her slender stream can be spread, causes plenty to spring from desolation, and the blank white wilder- ness to laugh with verdure. At this point of the prodigious journey the upper peaks of the Sierra Nevada came into sight, and we commence the ascent of the Californian Alps. The wilderness lies, at last, behind us ; before us are OCEAN TO OCEAN. 125 gigantic mountain-walls, planted thickly with pine forests, rugged with hanging boulders, lined here and there with long slides of timber, constructed by the lumberers, in order to send down the dressed trunks from the upper woods. Just beyond Truckee, at an elevation of more than 5000 feet, we cross the dividing line between the States of California and Nevada, the latter of which, albeit larger than all Ireland, contains only a population of 12,000 souls. But she is rich in silver and gold mines, and in unlimited possibilities, and she, moreover, runs southward — down from these wintry highlands, where even now the snow lies thick amid the pines, to the burning regions of Yucca and Yuma upon the Colorado River. On the Divide, at a station named " Summit," we top the snowy Sierra, and are at an elevation of 7400 feet. The air is rarefied, as well as severely chilly, and greatcoats and shawls are worn even in our well-closed car. The heavy snowstorm of last night, the first of the season, has thickly loaded all the great pines with white wreaths, and given to the tall peaks around a very wintry aspect. From this point to the blue Canyon below, the views are magnificent, but the endless line of snow-sheds cuts them off continually from the eager gaze. These sheds extend for twenty-seven miles in an almost unbroken series, built solidly of timber to guard the trains from avalanches and drifts; and they fre- quently take fire, to the heavy loss of the company and the serious delay of passengers. The track boldly curving, and ascending or descending heavy i26 SEAS AND LANDS. grades, skirts for some time a large mountain tarn, called Donner Lake, from the explorer of that name, who perished by its margin with all his party. Enormous in girth and altitude are the firs growing on the mountain-sides hereabouts, and marvellous are the vistas as one glances through their huge trunks and branches laced with the snow, at the deep valleys lying below the track. We are two hours late in our transit of 3600 miles — no very serious unpunctuality — but the engineer is anxious to be " on time " in Sacramento ; and the long train, with its cars each weighing twenty tons, rolls down the Pacific slope at a pace to make nervous persons uncomfortable. And now, as if by magic, the scene changes while we rapidly drop to the sunny uplands and foot-hills of Alta California. The snow dis- appears, the trees multiply in variety and number, wild blossoms deck the undergrowth — the rich red soil glows in the sunshine through the full foliage — we fly through lovely groves, through verdant clear- ings, then clusters of joretty cottages, to a region of vineyards and orchards. Lower down, at Dutch Flat, we come to where the gold-miners have washed away a whole mountain-side with their hydraulic pipes, and lower still we pass a Chinese village, and rattle merrily down to the Sacramento plain, whence 'Frisco is distant only ninety miles. Speedily these are run over, and reaching Port Costa the entire train is put on board an immense ferry-steamer, and we cross an inlet of the sea, for Oakland, the terminus of the long line. Here another ferry- steamer receives and wafts us over the Sacramento, OCEAN TO OCEAN. 127 and we repair to the big Palace Hotel at San Francisco, neither fatigued nor bored with the traject of 3600 miles from Massachusetts Bay to the Golden Gate, although our longest stop on the passage has not been above seventy minutes. San Francisco, Oct 9, 1889. CHAPTER X. SAN FRANCISCO. The capital of California is like nothing else in the United States. A city only forty years old, with a population of nearly 360,000 souls, with rateable estate valued at 1,800,000 dollars, with a vast maritime commerce filling its magnificent bay ; north and south of it a territory of boundless fer- tility, east of it the Sierra Range, holding up to the sun millions of acres of luxuriant forests, rich vineyard soil, and terraces where the bounty of Nature gives almost anything for the asking, to say nothing of its out-turn of gold, which from 1848 to 1888 was worth over 1,000,000,000 dollars— such is San Francisco. She bears everywhere amid her exuberant prosperity tokens of her rapid growth. The drill-marks are not as yet worn out from her granite road-stones, even in the busiest thorough- fares ; the finest paved ways in her proudest streets are interrupted by patches of rotten plank ; splendid palaces of commerce or pleasure alternate with low shanties of framework or adobe huts ; and in her very midst nestles the hideous and uncleanly Chinese quarter, which, when really finished, she will not tolerate. It almost takes the breath of m I o . .. | . ft &:/ fe \mmmn e_ 5; :C2 l rjt3 ( ^a \ :! ■ 5 ^irs* -^ s ^ &2 SAN FRANCISCO. 129 statisticians away when they attempt to recite the facts and figures of the birth and development of this extraordinary capital. Its first house was only built in 1835, when the place was called " Yerba Buena," from a medicinal root which grows wild here. At that time it transacted a poor little trade with Indians in oil and hides. One day a settler named Marshall found gold at Coloma, and the tide of adventurers began to How which carried " 'Frisco " to the high-water mark of affluence. The " rush " is long ago over ; the ships which brought the gold-diggers by thousands are doing duty as coal hulks or Hour stores ; the red wood and cedar bushes have grown over the spots on the Sierra where the first miners got their dust and nuggets. But California has found better things than gold or silver in her soil — her forests, her trade, her farms and dairies, and, above all, in her delightful climate, where anybody can work all the day through, from one year's end to another. The gold fever has abated, and left her all the healthier, with the habit, however, of prodigious affluence, and a passion for that solid coinage of single and double eagles, which it is a pleasure to handle after the grubby one and five dollar notes of the Eastern States. The city stands on the inner slope of a singular peninsula, planted between a gull' and the ocean. The ground it now sits on has been pushed forward into the sea (the hills at the back being steep), so that there are to-day paved streets where in 1ST.* large ships used to ride at anchor. The business quarters are compactly built, and the city, as a whole, covers i 3 o SEAS AND LANDS. an area of about eleven square miles. Built in the shape of an amphitheatre, upon three hills, it presents a striking appearance when seen from the sea or bay, and is regularly laid out with broad streets, vilely paved. The principal thoroughfare is Market Street, Kearney and Montgomery Streets are fashionable promenades, with handsome retail shops. Pine and California Streets are what Wall Street is to New York, or Broad Street and Lombard Street to London, the chief centres for bankers, brokers, and insurance companies. California Street Hill is perhaps the most "genteel " portion of the town. Sacramento, Dupont, Jackson, Pacific, and Commercial Streets form the Chinese quarter. The tramways are the urban wonder of San Francisco. You can go everywhere, at all times, up and down hill, landwards or seawards, without a minute's delay, by the ubiquitous car — not electric, as in Boston, but propelled by endless wire ropes running under the street cobbles. Whenever you walk the rumble of the wheels and ropes under your footsteps will remind you that it is San Francisco, and the paving of the thoroughfares is so rough and loose that driving, except on the trams, becomes a real ]ienance. Thus "all the world" throngs the cars, which fly to and fro, completely replacing omnibuses, which do not exist, and cabs, the hire of which, as in all American cities, is prohibitively dear/ A large proportion of the people in the streets is Mongolian, and after a little time you must make the prescribed ex2>edition to the Chinese quarter. I had the mistaken notion that the Californian SAN FXANCISCO. 131 Canton was situated by the water's edge, and alwavs wondered why the San Franciscans could not put up more patiently with what 1 had imagined to he a sort of Flowery Land Wapping. But I wonder no longer at the impatience of the San Franciscans against the almond-eyed folk, nor at the occasional violence of the "hoodlums;" for the Chinese city here, which I have again and again explored, is a most unmitigated nuisance to the Californian capital, and a perpetual danger to its health and peace. It is lodged — like a portion of another planet — in the very heart of the city, close to Kearney Street, one of the chief business quarters, and near to other great and important thorough- fares, the value and salubrity of which it most seriously impairs. You come upon it quite suddenly. You turn abruptly from a causeway full of splendid shops and handsome restaurants into narrow lanes where the odd names of pig-tailed merchants alter- nate in English characters with long swinging tablets in blue, yellow, and vermilion, covered with the Chinese inscriptions denoting their trades and commodities. The sensitive nostril recognises the locality before the eyes light upon it by a peculiar and wholly indescribable evil odour which must for ever henceforward remain associated with the thought of China and the Chinese. They do not live in this extraordinary quarter, but rather wallow like pigs and burrow like rats. The cellars of every low and filthy tenement in the twenty or thirty streets in- habited by them are choked with Chinese, packed awav at niii'ht like sardines. You enter anv one 1 32 SEAS AND LANDS. of these, and plunge down a rotten staircase into a dark, narrow passage, on either side of which are ranged double bunks, one above the other, like those on board the most crowded emigrant ship. In the passage-way some are frizzling absolutely repulsive articles of diet over lamps or charcoal fires : in the bunks, stretched on bits of matting, others are lying asleep, or mending their unwashed clothing, or smoking tobacco and opium. There is no air, nor any attempt to provide it. The daily and nightly arrangements of these Chinese are, in truth, one long and constant contempt of every accepted principle of sanitation ; yet they live and thrive, and are reputed by no means especially un- healthy. Thanks to the sandy soil on which San Fran- cisco is built, the Chinese landlord or tenant of a house in this quarter can delve as deeply as he likes in the way of subterranean dens, and many of these underground burrows go thirty feet into the earth. Those who were smoking opium in the lodging-bunks were only amateurs, taking a whiff of second or third rate stuff after the day's labours. The serious opium-smoker frequents establishments provided for the purpose, some of which we visited. Here he reclines on a mat, on an upper or lower berth of the close, stifling Closet, which holds perhaps, a dozen votaries of the anodyne. An attendant furnishes a little smoky oil lamp, a lychee shell full of the black sticky extract, a long brass pin, and a thick pipe made of bamboo, with a tiny metal bowl fixed midway upon its stem. Reclining SAN FRANC/SCO. 1.33 with his head upon a wooden pillow, the votarv, who is far beyond that stage of self-consciousness or self-respeet, which objects to being watched by "foreign devils," dips the pin in the treacly-looking mess, rolls it round and round into a black bead, which he roasts in the smoky lamp flame till it bubbles, fizzles, swells, and partially dries up. Then he pushes it into the small bowl, and holding bowl and charge against the lamp-wick, draws into his lungs the two or three "bouchees" of fume afforded by the pillule of drug, expelling them afterwards through his nostrils. At once he wipes out the bowl, rolls another pill on the pin, roasts it in the flame, and inhales the fumes, till you observe the eyes with which he watches the process grow more and more dim, and the pupils more contracted, and suddenly he is motionless and lost in stupor — the operation is complete — soul and body are away together in " Poppy-Land," where for an hour or two there will be no cares, no tasks, no home-sick longings for distant China ; no unkind " Melican man*' to make life a burden; no life at all except a heavy, vague, soft, sodden trance, traversed by dreams which seem like pictures outlined in moon- beams upon the darkness. There are those who think that opium keeps the Chinaman from fever and pestilence in such horribly close lairs, and certainly his ordinary diet seems to need some corrective. We explored the groceries, eating-houses, and druggist shops of the region with much suffering to the olfactory nerves, and total loss of any appetite for lunch. Food may be simple, i34 SEAS AND LANDS. and even coarse, without becoming repulsive, but the Chinese " charcutier " aims at and attains the ghastly and the grotesque in all his wares. The carcasses of his pigs suggest murder rather than slaughter, so blood-boltered are they, if fresh — so mangled and glistening with red grease, if pickled. The very aspect of his strings of sausage would turn the stomach of a saveloy vendor in the New Cut. He splits open his ducks and geese, and flattens them, insides and all, into frightful, oily, black trapezoids of shining leather. In one jar he keeps decomposed shrimps, in another rats' tails, in a third the eyes of fishes, in a fourth onions soaked in treacle, while shoots of bamboo pickled in brine and sea-slugs rolled in sugar occupy other recep- tacles. A particular delicacy was pointed out in the shape of a dozen lizards spitted together on a stick, and dried in the form of mouldy grey vine-leaves. The witches of Macbeth might, in fact, have accumulated all the ingredients of their cauldron, by one marketing, at the terrible em- porium where the above articles were inspected. In a Mongolian pharmacy, hard by, the materia medica was even more astonishing. The chemists of the Celestial Kingdom deal still in all those strange, far-fetched, and extremely nasty prepara- tions which physicked our Middle Ages. Among the ordinary prescriptions hanging on the file of this Chinese " Apothecaries' Hall " was one which, being translated, ran, " Let him take, at the third hour, with root of lily, dried dust of snake, bone, so much, and of red pepper, and of willow shavings. SAN FRANCISCO. 135 and the dung of bats in oil." The establishment was full of slicing machines, cutting up all sorts of leaves and twigs into medicinal form, and a Chinaman in blue shirt and pigtail was seated on a bench working with his feet an iron wheel up and down a metal groove, in order to grind the ingredients of pills and potions as unsavoury as that mentioned. In traversing the narrow alleys and underground burrows of China Town at midnight, other and less describable scenes met the eye, for morality of the non-Confucian kind is simply ignored, and there were whole streets of little lattice-windowed tenements which would have made the Cities of the Plain appear comparatively respectable. In the principle theatre — where we sat on the stage — an interminable comedy was being enacted by boy- players draped as women, to the music of an orchestra which spared no discord that gongs, cymbals, and squeaking strings could produce. The large audience of Chinamen — all in the same dark blue garb — and packed like herrings — seemed to enjoy the piece, and found no incongruity, apparently, in a party of strange foreigners sitting and smoking in front <>t" the footlights. From the theatre to the chief Chinese restaurant was a natural transition, and here was seen the liautc cuisine of the quarter, odd compounds and viands served in innumerable little bowls and dishes, and all partaken of by means of chopsticks, which the guests used with incredible dexterity. It would* be, however, a drawback to the pleasure of 136 SEAS AND LANDS. supping with them that each man, after thrusting the chopsticks into his opened mouth, inserts them again in the common dish containing the ragout or stew, and twiddles about the floating morsels, until he has selected a tid-bit to his taste. There are altogether some 40,000 of the pig- tailed people dwelling thus in the very centre of Ban Francisco ; and, albeit they are an industrious, peaceable, and interesting race, their deplorable social habits, and the way in which their cheap and resolute labour undersells that of the native- born Californians, render it certain that they must be some day or other deported, although the decree may breed trouble with the Government of the Vermilion Pencil. One of the most usual, but also most pleasant, excursions in the neighbourhood of Ban Francisco is through the Park to CI if? House, whence I had my very first gaze over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. All oceans look, of course, pretty much alike — yet it cannot be without emotion that one sees for the first time even the verge of that vast water, which washes the continents of America, North and South, and of Asia, extends its pro- digious volume from Pole to Pole, and contains all those lovely archipelagoes of the Southern main, where the climate is as perfect as the islanders are charming, and where Nature on sea and land is at her best. It is a great temptation to turn aside southwards and visit Honolulu, only a week's voyage across yonder blue waves. But our steamer, the Belgic, is bound directly to Japan, and we must SAN FRANCISCO. 137 forego the attractions of these " Edens of the purple main." The Park, created from the bare sand of the peninsula overlooking " the Golden (late," is beau- tiful and green with groves of bine gum, dwarf palms, aloes, cedar, pepper trees, and plentiful flowering shrubs. Crowds of happy people drive, ride, and walk out to the band-stand here, whence you can constantly hear the barking of the seals, which live upon two isolated rocks under the steep shore. Hundreds of these creatures sprawl on the ledges of the crags, or disport themselves in the billows — great monsters, some black, some grey, some snowy white, safe in their sea fastness, and wisely protected by the Government. There is no other place on earth where the sight could be thus seen of the ocean-flocks of Neptune, placidly herded as if on a remote and unfrequented spot — diving, fishing, sporting, and basking in the mild sunshine, without any fear of man. To the right opens the picturesque portal of the "Golden Gate," a mile wide between its posts of yellow sand, and always lively with vessels going and coming. It is the last point in our American wander- ings, and we shall see the shores fade behind us, with regrets due to that unbounded friendliness and faultless grace and goodness of which I have been an unworthy object in every city and at every stage of the journey. Of all this it would be improper, as it is impossible, adequately to write ; sullice it to observe that no language could ever express the sense which overwhelms me of the gencrositv and 138 SEAS ANJD LANDS. goodwill of Americans to one whom they have been pleased to regard as a friend. In quiting the continent I have published the subjoined which is at once a farewell and an aspiration : — Sonnet of Adieu. America ! at this, thy Golden Gate, New-travelled from those green Atlantic coves, Parting — I make my reverence ! It behoves With backward steps to quit a queen in state. Land ! of all lands most fair, and free, and great ; Land of those countless lips, wherefrom I heard Sweet speech of Shakespeare — keep it consecrate For noble uses ! Land of Freedom's Bird, Fearless and proud ! So make him soar, that stirred By generous joy, all men may learn of thee A larger life ; and Europe, undeterred By ancient wrecks, dare also to be free Body and Soul ; seeing thine Eagle gaze — Undazzled — upon Freedom's Sun, full-blaze ! Truly it is difficult to limit the excursions of imagination in thinking what this splendid and wonderful State of California, and the Union gene- rally, may and must become in the way of material development and mass of population. Look at this table, which shows the growth of the latter from the Revolution until to-dav : — SAN FRANCISCO. »V» Year. Population. 1790 3,929,214 1800 5,308,483 1810 7,239,881 1820 9,633,822 1830 1 2,866,020 1840 17,069,453 1850 23,11)1,876 18(30 31,443,321 1870 38,558,371 1880 50,155,000 1890 67,240,000 Average Increase in ten via 35.1 36.3 33.1 33.5 32.6 35.8 35.6 22.6 36.0 34.0 33.46 Negro. 757,308 1,002,(132 1,377,800 1,771,050 2,328,042 2,873,648 3,638,803 4,441,830 4,880,009 6,580,000 8,000,000 Average Inert -ax- iii i. -n \ ear Per cent. 32.32 37.5 28.65 31.44 23.40 26.6 22.1 9.8 34.8 21.5 26.81 The population of 1700 thus became, in 1860, eight-fold, or 31,443,321, which is equivalent to doubling every 23 ;; years, and the American statis- tician calculates in 1900 for 77,100,000, and in 19 ">0 for 103,314,000. lie predicts in 1990 — "all things being well " — an American people numbering 1,206,400,0(X), with 86,9.57,000 coloured persons, and proceeds to say — "Those who believe in the prospects here set forth will rule their undertakings and investments in the expectation that property in real estate must advance in the next half century ; that commerce and transportation and production must increase enormously. As the discoveries and inventions of science and industry make towns more and more healthful, convenient, interesting, and agreeable places of residence, our people, will tend more and more toward them. Museums, libraries, public halls for the education and instruction and amuse- i 4 o SEAS AND LANDS. ment of the people, will be more and more numerous and cheap. The streets and parks will be embellished and made gay with public and private buildings. Electric engines will do the heavy work of the day. More time will be at the disposal of men for enjoyment, as these improve- ments relieve men and women from slavish toil for the means of living. ... In 1990 the urban population will be 240,000,000, and of these New York will probably contain over 30,000,000. What work for architects, contractors, builders, car- penters, masons, bricklayers, plasterers, brickmakers, quarriers, saw-mills, lime-kilns, sand-gatherers, roll- ing-mills, structural and roofing iron in sheets and beams, for tinners and roofers, -and the thousand other trades engaged in construction, not only of the 14,000,000 new homes, but of the markets, stores, warehouses, post-offices, court-houses, city- halls, gaols, penitentiaries, &c, necessary in the administration of an additional population equal to all that exists now on the Northern Continent !" This is " spread-eagleism " with a vengeance ! But if you only saw what millions of sunny acres lie facing this Pacific sea-verge, how genial the climate is and how rich the soil, you would not wonder at the elated tone of Californians, nor doubt that a future of splendid prosperity must await the Union from the Western to the Eastern Ocean. To-morrow we take ship for Japan, embarking on . the Belgic, a fine steamer of 5000 tons burden, for Yokohoma, a voyage 1 of about twenty days. We shall have a crew of Chinese sailors, and take no SAN FRANCISCO. 141 less than 860 Chinese passengers in the steerage who are returning, with hoarded dollars, to the Flowery . Land. It is but too certain that of this number a proportion will die upon the passage, and others will go crazy from the effects of too much opium and samshoo, nor can it be pretended that they are, personally, the most agreeable of fellow-passengers. But when properly treated Chinamen behave well enough, and our captain, an Englishman, has had experience in their management. We have also on board some man- darins, the suite of the unsuccessful Embassy to Washington, and it is darkly whispered that one or two of these are already in peril of decapita- tion at Pekin. They are courtly and agreeable gentlemen, however, and we must try in such sad case, to render their closing days pleasant. It is not everybody who could be perfectly polite and chatty, as these almond-eyed diplomatists are, with " something humorous but lingering " impending over their red-buttoned caps all the way across the rolling Pacific ! San Francisco, Oct. 16, 1889. CHAPTER XL THE PACIFIC. We are two thousand miles from "anywhere," steaming swiftly over a lifeless expanse of dark blue waters, under a cloudless vault of palest blue sky. The nearest land is the Sandwich Island group, far away in the south, whence come softly sighing wafts of balmy breeze, which fill the wanderer with longings to put the head of the Belgic straight on for Honolulu, and to linger a season or two in the delightful archipelagoes of Polynesia. But we are bound right across the prodigious ocean for Yoko- hama, and the cities and temples of Japan ; on, perhaps, the longest voyage without stay or sight of land which passenger steamers take in any part of the globe. As it is the longest, so it is also the loneliest. The vessels which sail these seas for the lumber and grain of British Columbia, or the seals and walruses of Alaska, are scattered all far away to the northward along the thickening ice of Behring's Straits, and athwart the stormy arch of the Aleutian Islands. The San Francisco whalers, which cruise for the sperm oil yielded by the "right whale," are all far away to the southward among the atolls and coral reefs. We have not sighted a sail — unless it THE PACIFIC. 14; be that of the nautilus — or craft of any kind, through all these 5000 or 6000 miles of solitary salt waste, and shall not sight one until Satsunia Light twinkles from the hills of Japan, and the Gulf of Yokohama opens, with many a fishing boat and skimming sampan. What an immense isolation it is! We are for many a day as much cut off from the living world in this our floating island as if we were an aste- roid gliding through the blue of interstellar space. The limitless, weltering, desolate, beautiful wilder- ness of rolling water affords no token, except our own passing shadow and the beat of our tire- less crew, that man is so much as existent upon the planet. The sapphire-coloured wave, cloven into a sudden furrow by our swift stem, closes up again astern in a milky, broadening wake, which fades away among the dancing crestlets of a slumbering sea, already forgetting that we have ever passed. Infinite silences of Nature are before us, and infinite solitudes behind, so that there are hours when it feels almost too bold a thing to launch forth into such measureless deserts of blue water, even with so powerful and capable a ship as the I>< hjic What must it have seemed like to that grand old navigator, Captain James Cook, and his ships' com- panies, sailing these vast spaces of unknown sea in the little bluff-bowed brigs Endeavour and !!<■<>>- lute ; yet month after month discovering fresh clusters of lovely islets, unnamed archipelagoes, New Zea- land, Australia — a whole strange world of wonderful noveltv ; or to Anson and his commodores, cruising i 4 4 SEAS AND LANDS. the interminable azure of these expanses in search of the Spanish galleons, and slowly toiling home loaded with the doubloons of his Catholic Majesty, but with crews decimated by scurvy, and ' weather-beaten and weary ? The romance of those great days is gone, but with it also the hardships. We glide along over the pathless Pacific in a floating caravanserai carrying nearly 1000 souls, but in the utmost comfort, safety and speed, accomplishing every three days nearly 1000 miles of pleasant run, independent of the winds which baffled those bygone mariners, so long at least as the propeller beats its ceaseless stroke upon the whitened waves under our stern-post. Yet it has only been during the last few days that the Pacific Ocean has justified its appellation. Our first week upon its bosom was one of wild and rest- less tossing and rolling — for we left the Golden Gate in squalls of wind and rain, which continued long after it might have been expected that the influence of the Alaska storm-regions would have ceased. The Belgic is a very fine vessel of the White Star Line, registering 5000 tons, and constructed of steel, by those excellent builders, Messrs. Harland and Wolff, of Belfast, to whose unfailingly faithful work the voyager may always confidently trust himself. Long, and relatively somewhat narrow, she has a certain inclination to roll, sometimes even to a moderate beam sea, but has shown herself an ad- mirable sea-boat, and keeps up an average rate of twelve knots without canvas. At San Francisco, besides ninety saloon passengers, we shipped 870 home-going Chinese, berthed aft, on three decks, THE PACIFIC. 145 and packed one above the other in dense strata of Mongolian humanity. Our commander, Captain Walker, is an Englishman, and a navigator of great experience ; .the officers are also English, but the crew to a man are Chinese, as also the stewards, and all the service of the ship. I am surprised to observe what capital seamen these Celestials make under good and just management. Captain Walker has had his company of pig-tailed sailors with him in this same vessel for four years, and they know their duty and perform it, in fair weather or foul, with an alacrity and skill not easily to be surpassed. The almond-eyed stewards are equally laudable. Always cheerful, willing, and industrious, they get through their never-ending task of feeding and serving us with an unchanging complacency which is quite delightful ; and my particular attendant, Ah-Fat, affords me special and endless amusement with his views of land and sea life expressed in " pidgeon " English. " No makee raining, sun sine, plenty muchee good walkee topside ship," is his method of announcing fine weather at dawn, and recommending exercise upon deck. Preparing to extinguish the electric lamp, he briefly suggests, "No wantchee see now;" and when I inquire why his countrymen so often come on board sick, and even at point of death, Ah-Fat murmurs the ex- planation, " Plenty you, perhaps, savee, but no savee bottom-side Chinaman mind. My very sick, more better kill board ship than kill San Francisco. Sup- pose my killed board ship, my put one piecey bokkus, all nice ; go China cheap." And such is the ease. 146 SEAS AND LANDS. A consuming desire possesses the Celestial exile to have his bones laid in native earth, a desire rein- forced by religious doctrines and sanction. In every contract for foreign service it is stipulated by the Chinaman that the remains of the contracting party shall be conveyed — if he dies — to a Chinese grave. Those who depart life in California are temporarily interred by their friends, but only to be exhumed after a certain period and then packed up for expor- tation. The Pacific steamers are quite accustomed to accept and transmit these rather uncomfortable freights at of course a considerable charge, but generally ship them under the entry of " fish-bones." If the slant-eyed passengers are not closely looked after at embarkation, they will often bring all that is conveniently portable of a deceased friend or kins- man on board the ship in a portmanteau or tea-chest, " doing " not only the company, which is always a joy to the Celestial heart, but also their social duty, according to the maxims of Confucius. The boisterous week with which our long voyage opened worked, naturally, some woe aft among the 870 Chinamen. It was bad enough, midships, in the comfortable quarters of the saloon passengers, to have the great ship wallowing day by day, and night after night, in the gusty trough of. the ocean, rolling her boats into the water, and taking the spray, and even the blue seas, on board, with heavy swashes, that shake the deck, and blinding blows dealt at the sturdy bows of the Belgic, making her long elastic fabric of thin but strong steel plating quiver like the skin of a wounded sea-serpent. It THE PACIFIC. 147 is bad enough when von endeavour to dress for breakfast, to be hustled suddenly into your port- manteau ; and to have your brushes cast into the hand-basin, and your boots into the slop-tub ; to see the soup-plate sliding into your lap, despite the " fiddles," at dinner-time, and to be reduced at last to the mental and physical condition of a human pen- dulum. Even if not a victim of sea-sickness, this state- of things becomes odious and humiliating for the stoutest traveller when it continues throughout six or seven whole days, as was our fate; while for delicate women and children, and those who suffer badly from rough weather, it is about as miserable an experience, even in the best arranged and most commodious vessel, as travelling can well otter. But even to think of the condition of our Celestial fellow- passengers during those long hours, when we were all— ' " Rolled to larboard, rolled to starboard, in the seething of the sea/' was to be thankfully reconciled to our own lot. The Belgic is so admirably managed, and the "ways of the heathen Chinee" are so perfectly understood and met on board such a ship, that there was nothing at all absolutely unsanitary in that awful after-hold; but the discomfort — even for people accustomed to reside in the cellars of China Town — must have been sometimes perfectly grim and Dantesque. The odours which ascended from the hatches, roofed over from rain and spray by tar- paulins, of themselves altogether forbade any per- sonal exploration; but if imagination will picture i 4 8 SEAS AND LANDS. 800 Chinamen packed three deep in bunks, and then conceive a series of close wet nights, and spray-driving days, with the huge vessel bounding like a porpoise, and shaking together into chaotic helplessness that crowd of pig-tailed people, it may partly realise the hidden picture. In the course of those first five or six nights two of the poor yellow-skinned folk gave up the business and the ghost together. They had come on board moribund, in the last stage of bodily weakness, and one of them was discovered dead in his bunk at early morning, while the demise of the other was generally announced to the ship one night by the howling of his immediate neigh- bours. Even Chinese do not like to have a corpse rolling against them with every lurch and pitch. The system pursued in all these cases is uniform. The company, having contracted to convey the body, alive or dead, provided the necessary fee be forthcoming, carries a quantity of ready-made coffins. One of these is handed up from below, and then the steward of the Chinese section de- mands the regulation thirty dollars for embalm- ing. It is seldom these are forthcoming from the dead man's own pockets, or stockings, or girdle, for though his comrades would not steal from an actually defunct person, some of them have few scruples about annexing the cash of a departing brother. Yet the bulk of them are fairly generous ; and, a tin dish being filled with burnt sugar, into which lighted joss-sticks are fixed, somebody goes round with it, inviting contributions. Every well- THE PACIFIC. 149 disposed Chinaman takes a pinch of the burnt sugar and drops into the dish a dime, a quarter, or a half- dollar, until the requisite sum is raised. Then the steward, or his assistant,, opens the femoral artery of the deeeased, and injects into the veins a strong- preservative solution of carbolic acid, arsenic, and other chemicals. The corpse, thus pickled, is rolled in canvas, placed in one of the rough coffins, corded up, and lashed to the rail of the ship, with a paper tacked upon it, recording, in Chinese characters, the name and address of the hapless emigrant, who, in place of a passenger, has become part of the cargo. I have just inspected two of these sad packages, securely fastened abaft. Their whilom companions were sitting nonchalantly on the top of them, smoking little bamboo pipes, and playing dominoes. We expect, alas ! to have more demises ;is the voyage goes on, for several of the homeward- bound Celestials are very ill, albeit, fortunately, there is no epidemic or any general ill-health among their numbers. Our judicious captain, wisely perceiving that the northern or the central course across the Pacific would only entail head winds, strong seas, and slow daily runs, resolved to steer southwards to the olst parallel and " pick up fair weather." This, there- fore, was ordered, and the Bclgic, heading steadily on a south-westerly course, brought us on the seventh day of the voyage into a zone of far more pleasant seas and skies. Gloriously, indeed, for the three succeeding days was the Pacific engaged in rejustifying the appellation which had before iSo SEAS AND LANDS. appeared so frightfully misapplied. Under the in- fluence of blue weather above, and smooth water below, those turbulent hours became forgotten, when night after night the saloon passengers of the Belgic rolled from one side to the other of their narrow berths, or by day sate in melancholy rows along the deck-houses, with a life-line festooned round every neck or waist to keep chair and indi- vidual from sliding at each oscillation of the sea into the lee-scuppers. Dawns of delicious beauty were followed by noons of splendour, and by sun- sets of wonderful glory of colour and cloud-shapes as we ran along the soft parallel of 31.50, and so touched the upper edge of the golden Otaheitan zone. Far to the north, the heavens were still gloomy, no doubt, and the ocean restless ; but we had evaded the worst of those evil influences by our southernly demarche, and the happy difference was quickly visible from end to end of the good ship Belgic. The feeblest " sea-legs " on board became firm, chair-lashings were discarded, and games of deck-cricket, of shovel-board, quoits, and ring-the-pin were merrily pursued, while daring projects circulated among the younger ladies and gentlemen of dances under the new moon. Our pig-tailed passengers in the after-part of the vessel attributed the welcome change to the copious amount of joss-papers which they had flung over- board to propitiate the Goddess of Storms. When- ever the wind blows very hard the Mongolian voyagers believe that this deity is demanding another victim from their number, and they are THE PACIFIC. 151 wont to appease her wrath by casting forth in- numerable square pieces of gold and silver tissue paper, inscribed with prayers. Whether the god- dess accepted these, or whether we had run clear of the storm-zone, certainly for three whole days the Belgic bore us gaily and swiftly under skies realising Lord Tennyson's idea of what the Pacific should look like — " A blaze upon the waters to the East ; A blaze upon the waters overhead ; A blaze upon the waters to the West." Comforted by such bright weather, the pig-tailed people came out into the sun from their dark and crowded bunks, and gave themselves to the delights of unlimited domino-playing, with shirt-buttons for counters, which they treasured in their shoes. The liveliest games were played in and about the "grave- yard," where the two defunct Chinamen reposed, duly corded, lashed and ticketed. Hut there were only two dead out of nearly 900, and almost all the others were well, and cheerful at the rapid and even progress of the vessel. AVe logged a steadv average of 300 miles a day, which, if not equal to Atlantic runs, would still bring us to Yokohama in twenty days, or thereabouts. This morning Ah-Fat has more lucidly explained to me why his countrymen are so desirous to have their remains conveyed to China, if they cannot reach it alive. " That number one piecey Cod-pidgin!" lie softly pointed out: "suppose wantehee go topside, after kill, then wantchee family make chin-chin joss at grave 152 SEAS AND LANDS. Suppose no takee bones, no makee grave, no speakee chin-chin joss, then not belong topside at all after kill ; belong Hellee." In other words, an immense value is attached by the Chinese to the prayers and offices of children for parents, and of kinsmen and posterity for their ancestors, and such prayers must be uttered in presence of the dead man's relics, or at the spot where they rest. Hence the extreme anxiety of the Celestial to lay his mortal part in the family soil ; nor is there anything which more potently tends to hold China together in her intense and exclusive nationality. Then we had bad weather again, which the joss- papers did not appear to diminish, with a tremen- dous beam sea from the north-east, upon which the Belglc, largely lightened of coal by her passage of twelve or thirteen days, rolled recklessly and con- stantly. One lurch shipped a green sea into the galley and spoiled an entire dinner for the saloon. Another sent all the children — of which we carried a large and lively consignment — in one indis- tinguishable heap under the table of the " Social Hall," mingled inextricably, for some minutes, with playthings, toy-books, mothers, nurses, candy, and cushions. A third lurch at night unshipped the coffins wherein the dead Chinamen were making silent passage, and for a time flung these grim packages hither and thither about the flooded deck, one of them bursting open, so that the affrighted sailors had to chase and dodge the errant corpse up and down tin 1 lee-scuppers, and before it was repacked and re-lashed nearly lost it overboard. THE PACIFIC. 153 At table the plates and dishes overleap the fences of the " fiddle," soup Hies about like spray, and avalanches of breaking crockery add to the uproar of the hissing waves and whistling wind. In the state- room the articles you thought were safely fastened break adrift and cruise round and round the floor all night, preparing for you in the morning a chaos of fruit, cigars, clean collars, and books, all mashed and jammed by the heavy portmanteaus which have sailed backwards and forwards through the dark hours. It is not a pleasant time ; but, through it all, the good ship plunges bravely forward ; the imperturbable, kindly, skilful captain never loses his quiet self-composure for an instant ; the purser is genial, gay, resourceful, indomitably attentive to his vast family ; and the Chinese crew do all their hard, wet work with ready alacrity, so that in the very worst of it you always hear ringing their not unmelodious sea-cry, " Ya-hoya-hoya-ho !" and know that it will all come right and end in pleasant times again. And so it does ! Once more the Pacific slumbers, and once more the delicious days return when the merry group of fellow-travellers and officers, dis- cussing caviare sandwiches and dry champagne in the purser's cabin, or partaking tea and matchless Manilla cigars in the captain's own sanctum, might be yachting on the Solent for any sign that exists of a boundless ocean outside, or elemental perils in presence of whose anger the stout and strong Belgic herself would be as a cockle-shell. Day after day the hours of gold and sapphire succeed each i54 SEAS AND LANDS. other, heralded by a rosy dawn, and closed in by a sunset of purple and amber. If the great vessel still moves to the sea, it is with a grave and rhythmical measure, to which everybody has grown accustomed ; but, indeed, there are now long intervals when she hardly curtseys at all in response to the gentle swell lifting the shining faces of the long sea-ridges. Everybody is grateful to Captain Walker for bringing his ship into these southern latitudes, even if it prolongs the vogage a little ; and, in simple truth, it is not possible to praise too warmly the management of the Belgic. The steamer is good and strong enough for any service, and is kept as neat and sweet as a first-class yacht. Her com- mander, without descending to become what is called a " saloon-captain," is as kindly and considerate as he is firm and vigilant. The directors have had the wisdom to give us for purser — the most important officer in a passenger ship after the commander — a courteous gentleman whose heart is in the work of making everybody comfortable, and who understands and enjoys that work. Our voyage is a notable one in many points. Never has a Pacific steamer carried so full a list of saloon passengers, and but for signally admirable management we should be much inconvenienced. Mr. Magee, however, has skilfully organised double tables for breakfast and dinner, and his Chinese stewards do their increased duties with an alacrity so unfailing that even habitual grumblers are silenced. I believe this line is destined to become very popular, when the example of our present voyage is followed by the " Occidental THE PACJEIC. 155 and Oriental Steamship Company," which is a branch of the Great Southern Pacific Railway Company, under the general management of a gentleman well known, Mr. F. Crocker. It will be wise policy of the Government to adopt this southern road definitely — to touch regularly at Honolulu, going and coming, thus picking up Australian and Polynesian pas- sengers and goods, and furnishing a regular and pleasant route across the vast Pacific. I find it altogether impossible to acknowledge too warmly the excellence of the service, the carefulness and liberality of the control, or the constant efforts on the part of our captain, our purser, and "all hands." to render the prodigious journey pleasant, safe and harmoniously social. On the 180th meridian we "hove a day over- board." Monday, October 28, was for ns a dies non, erased wholly from our calendar in order to square the ship's time with that of the sun, whose course we had been diurnally overrunning. Thus we skipped gaily from Sunday to Tuesday, and all of lis may boast that there has been one day at least in our lives upon which we neither said nor did a word or act to be regretted. Of si sic omnes ! Animated by the fine weather, some of our ladies, on one of the lovely moonlight nights of latitude 31.0, dazzled us by appearing at dinner in fancy dress. One wore a bewitching Japanese costume of gauzy silk; another the mantilla and skirt of a Spanish senora ; a third had donned the robes of a lady of the Court of Louis XIV.: yet another was powdered and patched a la Queen Anne; and a i 5 6 SEAS AND LANDS. Chicago dame, comely, bright, and lively — as the important character demanded — had formed a charm- ing garb out of the ship's biggest " stars and stripes," and, with the help of a diadem of pasteboard, adorned with stars cut from tin-foil, and bearing the word " Liberty " emblazoned in the same material across her bosom, played majestically the part of "Columbia." Afterwards we had dancing to a late hour on deck, with singing, and all sorts of maritime " high jinks ;" that wonderful engine amidships beating its ceaseless measure day and night, fair and foul, whether we slept or awoke, dined, danced or flirted. Once only, in the entire traject, the machinery suddenly stopped ; and the effect was as though an event had happened to the Universe, so much had that never-pausing pulse of the ship become part of our bodily sensations. There was something out of order with the steam-chest, and it was " pretty to see " — as Mr. Pepys would have put it — how smartly the chief engineer and his staff whipped off the cover of the chest, wheeled the crane over it, slung the great metallic mass into the air, and put matters right — so that within two hours efficiency was restored, and the systole and diastole of the Belf/ic's iron heart once again beat regularly. For the use of future Pacific travellers — to all whom I wish as prosperous a voyage, as good a vessel, and, ;is agreeable a company of officers — the log is here appended : — THE PA CIFIC. *57 VOYAGE NINETEENTH OF S.S. BELGIC. San Francisco to Yokohama. Left Dock Oct. 17. Oct. Wind. Force. 3 Sea. Lat. 37.45 Long. W. 127.20 Hun. 230 18 Variable. Confused. 19 Variable. 5 Heavy. 37.50 133.22 286 20 Westerly. 7 Heavv. 37.31 138.33 248 21 W.N.W. 7 to 3 High swell. 35.52 142.52 250 22 Westerly. 7 Heavy. 33.52 147.56 277 23 N.N.W. 5 Strong. 32.25 153.42 302 24 N. 3 Moderate. 31.43 159.43 30!) 25 Variable. 2 Smooth. 31.27 165.36 302 26 S.S.W. 3 Smooth. 31.14 171.34 306 27 w. 4 Smooth. [Day dropped.] 31.14 177.22 Long. K. 298 29 Variable. 5 Confused. 31.14 176.32 304 30 E.N.E. 7 Heavy. 31.14 170.44 297 31 Variable. 4 Smooth. 31.27 164.41 310 Nov. 1 Westerly. 2 Smooth. 32.0 159.17 277 2 Westerly. 3 Smooth. 32.49 153.44 287 3 N.N.W. 4 Smooth. 33.38 148.0 2! 12 4 N. 5 High sea. 34.0 142.40 310 Yokohama Light distant 142 miles. And now the long voyage over this vast watery wilderness, which had so many possible perils, is happily terminating ! We have sighted Cape King, passed along the ten miles of intervening Japanese shore, and entered the long inlet, lined with given hills and little toy-box huts, which leads to Yoko- hama. The waters, strangely placid after the stiff nor'-wester blowing down upon us all yesterday, from Jesso and Saghalien, are alive witli little fishing craft and vessels of all nations. If is Japan ! the Land of Gentle Manners and Fantastic Arts. We are going ashore ! Gulf of Yokohama, Nov. 5, 1889. CHAPTER XII. JAPAN. Arriving at night in a strange country, one always wonders what the daytime will disclose. It dawned on a scene of singular charm and beauty. Far and near, over the placid surface of " Mississippi Bay," as the inlet is called upon which Yokohoma stands, rode at anchor a whole fleet of merchant ships of large tonnage, steam and sailing, seven or eight powerful men-of-war of various nationalities inter- spersed among them, her Majesty's vessels Severn and Wanderer being of the number. Amidst, and around, and beyond these, scores of native fishing craft, with square sails of many hues, traversed the bay, while hundreds of " sampans " — light rowing boats, constructed of broad planks of pine — skimmed the quiet sea, propelled after the manner of Venetian gondolas, by two long stern oars, which are worked under water with a sculling movement by the lively little brown-skinned watermen. The white hulls of the men-of-war, the black mail steamers, the brown and. yellow native craft with variously tinted sails, the fluttering ensigns of many nations — ami*' which the Japanese flag of red and white was every- where conspicuous — filled the fair marine picture 158 JAPAN. i 59 with bright points of colour, and beyond the thickly-peopled water lay the picturesque town, planted on what was once a marsh, between two "bluffs," or ranges of hills, running inland. Here was Japan at last, the country which surprises and fascinates everybody who visits it — the " Kingdome of Japonia," as the old authors styled it — and of which good Master Will Adams, its discoverer for English people, wrote — " This iland of Iapon is a great land, and lyeth to the northwards, in the lattitude of eight and fortie degrees, and it lyeth east by north, and west by -south or west south west, two hundred and twentie English leagues. The people of this iland of Iapon are good of nature, eurteous aboue measure, and valiant in warre ; their iustice is seuerely executed without any partialitie vpon trangressors of the law. They are goner ned in great ciuilitie. I meane, not a land better gouerned in the world by ciuil policie. The people be verie superstitious in their religion, and are of diuers opinions." We could hardly have patience enough for breakfast on board the Bc/f/ir, so much did the shore and the prospect of setting foot in the spacious city before our eyes excite the imagination. But the Japanese authorities are particular and punctilious. It was necessary to get a clean bill of health, and to fulfil all for- malities, after which a steam-launch conveyed us, "bag and baggage," to the steps of the Custom House, which we passed with little or no trouble, and found ourselves — with gait unsteadied by the ceaseless movements of the Paeifie waves — safe. i6o SEAS AND LANDS. sound, and well pleased on the soil of the " Land of Gentle Manners." Everybody has read and heard so much of Japan, by this time, and seen so many photographs of its people and places, that it cannot seem quite so novel, so astonishing to the modern traveller, as it was to Will Adams and his weather-beaten crew, when they came to " Nangasaque " and saw those scenes which the old seaman describes so well — " Then wee steered north north-west, and soone after came foure great fisher-boats aboord, about fine tunnes apeece in burthen, they sailed with one saile, which stood like a skiffe saile, and skuld with foure oares on a side, their oares resting vpon a pinne fastned on the toj^pe of the boats side, the head of which pinne was so let into the middle part of the oare that the oare did hang in his iust poize, so that the labour of the rower is much lesse, then otherwise it must be ; yet doe they make farre greater speed then our people with rowing, and performe their worke standing as ours doe sitting, so that they take the lesse roome." And again — " The king came aboord and brought foure chiefe women with him. They were attired in gownes of silke, clapt the one skirt ouer the other, and so girt to them, barelegged, only a paire of halfe buskins bound with silke reband about their instep ; their haire very blacke, and very long, tyed vp in a knot vpon the crowne in a comely manner : their heads no where shauen as the mens were. They were well faced, handed, and footed ; cleare skind and white, but wanting colour, which they amend by JAPAN. 161 arte. Of stature low, but very fat ; very curt eons in behauiour, not ignorant of the respect to be given unto persons according to their fashion. The kings women seemed to be somewhat bashful, but he willed them to bee frolicke. They sung diners songs, and played vpon certain instruments (whereof one did much resemble our lute) being bellyed like it, but longer in the necke, and fretted like ours, but had only foure gut strings. Their fingring with the left hand like ours, very nimbly, but the right hand striketh with an iuory bone, as we vse to play vpon a citterne with a quill. They delighted much with their musicke, keeping time with their hands." People talk of Japan as already half-Europeanised, but within a couple of hours after our landing I had seen the quaint letters of the " Ancient Mariner " of Gillingham illustrated in twenty particulars, and found that, like all the rest of Asia, Japan has caprices of fashion, but never really changes. Even here, where the Old and New Worlds throng Yoko- hama Gulf with shipping, and you may hear nearly every known tongue spoken upon the Bund, a walk of half an hour takes you away to scenes and customs which are as old as the beginning of the Christian Era, and older still. Under the thickest lacquer of new ways, the antique manners and primitive Asiatic beliefs survive of this curious and delightful people, in whose veins Mongol and Malay blood has mingled to form an utterly special and unique race. How is it possible to convey a tithe of those first l62 SEAS AND LANDS. impressions of strangeness and vivid interest with which the streets of even cosmopolitan Yokohama fill the observant newcomer? Look at these road- ways, moistened with a recent shower ! Nowhere else in the world would you see the mud marked with such curious tracks — innumerable transverse ■ * * H *"• at I^Be ■ : \^W*-Vv ^^r ***,.' '^tf, L' J vl *: II rsty ; r> \- ■ «»_*s> - <•' ;-s ■ .r« - A GEISHA. lines, parallel and sharply impressed, as if a goffer- ing roll had passed everywhere along. These are the footprints of the geta, the wooden clogs which all Yokohama wears on wet days ; and that noise, like the voices of very loud crickets, is produced A .TAPAXKSK I.ADY. JAPAN. m 163 by the pit-a-pat of thousands of geta, on the spots where the causeways are paved with stone or pebbles. Plunge into the cheery, chattering, polite, and friendly crowd going and coming along the Benten Dori, and it is as if you were living on a large painted and lacquered tea-tray, the figures of which, the little gilded houses, the dwarf trees, and the odd landscape, suddenly jumped up from the dead plane into the living perpendicular, and started into busy being. Here, too, are all the pleasant little people you have known so long upon fans and screens. Take the first that conies along — this tiny Japanese lady, whoni you left, as you thought, on the lid of the glove-box at home. Tripping along upon her traraji, she wears that kimono of puce-coloured silk with the white storks, which you so well remember, the obi of amber and blue satin, tied round her little body and swelling into enormous puffed bows behind — " She's a little bit thick in the waist, the waist ; But then she was never once laced, once laced ! " Her snow-white socks, which only just cover the little foot, are divided into a private room for the great toe, and a parlour for the little toes, which gives her the air of being a little -pigeon with white feet; and she waddles prettily, somewhat like a pigeon. The kimono is folded demurely across her little bosom, and her long sleeves hang down from the small brown wrists and arms to her knees. In these receptacles she keeps sheets of soft tough paper, with which she blows her small nose and 164 SEAS AND LANDS. wipes the dust from her dainty skirts, besides innumerable other articles of constant use, such as her cards, her chop-sticks, perhaps her special porcelain cup for tea. She has the little clear-cut almond eyes which the artist so faithfully depicted, the funny little nose — " adpressus " — flattened into A COUNTRY GIRL. the little rosy, laughing face, which presents a lovely mouth with the whitest shining teeth, full curving lips, and dimpled chin, and amber-coloured neck and throat losing themselves softly in the tender folds of the kimono. Her hands are small and fine, A MAI h SKKVANT. JAPAN. 165 the little nails veritable rose-leaves ; and in her glossy hair she wears a red camellia witli ever so many little fantastic pins stuck up and down the smooth waves of it. But there is where the artist of the fan and glove-box failed. His palette had not any black pigments black enough to represent the night-dark depths of the tresses of the Japanese girl. Those puffed and perfumed bandeaux of oiled coiffure, so carefully dressed, and arranged so that no single hair strays from the rigid splendour of the toilette room, would make a jetty spot on the heart of midnight. So black that the very highest lights of it are blue-black beyond inky blackness, 1 tlaek so that ebony would be grey beside it, the glittering tenebrosity of it makes her little visage and her little nape and throat emerge like dyed ivory from the contrast. Then the Kuruma-ya, the jinrikisha men ! Much as you have heard and read about them, you will almost die with laughter when you call one from the stand where the little machines are ranged like fairy hansom cabs, and start for your first ride. With a hat on his shaggy head like a white washing-basin, with a red or blue blanket over his shoulders, his little legs tightly encased in black cloth drawers, his feet thrust into straw sandals, his name and number gaily painted on his back, " San-ju-ban," or what- ever else his ticket proclaims him, starts off at a run with the ridiculous perambulator into which you have entered, and whisks yon here, there, and everywhere for fifteen cents, his little hoots twink- ling between the slender shafts, bedecked with 1 66 SEAS AND LANDS. bands of tin-foil. On all sides, as you walk about Yokohama, the cry will be heard from the Kuruma stands of " Sha, Sha ! " answering to the London " Keb, sir ! " and should you have picked up a little of the language the polite phrases of the two- legged steed will be a good sample of " honorific Japanese." " If the honourable lord does not give himself the trouble of much illustrious delay, the fare will only be 20 sen. Condescend to make gracious use of this worthless servant ! " Then the children. Japan is evidently a Paradise for babies and boys and girls. The babies are one and all slung upon the back in a deep fold of the kimono. There they sleep, eat, drink, and wobble their little shaven pates to and fro, with jolly little beaming visages, and fat brown hands and arms. The children are friends of everybody, and play ball and fly kites in the most crowded thoroughfares, never rebuked, never ill-treated, with grave happy ways, and long flowing robes, which give a certain quaint dignity to even the youngest. Coolies go about carrying huge burthens on balanced bamboo baskets ; fishermen hawk odd-looking piscine speci- mens in white tubs ; the blind amma, or shampooer, wanders up and down tooting a plaintive note upon a double pipe of reed, to notify that he is ready to knead and pummel anybody troubled with rheumatism ; the isha, or physician, passes with his drug-case hitched into his waistband by an ivory netske ; the miller, standing naked behind the string-screen of his shop, grinds rice between, two JAPAN 167 stones, his brown limbs powdered with the fine flour; the bath-man lifts the blue cloth curtain of his establishment, and begs you to " make honourable entrance." If you do you will see all sorts and conditions of men — and women, too — amicably tubbing together, and will be yourself THE 13 A 15 V. invited to disrobe and sit in a tub, which will scald you, if not heedful, for the Japanese take their baths at nearly the temperature which boils an egg. And the little shops, and the little goods, and the little, funny, impossible articles bought and sold ; 1 68 SEAS AND LANDS. and the little, placid, pleasant folk laughing and trotting about the ways ; and the little trees grow- in every nook, and the little absurd cakes and little morsels of food, and little cups and little bowls which they use. I know I abuse this adject- tive " little," but all in Japan is chisai, choito, except the shrimps — which are colossal — and the sea, and the mountains. But the word " mountains " reminds me of Fuji- San, and one ought to speak first of this prodigious and renowned eminence, which is clearly visible from many spots in Yokohama. So, for the present, I leave the ever- wonderful population of the Japanese towns and pay tribute of distant respect to sublime " Fuji." The highest mountain in Japan, it stands between the j)rovinces of Suruga and Kai. Its height is variously stated at 12,234 English feet, 12,365 feet, and 13,287 feet. According to the ancient Japanese legend, Fuji arose in a single night, while the Biwa Lake, near Kioto, was formed simultaneously. Eruptions are mentioned as having taken place in the years 799, 864, 936, 1082, 1649, and 1707. The last began December 16, 1707, and continued till January 22, 1708. On this occasion the hump called Ho-yei-zan, on the upper slope of the south side of the mountain, was formed. Mount Fuji stands by itself, rising with one majestic sweep from a plain which is almost surrounded by ranges of mountains. The southern side curves down to the sea, its graceful line being only broken on the south-east by the rugged peaks of Ashidaka-yama. The ascent can be made from five different points, JAPAX. 169 viz., Murayama, Suyama, Subashiri, Yoshida, and Shito-ana. The slope of the mountain is richly cul- tivated with rice, tea, tobacco, millet, and various vegetables, and higher up the paper plant, mihumnta (Edgeworthia papyrifera) abounds. Although in the present day it is not necessary to obtain permission A Ml'SVMK. before making the ascent, still a certain amount of etiquette attaches itself to the formal ceremony of opening the mountain on the lirst day of the eighth moon. Our earliest glimpse of this famous volcano. the finest peak of its kind in the world, was obtained 170 SEAS AND LANDS. from the " 101 steps." At the top of these steps, beyond the Creek of Yokohama, is a Tea House, known to all, called "Fujiya" or the "Abode of the Wisteria." We had rejmired thither to drink the little cups of pale yellow beverage for which the Japanese have so refined a passion, and to nibble ,the little yellow and red cakes, and smoke the little brass pipes, while chatting with O Take San, the agreeable Lady of the Establishment. We had finished a repast, calculated to stay the appetite, perhaps, of a butterfly, or a Japanese ; had heard the music of the " samisen," and some less abstruse melodies, among them a song composed to a Yoko- hama belle by an American officer, of which here are two verses — " I strive to make love, but in vain, in vain, My language, I know, is not plain, not plain, Whenever I try, She says, ' Go men nasai Watakshi wakarimasen-masen.' * She plays on the soft ' samisen,' ' samisen,' She sings me a song now and then — and then, And when I go away She sweetly will say, ' Sayonara !' ' Do please come again — again.' " Our " afternoon tea " was concluded, the shoji (a screen of frame and paper) was drawn back, we resumed our shoes, and with many a " O yasumi nasai ! " and " Sayonara ! " proceeded to descend the " 101 stepp." It was nearly sunset, and lo ! * " Deign honourably to excuse me, but I do not understand." Tin: iirxDKKii and unk stk.ps yukomoma. JAPAN. i 7 , half-way down in the rosy west, suddenly wo spied the glorious hill raising its sharply pointed cone, all brilliant with snow, above the belt of light grey and rosy clouds which lay along the horizon. Although sixty or seventy miles distant, the giant peak stood forth plain as a silhouette of silver upon the golden background of the western heavens. It was good to behold Fuji-San — the "Lady of Mountains" — so soon after arrival, and no wonder could be felt, even from that dim and remote vision, that the Japanese revere their beautiful and isolated volcano. In- numerable are the legends attaching to it. On the summit dwells a deity — the guardian God of the Crater — who is styled " O-ana-Mochi no Mikoto," the "Protector of the Great Hole." The sand brought down during the daytime by the feet of many pilgrims reascends of itself during the night. On the fifteenth day of the sixth moon the snow all disappears from the summit for twelve hours, to make the visit of the goddess "Fuji-Sen-Gen" perfectly convenient ; and reappears the following day quite punctually. The smoke of Fuji, her snows, her green girdle of canes and vines, her feet sandalled with flowers, her bosom from which issue streams fertilising the plains, her perfect con- tour, her majestic beauty, till Japanese poetry with passionate themes of eulogy and adoration. One native bard exclaims — " What words can tell, what accents sing Thine awful grandeur? Tis thy breast Whence Fuzugawa's wavelets spring, Where Narusana's waters rest." 1 72 SEAS AND LANDS. Divine, truly, in majesty and grace rose the tall peak, about the precise height of which in feet and metres it seems almost impious to disjoute, when the living lovely vision of this mountain once comes in sight. For days and weeks together the clouds often shroud that splendid cone, and you can only know where Fuji-San stands by the masses of cumuli and cumulo-strati gathered about her from the Pacific Ocean at her foot. All the more happy did we feel to catch a glance of the Goddess on the third day of our sojourn in Japan. The omen was good, and we mounted our jinrikishas and trundled home through the twinkling paper lanterns and busy little streets, with the resolve to see Fuji presently close at hand, even though the season should forbid the ascent of its sublime slopes. Yokohama, Nov. 8, 1889. CHAPTER XTIT. A JAPANESE CITY. We are on English soil again, for a time, being the happy guests of the British Minister and Mrs. Eraser, at her Britannic Majesty's Legation in Tokio, the capital city of Japan, formerly known as Yeddo. The run by railway from Yokohama is short but inter- esting. The carriages are of the English pattern ; the names of the stations are painted up in English as well as in Japanese, and the eighteen miles of flat country are traversed in about three-quarters of an hour. In quitting Yokohama yon pass under a large Shinto Temple, and skirt the fishing town of Kanagawa ("The Metal River"), where foreigners were first settled. Then you come to Tsnrnmi ("Place to Bee Storks "), surrounded by extensive rice-fields, in which the people were reaping the ripe stalks and hanging them in circular-shaped sheaves upon the stems of the trees, so that every hedge-row presented a most curious appearance with these lines of swathed trunks. Tobacco grew green and plentiful everywhere, with patches of onions and of those gigantic radishes which the Japanese so much affect. Kawasaki ("River-Bend") is next passed, where numberless cargo-boats thatched with 174 SEAS AND LANDS. mats, and gliding sampans, driven by big-handled oars, testify to a lively water traffic. The boat women work and row with their babies tied upon their backs, the little black round heads and doll- like eyes wagging and winking behind the totally unconcerned mother. Omori (" The Great Forest ") succeeds, but its trees have mainly disappeared, though Kamada, close by, is famous for its plum- blossoms in April. The love of the people for flowers is one of their many charming traits. We are too late, or too early, for the red and white lotuses, the tree- peonys and the golden lilies, which, with the jasmines and roses, embellish the spring and autumn lakes and fields ; but it is the cream of the season for the chief blossom of Japan, her imperial symbol — the chrysanthemum ; and truly splendid are the displays seen of this many-hued and multiform flower. Half the women wear a purple or amber pompone in their hair or bosom, and one of our objects in coming at once to Tokio is to be present at the annual exhibition of chrysan- themums, held in the Emperor's gardens. Passing Ikegami (" The Upper Lake "), we next see a famous temple, dedicated to the ancient Buddhist saint, Nichiren, and another sacred to Daikoku, the God of Wealth and Good Fortune, whose highly comic picture — sitting upon bags of rice which rats are busily gnawing — figures on all the one and five yen bank-notes current in Japan. The jocund spirit of the people manifests itself even in these grave matters of finance. They will not and cannot take A JAPANESE CITY. , 75 either life or religion an grand scrieu.r. Another ornamental shrine hereabouts, rich with lacquer and carvings, is raised in honour of Mioken, the Pole- Star. And thus our train comes to Shinagawa ("River of Merchandise"), at the head of the Gulf — a place mainly populated by fishermen, who catch and sell extraordinary quantities of odd-looking fish, and of those gigantic blue shrimps already observed, fhe line now curves round, through suburbs of the metropolis, styled, respectively. Mita ("The Three Fields") and Shimbashi ("The New Bridge") ; and then we are in the station of Tokio, a really vast city, nine miles long and eight miles wide, con- taining over a . million inhabitants, the seat of Government, as well as of the Shiro, or Castle, wherein resides his Imperial Majesty the Mikado. This Shiro, with its huge ramparts of cyclopean masonry and wide moats full of wild fowl, banked by lofty slopes of grass and rows of ancient trees, is one of tin 1 perpetually striking features of Tokio. While driving or riding in a jinrikisha you are always entering or leaving its massive gateways, guarded by neat little soldiers, and capped with Chinese-looking gate-houses. The broad moats swarm with fish, as well as with teal, widgeon, and duck, but nobody is permitted to angle or -hoot there. Tokio gives the impression of being mainly a bigger Yokohama, without the beautiful sea view, albeit it possesses its own maritime quarter, and is washed there by the head of the Gulf, into which runs the River Sumida. Yet the interminable 176 SEAS A AW LANDS. thoroughfares present a far fuller stream of life, and even more surprising novelties than the seaport. Nothing but an instantaneous photograph, carefully coloured, could impart even an idea of the pictur- esque population of the Nakadori or of Ginza Street. The trundling jinrikishas ; the little shock-headed Japanese in dark blue coats and tight trousers ; the tiny womenkind with hair banded and brushed into fantastic, glossy, immovable coiffures ; the mothers with the slit-eyed babies lashed upon their backs — so like to dolls that you almost look for the wire wherewith to make them wink and squeak ; the smart little soldiers in brick-red breeches ; the immacu- lately gloved policemen ; the postmen in soup-plate hats running along with letter-bags ; the endless clatter of the innumerable wooden pattens; the shuffling of the countless waraji; the slow, shaggy oxen dragging the bamboo waggons ; the pretty, grave, delightful, happy children, racing along the public way, with flowing sleeves, like those of a Master of Arts, and flowers in their hair, or flying kites of astonishing devices, or clambering about the stone gods and demons of some Buddhist temple, or broadly and blandly staring at the foreigner with languid almond eyes and little painted mouths wide open ; the fishermen, with specimens of piscine natural history which make mermaids commonplace, and sea-serpents appetising ; the gigantic radishes ; the absurd English inscriptions on the sign-boards ; the funny small shops, with their hanging screens of blue cloth and reeds ; the squatting shopkeepers ; the cakeman with his tinkling bell ; the blind amma A JAPANESE CITY. 177 or shampooer ; the small black and white houses, ranged in endless rows as if out of a wooden toy-box, with paper fronts and sliding shoji; the' tootling of the tramcar horns; the spiek and span musumes tripping, with shining tresses and pigeon-feet, to dance or to dinner ; the startling things in toyshops, and restaurants, and "butcheries" where badgers, wild boars, and silver pheasants are hanging up at the poulterers', beside ducks, and snipe, and hares; the great kites and noisy crows sweeping round and round above the traffic of the bazaar, and at the four- cross way, where a long vista opens westward, Fuji's grand and perfect peak sixty miles off, towering above the rosy clouds of sunset, lifting itself to our far-off gaze in such majesty of form and colour as no other mountain in the world possesses — a sight that puts on the other sights, as it were, the Creator's own mark when He made this wonderful, delightful, unique, and mysterious Japan. Dark blue, dark grey, puce, purple, and black em- broidered with white, are the leading colours of the autumn dresses of the Japanese out of doors, so that the general aspect of the moving crowd is not so variegated as the throng of an Indian town presents. But a happier looking population can nowhere be studied; they go chattering and laughing along, the porters singing between their balanced burdens, the air all full, far or near, of pretty salutations — " () hayo ! O hayo gozaimas !" or " Sayonara ! sayonara !" and at evening, " O yasumi nasai !" ("Condescend to take honourable repose !") The deep reverences these little people make to each other in the street 178 SEAS AND LANDS. are charming for grace and apparent goodwill — the commonest coolie bends with the air of a finished teacher of deportment when he meets a friend or accepts an engagement. Indoors the obeisances are more lowly still. The little foreheads touch the earth or the spotlessly clean mats, and the little hands, almost always exquisitely formed — are spread out, while the kneeling musume prostrates herself and musically utters the irrashai ! The children in the streets are for ever breaking into a dancing run for pure glee of existence, clattering along in merry groups upon their wooden clogs. Or else they gather at street corners and play softly boisterous games with each other, singing songs and beating hands to the tune. I secured the words of one of these, where the little brown-eyed, black-pated, Japa- nese babies stood in a ring, and swung their hands first outwards and then inwards, simultaneously. It seems they were thus alternately imitating the open- ing and the closing of flowers, expanding the circle at the word " hiraita " (" opened "), and contracting it at " tzubonda " (" closed "). This joyous little street song, in the vernacular, was — " Hiraitu ; hiraita ! Nanno hana hiraita ? Renge no hana hiraita, Hiraita to oraottara, niata tsubonda. Tsubonda ; tsubonda Nanno hana tsubonda ? Rensre no liana tsubonda Tsubonda to omottara, mata hiraita," A JAPANESE CITY. i 79 Which is, being interpreted — " Opened ; opened ! "Which is the flower has opened ? The lotus-flower has opened. You thought so, hut now it is shut. Shut ! Close shut ! "Which is the flower that's shut ? Tis the lotus blossom that's folded. You thought so, but now it expands ! " There is another graceful nursery rhyme that the dark-eyed Japanese babies sing in the streets, which goes — " Chocho ! Chocho ! Na no ha ni tomare Na no ha ni akitara Yoshi no ha ni tomare." And this, again, in English as simple, is — " Butterfly, butterfly ! Light on the rape and feed ; If you are tired of honey there, Fly to the flower of the reed." But the place of places in Tokio to see the Japanese small folk is Asakusa, a quarter where a kind of permanent fair is established round the eminently popular temple of Kin Riu Zan. Tn this large and striking edifice is preserved a small image of the Goddess Kwannon Sama, made of pure gold, which was hauled up in a net from the Sumida River, and is too sacred ever to be publicly exhibited. The 180 SEAS AND LANDS. shrine is naturally a favourite one with fishermen, but all classes frequent it, and curious it is to stand within the sanctuary and watch the naivete of the worshippers. They go first to a little hut, and pay an infinitesimal coin for leave to wash their hands and mouths with water from a wooden ladle, for it would not be right to go un purified to pray. Then they pick out the particular incarnation in the great fane which suits their need, for one image is good at curing stomach-aches, another at bringing fish into the net, a third in making fair weather at sea, and a fourth figure in wood which will accord a becoming connexion if you stroke its face, has that countenance now completely rubbed flat and feature- less by the innumerable palms 01 women and girls coming thither to benefit by the goddess. With hands and lips washed, the votary pulls a bell-rope which is to awaken the attention of the diety. Then he throws a coin or two into a grated re- ceptacle, joins his fingers together, breathes the supplication or whispers the wish, and afterwards claps his hands to let the divinity know that the affair is terminated, and that others can take their turn. There is a pagoda near the temple, which is approached by a stone-jmved walk. On both sides of this stand bright little shops for the sale of toys, ornaments, &c. The huge red building at the entrance contains two gods of colossal size, in large niches, protected by iron screens. They are the tutelary guardians of the gate, and are called " Ni-0 " (" Two Kings "). One stands ready A JAPANESE CITY. im to welcome those who repent of their sins and determine to lead new lives; the other is the special nod of children. The tame pigeons fiviiiot with green tea leaves ready for infusion, and the small cups in their stand, so that, free of charge, we might sip o-cha as we started. The line passes through low-lying fields with har- vests of rice, tobacco, cotton, and the huge radish, dai-kon, fringed with waving thickets of bamboo, and populous with villages of little lints all built upon the same pattern, with fronts of framework and paper, and roofs of fine shingle or thatch. Here and there, near a temple, would be seen a " garden of the dead " — stone monuments of quaint form inscribed with Japanese letters, and interspersed with chimps of the red camellia or tufts of chrysan- themum. Everywhere, indeed, is seen the Ki-kn — imperial blossom of Japan — growing at the cottage door, by the well, in the temple yard, beside the graves, and even in the paths intersecting the rice- fields. Everywhere, too, are visible the delightful Japanese babies — most placid and most plump of all known infanthood — rocking and blinking in the fold of the mother's kimono, but just as frequently tied on the backs of old men, boys, and little maidens; for as soon as a Japanese child can even toddle about, a smaller one, who cannot yet run alone, is swaddled tightly upon its shoulders. The babies thus, see everything, share everything, take part in agriculture, kite-flying, shopping, cooking, gossiping, washing, and all that goes forward and around, which perhaps gives them their extraordinary gravity and worldly wisdom, mingled with gladness, as soon as they reach the mature age of four or five. They then bow, and say ohayho ! and carry up and down 1 88 SEAS AND LANDS. another baby, and shuffle about on clogs, as if life were already understood by them quite as thoroughly as by their mothers, whose wooden pattens make the stations echo so blithely as they enter or quit the train. Round almost every country hut the yellow fruit of the ka-ki, or j^ersimmon, is hanging. up to dry for winter use, and the fruit itself may be seen on the leafless tree, like a smooth, elongated orange. On the left of the line, all the way from Tokio to Utsunomiya, the beautiful head of Fuji-San per- petually shows itself, at first dim, misty, and vaguely gilded in the too full light of the afternoon ; then majestically displaying its crown of snow high above a belt of sunset clouds'; and lastly, as the evening falls, and the background of the west deepens from rose red and amber to grey and emerald green, emerging in full outline, almost from base to summit, a cone, mathematically perfect, of indigo blue, dominating the whole landscape by its grace and grandeur, although it is twenty leagues, as the stork flies, to the foot of that stupendous mountain. We arrive in the dark at Utsunomiya, hand our tickets to collectors, who bow down to the platform, and our light baggage and ourselves to jinrikisha men, who trundle away up an interminable street, glittering with paper lanterns and the lamps of a thousand little open shop-fronts. Just as we wonder whether there will ever be any "other end" to ITtsunomiya, the Kurumas are wdieeled sharply round and brought up with a general shout of arrival in front of a Japanese inn. The peculiarity Ri'RAL J A PAX. 189 of such an establishment, on a first experience, is that you see all of it at once, like a doll's house of which the facade has been flung open. Then- is the little passage full of ivaraji and clogs, by which you enter between raised platforms covered with mats so spotless that you would not, as you must not, tread upon them except with unshod feet. There is the shining ladder of dark polished wood without hand-rails, by which you pass to the little rooms upstairs, all visible at a glance with their sliding doors and papered lattices. There is the kitchen, with charcoal fire burning under the rice-cauldron, and beside it a little paved way to the bath-room and minor offices. The entire pcr- sonnel of the inn upon your first approach — in- cluding mistress, proprietor, and four or five female "helps," with glossy hair, and short, white, cloven stockings — prostrates itself on the vd^c of the matting, with hands spread, foreheads touching the black lacquer border, and soft little choruses of " hayo gozarimas" and "0 ide nasal;" that is to say, " Your honourable arrival is most wel- come! " "Please to make your honourable en- trance!" Shoes are slipped off and indoor slippers offered, into which thrusting your feet, you slide and glide with many a bow and " Arigafo " ("Thank you") over the immaculate mats and up the shining ladder to the blamelessly clean pigeon-loft assigned for your use. Squares of padded cloth are placed on the floor, and the hibachi, or " fire-box," is brought in and set in the midst, with two brass knitting: needles wherebv to stir and trim the i go SEAS AND LANDS. glowing charcoal. The musume, a young waiting girl, next presents, always on her knees, tiny cups of pale yellow tea, unsweetened and unmilked, and, learning that you will partake of dinner, beats the matting with her little brow, and goes to command it. Various members of the household drop in meanwhile to salute and inspect the visitors, and presently the repast arrives. First appears a small square table about eight inches high, upon which are placed fresh cups and chopsticks (hashi), the latter being cut from white wood, the two sticks still joined at the end, so that you may know they are fresh and unused. You separate them as a hungry man takes up his knife and fork, and are then ready for the " honourable tray " of red or black lacquer, which is slid within your reach by the kneeling and bowing musume. On each of our trays was a little bowl of soup with shreds of vegetables, a saucer of pickled celery and radish — tsukemono — a minute slab of boiled trout, another saucer holding shreds of cold chicken, and a wooden bowl with a rather doubtful composition of some sort of whey and white of egg. Between the trays a large wooden tub of hot boiled rice, admir- ably dressed, was set, with a fresh pot of tea. A plate of cakes — kashi — also appeared, and when we had asked for and obtained salt and bread — articles apparently not usually furnished — there was quite enough to eat, and of no bad quality. The little glossy-haired musume kneels all the time before the guest, softly murmuring as she re-fills your plate or cup, " Mo suhoshi nasal " — " Condescend RURAL JAP AX. i 9 i to take a little more ! " — and it is part of the re- fined politeness of this nation that they call hot water, tea, and soup, by complimentary terms, as " yu," " The honourable hot-water ; " " chn," "The honourable tea;" " tsuyu," "The honour- able refreshing dew — of soup." The hot white rice, decorously poked into the mouth with the chop- sticks from the edge of the laquered basin, is the real mainstay of the meal, which, being removed, the tobacco-box and small bamboo pipes succeed. By-and-by beds are prepared by drawing from a hidden cupboard many quilted mats and a little bolster about the size of a Bologna sausage, stuffed with rice-blades. An andon, or paper lamp, is then put in a corner of the room, the charcoal brazier is replenished, and the household, generally, again touch the soft clean mats with their foreheads, murmuring "0 yasumi nasai" ("Condescend to take honourable repose"). The sliding shoji are pushed back, you creep between the padded quilts on the floor, and before sinking to slumber observe in the dim light the simplicity of your apartment. It contains one Kakemono, or " hanging picture," in Indian ink, one pot of chrysanthemums, an in- scribed tablet in Japanese bearing the name of a god, or a river, or mountain, and a tiny looking- glass on a dressing-table about as large as a cigar- box. Now you will hear the shrill notes from the street below of the pipe blown by the annua, the shampooer ; the light musical laughter of the hi u.wmes downstairs, washing up; the tinkling strings of the samisen played in one little room, 1 92 SEAS AND LANDS. the monotones of a Buddhist reading his sacred books in another, the barking of the village dogs, the rattle of a late jinrikisha, the splash of some tardy traveller boiling himself by way of refresh- ment in the very hot furo-dd of the basement, the noise of numerous paper shutters closing in your own and adjoining abodes, and the stroke of the watchman's staff as he makes his rounds. Lulled more or less by these sounds, and with a strange, indescribable odour about you of clean matting, soy, and salted jasmine, you sink to sleep, to dream, perhaps, amid the transparent walls of the chamber, that you are a new hat in a bandbox, or an ivory carving wrapped up in tissue paper. After a breakfast more substantial than the airy appetites of the Japanese would demand, we depart amid a shower of sayonaras and gentle good wishes for a prosperous journey, to Nikko. The distance by road is twenty-five miles, which we are to accomplish in four jinrikishas, one of these ever-amusing vehicles containing our guide and another our baggage. We have two men to each jinrikisha, one in the shafts, the other pushing behind or pulling with a cord ; and, small though they be, and hilly albeit the road, they will run the twenty-five miles quite easily in four hours. The journey gives a good insight into Japanese rural life, since the way passes through many villages, and a fairly populous country. The road for four-fifths of its length is bordered on either side by stately trees, principally cryptomeria, some of which attain an extraordinary size, and for leagues together furnish an avenue of the utmost beauty RURAL JAPAN. 193 and magnificence. Hundreds among these trees have more than five feet diameter at a man's height, and lift their dark green crowns more than a hundred feet high. Every now and then a spot is reached where lightning, or the tail of a typhoon, has brought down one of these forest giants, hollowed to the core, and it either lies from bank to bank like a massive bridge, or has been partly consumed by fire and sawn in fragments, so that the thoroughfare can be cleared. In and about the villages a primitive but very practical agriculture is being carried on. The men are reaping rice, knee-deep in its wet bed ; the women, old and young, are threshing out the rice- bundles with curious revolving flails, or beating- bunches of millet and other grains on the top of a web, which lets the seed fall through, and thus combines threshing and winnowing. Lightly built carts, drawn by ponies, led by a nose-string, convey rice straw, shingles, petroleum for the household lamps, and vegetables ; but much of the traffic is done with pack animals. Everywhere may be seen the bright, placid life, the easy manners, the quiet contentment with the day, its duties and its pleasures, and light yet sincere piety, the kindness to children, strangers, and animals, the friendliness and tem- perance, and the indifference to the future, which mark a Buddhistic people. At Matsumoto, and again at Imaichi, our two- legged steeds pulled up briskly at a roadside tea- house, where we are received witli the sweet invariable politeness of this people, and sip little cups of pale tea, and munch parti-coloured biscuits i94 SEAS AND LANDS. under the shade of waving bamboos, or in a garden of the usual fantastic design. The Japanese love of flowers is as genuine as it is refined. At Imaichi a small boy brings us out a pot of chrys- anthemums and places it beside us, as if it were in the nature of things that our rest would be made better and happier by the purple and amber blossoms. The little ones in the street shout out " Ohayo ! " in cheerful salutation, and the older people bow gracefully. As for our human horses, they seem insensible to fatigue, and trot the last five miles into Nikko as freshly as at first. Starting so early in the morning from Utsunomiya, we have arrived in time for lunch at the hotel, and for a good walk into the heart of the mountains as far as Nanataki, the " Seven Cascades." All around the little town, which deals principally in skins of wild animals and articles turned from wood, are lofty hills closed in thick timber and full of lakes and cataracts, and the air is pure and invigorating, Nikko being 2000 feet above sea-level. But what brings native and foreign people to Nikko is not the grand mountain scenery surround- ing it, nor its superb avenues of firs, nor any attraction the little town can offer, but the splendid temples and the royal tombs, which make it a place of pilgrimage and one of the spots dearest to Japanese piety and patriotism. The people have a proverb, " He who has not seen Nikko knows not the meaning of the word Kikko " (beautiful). You find in Japan everywhere apparently two religions, Shinto and Buddhism, but the two intermix almost RURAL JAP AX. i 95 universally as much in belief as in locality. I gather that every Japanese baby is placed at its birth under the care of some Shinto deity, but lives and dies in some Buddhist sect. Shinto is the religion, so far as it is one at all, of the Court and the State, but it exacts few or no observances, and the moral guidance of the nation is practically com- mitted — so far as I can ascertain — to imperfect forms of Buddhism. Shinto, meaning " Way of the ( rods," to distinguish it from Butsu-do, the " Way of Buddha," was, it seems, ancestor-worship first, and afterwards nature-worship. And this has affected Japanese Buddishm, for in most Japanese houses, together with the Shinto shrine, there is a Buddhist picture, and tablets inscribed to the memory of dead members of the family, who are prayed to and have the advantage of periodical offerings and burnt per- fume sticks. There are Shinto priests who wear a peculiar gown while officiating in the temple, and a black cap with a white fillet, and you may generally know a Shinto temple by the bundle of white paper or calico hanging in front of its shrine, which has, perhaps, a metal mirror over above it. Inside the sanctum an emblem of divinity is preserved, wrapped in a box, which may be a sword, a stone, or a shoe, but which even the chief priest scarcely ever sees. The worshipper claps his hands before this, bows his head, and throws a coin or two on the altar-mat, but utters no audible prayer. Pure Shintoism does not admit of any external decoration or images. The wood of the temple, which imitates the ancient Japanese hut, should be unpainted, and the roof 196 SEAS AND LANDS. merely thatched. But the advent of Buddhism, which came in from Corea and China about 600 a.d., brought with it religious and secular art, which Shintoism partly adopted ; and this caused the Shoguns, or secular rulers, to oscillate between one cult and the other, so that at Nikko — as well as in Shiba, the Royal Mausoleum of Tokio — one finds Buddhist and Shinto fanes within the same en- closure, and the latter as brilliantly adorned — at any rate, inside — as the splendid Buddhist sanctuaries near at hand. There are nine times as many Buddhist temples in Tokio as Shinto, and Mr. Satow, C.M.G., a very high authority, writes that " Buddhism, during the last ten years, has been steadily regaining power and position ; while the Shinto religion, for the protection of which a Government Department, ranking with the Council of State, was thought necessary at the revolution, has relapsed into its former insignificance. It is still in a certain sense a national religion, since its temples are maintained "out of the imperial and local revenues, and the attendance of the principal officials is required by Court etiquette at certain annual festivals celebrated at the Palace. But it has no exclusive hold over any section of the people, who adhere to it just in the same degree, and no more, as has been their practice during the last thousand years." Shiba — meaning " the grass-lawn " — in the capital, is a wonderful group of mortuary chapels and temples gathered round the tombs of six of the Shoguns, with those of their wives and fathers. RURAL JAPAN. 197 It is a maze of strange Chinese-looking edifices, burning in the noonday light with gold, bright- coloured carvings, fantastic arabesques, sculptured eaves, painted red, and sweeping black root's; each temple planted in a court, surrounded by stone railings, and a great number of votive lanterns, carved out of stone, together with objects in bronze, ornamental belfries, sacred wells, and picturesque gateways. All these are environed by dense groves of tall, dark fir trees, and on almost every portion of them is to be seen the triple Asarum leaf, the crest of the great Toku-gawa family of Shoguns, who were Buddhists. But, since nearly all the features of Shiba are reproduced with greater splen- dour at Nikko — both being practically indescribable without pictures — a brief mention of the wonderful shrines of the latter must do duty for both. A range of imposing mountains rises round Nikko, called the " Hills of the Sun's Brightness," and in a hollow of one of its lower glens stand the picturesque and curious structures which make the little town famous. They have grown up chiefly to mark the last resting-places of a Buddhist saint named Shodo Shonin and of two famous royal Shoguns, lye Yasu and lye Mitsu. At the top of the single street of Nikko you turn, by an ancient bridge painted red, and pass through a grove of cryptomerias to the gate of the Su mini fsti- ((0, or " Hall of Three Buddhas." You will enter that presently, and see within it the colossal figures, heavily gilded, and the familiar decorations of a sumptuous Buddhist shrine; but you must fust go 198 SEAS AND LANDS. on to a tall granite torii or gateway, where, hard by a five-storied pagoda, painted in red and green, a Shinto priest gives you the paper of admission, which he stamps with a vermilion seal. Armed with this, you enter the " porch of the two kings," 'and find yourself in a region of barbaric grandeur, where edifice after edifice grotesquely glorified, and tomb after tomb superbly but sombrely adorned, at first fascinate and then bewilder the attention. It is a region of fantastic architecture, gigantic gateways glowing with carved work, sometimes ex- quisitely beautiful or sometimes singularly hideous ; of paved courts, rich with wonderful bronzes, and ranges of sculptured votive lanterns ; of wide stair- ways of masonry leading to black-lacquered plat- forms, on which magnificent shrines stand with golden walls and pillars, and roof trees and eaves blazing with red and green and blue, are cut into wonderful volutes and gargoyles. Gilding and carving, lacquer and enamels, the richest chasing and the rarest sculpture, with blocks of stone massive enough for the Titans, and joinery deli- cate , as fairy work, unite in these extraordinary fanes. If you studied every detail of wonder, it is not a day but a month which would be necessary, and they would look yet more imposingly splendid but for a casing of plain wood which covers their side- walls. In one court; rises a great tree a hundred feet high, which Iye-Yasu was wont to carry about in his palanquin in a flower-vase. A holy cistern next presents itself, where the water runs over the RURAL JAPAN. 1 99 granite so equally that it seems a solid block of the element ; a bronze lamp from the King of Loo-choo also claims attention, and a bell from the King of Corea. Another stone staircase is ascended, and you are amongst tigers, tapirs, twisted dragons, and gilded demons, so lifelike as almost to alarm. And then gate succeeds to gate, court to court, cloister to cloister, and stairway to stairway, in such lavish confusion that it is a welcome repose to abstract the mind from the bewildering and heathenish grandeur by slipping off the shoes and entering one of the temples. The folding doors are rich with lotus and peony in gold relief. Beyond the black threshold stretch soft white mattings, leading through an ante-chamber, under a ceiling diapered witli wonderful colour and carving, to an altar glittering with gold and shining red-and-black lacquer. The panels of what might be called the nave, as well as the chancel to which it brings us, are embellished with marvellous figures in sculp- tured wood and beaten gold ; and gold asaruin leaves, the crest of the great family whose founders rest here, repeat themselves in every spot. In tin oratory, if it be Shinto, there hang Go/ici, or charms in gold paper, witli a circular mirror of metal, and you see the rural pilgrims prostrate themselves here, wrap a coin or two in white paper, reverently deposit the gifts and rise and depart with- out a word. If it is. Buddhist, the decorations will be still more dazzling, and the treasures of the oratory, more numerous and elaborate, while scrolls of "the Law" will be laid for reading on low stools. 200 SEAS AND LANDS. Both and all these buildings are chapels to the tombs of the saint and of the great Shogun. Weary of the overwhelming but often rude and grotesque splendour, you quit the soft-matted, silent, shining temple and the motionless priests, and pass up moss-grown ancient stone stairways and along galleries of masonry to the bell-shaped tombs, surrounded by balustrades of stone, where the old secular Kings of Japan sleep. In front of them stand great storks in bronze, and huge incense burners in the same material. All round the tombs, enclosing the entire range of buildings, groves of enormous trees cast their black-green shadow. The mountain glen seems to embrace the shrines and tombs alike, and to shut them from the glare of day, with gaunt rocks and impenetrable foliage. There is one spot near the gate of the mausoleum of Iye-Mitsu where you pass between the God of Wind, painted green and gold, and the God of Thunder, all blazing crimson, and reaching the " Yaksha Gate," look out of it upon the wall of dark-sn-een verdure and the wilderness of curving roofs, gilded ridge-poles, brilliant doorways, and lacquer alight with gold. Here the weird and strange attractions of the scene seem to be concen- trated in all that nature can lend of solemnity to all that superstition can devise of blended terror and beauty. For there is nothing elevating, reposeful, or edifying here. The Shinto has taken up with splendid but painful images of ugliness and awe, the Buddhism is degenerate and decorative, and the mountains around, which have elsewhere so many RURAL JAPAN. 201 features of gracious beauty, huddle their crags together round the place, and lend it nothing but what it seems to ask — profound shadow, sepulchral gloom, and an unbroken silence. Half dazzled, half oppressed with pacing through a dozen glittering shrines and chapels, resplendent hondens and haidens, superb oratories and gloomy tomb-enclosures, where gorgeous details overlaid and overwhelmed each other, and the mind became obscured as is the eye when it gazes too long upon extreme brilliancy, we resumed our shoes, and, passing towards the beautiful gate, Yomei Man, saw the one graceful and charming sight of the fantastic labyrinth. Close by a side building where country people upon their knees were buying written charms to take home for good luck or recovery from illness, we came upon a pretty little open chapel marked by the Shinto gold paper shreds and mirror. On its floor of spotless matting was a seated figure, which might have been taken at first for the chief triumph of the Shogun carvers' work, so motionless was it ; but in another moment you perceived this was only a Ja])anese girl clothed in white, and seated in the shrine. Our guide threw a coin into the box in front of her. Upon this she rose, ami with extremely becoming movements, commenced the kagura, or temple dance, beating slow time to her own steps with the bunch of silver bells held in her right hand, and waving her fan to the same cadence with her left, while performing what was a most rhythmical, solemn, and striking " p