 CHAPTER 11 On the Railway Cars An inconvenience inseparable from the distances run on American railways is the variation of time. Going west one's watch is always slowing, going east it gains, a difficulty that might be grappled with if it stood alone. But there is, super-added, the uncertainty as to what time prevails in the connecting link of railway, with which you are specially concerned. There was much disgust expressed in the British section of a Denver train at the Discovery made on reference to the timetable, that the Denver and Rio Grande railway delivered its passengers at Ogden a quarter of an hour after the Central Pacific train had gone on to San Francisco. On arriving at Ogden it was found that on the contrary there was a good hour to spare for breakfast, the simple explanation being that at Ogden San Francisco time is taken up, whereas we had been running on Denver time. I used to have a great pity for the people living at Pont-Arlie, the frontier town where French time is exchanged for the Swiss. Between l'heure de Paris and l'heure de Berne, set forth on the same clock-face by combination of red and black hands, it seemed that life could scarcely be worth living. But Pont-Arlie is not a patch on Ogden, where the waiting-room at the railway station is crowded with clocks, giving the various times upon which diver's trains will run. It would not be difficult to drive a man mad, supposing he were called up in the morning by New York time, had his breakfast by Washington time, lunched at San Francisco time, had a cup of five o'clock tea by the Boston clock, dined at the Chicago hour, and went to bed at Laramie time. He would gratefully be buried either at St. Louis time or Omaha, whichever struck first. At Ogden trains running west are ruled by San Francisco time, which is three hours two minutes slower than Washington time, three hours twenty-six minutes than Boston, three hours fourteen minutes than New York, two hours twenty minutes than Chicago, two hours nine minutes than St. Louis, one hour forty-six minutes than Omaha, one hour fourteen minutes than Laramie, and forty-two minutes slower than Ogden time. The public inconvenience arising from this penalty of geographical greatness has long occupied the attention of the railway managers. It is growing in pressure since the railway system is branching out and every little line has its local time. A characteristically bold scheme has been put forward to abolish the old world clock-dial and have one worthy of the United States. Why should the computation of time stop at twelve o'clock when there are twenty-four hours in the day? Why not have thirteen o'clock and even twenty-four o'clock? These startling questions have been put before the intelligent public, and have been received with much favour. If the French Republicans changed the names of the months and the course of years, why should not a greater and more stable republic have its own clock-dial? The proposal was tempting, but it had to be resisted by reason of the same extension of longitude that is at the bottom of the whole difficulty. When it is twenty-four o'clock, Anglesey midnight at Boston, it would be about half past eight in the evening in San Francisco. Must San Francisco be put to bed immediately after dinner? Almost Boston sit up till what would be half past three in the morning. Whatever the republic might decree, the sun would remain master of the situation, and the national sundial scheme gravely put forward by the Pennsylvania Railway Company had to be abandoned. A much more modest one is now practically approved by the railway managers and will shortly come into operation. The breadth of the states will be divided into four parallels, starting from the east by New York time by which in the first parallel all trains of whatever company will run. In the second parallel the trains will run on the system of time dated an hour later. A second hour will be accounted for in the third parallel, and at Ogden San Francisco time making up the balance will prevail. The delay in American trains is truly continental in its proportions. In England it is regarded as a serious matter if a train on a main line is half an hour late. To lose an hour waiting for a train is an event the rarity of which is marked by much strong language on the part of the sufferers. Arriving at Salt Lake City from Denver we were four hours late, and starting next day from Ogden by the Central Pacific we had to wait three hours and a half for the arrival of the Union Pacific from the east. From Ogden to San Francisco is over 800 miles, a run in which there are possibilities of making up the loss of time more especially when the average speed is twenty miles an hour. On this journey it was done and we reached San Francisco on time, but this is not always the case as appears from the Denver journey quoted the through passengers from the west missing their train and being compelled to stop at Ogden all night. Slow running is not always an unmixed evil as we learned on the Denver line. Approaching after midnight one of the stations, a switch which should have been closed, was left open and a serious accident made possible. Owing however to the slow pace only the engine and the baggage car got off the line and the passengers in the Pullman car slept on, unconscious of the danger averted. As compared with English trains the American cars with their open gangways and the possibilities of moving about are vastly superior for the work they have to do. To travel a thousandth miles at a stretch cooped up in an English first-class carriage would be intolerable. In the Pullman cars a run of a thousandth miles, travelling day and night, is a mere incident of the week and you leave the cars as fresh as when you entered. One day we saw the sunrise over the Rocky Mountains and watched it sink behind the grey sandy plains that lie about Salt Lake City. A long journey as hours accounted but actually wear is some neither to body nor mind. This railway journey from Salida across the Rocky Mountains is perhaps the most beautiful in either world, new or old. At a quarter-past four o'clock in the morning the train was due, but it was nearly five before it steamed out of the station and breasted the steep ascent of the Marshall Pass. The stars were still shining in the deep blue sky. In the east, breaking over a purple ridge of mountain, the dark blue was pailing to pearl grey. Presently there was a faint tinge of colour changing as we looked to sulphur and on through grades of infinite beauty to gold and crimson. Then the sun shone clear over the mountaintops and hill and dale field, stream and sky took on a beauty that mocks description. After winding in and out round capes and over chasms we came to one of the many canyons which make railway engineering possible over these great divides. Imagine a narrow gorge with towering sides of rock, a tiny river rushing through sometimes emerald green where the sunlight caught it in quiet depths, but often a mass of foam and spray leaping over grey rocks in its haste to reach the plain. The mountains on either side rise sheer up a clear thousand feet of bare rock, grey and brown and red. A turn in the canyon shows hills of softer shape, with here and there veins of brushwood of brilliant crimson. There hang over the stream graceful trees unknown in England with delicate foliage like maiden hair fern of every shade of colour from deepest gold to daintiest green. Through the gorge winding at every few yards the train glides along at a pleasant driving pace giving time to enjoy all the beauty spread abroad. Nearly always we have the river for which and the track there is just room enough in the canyon. All through the long morning the crisp mountain air is full of sunshine and even when the sun goes down and the moon and the stars come out over the plains there is a deep blue sky framing the ever-varying picture. At midnight on the far horizon towards which we were speeding a new and startling light flamed forth. It was too low to be a constellation and out of the way of the Aurora Borealis. As we do nearer it spread in extent and the smoke about it began to form a cloud. It looked like a burning city but it was only a stubble field and this was one of the peaceful processes of western agriculture. In this happy land straw is not worth the trouble of reaping. The heads of corn are cut off close and the straw left standing. When it is thoroughly dried a match is applied. The straw burned up and the ground is ready for the plough. It is a matter of great regret to travellers that Mr. Baydecker rests on his laurels earned in Europe and for bears to include the United States in his familiar series of handbooks. Here is a new world to conquer worthy of his genius. There are handbooks in the United States, one professing to be on the model of Baydecker, but they are curiously useless. I had one known here as the Tourist's Guide to the United States and Canada and in England as the Englishman's Guide. Published at seven and sixpence in England it costs ten and sixpence in New York, its place of manufacture. For some days covering thousands of miles of travel it possessed a strange fascination for me, being the premier book in the English tongue as containing the least amount of information in proportion to its bulk. But enjoyment of that kind soon pause, and on rejoining my trunks at Chicago I put the volume away at the bottom of the largest one. The baggage arrangements are, in their inception, among the principal conveniences of American travel. The voyager from New York to San Francisco can, without trouble or expense, check his baggage forward from town to town, picking it up where he pleases. Sometimes it is true he picked it up in several pieces, and many a family arriving at San Francisco have had their opinion of the convenience of the American system sorely modified as they stood by the wreck of their baggage. An American railway porter treats each individual piece of baggage as if he owed it a personal grudge. Easy as it may seem to take the lightest and frailest boxes as to the basis of a pile, and then bring down upon them the sharp ironbound edges of a Saratoga trunk, it requires a good deal of skill and practice, so to deal with whole carloads of luggage. Yet I have never seen at any station along four thousand miles of railway a single instance of failure. An English railway porter handles baggage with comparative kindliness, for it represents to him six months or a shilling. Tipping not being the practice in America, the railway porter has nothing to look for or to hope for, and accordingly takes it out of the baggage. This same absence of tips is doubt as responsible for the brusqueness frequently reaching the stage of downright rudeness, which marks the manner of all with whom travelers have to deal at American railway stations. Ask a porter or depot superintendent, if you can find one, from which of the confusing lines a particular train is to start. Howl! he growls, turning upon you a frowning indignant face, as if he thought he had heard you ask him to lend you five shillings. You repeat the question, and he, turning on his heel, pitches over his shoulder a monosyllabic reply, which you may or may not catch. In any case, it will be all you'll get. This is not a reference to an exceptional experience. It is an unvarnished description of at least twenty approaches politely made to railway officials between New York and San Francisco. At only one town did I meet with an employe whose manner answered in any degree to the courtesy and willingness to oblige of a corresponding official at an English railway station. The exception, I gratefully and admiringly record it, was the stationmaster at Kansas City. The tip system against which English railway directors rigorously enforce penalties has its abuses. But sometimes, wandering forlornly in search of my train at a large railway junction, I have thought tenderly of the English railway porter, with his right hand dropped at his side and conveniently hooked, lest for adventure the obliged passenger should want to drop a shilling in it. Perhaps in England we are too much in the habit of relying upon the friendly and officious porter, who not only sees your baggage into the van, but conducts you to a carriage, and leaves you safely and comfortably seated. But if such intervention is desirable at an English station, with its well-defined platform, its warning bell, and its hosts of attendance, it seems absolutely indispensable in an American depot, pronounced depot, which is simply a wilderness of rails level with waiting-rooms. Instead of a train being drawn up to a raised platform as in England, it is halted in various positions on the broad, level, unguarded highway, oftenest either in the middle or at the far side. No attempt is made to see that passengers who have paid for their tickets start with the train. All aboard, the conductor confidentially observes to himself, and thereupon, without warning, whistle, or sound of bell, the train glides out of the station with whatever proportion of passengers may chance to be seated at the moment, or in the frantic rush which follows may succeed in jumping on. Don't get yourself left, a phenomenally friendly conductor said to me at Ellis, as I stood on the platform two seconds before the train moved on. That way of pushing it exactly represents the situation. If a train over an hour or too late pulls up at a roadside station, and presently moving off without a warning note, leaves the passenger behind, he has got himself left. This brusqueness in railway places is a reflection of the national manner as met within the cars and on steamboats. How, or what's that, is the invariable response made to a question, however softly put, by a stranger on the cars. It is uttered in a peculiarly sharp, snappish tone, while your interlocutor is looking up and down from hat to boots with suspicious, inquiring glance. I do not think anything unpleasant is meant by this. The American, when you know him, is among the most friendly and hospitable of human beings, but his manner on the cars or in the streets is apt to convey a false impression to the foreigner. What sometimes happens, even after the unpromising conversational start of how, or what's that, that a fellow companion on a car becomes very friendly, and sometimes even entertaining. This is most frequently the case on long journeys, where, having observed your habits and formed an opinion of your character, the conclusion has arrived at that you don't mean any particular harm. On the journey between Ogden and San Francisco I made the acquaintance of an early settler in California. He was a lawyer, and full of reminiscences of the early administration of law in the state. It seems to have worked consistently so as to give the odd chance to the criminal. Three escapes are worth recording. The first happened at Esmeralda, a town near the borders of Nevada and California. A man was being tried for murder, a very bad case. Esmeralda being at the time understood to be in California, the judge, sheriffs and jury were all from that state. The case for the prosecution was concluded there was literally no defence, and the fate of the prisoner seemed sealed. The judge was about to address the jury, when the official surveyors, who had been working in the neighbourhood for some days, hurriedly arrived in the court, and announced that Esmeralda was in Nevada. Then, gentlemen, said the judge, rising and reaching for his hat, I don't know if I have any business here. I reckon judge that we've none either, said the jury, beginning to disperse. I guess I'm in the wrong box too, said the prisoner, and out he went with the crowd, and was not seen in the neighbourhood any more. In the second case the prisoner got off by an oversight of the judge. This happened at Sacramento. The man had been caught red handed in the act of murder, but in accordance with the possibilities of American law had been bailed out. At the sitting of the court the man surrendered and the responsibility of his bondsman there ended. This was the preliminary inquiry, and what the judge had to decide was whether the man should be held to answer the charge before a jury, a process akin to our magisterial inquiry. After hearing the evidence, the judge held the prisoner to answer, but omitted the next formula of delivering him into the custody of the sheriff. It was, accordingly, the business of only a single person to look after the prisoner. That person was himself, and judging he would be better outside, he walked out, and has not since been captured. The third case is less nearly connected with legal formula. A sheriff had, after a hot chase, caught a prisoner charged with shooting a fellow practitioner at the bar of an hotel. As there was some talk of rescue, the sheriff, a determined fellow, spared no precaution. He had the prisoner bound and carried into a substantial log hut. Arming himself to the teeth, he determined to keep watch himself through the night. He barricaded the door, and for greater safety slept across it, placing his prisoner in the corner remotest from the door. I guess, he said, as he lay down, if they take the boy they'll have to stride over my body. At daybreak he was awakened by a cold draught, and looking round, saw that he was the sole occupant of the hut. The prisoner's friends had raised one corner of the hut with a screw-jack. The prisoner had rolled himself out, and was already well across the border. The distance seeming the greater by reason of the loneliness of the way. Nineteen days are occupied in crossing four thousand seven hundred miles of water, and during all that time till within a hundred miles of Yokohama we do not see a sail or other sign of human life. Life of any kind except that, born along by the ship herself, has been curiously absent. One day a missionary from Illinois created some excitement by discovering a whale, but it turned out to be only a porpoise. Opportunities for observing the common objects of the sea are limited in Illinois. Save for the albatross the great waste of water bounded by the horizon would be absolutely lifeless, but the albatross we have always with us. Shortly after land had faded from sight three attached themselves to the ship, and through a wild wet day followed it, sometimes swooping far ahead as if impatient of its slow progress, and then returning quietly to talk the matter over in our wake. On the fourth day the number was increased to nine at which it steadily stood. It is hard to say whether they are always the same birds, and much kindly thought is bestowed upon their sleeping arrangements. Wherever they sleep or howsoever they rest they are always full of life and strength and grace careering round the ship, and never tired of their one game, which consists of getting a clear run with one or two flaps of their wings, then with graceful swoop coming down to the water's edge, and seeing which can go nearest to the waves without wetting the tip of one wing. One Sunday afternoon to the scandal of the missionaries of whom we have six on board, they began playing cartwheels in close imitation of the London street boy, but they soon tired of this and went back to the prize skimming game, which they have played incessantly ever since. One day a ship in full sail bound east past us. The day after, when within a hundred miles of port, we had a visitor in the shape of a dove. Like the one dispatched by Noah, it had been out over the waste of waters in search of land, and finding none gladly took refuge on our ark. It sat for hours on one of the yard arms, and regarded with profound interest the crowd of Chinese playing dominoes on the lower deck. In the afternoon came also a couple of white albatross, which gaily escorted us till night fell upon the ship almost under the shadow of land. A wreck on the Atlantic is bad enough, but a wreck on the Pacific is almost hopeless. On a recent passage of one of these steamers, the lookout discovered far on the lee what looked like an abandoned junk. Bearing down upon it, signs of life were noted, and a boat was prepared for the rescue. The steamer, bearing close down upon the junk and having too much way on her, passed it, where upon seven half-starved Japanese, who had been eagerly watching her approach, believing the steamer was, after all, abandoning them, flung themselves upon the deck with a despairing shriek. And all that could be seen was half a dozen skeleton hands waving over the bulwarks of the junk, a mute appeal to relent and rescue them. When the Japanese were taken off, they could scarcely crawl across the deck of the steamer, and one died the same night, delirious with his first meal. It was a junk, rice-laden, and had been driven out to sea by a typhoon. Three long months they had been tossing about on the lonely Pacific, hungrily scanning the horizon, and never a sail had they seen till the steamer hove in sight. They had subsisted wholly on raw rice, and it fortunately, being the rainy season, had found a bare but sufficient supply of water. Under the unremitting care of their rescuers, the six Japanese recovered health and strength. Indeed, before being landed at Yokohama, they were well enough to roundly abuse the captain for having burned their waterlogged junk after saving them, and to threaten an action for damages. An ordinary Atlantic steamer would make this voyage in fourteen days. The Coptic, though small as compared with the Atlantic liners, could easily do it in sixteen. But the managers at San Francisco have reached the conclusion that more money is to be made by extending the natural limits of the voyage, which not infrequently runs to twenty-six days. The Occidental and Oriental line is registered as a Liverpool company, and the ships at the time of my visit actually belonged to the White Star Line. Practically, the little knot of men already alluded to as controlling all public works in connection with San Francisco have closed their rapacious hand over this line of steamers, which they charter. There is another line, the Pacific Mail, to which an innocent public might look to deliver them from a tyranny of monopoly. But San Francisco operators are not likely to leave a weapon of the kind hanging loose. The two companies pool their earnings, and of course settle their freight charges on a common basis, limited by the endurance of the public. I do not know anything of the freight charges, but can bear testimony that the passage money as compared with the mileage of the Atlantic is nearly fifty percent higher. That might be born, especially as there is no redress, but the hapless passengers have some cause for complaint that their time should be ruthlessly wasted, offered up as sacrifice to the molok of the niggardly economy of the San Francisco clique. Things have grown worse since the company became possessed of a so-called coal mine. This is known as the Carbon Hill Mine, and according to the San Francisco joke, the managers of the Occidental line debated for some time whether they should work it for slate or for coal. It was decided by a toss-up to call it a coal mine, and the proceeds are sent out to be burned in this line of mail-steamers. Burning it liberally and with a fair wind, we gaily bowl along at ten knots an hour, with a headwind and a rough sea, if we make four knots, we are grateful. With fair treatment, the Coptic could do an average of fourteen knots. Experiments are now being made with the view of using this coal in driving the cable street trams in San Francisco. A still more ambitious project, entertained by the ruthless proprietors, is to burn it on the Union Pacific line. The only hope for hapless San Francisco and for the public using this great highway to the west rests in the fact that the Carbon Hill Mine is the private property of a few members of the clique, and they will have to settle with their colleagues in the proprietorship. If it can be made worth their while, these gentlemen will, in accordance with their custom, accept the stuff for coal. But the terms must be high, and San Francisco helplessly looking on, hopes for the best. As for the mail-steamers, things are likely to grow worse rather than better, since there is some talk of abandoning the charter with the White Star Line for a cheaper class of vessel. In the meantime, we have a White Star ship with all its comforts and admirable management, as far as it can be controlled from Liverpool. We have, in Captain Kidley, one of the cheeriest, kindliest commanders of float, and with occasional growls at the coal, get along very comfortably. Our captain has a fine baritone voice, and comes out with great effect in the choir on Sundays. The difficulty here, and with kindred entertainments, is that the piano has been tuned at least two notes low. A fresh evidence it is agreed of the economical policy of the management. Last Sunday it had been arranged to include in the hymns the one commencing eternal father, strong to save. A hymn which sung in thousands of English churches on quiet Sundays, find an echo in many a lonely ship making its way across the pathless ocean. Just before the service I came upon the captain, evidently in a mood of deep dejection, despairingly wrestling with a difficult problem. What's the matter, Captain? I asked. Have the engineers come upon another layer of slate? No, said he, loyally resenting reference to the sore subject of the coal. I'm thinking of the piano. We must pitch eternal father two bars higher. We have on board, living and dead, some twelve hundred Chinaman. The living ones are going home to spend in China the modest fortune they have made in California. The dead are going home to be buried in the company of their ancestors. No one can say how many dead we have on board, though the original number is being added to from day to day. Even the person does not know, though he might, if he liked, tell how many coffins have been regularly entered as freight by the six companies of San Francisco. These corporations were instituted with the object of directing and profiting by the immigration of the Chinese to California. Apart from other payments, a Chinaman subscribes two dollars to the six companies on arriving at San Francisco, and from two to six on returning. In consideration of these payments, the companies undertake in the event of sickness to provide medical aid, and in case of death, to embalm the body and ship it to Hong Kong. The companies are, in fact, a kind of sick and burial society. On a hill at San Francisco, overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate, is a small, unkempt enclosure, known as the Chinese Cemetery. But it is merely a temporary resting-place for the bones of the tired dead man. It is in his bond that sooner or later he shall be laid at rest in his native village, in convenient contiguity to his ancestors. And the six companies dare no more, in the least considerable case, refuse to meet this engagement, than the Bank of England dare refuse to cash one of its five pound notes. It is whispered among the outer barbarians that the six companies are not asleep to opportunities of reducing their liabilities. If they have on their books a man sinking from consumption a dire disease among the Chinese immigrants, they make haste to ship him off. If he dies in San Francisco it will cost the companies from first to last twenty pounds. If he has once got on board and passes out through the Golden Gate into another world, the cost of embalming the body falls on other shoulders. If the man has money, the amount is deducted from his possessions. If he has not, the poorest Chinaman on board will subscribe to the fund necessary to secure his embalmment. In either case the cost of embalming is only thirty dollars, of which the Persa takes twelve and a half. The doctor who does the work receives an equal sum, and the odd five dollars are distributed among the members of the crew who handle the coffin. A dead Chinaman is, with grotesque realism called a stiff, and the number of stiffs on a voyage is the measure of the financial prosperity of Persa, doctor and petty officers. On a good voyage I have been told there have been as many as sixteen stiffs, representing four hundred and eighty dollars. These steamers always take out a stock of coffins. They are stored in the boats on deck, and should anything happen to the vessel and we had to take to the boats, we must first hand out the coffins, some full, others empty. A Chinese coffin has an unaccustomed look, which relieves the boatloads from much of their ghastliness. They look like trunks of trees, hollowed, squared, and with the ends stocked up. They are not shaped with the stiff formality of the western coffin, and are to my mind infinitely preferable. Generally the deaths are viewed with stolid indifference by the Chinese. There is one more bunk empty, one mouth less to feed, and the Persa and doctor have another handful of dollars. But when there is a family and one is taken, the commotion is considerable. There was on board our ship an old, dried up Chinese lady from Demerara, said to be eighty years of age. She was hastening home to dwell for ever with kiss and kin, but could not hold out, and died on the tenth day. One night she predicted her death on the following day, had herself dressed in grave-clothes, and lay quietly awaiting the trist she had made, and which death for his part faithfully kept. When the coffin was carried out to be placed with the rest in the boat, her sons and daughters and grandchildren followed it with great weeping and wailing, in which their sympathetic countrymen playing dominoes on the deck heartily joined. When the sail-cloth was drawn over the newest coffin, stowed away in the boat hanging by the dabbits, sons, daughters, and grandchildren went back to pipes and tea. The players returned to their dominoes, and the yellow-wrinkled old lady in the white grave-clothes seemed to pass from memory. The reason why uncertainty exists as to the precise number of dead bodies on board arises from the friendly habits of the Chinese. They will, to oblige a neighbour, cheerfully pack up the bones of a compatriot in a red pocket handkerchief, or place them as the last layer in a trunk containing their best clothes, and so give them free passage home. The live Chinaman is the most inveterate gambler of the human race. He begins shortly after sunrise, and the dominoes and dice are put away only when it grows too dark to recognise the numbers. I got up early one morning to see the sunrise, and was rewarded by coming upon even a more remarkable sight. It was a Chinaman cleaning his teeth. He had on a pair of blue cotton trousers, made for a man with much longer body, the seat flapping idly about his knees. Above this he wore a sailor's cloth p-jacket, green with age. The front part of his head, shaved shortly before leaving San Francisco, was now covered with short hair, his pigtail being wound several times round the crown of his head. There, in the early morning, with the east beginning to glow in the light of the rising sun, the Chinaman stood and sedulously soared away at his teeth with a brush he had probably borrowed from his last place. Near him, even at this hour, were five groups sitting on their haunches around pieces of matting, playing dominoes and chattering like so many magpies. They seemed a very light-hearted race with unlimited conversational powers, and a keen perception of what passes in Chinese for a joke. Their capacity for the conditions of sedentary life is astonishing. Some of them do not leave their bunk from one week's end to the other. Those who go on deck either sit on their haunches all day gambling, or stand vacantly staring at the quarter-deck, as if they momentarily expected something to happen upon it. Nothing surprises them so much as to see the saloon passengers walking up and down as if for a wager. On fine days some of them dine on deck, and display remarkable dexterity with their chopsticks. They eat in parties of fourteen. Each mess has its self-elected steward who brings the allowance, around which the fourteen sit, gambling and gobbling, putting their chopsticks in the common dish, and stoking themselves with rice with marvellous skill. An able-bodied Chinaman dexterously poises his bowl over his underlip, holding it with his left hand. In his right, twinkle the chopsticks, and before you could count a score, the bowl is empty, and the reinvigorated diner out is fishing round with his chopsticks in the common bowl for a toothsome bit of fat pork. Upwards of half a tonne of rice is consumed every day by the steerage passengers. This is their staple food, but they have delicacies and luxuries which vary its monotony. Dried fish is much appreciated, and so are eggs, if of proper age. It is, of course, only the rich who can afford the luxury of an egg laid five or six years ago. On board the ship the steerage passengers must be content to have them as many months old. They are shipped in barrels, each egg being carefully covered with the preparation of mud and charcoal. This is peeled off, and the delicacy is ready for the table. It is interesting to watch the glistening eyes and watering lips of the group standing around the barrel in which the eggs are being peeled. Who knows but that per adventure a real full-flavoured five-year-old may not by accident have got in with the rest. Another delicacy of even higher rank is shrimps. Not your fresh shrimps, redolent of the sea, such as are served with bread and butter and watercress at Margate. The in-born conservatism of the Chinese extends to his dish of shrimps. They must be old, or he will have none of them. They are shelled and dried, and after many days made into soup in conjunction with vermouth chili. It is a great day in the steerage when shrimp soup is on the bill of fare. The shells are exported to China, where they bring a large price, being regarded as the finest manure for the tea plant. In San Francisco a large and important trade is carried on in shrimp shells, of which we have many bales among our cargo. Another favourite Chinese soup is made of a quartz sugar, first cousin to molasses, known as Penochi. A proportion of ship's biscuits is added, and the soup served out twice a week to the exceeding joy of the Chinese. Yet another prime delicacy is a vegetable known as beanstick. This is the beanstalk dried and submitted to some more mysterious process, after which it is chopped up and boiled to make soup. Tea is served at every meal, and is, of course, taken without milk or sugar. This list comprises the principal articles of food provided on the ship. In addition, some of the more thoughtful furnish themselves with the supply of pork sausages supernaturally fat. These they hang up at the head of their bunks. It must be rather hard for the poor fellows on either side or in the rear bunks to have these tempting delicacies hanging almost literally over their noses, and to feel that they are another's. I had the opportunity of visiting the Chinese quarters in the ship, and was astonished to find it densely populated at eleven o'clock in the morning. It was a fine morning, and the decks thaw and aft were crowded with domino players chattering at the top of their voice, as fortune varied, and there were exchanged driblets of cash, of which at present currency eleven hundred go to make three and nine pence. Yet the births below deck were as populous as a rabbit-warren. As we walked through, dodging the strings of sausages that hung out from many bunks, yellow faces bobbed up from all quarters, and great brown almond-shaped eyes fixed us with uncompromising stare. Unlike the Japanese, who, whenever they can, dress in European garments, which even upon the well-to-do classes look as if they were misfits bought in Petticoat Lane, the Chinese, even at sea, preserve their national garb. They are not exclusive in respect of trousers, which may be of any cloth or cut, though blue cotton is preferred, nor are they particular in the matter of headgear. The proper Chinese cap is made of black silk, close fitting and surmounted by a little red button. These are largely worn on the ship, but in number they are run very close by a soft, flat-crowned billy-cock, in various stages of dilapidation, and having more or less reference to the size of the head. This disreputable headgear, clapped over the pigtail and surmounting the Chinese tunic, sometimes has an irresistibly comic effect. Amongst the throng of Cooley's are some half dozen men of strikingly different appearance. These are decently dressed in blue-cloth tunics with trousers to match, and with stockings on their feet. They wear their pigtails down their back, where in course of time it makes a smooth, greasy mark between the shoulders. They are merchants returning home on business, and could well afford to take a saloon passage, but like the shunamite woman, they prefer to dwell among their own people. One family, consisting of father, mother and three pretty moon-faced children, travelled from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a drawing-room car. On board the Coptic they pig in with their own race, eat their own food, and breathe their somewhat overlaid and air. Neither wife nor children have, as far as I have seen, once appeared on deck since the ship left San Francisco. That is by no means an uncommon case, yet they appear healthy and happy enough. Infinite care is taken to find the best possible ventilation for the crowded hold, and with surprising success. On the morning I visited the steerage, it had been batten down on account of rough weather, yet no one could have told that a thousand people closely packed had passed the night there. There is food for pensive thought in the fact that there are over eleven hundred Chinaman on board the ship, and less than fifty of western race. Contingencies have been cared for in a peculiar but effective manner. Hoses and steam-pipes are strategically placed so as to command the decks and holds. If the Chinese were to prove obstreperous they might be either steamed or drenched. Cases are not infrequent where the hose is brought into requisition. Not very long ago, on a voyage of thirty days, the supply of rice gave out, and the Chinese began to murmur. The murmur rising to clamour the hose was got ready for action. When the Chinese rushed off to asking for rice, the bosom gave them water, and what might have been a murderous outbreak was instantly quelled. Four days before we arrived, there was an outbreak among the Chinese on the Coptic, arising out of a little difficulty among themselves. They were, as usual, playing dominoes when accusations of foul play were made. Three retired, and, coming back, each armed with a chopper, went for anyone who had a chance to be near. The baker was one, and him they sliced with the choppers, till the watch rushing up they were disarmed, put in irons, and were on arrival handed to the police authorities at Yokohama. Meanwhile we were deprived of the services of our baker who made excellent bread. There is a small cabin aft, set apart for opium smokers. It is always crowded, but the space is wholly inadequate to the demand. Those who cannot get in appropriate a covered passage near the wheel, where in double line, feet to feet, they lie and smoke, like gods together, careless of mankind. To them, hateful is the dark blue sky, vaulted are the dark blue sea. Death is the end of life, our why should life all labour be? Let them alone! They have toiled much and long in an alien land, bearing the insults and often the cuffs of a race they despise. Now they have made their little heap of money, and are going back to spend it with their families, and with the sweet certainty that their bones shall rest in their own land. There will be labour again when the voyages are over, and they land in Hong Kong. In the meanwhile let them muse and brood and live again in memory with those old faces of their infancy, heaped over with a mound of grass, two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of East by West by Henry W. Lucy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 13 Some Japanese Trays As we steamed into the bay of Yedo, Yokohama was dimly discernible under larring skies, and through the mist of incessant rain. In crossing the Pacific we had been cheered by the sight of many sunsets of ever varied beauty. However dull or wet the day, the sunset was rarely missing. Now the sun seemed to have set for ever. It had, we learned on landing, been raining for a fortnight, which was a little hard on Yokohama, since it had had its rains in June and July, and this was its season for fair weather. One of our fellow passengers was from Glasgow, and as we stood in the custom house, sheltering from the pitiless rain, and wondering how far we should be successful in making a dash into a dream rickshaw without getting wet through, he was visibly affected. It is just like Glasgow. He murmured, thinking of the many months that had separated him from home and friends, fog and rain. But the rain was the only thing home-like in the scene. As the Coptics steamed up to the boy, we caught some indefinite glimpses of Yokohama, with the green bluff which Europeans have wisely marked for their own, and where they live in pretty bungalows set in cool gardens flanked by tennis-lawns. Even through the rain, the bay was a fine sight. All the navies of the world might ride at anchor here, safe from the winds that mock at the name of the Pacific. Half a dozen men of war were already anchored, notably a Russian ironclad, one of the most beautiful things afloat. England was represented by a single ship, two having been ordered off to Hong Kong in view of possibilities that might be created by the trouble agitating France and China. There were ships of larger or smaller tonnage from American and British ports. A Mitsubishi steamer came puffing in our wake, arriving from one of the southern Japanese ports, and going north at daybreak. One smart steamer murmured to the boy, must have been an object of special interest to the Mitsubishi people. She is the first comer of a splendid fleet of sixteen steamers, now building on the Clyde, and intended to run in competition with the Mitsuline. By October 1884 this fine fleet of steamers will be coasting round Japan. Long before the Coptic was made fast to the boy, the bay was alive with sampans, the heavy-looking native boat with the cruise clamorous fares. The boatman, standing in the stern vigorously working the colossal ore that skulls the sampan, were dressed for a wet day. It is not many years since the Japanese native costume amongst the lower orders was limited to a hand-spread of cloth tied about the loins. The new order of Japanese, impregnated with Western ideas, sternly sets its face against this habitude. The upper classes, laying aside the graceful eastern robes which their fathers wore, have attired themselves in European dress, which they wear without grace. There seems no reason why, given a capable tailor, a Japanese gentleman should not look well in broadcloth. As a matter of fact he never does. From the Mikado down to the merchant or tradesman, a Japanese who wears European dress seems to have bought his suit at a ready-made clothing establishment. Happily the ladies, with instinctive good taste, more generally retain the native costume, with its graceful lines and soft colours. When they lay it aside for European clothes, they lose all their natural tasting colours and come out with painful contrasts. The lower classes, compelled by imperial edict to go about clothed, keep to the native dress, and so obtain a vast advantage over their superiors in station. In fine weather this dresses with the men exceeding scanty, consisting of a blouse and blue cotton drawers, tightly fitting and extending halfway down the thigh. On a day like this they put on wonderful straw cloaks reaching to the knee, whilst their heads are thatched with wide straw hats of saucer shape. Thus arrayed with bare brown legs and brawny arms wielding the gigantic oar, they look like a regiment of man Fridays, expectant of Robinson Crusoe's arrival in the Coptic, and eager to welcome him back to island life. Presently, when the rain ceased, the cloaks were dropped off, straw hats pitched aside, and they stood there some forty or fifty of the stalwartest men in either hemisphere. They do not run much to height, but their limbs are magnificent and their energy tireless. All ages were represented in the Sampans, from boys of eight or ten with tremendous biceps and stout calves, to men so old and wrinkled that they would seem past the time at which these heavy oars could be usefully wielded. One old gentleman, a priceless subject for a painter, sculled in with the first of the fleet, having a bright blue cotton handkerchief tied round his wrinkled face, a straw cloak on his shoulders, and apparently nothing else. The object of attack was the Cooleys who might be going ashore, and the victory was to the boatman who got his Sampan nearest to the ship's side, and so secured the chance of the first Cooley disembarking. There being no provision for holding on to the steamer, the only way of keeping in place among the heaving mass of Sampans was to keep sculling. Old blue cotton handkerchief, after racing across the bay, stood in the stern of his Sampan with brawny muscle, corded legs set wide apart, sculling for his life. Whilst in the bowels, thrown out in skirmishing order, was his grandson, or perhaps his great-grandson, fishing for Cooleys with a boat hook. I was on the steamer for nearly two hours after she was attached to the boy, during which time the crowd of Sampans were struggling and heaving on the port side amid an incessant din of voices. Whenever I looked over the side, there was the blue cotton handkerchief bound about a wrinkled face that seemed to be carved deep out of mahogany. The old man with lips firmly set and eyes anxiously fixed on the throng of Cooleys, sculling as if he had just taken the oar in hand and it was feather-weight. The Cooleys had an uncommonly lively time of it. I could not make out upon what plan selection was made, whether the Cooleys chose the Sampan or the Sampan man the Cooley. All that was to be seen at brief intervals over the bulwarks was a Cooley bundling into a Sampan, where half a dozen brawny arms seized him, and amid a fearsome clamour handed him about till he was finally deposited in a boat and was presently rode away. One who had evidently got himself up with great care, probably having a circle of visiting acquaintance in Yokohama, had undergone this process of selection, and was sitting pale and heated, smoothing out his umbrella, wiping his spectacles and shaking his clothes into shape. He had had a bad time of it, but it was over now, and he would soon be on dry land. Suddenly the clamour recommenced. He was seized upon and hustled, spectacles umbrella and all into a Sampan three boats off, where five of his compatriots were already seated. From this and one or two other incidents I surmised that the Sampan men arranged among themselves to take parties of Cooleys who were going together to various parts of the town, and that they were sorting them out as if they were a consignment of apples. We had two Japanese passengers in the saloon of the Coptic, young fellows who had been travelling and studying in Europe and the States. They had all the amiability and gentleness of the Japanese, modest, retiring, and almost pathetically polite. In rough weather they were always being blown about the decks, pulled short up by running against portions of the rigging, and in various ways being made light of. Coming on deck shortly after we were anchored, I beheld a strange transformation scene. The elder of the Japanese was leaning in easy dignified attitude against the gangway. The younger one was standing, talking to him, bare-headed, and before him in semicircle at respectful distance stood an extraordinary group of Japanese. They were five in number. Each man had a large paper umbrella stuck under one arm, and a hat of straw under the other. Three wore straw cloaks. One had a musty brown cloak, and the fifth, the bow of the party, wore a pair of top boots, and a gorgeous green blanket. I noticed, and the accuracy of the observation has been abundantly confirmed in various parts of Japan, that when a native draws on a pair of top boots, he thinks he has done all that can be fairly required of him in the way of dressing. But the law is stern, and as the day was wet the green blanket had been super-added. Nevertheless, as he moved about and bowed, unexpected glimpses were caught above the top boots of sun-tanned flesh. Whenever the elder Japanese spoke, all the five men bowed down to the ground. If without speaking, his glance wandered in any particular direction, the individual so honoured, bowed, and smiled, and chortled in his joy. After this scene, the secret about the elder Japanese could no longer be kept. He was a prince in disguise. Young as he was, he had been a Daimyo at the time of the Revolution, endowed with vast wealth and almost boundless power. He had never stirred abroad without an escort of two sordid men. When the Revolution came, the Daimyo's accepted the situation with praiseworthy philosophy. They abandoned their rank and state, took government bonds in part payment of the value of their lands, and this young prince, like some others, contentedly went forth to see the wonders of the Western world. The five men were some of his old retainers, probably two sordid men, who, hearing of his arrival, had come to do him homage. The custom house at Yokohama is based entirely upon European models, except in the matter of roughness or incivility. One of my drunks, the least battered after running the gauntlet of the American baggage service, they asked to have opened, but the whole thing was over in a few minutes, and we were at liberty. Jinrikusha men were patiently waiting, not pestering passengers with demand for preference, but standing quietly in a row, dumbly hoping they might obtain it. The Jinrikusha is perhaps the most prominent and certainly not the least useful institution of Japan. It is like an enlarged perambulator placed upon two light wheels. There is a hood movable backwards or forwards at pleasure, and on a day such as that on which we landed, the fare is covered in from the rain, with a curtain of oil paper let down in front. For a steed you have a little jab, all bone, muscle, and good temper, who trots along at about six miles an hour, and can, if you will hire him, take you forty or fifty miles in the day, coming up smiling in the morning for another journey. The fare inside the bridges of Yokohama, practically the length and breadth of the city, is equal to a trifle under five pence. You can hire a Jinrikusha by the hour for seven pence hatening. The mode of locomotion is pleasant and convenient, and with lingering reminiscence of the London cabbie and the United States hackman, it is a positive pleasure to have for companion a Jinrikusha man. He takes his poor pittance with a smile and a bow, and cheerfully trots off without thought of contingency of a supplementary copper. He is as merry as a child, and when two or three run together they laugh and talk like schoolboys. In common with their nation they have a keen sense of the humorous or the ridiculous, and to judge from the frequency of their laughter they are constantly finding it. Robinson Crusoe, in saucer hat and short straw cloak dripping over bare legs, took me to the hotel, and all the way I could hear him amid the gusts of wind and the patter of the rain, chatting and laughing with his companions. On a day like this there was nothing to be done but shopping, and after delivering a few letters of introduction we went out to the silk stores. This time my Jinrikusha man was a butterfly being, with a bright blue cotton handkerchief wound about his head, and a yellow oil-paper waterproof which glistened transparent in the pouring rain. The five retainers of the deposed prints wore white stockings, with the big toe in a place all to itself for convenience of tying the straw sandal. The people walking about the streets with paper umbrellas and paper or straw cloaks wore wooden patterns, standing fully three inches off the ground. To Western ideas it would have seemed better if there had been less clog and more trouser, but it was very wet, and there was no use in spoiling any clothing that might possibly be dispensed with. The Jinrikusha men wore nothing on their feet but straw sandals, with which they gaily splashed through the mud, the water running down their bare legs in never-ceasing streams. The next morning Yokohama underwent a glorious transformation. The clouds had rained themselves out, and the sun, like the Mikado breaking the bonds in which he had long been held by the Shoguns, had a complete restoration. We rose early, got into Jinrikusha's, and gaily bowled along for a trip round the bluff. As we crossed the bridge over the canal a few paces to the right, there was Fuji, with snow-cap on, lifted far up into the blue sky. This famous mountain of Japan is seventy miles distant from Yokohama, but it seemed close enough to invite us to a run there and back before breakfast. Before mounting the steep to the bluff, we passed down a street wholly occupied by the Japanese. Yokohama is a foreign settlement. It was a fishing village when, in 1859, it was selected as the site of one of the treaty ports. Foreigners, among whom English predominate, have built its principal streets, its hotel, its shops, its banks, and its clubhouse. Walking along the bond, there is nothing except a stray Japanese, or a group of Jinrikusha men, to contest the assumption that this is an English colonial street. Save for the same striking feature in the scenery, Main Street might pass for a British thoroughfare, but cross the bridge, follow the street that skirts the canal, and you are in a new world. The street swarms with its residents in a manner peculiar to Eastern life. In an English street, there are to be seen the people who may chance to be passing, whilst glimpses are caught through windows of others in the shops and houses. In Japan, the people in the houses are as much on view as those actual in the street. The first duty of a Japanese householder, or his deputy, on rising in the morning, is to take down the front of his house. It is literally slided away, and the interior left in full view, with whatever domestic operations may be going forward at the moment or through the day. This peculiarity of house architecture is not confined merely to the front. The inner rooms are made up on the same principle. There is a groove in the floor along which a panel slides. When night comes and bedrooms are required, the panel is slided along, and there is the room. In the morning, when it is time to get up, and sometimes as travelers in the interior find to their embarrassment before it is time to get up, the panels are slided back, and what was a bedroom is an unenclosed space. These panels, called shogi, are made of latticework of wood, the open spaces being covered with paper tightly stretched. This is the only wall of the inner rooms, the outer wall, front and back, being composed of sliding shutters, all wood. The shutters were drawn back, the bedroom walls had disappeared, and all the houses were open as we drove through in the fresh early morning. All the men and women were at work, and all the children carrying babies. In this street, as in all other Japanese thoroughfares, the number of children is astounding. Salt Lake City is childless as compared with any Japanese quarter, whether in town or country. The stranger is startled by the first impression that all the girls are born double-headed. To see a girl from three years old up to twelve is to make the discovery of a second and smaller head, apparently growing on her right or left shoulder. On closer inspection this turns out to belong to a baby, which she is carrying strapped to her back, no portion of it visible except its head and face. I could not learn at what age a girl is held to be capable of carrying a baby, but I have seen scores whose age did not exceed four, staggering along under the weight of an infant brother or sister bound to its back. This is the national form of carrying what in England are known as infants in arms. The Japanese equivalent to the phrase would naturally be infants on back. I do not know how it is for the infant, but it is evidently a very convenient way for the bearer. Women carrying children can and do go about their daily work as if they had no encumbrance, whilst the children play about the streets just as if the baby on their back were a wart or other insignificant natural excrescence. I never saw in Japan a baby held in other fashion, with single exception of a man in Oyama who dandled one in his arms, and he, I subsequently ascertained, was a person of weak intellect. Amongst the most striking of the costumes in the moving scene was that of men in blouses, with a sort of white brick dado below the belt, and between the shoulders a circle also of white, marked with cabalistic signs. From a back view they look like movable targets for archery practice, but they were merely labourers in particular trades, or engaged by firms whose badge they wore. There was among the population a larger proportion of trouser than obtains among Jin Rikkusha men, but this article of dress, considered indispensable in some countries, is held in but light esteem in Japan. Where it is worn there is an evident desire to make as little of it as possible. It is cut off short with surprising determination, and where worn down to the ankle a compromise is effected by having the cloth made almost skin-tight. When the waiters at the grand hotel brought me my first meal, I thought I was about to be entertained with a salutary performance. They wore black-surged tights of the cut familiar in the stage-costume of male members of the Vokes family. I should not have been at all surprised if one had incontinently passed his leg over the head of the other as he walked past him with a dish of chops. But they had only brought in Tiffin, and left the room in the usual fashion after placing it on the table. Many of the women add to their natural charms by blacking their teeth. This is the sign of the married state, and has a particularly hideous effect. I am told it is now going out of fashion. The younger girls, when dressed for the day, touch the front of their underlip with a brush dipped in vermilion. Our gin-rickisher men made their way through the throng without running over any children, a feat accomplished only by dint of incessant shouting. We walked up the hill, and finally came out on the race-course, on the way, obtaining a bird's-eye view of Yokohama. Coming back, one of the gin-rickisher men politely invited us to visit a garden shop. Not desiring to buy anything we were reluctant to enter, but yielded to pressure, and were received by the nursery gardener with profound courtesy, not abated by one jot when we left without a chrysanthemum pot or a flowering shrub under each arm. Yet the temptation to buy was very great. There were wonderful chrysanthemums, familiar as home friends in colour and shape, but in size and variety exceeding our choicest growths. Besides thee is the chief growth of the garden. There were a variety of clever and artistic arrangements of ferns and grasses in china pots and dishes of diverse shape, with pieces of rock or tiny stumps of trees standing in cool water, and presenting within the space of a few-hands breadth a charming bit of silvan scenery. We skirted the bluff, looked down on the harbour, its quiet waters glistening in the morning sunlight, and reached the level road by a steep hill, in which was a joss-house. Looking in, we saw kneeling before a tinseled altar, two men, one reciting prayer in a monotonous voice, and the other beating a drum, whose tireless tum-tum-tum-tum-tum-tum-tum we could hear halfway down the hill. Returning through the narrow street by the canal, the busy scene had grown in colour and motion with the advancing day. The houses were full of people, and yet the street was thronged. The domestic arrangements in a Japanese shop trench closely upon those of trade. The families sit in a group on the floor, the men, and not unfrequently the women, smoking. A small square box containing burning charcoal and a receptacle for tobacco ash is an indispensable article of furniture in every sitting-room, whether it be shop or kitchen. The pipe, made of metal, has a bowl about as broad and deep as the nail of the little finger. It holds sufficient tobacco to afford the gratification of three whiffs. These taken, the ashes are knocked out, and the pipe laid down with as much satisfaction as if the owner had had an honest smoke of an hour's duration. Out of doors the Japanese carries his pipe in a leavened case, which, together with his tobacco pouch, is fastened at his girdle. Many, even among the poorer classes, have at the end of the cord on which pipe and pouch are slung a piece of carved ivory or bone. The tobacco smoked by the Japanese is homegrown, and to the British taste, flavorless, save for a soup-song of chopped hay. Tiny whiffs of smoke were going up from many of the groups squatted on the shop floors, waiting for custom. The street was full of pictures. Here was a woman washing vegetables in water drawn from the street well, with barrel top and pulley and rope overhead to haul up the bucket. Next door was a cooper's shop, with an attractive store of the buckets and dippers which abound in Japanese households. Further on was a man mending tins. On the opposite side of the road a woman was spreading out rice to dry on mats. Her neighbour, equally industrious, was carefully stretching on a board the blouse she had been washing for her husband. Here was a butcher's shop, with chrysanthemums blooming among the shoulders of mutton and ribs of beef. Many of the joints had attached to them long strips of paper, on which Japanese characters were traced in a bold hand. They probably stated the price and recommended the quality of the meat, but to the newcomer there was a strange incongruity between this learned-looking calligraphy and a plate of mutton chops. The tailors in the shop next door seemed familiar enough, as they sat cross-legged on the floor, busily stitching. Of course the sixteen shilling trouser is unknown in Japan, but the Japanese, when fully dressed, wears a surprising number of garments, the making of which keeps the tailors busy. Another thing that had a home look was the fruit shops, which, as in many parts of London, were open to the street. But in the fruit shops, as in all the others, the floor is raised only a few inches from the pavement, which gives the general idea that the people are sitting in the street itself. There was a grocer's shop, with father, mother, and three children, squatted round the hibachi, each with a hand over the glowing charcoal, for though the sun was up, the morning air was keen. The man pounding rice next door had no need of artificial means to keep him warm, nor had the man carrying water in two tubs slung on a bamboo pole and carried across his shoulder. This seems an uncomfortable way of getting along with portable property, but it is an ancient habit with the Japanese, and he makes light of it. If the weight be unusually heavy, he eases the burden on his shoulder by thrusting a smaller bamboo under the larger one, using it as a lever which rests on his other shoulder, the end being held in his hand. All kinds of things are carried in this way. There passed us in the street what seemed like a bed of chrysanthemums, but was really a coolly carrying innumerable pots, on two trays slung from bamboo in the manner described. There were several cake and sweet shops, whose contents were more curious than toothsome, but they had attractions for the countless double-head children who stood around. The larger head looked longingly at the bountiful stores, whilst the smaller one stared out into space, its owner not yet having reached the age when it could covet sweet meats. Through this bright and bustling scene, the Jinrikashomen ran to and fro, laughing and chattering, as if it were rather fun than otherwise to be beasts of burden. Japan is eighteen miles from Yokohama, the two towns being connected by a line of railway that takes fifty minutes to do the journey. On the other hand the fare charged is very high, being four shillings for a first-class ticket, and all luggage must be paid for. The railway, like most of the public works in Japan, was constructed by Englishmen, and all the material came from England. It is odd in crossing bridges, spanning rivers in one of the oldest empires in the world, to find familiar English names from Birmingham or Sheffield. The carriages are comfortable and well-appointed, forming a kind of compromise between the English and American system. The first and second class open from end to end, the seats being placed longitudinally, but in the first class carriages a party of six can shut themselves in and to be comfortable in truly English fashion. The guards and ticket collectors are dressed in neat uniforms. The stations at both termini are spacious stone buildings, with every accommodation, including the morning newspapers in the waiting-room. Displayed on one of the walls of the station is the meteorological report of the day, by which the traveller waiting for a train can learn how the wind is blowing at Nagasaki, and under what degree of atmospheric depression people are living in Kyoto. The explanation of the chart is printed in Japanese and English. At Yokohama the ticket clerk understands enough English to transact business with the foreigner. His colleague at Tokyo is more deliberate, requiring an appreciable space of time to grasp the fact that he is being asked for a ticket for Yokohama. But when the ticket office is closed, and the clerk resting from his labours, the station at Tokyo is a hard place for the Englishman who knows nothing of Japanese. On the day of my first visit, I had occasion to tell the coachman to return and meet me at the station at twenty minutes past twelve. I tried in various ways to make this clear to him. I took him to the clock, pointed to the figure twelve, and showed how the minute hand would come to twenty. He had followed me throughout with the short, sharp exclamation, with which Japanese servants and persons of the lower class indicate that they are attending to your instructions, and will hasten to obey them. But when it was all over he bowed to the ground and stood looking at the clock. I fancy he thought I had been explaining its internal arrangements. Nothing could exceed the politeness of the officials who happened to be about. They crowded round and addressed me at much length, but nothing came of it, and we parted in despair. After a brief interval of rest, I had another struggle with the coachman, with the same results. At length, when all seemed dark and my engagement imperiled, the coachman said, Parlez-vous Français? He had, it seemed, been to Paris with delegation, and had learned sufficient French to make intercourse for the rest of the day practically intelligible. Mr. Inouye, the Foreign Minister, had been good enough to send one of his secretaries with a carriage to meet us on arrival, and we drove what seemed the full length of Tokyo. Two bettos, or runners, accompanied the carriage, and made things lively for the population along the route. A carriage is a rare spectacle in the streets of a Japanese town, and wherever one is used the services of the bettor are indispensable. He runs ahead, shouting at all corners, and where necessary, sometimes without necessity, pushing aside people in the roadway. Our bettos, wearing the livery of the Foreign Office, were as autocratic as their brethren in plush in western capitals, and surprised many innocent, unoffending men by pouncing upon them from behind and running them out of the roadway. People thus treated made no sign of resentment, a nation but just delivered from the tyranny of the two sordid men regards official bettos as quite gentle creatures. Tokyo is a widely different place from Yokohama. The European settlement is but a town of yesterday. Tokyo, as it is now called, Ye-Dol, as it was named up to the period of the dethronement of the tycoon, was an important place in the year 1601 when it suffered the first of a long series of fires. In 1868 the Mikado visited Tokyo for the first time, and in the following year it became the recognized seat of the government. Its population is roughly estimated at a million, but authorities fix it at eight hundred thousand. This is a large number to house in small two-storied tenements, and accordingly Tokyo stretches itself out in all directions till it covers an area of eight square miles. There is nothing European about it except here and there an official in Petticoat Lane dress. There are pavements in the principal streets, but as a rule the people prefer the roadway over which they literally swarm. We drove through miles of streets all densely populated with the bettos running on ahead, perspiring and shouting with inordinate vigor. We were bound for the public gardens at Shiba, where a pleasant luncheon was served in a tree imbued cafe. Afterwards we went to visit the temple of Sensoji at Asakusa, spelled A-S-A-K-U-S-A, pronounced Asakusa. It was the first fine day after long continued reign, and being a festival to boot, it seemed that all Tokyo had poured into the grounds within which the temple stands. The approach is banked on either side by long rows of booths, which with the gay and laughing throng make the place seem more like a fair than the approach to a famous and venerated temple. The fate day belonged to the God of happiness, whose favour was secured by the purchase of a gym-crack-contrivance sold in many of the booths. This was made of pieces of stick crossed at right angles by a thicker piece, something after the fashion of a ship's mast and yard arms. The spars were decorated with bits of coloured paper, ribbon, and artificial flowers. It might have served to while aware an idle hour with a British two-year-old baby. Here it was reverently and hopefully carried by grown-up men and women, who were taking it home to hang up in an honoured place, where it would secure happiness for the rest of the year. I saw two sailors belonging to a Japanese man of war carrying one of these toys carefully wrapped in paper, lest the sun might tarnish its glory or the rude wind ruffle it. In the booths were sold toys, sweetmeats, cakes, tea, sake, these contrivances for securing happiness, and seed for the doves that build their nests in the roof of the temple. One stream was passing upward to the steps of the temple, the other returning. Falling in with that on the right-hand side, we slowly made our way under the hot rays of the November sun and amid the dust sent up by the trampling of ten thousand feet. Our progress was the less rapid by reason of the rarity of European mixture with such a crowd. The men of our party were dismissed from consideration after a rapid glance, but the ladies, their dress, their bonnets, their gloves, their boots, and their way of doing their hair were a phenomena which must be closely examined, even at the risk of bringing the whole procession to a halt. There was no rudeness or hustling. It simply came to this, that the god of happiness in his bounty, and incited by many prayers and offerings, had crowned the pleasure and excitement of the day by dropping in among the counter-attractions of the boons, three ladies in strange garb, and the most must be made of the opportunity. The women gathered about and stared with undisguised curiosity. They furtively felt the material of dresses and cloaks, and were particularly struck by the arrangements of the back hair. Their general impression appeared to be one of good-humoured astonishment, not unmingled with pity for unfortunate persons of their sex who, either from necessity or choice, thus attired themselves. By slow degrees we reached the temple's steps, and stood under the shadow of its overhanging roof. Before the temple is a red wooden structure of two stories designed as an entrance gate. A number of large sandals were hung up before images of the two heavenly kings. They are placed there by persons who desire to become good walkers, and hereby avoid the necessity of ordinary training. Close by was a small altar erected to Jizor, the helper of those who were in trouble, a large class in Yeh-do as elsewhere. Three prayer-wheels, attached to as many posts, were in momentary use, men and women patiently waiting for their turn. Some of the Japanese have the comfortable doctrine that any sin which may beset them is due to actions accomplished in a former state of existence. Wishing to be quit of this sin, they come and turn the wheel, praying to the little bronze and gilt monstrosity squatted above the wheels, and even as the wheel revolves this evil influence may speedily run its course to the end. A heap of small pebbles were disposed about the image. I thought this was the work of a rival sect who had been stoning Jizor, but our learned guide informed us that they had been brought hither by the loving hands of childless mothers, yearning for the well-being of little ones they had lost. It seems that in the other world there is a hag who haunts the river Sotsukawa, and whenever a little child appears in sight, robs it of its clothes and sets it to the task of piling up stones on the river bank. These pebbles are the mother's offering to lighten the task of her child. Presently, it must be some time in the dead of the night, the good Jizor will move his inadequate little legs beneath his great paunch, get some expression into the inanity of his smooth brazen face, and hide him off with the load of pebbles to cheer the little children. At the end of the row of booths, with its many colors and its moving throng, is the big red temple. At the top of the steps, within view of the screened altar, was a box eight feet long and about too wide, covered in at the top with a wooden framework of gridiron shape. There was no need to question the use of this contrivance, a devout multitude thronging the steps showered copper coins upon the gridiron, behind which the money disappeared and the record ended. The act of devotion before the shrine was quickly performed. The gods of the Buddhist mythology have a good deal to do. Like Baal whom Elijah mocked, per adventure at the moment Quan Non or Bin Suru is approached, he sleepeth, or has gone on a journey, and it is necessary, pointedly, to call his attention to the petition before him. In most of the temples there is a gong with pendant rope, which, being pulled, strikes the gong and lets the god know that someone is around. At Asakusa this desirable end is attained by clapping hands. I saw a little baby release its hands from the confinement of its mother's dress and clap them whilst it crowed a little prayer. The whole business is over in a few seconds. Holding out his hands straight before him, the worshiper brings his palms together smartly two or three times, bends the head over the closed palms, mutters a prayer, and goes his way, not forgetting the gaping gridiron box. There are many gods in the temple varying in popularity. Closely running diesel in the affection of the people is Bin Suru, upon whom Buddha conferred the power of curing all human ills. There was an eager throng round this idol, men and women of all ages gravely rubbing the knee, the back, the chest, the foot, or the face of the grotesque image, and then rubbing the corresponding part of their own body. By this means local affections are either alleviated or finally cured. Not far from the temple is the Kinzo, a structure from which it is evident a smart American took the idea of the revolving bookcase, which has found its way to many studious homes in England. In this are stored a complete edition of the Buddhist scriptures, nearly seven thousand volumes in all. This library possesses a gift which unhappily does not extend to modern modifications at home. It is decreed and written over the bookcase that anyone who will cause it to revolve twice on its axis shall have secured all the benefits naturally accruing from sitting down and reading the books through, from volume one to volume six thousand seven hundred and seventy one inclusive. Another shrine erected to a four syllable god, the spelling of whose name I forget, is noticeable for slips of paper stuck on the wire grating. They are placed there by persons who have asked this polysyllabic deity to grant them a special favour. Although thousands of slips are attached in the course of a week, the aggregate number never increases, since the last comer takes away the strip of his predecessor, and accepts it as the answer to his prayer, a game of cross-question and crooked answer which must sometimes be a little embarrassing. All this seriously looked at is piteous to contemplate. But there is nothing serious about the multitude that throng the steps of the temple, and from its heights are seen surging on in apparently endless stream. This is a fake day. The sun is shining forth after weeks of rain, and they are out for a holiday, which they mean to enjoy. They take to their pleasure cheerily and gently. There is no pushing or jostling, and not a tipsy person in the ten thousand. They drink tea, a faintly yellow liquid, out of tiny cups, and if they take a cup or two of sake, it does not affect their outward behaviour, their politeness is unbounded. A man or woman of the poorest class approaching an acquaintance bends as lowly before him as if he were the Mikado. They are always laughing out of pure light-heartedness, and to not mar their holiday with excess of any kind, unless it be of devotion. The train was crowded on the return journey, the Japanese evidently taking with great readiness to this innovation from Europe. Some of them have not yet mastered the mystery of the raised bench on which to sit with legs pendant. It is odd to see them on entering a railway carriage, get up on a seat, and fold their legs under them, as if the carriage were leaking, and they desired to keep their feet dry. On the other hand, the Japanese who have lived in Europe find a difficulty in reverting to the other national custom. Sitting next to Mr. Inuye at a Japanese dinner, he confided to me that at the end of the first hour he had felt a hankering after a chair, and I noticed that he took an early opportunity of securing one. This custom of sitting on a chair at table is one of the crucial tests of advance in European education. Some years ago, when the Europeanising policy of the government was finally determined upon, an order was issued requiring every official to possess himself of at least one table and four chairs. The law must be obeyed, but it was a noticeable fact that no one voluntarily went beyond the minimum number, and it must be admitted that one table and four chairs do not go far in the direction of furnishing a house in European style. I have not noticed any effect upon men of this posture involved in the absence of chairs, but among the lower classes of women there is almost invariably an undesirable crook at the knee. This, however, may possibly be due to the habit of carrying children on their back from the time they are themselves able to walk. One other peculiarity about the carriage of the Japanese girl or woman is the shuffling walk and interned toes which come of going about in clogs and sandals. Very few of the European communities stay in Tokyo overnight, the tiresome journey between the capital and Yokohama being voluntarily undertaken for a double reason. There is a very poor European hotel at Tokyo and the most excellent one at Yokohama. I had heard beforehand of the grand hotel as the best hostelry in the East, and after a week's residence I am able to confirm the statement. The proprietors are French, and through all the meals of the day preserve their national reputation as cooks. The waiters speak English more or less, and their civility knows no bounds. One day at Tiffin I heard an Englishman order a couple of pancakes, and a lemon, he added impressively. Hi! said the waiter, and his tightly clothed legs rapidly carried him out of the room. A long interval followed, but pancakes are not made in a minute, and besides there was the lemon. At length the waiter returned, and briskly walking up to the expectant Englishman presented him with three pins set forth on a plate. It is not customary among the Japanese to include a dish of pins in the midday meal, but foreigners eat all sorts of things, and understanding that pins were ordered, this obliging young man procured them regardless of personal trouble. On returning to Yokohama we went in search of a real Japanese curio, to wit a suit comprising straw cloak with hat and sandals to match. These were not to be bought in Main Street, or in any other of the thoroughfares where Europeans trade. Our gin-rickisher men undertook to take us to a shop, and trotted off delighted to the Japanese quarter. The shopkeeper was an old lady with blackened teeth and scanty skirt, which last did not prevent her from climbing up a ladder, to bring some of her newest goods from beneath the rafters where they were stored. The bargaining was chiefly pantomimic, and was carried on with great success. It is a long time since gin-rickisher men spent so joyous a quarter of an hour. One, constituting himself shop assistant to the old lady, flung the straw cloak over his shoulders, and slowly turned round, so that we might study its cut and fit. He and his colleague laughing the while like children in possession of a new toy. When we tried them on ourselves, they roared with laughter, and as by this time half the street had congregated round the shop, the scene grew into one of mad merriment. When we had completed the purchase, the old lady produced one of the ready reckoners which are found in every shop in Japan, from the bank counter to the matted floor of the dealer in straw sandals. It consists of a small oblong box with rows of cane-stretched crossways. On these are strung a kind of bone button, with which skilled fingers play, and in an incredibly short space of time work out the sum. At the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank at Yokohama, an affable Chinese, in the twinkling of an eye, works out an intricate sum involving the minutest fractions in value of exchange. With not less readiness did the old lady with the black teeth and the inadequate skirt work out the sum of my indebtedness, charging not a cent more to the foreigner than she would have done to the Jinrikesha men. End of chapter 14