ASIA 
 
3tt)ara. $9»m fork 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 
 1918 
 
Cornell University Library 
 G 463.H72 
 
 A wizard's wanderings from China to Peru 
 
 3 1924 023 256 922 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023256922 
 
A WIZARD'S WANDERINGS 
 
 FROM 
 
 CHINA TO PERU. 
 
 »Y 
 
 JOHN WATKINS HOLDEN, F.S.Sc. (Lond.), 
 
 THE BOHEMIAN MAGICIAN. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 DEAN & SON, 160A, FLEET STREET. E.G. 
 t886 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 •Alexandre Dumas, /Jr^, laid down the dictum that 'prefaces were 
 for failures.' However that may be, I fear it is not possible to dis- 
 pense with one here, as, though I am pretty well known in the profes- 
 sional world, I fear the general reading public on first glancing at these 
 pages would naturally ask : ' Who the dickens is Dr. Holden ? ' Well, if 
 you please, I was born very young on the ist February, 1844, at the 
 good old city of Worcester, and christened there on the following 
 Palm Sunday,' which might possibly account for my early love of 
 ' Palming, or Sleight-of-hand ! ' As my youthful record is on a par 
 almost with that of the hero in 'A Bad Boy's Diary,' I think I had 
 better charitably draw the line here and pass it over. 
 
 At sixteen, I found myself under fire, fighting under a foreign 
 flag for some quixotic craze they called Liberty, with two 
 other Englishmen only, instead 01 returning to England and 
 entering Her Majesty's Navy, as my pater, who was Lord Lieutenant 
 of his county and Member of Parliament, had intended me to do. 
 Estranged from my family, I determined to be independent of every- 
 body, and thus early commenced my Bohemian life. 
 
 It was whilst travelling through Morocco that I first gave any serious 
 thoughts to the ' Magic Art.' At Castillejos, my travelling companion, 
 a Hungarian Count, and myself, arranged to join a famous conjurer, 
 one Sed Hamlah, and make the grand tour through some outlandish 
 parts of Africa, calling ourselves the ' Cold Hot Iron Doctors.' The 
 natives believe in burning the part afflicted with pain to effect a cure, 
 so we simply took with us a stock of lunar caustic and, shall I add 
 •brass.' Through Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, Egypt Proper, Nubia, 
 Darfur, &c., we travelled, meeting with adventures such as I fancy few 
 other Englishmen have gone through. This gave me an excellent 
 
Introduction. 
 
 insight into the mysteries of Oriental Magic, and an acquisition of 
 many strange and incomprehensible wonders, which I have since 
 worked up to suit our Occidental ideas, I often think to myself, could 
 the late poor old Sed Hamlah get leave to come up from the 'Shades' 
 for a night, he would hardly recognise many of his old tricks in the 
 guise I present them to my Mayfair patrons ! 
 
 Having learnt all I required in the East, I next thought it necessary 
 to be able to address an audience, not only in the Queen's English, 
 but from an elocutionary point of view as well. An opening offering 
 itself, I engaged with ' Drake's Diorama of India,' as Lecturer and 
 Cicerone and very soon made my mark. Mr. Drake is still on the 
 road, and, I am sure, he will be pleased to hear that some of the most 
 agreeable memories of the past are associated with the several tours 
 made under his direction. In these days of bogus managers it is 
 quite a relief to speak with unqualified praise of the honourable and 
 conscientious manner, Mr. Drake ever behaved to his Company when 
 on tour. It was now time to try the anxieties and routine of an 
 Acting Manager's life ; so, after a short experience with Mr. Simontin, 
 of Dublin, Dr. Corry, of Belfast, and the late Mr. Hodges, of the 
 Aberdeen Theatre Royal, I became Acting Manager of the ' London 
 ' Opera Company,' which gave me a good insight into the taking of 
 theatres, advertising, billing, &c. It also gave me an opportunity of 
 addressing larger and more fashionable audiences, as, Gibus in hand, 
 and left hand on heart, I would come before the curtain and ask ' the 
 indulgence of the audience for the Prima or .Seconda Donna (as the 
 case might be), who was suffering from a severe cold, &c., &c., &c.' 
 
 All this time, however, no chance offered itself of appearing as a 
 Wizard ; besides which, it was necessary I should take a course of 
 lessons in ' palming,' and obtain the latest European magical novel- 
 ties. I was introduced to Professor Hellis, of Netting Hill, one of 
 the most elegant Palmers of the day, as many of my readers may re- 
 member who ever saw his performances at the old Polytechnic, in its 
 palmy days. This gentlemen gave me (for a consideration) a course 
 of lessons invaluable to me, and most deeply do I feel indebted to him 
 for the same. Under the kind and cordial auspices of Professor 
 Hellis, I finished my course of instruction in the Mysteries of the Magic 
 Art — I feel that I am but discharging in a trifling degree my debt of 
 gratitude to that kind-hearted man in acknowledging my obligations 
 to him. But who of his professional contemporaries ever applied to 
 him for aid, or counsel, that did not experience the most prompt, 
 generous, and effectual assistance ? Having, in course of time, learnt 
 the most requisite information, the time was now ripe, I thought, to 
 make a first appearance. This was done at the Hope HaU, Liverpool, 
 in the summer of 1877, and a few months afterwards an engagement 
 ■was obtained at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, Regent Street, and 
 
Introduction. 
 
 in a rather amusing manner. An appointment was made, and I had. 
 to appear before the Directors at mid-day, in the room at the top of 
 the building, and to then and there show them what I was capable of 
 doing. Ten minutes or so before that hour, I knocked at the door, 
 which was ajar (pardon the paradox) and receiving no reply, looked 
 in, and noticed the room empty. A brilliant idea suddenly seized me. 
 
 Taking several coins I wrapped them up in some bright coloured 
 paper and quietly hid them behind a clock, or almanack, or something 
 at the extreme end of the room, and then closed the door and cleared 
 out of the building altogether, waiting outside in Regent Street, until 
 I saw the worthy Directors, and their most courteous Secretary, Mr. 
 J. Howell, enter the'Institution, and wind their way up aloft. Leisurely 
 following, and allowing them time to be seated, I knocked at the door 
 and was told to come in. ' We don't want you to make any display^ 
 or speech, but merely give us a specimen, Dr. Holden, of what you can 
 accomplish,' said one of the Directors. 
 
 'Well, gentlemen, it is somewhat difficult, sans preparation you 
 know, but if you will allow me I will introduce a marvellous Oriental 
 feat viz. the ' Vanishing of Money' a trick, by-the-bye, they are adepts at 
 in the far East. In this- case, however, I shall get my money back 
 again, so the latter part will be more Occidental than Oriental perhaps. 
 You observe, gentlemen, I take three coins, and roll them up in this 
 little piece of bright coloured paper, I tuck up my sleeves, so that 
 nothing passes that way, and in my bare hands and arms I vanish 
 these coins so.' Here I apparently made them smaller and smaller, 
 and then at length vanished them altogether, showing the backs and 
 fironts of both hands. ' Now, gentlemen, comes the most remarkable 
 feature of this trick, I shall command that my coins re-appear— let us 
 see — where shall we say .■' Ah 1 there behind that clock, or whatever 
 it is, at the other side of the room ! Pass ; kindly see if they are there.' 
 Of course they were ; I had already placed them there, but the elderly 
 gentleman who got up from his seat to look for them, seemed perfectly 
 convinced that by no earthly laws of well-known Polytechnic science 
 could such a miracle occur, and the look they all gave when he brought 
 from behind (whatever they were hid), the coins rolled up in the bright 
 coloured paper, will never be forgotten by the author of the hoax. . 
 
 Whether the Directors thought one of their number was a confede- 
 rate or not, it is difficult to surmise; at all events it was the means of 
 getting' me an engagement there, and opening on Boxing Day, 1877, I 
 made a very favourable impression. The Times of December 27th, 
 remarking — ' The Prestidigitateur at the Polytechnic is Dr. Holden, 
 and his skill in sleight of hand is not unworthy of the dignified title 
 which he bears.' The Daily News remarks — ' Dr. Holden's conjuring 
 is very good indeed.' The Railway Record, of December 2gth. — • 
 ' Evidently a great acquisition amongst our London entertainers, so 
 
Introduction. 
 
 exquisitely finished are his performances, and so enchanting the ddbon- 
 naire air which he infuses into them ; whilst the Sunday Times 
 summed up with 'Dr. Holden gives his marvellous entertainment 
 of Legerdemain, and performs many feats which seem to baffle 
 description.' 
 
 Having travelled nearly all the world over, I thought it now my 
 best policy to settle down in London and make a name there, more 
 especially so, as performing, in 1878 at the Granville, Ramsgate, Mr 
 Mitchell, Jun., of the Royal Library, Old Bond Street, London, happen- 
 ing to be present at one of my representations there, very kindly and 
 considerately recommended me to his father, who at once placed me 
 on his books, and obtained some high class engagements, T.R.H. The 
 Duke and Duchess of Teck, and the daughters of H.R.H.the Princess 
 of Wales, being my first patrons. Then the Brazilian Ambassador, 
 Earl Dudley, Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, at Arundel Castle, Lord 
 Londesborough and many others of note. On May 24th, 1879 through 
 Mr. Mitchell's influence a Royal command took me to Balmoral Castle, 
 where I had the great honour of appearing before Her Most Gracious 
 Majesty the Queen-Empress, the late lamented Prince Leopold, the 
 Princess Beatrice, and, for a second time, the daughters of the Princess 
 of Wales, T.R.H. Princesses Victoria and Maud. 
 
 Several times during the performance Her Majesty had some kind 
 word of encouragement to give me, and at the conclusion she person- 
 ally complimented me, remarking that my performance was ' so 
 different to anything I have seen before, and the usual style of conjur- 
 ing.' Her Majesty was no doubt thinking of Anderson, the ' Wizard of 
 the North,' who had appeared there some fifteen years previously, or 
 possibly a longer period even than that. This was a red-letter day for 
 me, as the announcement appeared in the Court Circular and all the 
 other papers copied. But success, I soon found, begets envy, and my 
 professional contemporaries, irstead of looking at the honour in the 
 light I looked at it, viz., as an exceptional honour to the Magical Pro- 
 fession, thought fit to sneer and pass some cutting remarks, but that, I 
 might have expected. 
 
 On December ist, 1880, the anniversary of H.R.H. the Pr.ncess of 
 Wales' birthday, another Royal command took me down to Sandring- 
 ham, where I performed in presence of the most aristocratic audience 
 I ever had hoped to appear before. It included T.R.H. the Prince and 
 Princess of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, Lord Hartington, Lord 
 and Lady Claud Hamilton. The Duchess of Manchester and a 
 number of other aistinguished visitors. The Prince of Wales 
 personally complimented me on ray success, and in less than three 
 months afterwards, viz. on February 21st, 1881, I appeared again before 
 their Royal Highnesses and suite, at Marlborough House, with far 
 greater i?t/«/ even than at Sandringham. Success was now assured, 
 
Introdnction. 
 
 engagements rolled in from all parts. I was induced to accept the 
 appointment as ' Entrepreneur of Magic' to the largest firm in London, 
 and for two years or more, with the aid of a staff of competent 
 deputies, satisfactorily fulfilled a vast number of private engagements 
 in town and country, with occasional tours of short duration to the 
 Continent, Channel Islands, Scotland, and Ireland. In Dublin, 
 October, 1882, I appeared at the Ancient Concert Rooms, 
 Great Brunswick Street, afterwards visiting Kingstown, Bray, Gorey, 
 Wexford, and Cork, where I appeared at the Royal Opera House. 
 The greatest honour I consider I ever received, was in Scotland, on 
 April 4th, 1883, when I passed my third degree in Freemasonry and 
 was made a Master Mason the one ambition of my life, and before 
 which, all other honours I have received (and they are legion), sink 
 and ' pale their ineffectual fires.' At the Alexandra Palace I 
 appeared year after year to large audiences, and this summer I 
 completed a month's engagement at the Crystal Palace. Sydenham, 
 in the Entertainment Court there, a room admirably adapted for 
 magical performances. The crowded audiences I performed to spoke 
 well for the able and experienced management this popular place is 
 now under, thanks to the energy of Captain Henshaw Russell. 
 
 It seems indeed marvellous what one can accomplish in so short a 
 period by personal energy alone. It shows one what perseverance 
 and determination will do if properly applied. During this period I 
 have given my whole mind and soul to the Magic Art, and have thought 
 of nothing else. Experiment after experiment have I conceived, and 
 it may well be said, ' Alone he did it,' for I never allow anyone on 
 the stage with me, nor do I take an assistant about with me. In 
 August, 1884, an unlooked for honour was accorded, viz., the making 
 me a ' Foundation Fellow of the Society of Science, Letters and 
 Art, of London.' I fancy I have now said quite enough about myself 
 
 Bacon says: 'Long speeches are flat things, and carry little weight.' 
 So are long prefaces. The Spartans have been praised as the most 
 eloquent of the races of Greece — and why ? Simply because laconic 
 brevity was their peculiar forte. 
 
 Let us to the point, at once, and call a spade a spade. Just as good 
 wine needs no bush, so truth asks but few words, without periphrases 
 or reservations. Speech was well compared by Themistocles to a 
 piece of tapestry gradually unrolled, whereas thoughts unspoken lie in 
 packs. But in choosing a carpet men do not look at a mile of it, but 
 only at as much of it as contains a fair type of the pattern. The rest 
 should be kept for other occasions It was stated the other day, by an' 
 eminent Professor, in the course of a lecture, that ' Cato did not begin 
 to learn the Greek language until he was eighty-four years of age.' 
 Young England of to-day are telling their fathers that they are anxious 
 to follow the example of Cato ! If more time were devoted to the 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 living languages at our public schools than to the dead languages a,nd 
 political economy, it would do far more good to the rising generation ! 
 
 In these pages I shall endeavour to give a truthful, concise description 
 of what came under my notice during a Professional Tour as a Public 
 Entertainer, all the world over. As, however, this is not a Diary of a 
 Magician's Wanderings, I shall touch on the professional part of it but 
 lightly, as I am fully aware the subject is not to everyone's taste, whilst 
 pleasant, light geographical facts cannot but commend themselves to all. 
 
 ' It is for wandering in it that the world was made so wide,' wrote 
 Goethe, and over this same world I am now going to take you. Was 
 it not the Eniperor Hadrian, who, to keep fresh his recollections of 
 travels in Gredbe, built at his magnificent villa, at Tivoli,^^^ similes of 
 the glorious Temples'of Poecilfe, and Lyceum, planting by their side 
 the Grove of an Academy, and carrying the stream of an ideal Peneus 
 thorough the pleasant Vale of an imitative Temple? Now Hadrian, 
 with all the unperial power of Rome, would have been totally unable 
 to enjoy the ' ethbarras de richesse' of foreign travel, which we, in the 
 _Nineteeenth Century, are able to indulge in, if only we possess suffi- 
 cient capital. The remarks 1 shall have the honour of making in 
 these p"a.ges may possibly construct a humbler Tivoli, and, together, 
 (may I hope) we shall enjoy the pleasures experienced of old by the 
 Greek traveller in the Villa of Hadrian ? 
 
 i6, Hastings Street, London, W.C, 1886. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF THE TOUR — ADIEU TO LONDON — ADVICE 
 WITH REGARD TO GOING OUT TO INDIA — DESCRIPTION OF 
 THE BEST ROUTE — THE ORIENTAL NAVIGATION COMPANY — 
 DEPARTURE FROM DOVER . . . . • . . . . , . I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ARRIVAL AT PARIS — PARIS AND THE PARISIANS — BON* MOT - 
 OF THE EMPRESS EUGENIE — THE RUE ROYALE — THE SIEGE' 
 OF PARIS — THE COMMUNISTS . . . . .... 5 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OFF TO NORWAY — HAMMERFEST — THE MIDNIGHT SUN — DEN- 
 MARK COPENHAGEN — SWEDEN — ^ LINNAEUS — EMPLOY- 
 MENTS OF WOMEN AT STOCKHOLM . . . . . . . . 8 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RUSSIA — PETER THE GREAT — CATHERINE THE SECOND — ST. 
 
 PETERSBURG — THE RHINE — GERMANY AND THE GERMANS . . II 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SPAIN DESCRIPTION OF MADRID — SEVILLE — BARCELONA — 
 
 GENERAL REMARKS ON SPAIN — A SPANISH BULL-FIGHT . . 13 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CROSSING THE ALPS — ARRIVAL IN ITALY — VENICE — GONDOLAS 
 AND GONDOLIERS — THE BRIDGE OF S[GHS — MILAN — ROME 
 — HUMOROUS REMARKS OF AN AMERICAN TOURIST — THE 
 BAY OF NAPLES — VESUVfuS — HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII 
 — BRINDISI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ' 16 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A TRIP TO AUSTRALIA — MELBOURNE — SYDNEY — AUSTRALIAN 
 
 WINES— ^HONOLULU THE CAROLINE ISLANDS ..'. .. 24 
 
Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A TRIP TO INDIA BOMBAY INDIAN RAILWAYS BENARES 
 
 THE GANGES DELHI THE BUDDHISTS HYDERABAD 
 
 THE author's PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS AT THAT FAMOUS 
 
 Cri'Y^ — EUROPEAN REQUISITES FOR THE INDIAN CLIMATE 
 
 MORSTING AND NIGHT IN INDA— THE ' LOGANS ' OR ROCKING- 
 S10>fES — THE MOSQUES OF AHMEDABAD — HINDOO CHIL- 
 DREN — INDIAN PILGRIMS . . . . . . . . • • 33 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ARRIVAL AT CEYLON — GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLAND 
 — ^DESCRIPTION OF BANKOK, THE CAPITAL OF SIAM— THE 
 
 WHITE ELEPHANT SUNDAY MORNING'S DIVINE SERVICE AT 
 
 SEA THE MAHARAJAH OF JOHORE . . . . • • 45 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A VOYAGE TO CHINA PEKIN — -THE OPIUM-SMOKER THE 
 
 CHINESE AND THE BRITISH CHINESE PROVERBS — LEGEND 
 
 OF THE ORIGIN OF THE FAN THE JOSS-HOUSE .. .. 51 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SHANGHAI FISH AND FOWL IN CHINA CHINESE JUNKS 
 
 ■ CHINESE IMITATIONS — INVETERATE GAMBLERS . . • • 55 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A TRIP TO JAPAN — YOKOHAMA — TOKI.O — YEDDO — JAPANESE 
 
 WINDOW-GARDENING— THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS HOW 
 
 TO KEEP YOURSELF COOL IN HOT CLIMATES — THe' AINOS OF 
 JAPAN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE JAPANESE .. 57 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CROSSING THE PACIFIC — SAN FRANCISCO — THE CHINESE IN 
 
 CALIFORNIA GIANT TREES OF CALIFORNIA OGDEN 
 
 SPLENDID SCENERY IN AMiCRICA _. . . , . . ... 64 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF NEW YORK THE BROADWAY^— THE FALLS OF 
 
 NIAGARA — THE TERRAPIN TOWER — A VISIT TO THE FALLS 
 THE LAKES • . . . . . . . . . . _ ^ 
 
Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A VOYAGE TO MADEIRA DESCRIPTION OF FUNCHAL OUR 
 
 FELLOW-VOYAGERS A CRUISE IN SEARCH OF HEALTH 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF HOME^— OUR BRITISH SAILORS . . . . 72 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE APPROACH TO TABLE BAY — SOUTH AFRICAN SCENERY — 
 
 THE lion's HEAD TABLE MOUNTAIN ARRIVAL OF AN 
 
 AMERICAN WHALE SHIP — THE PHASTTOM SHIP OF VANDER- 
 
 DECKEN STRANGE TRADITIONS SPECIAL FEATURES OF 
 
 CAPE TOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . ■ ■ 85 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 WITCHCRAFT' IN SOUTH AFRICA — AN IMPOSTOR — STRANGE 
 
 PREDICTIONS — THE AMAXOSA HOW THEY WERE DUPED — 
 
 CETEWAYO'S WITCH-DOCTORS — HOW CETEWAYO'S HIDING- 
 PLACE WAS DISCOVERED KIMBERLEY THE DIAMOND 
 
 FIELDS OF SOUTH AFRICA . . ... . . ... . . 96 
 
 CHAPTER XVin. 
 
 'THE DARK CONTINENT' — STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE — 
 LORD WOLSELEY — GORDON — KHARTOUM — A SAIL DOWN 
 THE NILE — REMINISCENCES OF PAST AGES — UJIJI — THE 
 SIMOON — THE SPHINX — THE PYRAMIDS . . . . . . lOI 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PALESTINE THE HOLY SEPULCHRE — THE TALMUD — THE 
 
 MISHNAH DEAN STANLEYS BOOK ON THE HOLY LAND 
 
 THE CEDARS OF LEBANON— BETHLEHEM DISTINGUISHED 
 
 MODERN JEWISH MUSICIANS. . .. .. .. .. I06 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE ARABS AND THEIR HORSES — ARABIAN AND TURKISH 
 
 CUSTOMS THE BEARD — SOME STRANGE ADVENTURES OF 
 
 THE AUTHOR — OUT AND ABOUT — THE AUTHOR'S ' BOHEMIAN 
 NOTES ' 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 "3 
 
 SUMMONED TO BALMORAL — AN ENTERTAINMENT GIVEN 
 BEFORE THE QUEEN — A MAGICAL DISTRIBUTION — THE 
 
 SILK CLOTH THE BOUQUET — THE ROYAL PROGRAMME OF 
 
 THE author's PERFORMANCE BEFORE HER MAJESTY — 
 GENERAL REMARKS ON SCOTLAND 120 
 
xvi Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII.- 
 
 LIFE IN SCOTLAND — PORT GLASGOW — LOCH LOMOND — 
 TOURISTS TO THE SCOTTISH LAKES — GENERAL REMARKS ON 
 SCOTLAND .. .. .. .. .. .. ..129 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 NECROMANCY — ROGER BACON — THE ELIXIR OF LIFE — SUPER- 
 STITIOUS IDEAS — THE CHINESE — SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT 
 BIRDS — THE SWALLOW — KINDNESS TO ANIMALS A NOBLE 
 QUALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 ' SPIRITUALISM ' — MEDIA — DR. RADCLIFFE — SHAKESPEARE'S 
 ' MACBETH ' — IMPOSTURES — SEANCES — EXPOSURES OF 
 ' SPIRITUALISM ' BY SIR GEORGE SITWELL AND HERR CARL 
 VON BUCH . . . . . . . . . . . . , . 138 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ' FORTUNE- TELLING ' BY CARDS — A SPANISH SUPERSTITION — 
 ' THOUGHT-READING ' — ITS FALLACY AND ABSURDITY — 
 A FEW COMMON-SENSE OBSERVATIONS — CURIOUS INSTANCES 
 WITH REGARD TO THE SO-CALLED ' SECOND SIGHT ' .. 1 46 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. ^, 
 
 THE 'art OF MAGIC' — NOT EASILY ATTAINED — EXPLANATION* 
 OF SOME INTERESTING EXPERIMENTS — THE OLD STYLE OF 
 CONJURING OUT OF DATE — THE DEMON COIN — THE WIZARD'S 
 POCKET-HANDKERCHIEF : — HINTS ON CONJURING — THE 
 
 ' TRICK OF TRICKS ' — THE GREAT INDIAN SAND TRICK 
 
 THE ENCHANTED SEGAR .. .. ., .. .. 155 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 SUPERSTITIONS WITH REGARD TO WEATHER — THE LEGEND 
 
 OF ST. SWITHIN .. .. .. .. .. .. ijg 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 ' SPIRITUALISM ' — AN EXPOSE OF THE IMPOSTURE — HEAR 
 BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION — A REMARKABLE INCIDENT 
 WITH REGARD TO SO-CALLED ' SPIRITUALISM ' — ' THE FLOAT- 
 ING TABLE '— ' SPIRIT-RAPPING ' — THE SPIRITUALIST MUSI- 
 CAL BOX — ' INVISIBLE WRITING ' .. ... .. . . 163 
 
A WIZARD'S WANDERINGS 
 
 FROM 
 
 CHINA TO PERU. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF THE TOUR — ADIEU TO LONDON — ADVICE WITH 
 REGARD TO GOING OUT TO INDIA — DESCRIPTION OF THE BEST 
 ROUTE — THE ORIENTAL NAVIGATION COMPANY— DEPARTURE 
 FROM DOVER. 
 
 ' Not to laugh when nature prompts, is but a knavish, hypocritical 
 way of making a mask of one's face.' — Pope. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that our preparations are completed, that 
 our luggage is at the depot, our purse well-filled, our money-belt 
 also, and that we are going to start on our contemplated tour. 
 Now that we are about to bid adieu to London, the place actually 
 rises several degrees in our estimation. The ' silvery Thames ' 
 looks less pea-soupy than we ever noticed it before, and, for the 
 first time in our lives, we actually notice architectural beauties 
 about old Somerset House, which was, once upon a time, a 
 palace, but was levelled to the ground by the Protector Somerse.t, 
 in 1540- After his execution, three years later, Somerset House, 
 his residence, became Crown property. It was built from the 
 designs of Sir William Chambers, 1775. Go where you may in 
 this tight little island, if you come across an old-fashioned bed- 
 room, the chances are : ' Queen Elizabeth slept here.' She slept 
 several times in Somerset House. 
 
 There was a touch of the courtier as well as of the wit in 
 Sydney Smith's reply to the lady, who, arguing that it was always 
 
2 . A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 high tide at London Bridge, at twelve o'clock, appealing to him 
 with, ' Now, Mr. Smith, is it not so ? ' 'It used not to be so, I 
 believe, formerly, but perhaps the Lord Mayor and aldermen have- 
 altered it lately.' 
 
 One hundred men could not carry the amount of the National 
 Debt of England counted out in ten pound Bank of England notes, 
 notwithstanding the lightness of the paper they are printed on. 
 
 Great Britain has, at present, no fewer than fifty colonies, in 
 different parts of the world ; so a man has a choice before him, 
 where to settle down in, if, in these days of depression, he could 
 only manage to get there. Looking at the vast numbers of un- 
 employed hanging about the London streets, willing to work, but 
 unable to find the same, how fervently have I, over and over 
 again, wished I had the loan of Aladdin's lamp, that I might put 
 a few hundred golden sovereigns in each of their pockets, and dis- 
 patch them high presto over to Canada, where they, perhaps, 
 might improve their condition. 
 
 Considering that Enghshmen have invaded every country in 
 the world for commercial and industrial purposes, it is unreason- 
 able a;nd ungenerous on their part to complain about the migration 
 of foreign labourers hither. But for the influx of foreigners in 
 times past, England would not have secured her manufacturing 
 supremacy. It must not be forgotten that some of our most 
 profitable industries were taught us by foreigners. Nor does the 
 influence which foreigners have exerted in the development of 
 British manufactures belong exclusively to the period of 
 'ancient history.' Our chief manufacture, namely, that of iron 
 and steel, still owes much to them. Both of our two new centres 
 of this great industry — Middlesborough and Barrow-in-Furness — 
 have been, practically, the creation of foreigners, the late Mr. 
 Bolckow having been the founder of the former, and Mr. H. W. 
 Schneider, if not the founder of the latter, at least the discoverer 
 of the rich deposits of haematite ore to which its prosperity has 
 been due. Again, the value of the services which another 
 foreigner — the late Sir William Siemens — rendered, not only to 
 the iron and steel manufacture, but to various other British 
 industries, cannot be adequately estimated. In art and science, 
 as well as in industry, we have been laid under a heavy debt of 
 gratitude to foreigners. The grand cathedrals of which we boast 
 were largely the work of foreign stonemasons, and one of the 
 greatest names in English scientific literature, is that of a 
 naturalised foreigner. Sir William Herschel,. from whom a late 
 Lord Chancellor claims descent. We owe even our House of 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 3 
 
 Commons to a foreigner. It is manifestly unreasonable, there- 
 fore, to denounce foreigners as intruders upon British soil. Still 
 it is unfortunate that in one great industry, namely, seamanship, 
 foreigners should preponderate over Englishmen. 
 
 In deciding upon the best time of year to go out to India or 
 ' gorgeous East,' the points to be considered are ; — firstly, the 
 season in England at time of departure ; secondly, the best 
 season in which to pass down the Red Sea, so as to avoid as 
 much as possible the suffering consequent upon the heat during 
 that part of the journey ; and, thirdly, the season upon arrival in 
 India. The great object, of course, is to make the immediate 
 change of climate to the traveller as inconsiderable as possible. 
 
 The Red Sea is hot all the year round. The best time for any 
 person to leave England for either of the Presidencies, is September 
 or October. Anyone going out to India for the first time will 
 feel the heat less than old stagers, especially in the Red Hot Sea. 
 
 The Brindisi route has the advantage of being, at least, the 
 shortest and quickest. Brindisi is 1,300 miles from Calais, so you 
 have only 800 miles sea voyage to Alexandria, and a pleasant trip 
 through the Tyrol and Italy. If you leave, suppose on Monday, 
 at 5 a.m., and after one of the most delightful trips perhaps in 
 the world, passing by the mountains of Argosella, the Island of 
 Claudia, and the Isle of Candia, you can reach Alexandria on 
 Thursday. Leave Suez on Friday, arriving at Aden in six days. 
 From Aden to Ceylon, it would take nine days, four days more to 
 Madras, four days to Calcutta. 
 
 At Messrs. Green and Co.'s, Managers of the ' Orient,' and the 
 Pacific Steam Navigation Company, Fenchurch Street, London, 
 we take our Ocean ticket, also one for Naples, where their magni- 
 ficent steamer wiU call pine days after leaving Grayesend. We 
 book for Sydney, Australia, 12,065 ty Rpd Sea rpute, or 13,580 
 miles via Cape Town route. 
 
 I Hke the former route best, as the accommodation on board is 
 as near perfection as possible. A pleasaiit little tpqr is before us 
 through Europe, with a knowledge that, bar accident, dusty, and 
 tired, sick of continental cookery and imposition, we find at 
 Naples a haven of rest on board — a British steamer one inight 
 well be proud of. 
 
 Let us then suppose we have run past Kent with its charming, 
 comfortable-looking, homely scenery, with not a square yard of 
 land running to waste, fields well looked after, contented-looking 
 peasantry (if it is not hop-picking time), and a take-it-altogether-- 
 generally-speaking-solvent-general-appearance of things in general. 
 
 B — 2 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China io Peru. 
 
 We bid adieu to the white cliffs of Old England, and sniff 
 with unctjon the ozone as the spray washes over the deck of 
 the Calais-Douvres. 
 
 'Tremendous motion felt and rueful throes.' — Milton. 
 
 All our cares are placed on the shelf, we mean to enjoy our- 
 selves, let the natives swindle us as they like. We have been 
 to the Scottish Highlands ere now, have we not ? Well, after 
 that ordeal, we ought to be able to stand anything ! In a very 
 few hours time we arrive at Paris. There is something about 
 Paris very attractive. Like the loadstone it draws. 
 
CHAPTER ir. 
 
 ARRIVAL AT PARIS — PARIS AND THE PARISIAN — BON MOT OF THE 
 EMPRESS EUGENIE — THE RUE ROYALE — THE SIEGE OF PARIS — 
 THE COMMUNISTS. 
 
 It is essentially a show city, all is insincere and got up for effect. 
 A Frenchman does not know what he wants, and he won't be 
 satisfied until he gets it. Voltaire, whose wit like a Malay 
 Kreese, carried poison on its blade, turned his satire on his own 
 countrymen, whom he epigrammatically described as : Moitik singe, 
 moitie tigre. 
 
 The Frenchman, who has got a dash of German blood in his 
 veins, is active in mind and body, has neither time nor per- 
 tinacity to be inquisitive; he has general views, but changes them 
 every moment ; is quick to anger, ambitious and egotistical, but 
 none so readily takes or makes a joke. 
 
 Count Bulow cleverly describes the three nations, French, 
 English, and German. 'Some years ago a prize was offered 
 for the best drawing of a camel. A French artist, as soon as he 
 heard of it, rushed to the Jardin des Plantes, and in a week had 
 finished a beautiful imaginative picture. The Englishman took 
 a week to consider, and then went to Arabia, whence he returned 
 in six months with an accurate and bold sketch of the subject. 
 The German shut himself up in his atelier and endeavoured to 
 elaborate a camel from the depths of his moral consciousness, 
 and he is still at work.' 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau remarked : ' Qh, Paris ! Paris ! Paris ! 
 A mass of houses ; an abyss of, ills ! If all the griefs and crimes 
 which those houses enclose were to appear on their exteriors from 
 every stone would ooze a tear or a drop of blood.' If you give a 
 Frenchman a sovereign he wants change. On dit an English- 
 man is never happy except when he is miserable. A Scotchman 
 never at home except when he is abroad ; and an Irishman never 
 at peace except when he is at war. Of course we should have a 
 look in at the Caf6 Chantant to hear the latest favourite. When 
 
6 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 charming and pschutt song. L' Alcazar was crowded nightly, and 
 all Paris, high and low, had gone wild about her. 
 
 ' Swans sing before they die ; 'twere no bad thing 
 Should certain persons die before they sing.' — Coleridge. 
 
 did not apply to this music-hall artiste for a wonder, I thought. 
 I once heard a bon mot not easily forgotten. ' II reflechi,' said 
 the Empress Eugenie to the late Emperor, admiring a beautiful 
 looking-glass he had just presented her with. ' Which is more 
 than you do,' he replied. ' II est poli,' quietly answered the 
 Empress, ' which is more than you are.' 
 
 As we stroll down the Rue Royale, admiring the well displayed 
 contents of the different shop windows, we cannot help thinking 
 of the miserable Communists of 1871, who, in this very street, 
 bribed the firemen to fill their engines with petroleum, and play 
 on six burning houses in which twenty-seven persons perished. 1 
 happened to be shut up in Paris during the Siege of 1870, and 
 should think many to their dying days will remember the kind- 
 ness of our compatriot, Dr. Evans, who saved the Empress from 
 the mob, and afterwards spent something like ^^48,000 amongst 
 the wounded Frenchmen. 
 
 In Paris the women are always thirty, or sixty, a woman of 
 forty does not exist. 
 
 In the Royal Library there is a Chinese chart of the heavens, 
 made about 600 B.C. in which 1460 stars are correctly inserted. 
 
 Louis Philippe once remarked to Madame Grisi, the wife of 
 M. Mario, as she stood fondling her two young children :. 'Ah, 
 madame, are those then some of your little Grisettes ? ' ' No, Sire, 
 was the quick reply, perfect in every requirement of the pun, ' no 
 Sire, these are my little Marionettes ! ' 
 
 As no doubt my readers are aware, the Louvre and Tuileries 
 are situated on the right bank of the Seine, between it and the 
 Rue de Rivoli. The two piles were completed and harmonised 
 under the second Empire, and occupied with their enclosures an 
 area of nearly sixty acres, forming one single palace of supreme 
 splendour, grandeur and magnitude. The Louvre consists of an 
 old and new Louvre. During the reign of the Commune, not 
 only did the devouring element threaten to destroy the inestim- 
 able treasures of the Louvre, but one day a nurriber of men carry- 
 ing slow matches and led by a man (if you can call him a man) 
 named Napias Piquat, made all the preparations to set fire to 
 several parts of the Museum of the Louvre, and two of the 
 guardians were shot. 
 
A Wizard'' s Wanderings from China to Peru. y, 
 
 This Napias Piquat threatened to make the whole building one 
 great conflagration. He was taken and shot. 
 
 On Sunday, May 21st, a concert was held in the Salle des 
 Marfichaux, which extended the whole depth of the Palace and 
 the height of two floors ; it was one of the most splendid and 
 gorgeously decorated halls in Paris. On the walls were ranged 
 the busts and figures of marshals and generals of the Empire ; the 
 ceiling was exquisitely carved and painted. 
 
 It is almost impossible to describe the Communists. These 
 reckless madmen and fools, deaf to reason, bent on eve'ry form 
 of wickedness and excess, made Paris, once so gay, their 
 frightened slave, crouching to earth under their dreaded and 
 loathsome tyranny. The aspect of Paris after the suppression 
 of the emute was sad in the extreme, Paris sad, motionless and 
 waste — filled with dead, dying and wounded. Consternation m 
 every Ijreast — solitude in every street ! 
 
 First came the Siege with famine, separation and poverty, then 
 the insurrection of Mont-matre ! Cannonading day and night — 
 ceaseless musketry — mothers in tears — sons pursued — wounded 
 wherever you happened to look. It was of a character savage and 
 barbarous in the extreme — nothing was respected. God — pro- 
 perty — person or religion. Human, or divine laws were set at 
 defiance. Who can wonder that the retribution should be other 
 than terrible ? The glowing fires of burning Paris illuminated the 
 Prussian camp at St. Denis ! 
 
 O Commune of Paris ! That the bloodless revolution of Sep- 
 tember should end in fire and sword, in rapine and murder 
 under the eyes of the Victor ! Paris left to do what the Prussian 
 hordes had left undone made it a seething cauldron. A diaboli- 
 cal genius presided over their work of destruction ; individuals 
 wearing the fireman's uniform were seen to throw combustible 
 liquids' by means of engines and pails on the burning pile, instead 
 of trying to extinguish the flames, and if anybody attempted to 
 arrest the conflagration, he was fired at by those demons in their 
 wild revenge. 
 
 Let us now suppose we are like ' Sir Boyle Roache's bird,' and 
 pay a flying visit due North. Travelling on the Continent is not 
 like travelling here in England. Red Tape shows itself every- 
 where. The boasted French politeness is but a ' beautiful myth,' 
 still the novelty of the thing makes it endurable, and we try and 
 fancy we are enjoying railway rides over Europe. The train 
 service is certainly improving year by year, and well it may do. 
 Let us then start right off, due North. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 OFF TO- NORWAY — HAMMERFEST — THE MIDNIGHT SUN — DEN- 
 MARK— rCOPENHAGEN — SWEDEN — LINN^US — EMPLOYMENTS OF 
 WOMEN AT STOCKHOLM. 
 
 During the dog-days commend me to Norway. The less luggage 
 we take the better, a portmanteau and a bundle of rods, sticks, 
 &c., ought to suffice. With such light encumbrances it is possible 
 to spend a month or six weeks very comfortably travelling over- 
 land across the Hardunger, the Fillie, or the Dovre Fjelds for 
 instance, or even farther north, if time and weather permit. 
 Roughly, 4s. 6d. to 5s. a day, secures the best accommodation the 
 roadside station-houses have to offer, and abundance of wholesome, 
 if not very varied food, while the expenses of travelling by cariole 
 may be taken at something over 2s. per Norwegian mile, one 
 Norwegian mile being equal to seven English. With the help of 
 a phrase book all necessary conversation with the natives may be 
 carried on, and the language is not at all difficult to acquire. 
 
 The chief requisites for comfortable travelling are a disposition 
 to treat the peasants considerately with a little of their own serious 
 politeness, and a well replenished bag of small change, a commo- 
 dity very scarce ' up country.' So, after a visit to Hammerfest, 
 where, of course, we buy shoes and bone spoons of the Laps, after 
 stealing a glance at the red midilight sun on the threshold of the 
 dim and mysterious Arctic circle, we bid adieu to Norway with 
 regret. 
 
 Denmark's most ancient inhabitants were Cimbri and Teutones, 
 who were driven out by the Jutes or Goths. Denmark's name is 
 supposed to be derived from Dan, the founder of the Danish 
 Monarchy, and Mark, a ' German word signifying country.' 
 
 Copenhagen has been bombarded by our fleet several times. 
 The last time was in September, 1807, when it surrendered to 
 Admiral Gambier and Lord Cathcart. 
 
 Hans Christian Andersen, the poet and teller of fairy tales, 
 was a Dane. You have of course, read 'The Ugly Duckling'; 
 if not by all means do so. 
 
A IVizani's Wanderings from China to Peru. 9 
 
 Copenhagen was built by Waldemar the First, 1157, and became 
 the capital in 1443. The University was founded in 1479 In 1794 
 the palace, valued at four millions, was destroyed by fire, and 100 
 persons lost their lives. The following year the Arsenal, Admiralty, 
 and fifty streets were destroyed by fire. 
 
 A very enjoyable couple of days can be spent here. 
 Sweden's ancient inhabitants were the Fins, now the modern 
 inhabitants of Finland. The internal state of the kingdom is 
 little known previous to the nth century. The entire population 
 in 187 1 was only 4,204,117 or about that of London. Here 
 the women work like slaves, it's simply disgraceful. Stockholm is 
 built on holmen or islands, and was fortified by Berger Jarl about 
 1254. Here the Swedish nobility were massacred by Christian 
 the Second in 1520. 
 
 In these pleasant parts, you meet with that charming ideal, a 
 pretty, high-spirited, educated young woman, who is able to darn 
 a stocking, mend her own frock, command a regiment of pots 
 and kettles, feed the pigs, milk the cow. During the dog-days, 
 there are many worse places to visit than Sweden. This is 
 becoming a very popular tour, especially to anyone fond of 
 fishing and roughing it. The steamers plying between the two 
 countries are comfortable, and the table not at all bad. 
 
 On mention of Sweden, one name above all others, must be 
 uppermost in our minds, viz., that of Linnceus, the naturalist. 
 Karl von Linne was bom at Rashult, in the province of Smaland, 
 May 13th, 1707. 
 
 The writer is not altogether unacquainted with woman's work in 
 Europe. He has seen her around the pit-mouth, at the forge — 
 in male attire it is true — hundreds of them in ' merrie England,' 
 over and over again, and that quite recently. In ' sunny France ' he 
 has seen them filling blast furnaces and tending coke ovens. 
 Daily has he watched her bearing the heat and burden of the 
 day in the fields of the ' Fatherland,' and in Austria — Hungary, 
 doing the work of man and beast on the farm and in the mine. 
 He has seen women emerge from the coal pits of ' busy 
 Belgium ' where little girls and young women graduate under- 
 ground as hewers of coal, and drawers of carts, for it is no uncom- 
 mon thing on the Continent to hitch women and dogs togethefr, 
 that manufacturing may be done cheaply. Aged, bent and sun- 
 burnt, he has seen women with ropes over shoulders, toiling on 
 the banks of canals and dykes in picturesque Holland. 
 
 Having seen all this he was yet surprised to find in a city so 
 beautiful and seemingly so rich and prosperous as Stockholm, 
 
10 A Wizard's iVantferings from China to Peru. 
 
 women still more debased. In Stockholm she is almost exclu- 
 sively employed as hod-carrier and bricklayer's assistant. She 
 carries brick, mixes mortar, and, in short, does all the heavy work 
 about the building. At the dinner hour you see groups of women 
 sitting on the piles of wood and stones eating their frugal repast. 
 They are paid for a day of hard work of this toil, lasting twelve 
 hours, the munificent sum of one kroner, equivalent to is. ifd. 
 Women sweep the streets, haul the rubbish, attend to the parks, 
 do the gardening, and row the numerous ferries which abound at 
 Stockholm. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RUSSIA — PETER THE GREAT — CATHERINJE THE SECOND — ST. 
 PETERSBURG — THE RHINE — GERMANY AND THE GERMANS. 
 
 Our next look is at Russia, which was originally known as the 
 eastern part of ancient Sarmatia. Its name is derived from the 
 Roxolani, a Salvonic tribe. Rurick, a Varangian chief, appears to 
 have been the first to establish a government in 862. His 
 descendants ruled amid many vicissitudes till 1598. The pro- 
 gress of the Russian power under Peter the Great, and Catherine 
 the Second, is unequalled for rapidity in the history of the world. 
 
 The Russian language, though not devoid of elegance is, to a 
 foreigner, of very difficult pronunciation ; the number of letters 
 and diphthongs being forty-two. The supposed population of the 
 Empire is 82,159,630. Russia's estimated revenue is ,^34,500,000 ; 
 and her expenditure ;£^37, 850,000, accordmg to the last Russian 
 budget. 
 
 Amber in great quantities is found here, the dredgers being 
 more successful after a violent storm, which has no doubt dis- 
 turbed the bottom of the bay along the shore, and exposed the 
 pieces of amber to the action of the dredges. Amber is, as no 
 doubt you are aware, a resinous exudation from ancient forests, 
 possibly submerged thousands of years ago. 
 
 St. Petersburg, the modern caJDital, was founded by Peter the 
 Great, 27 May, 1703. He built a small hut for himself and some 
 wooden hovels. In 17 10, the Count Golovkin built the first 
 house of brick ; and the next year, the Emperor, with his own 
 hands, laid the foundation of a house of the same material. The 
 seat of the empire was transferred from -Moscow to this place, in 
 171 1. Beds of turf exist in Russia covering 70,000 square miles, 
 which would furnish sufficient material to provide all Russia with 
 light for ten thousand years. 
 
 The first Russian newspaper was published and edited by 
 Peter the Great himself, in 1703. 
 
 The area of Russia is almost exactly similar in extent to that 
 11 
 
1 2 A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 of the moon, with this diiiference, however : Whilst the area of the 
 moon is a fixed quantity, that of Russia is continually increasing. 
 
 The inhabitants of Black Russia are nearly all flatfooted, which 
 makes the soldiers drawn from those particular parts incapable of 
 long and rapid marches. In our own army, no flat-footed man 
 is admitted, 
 
 Having had enough of Northern Europe, we find it quite a 
 relief to visit, in imagination, Germany, which has few more 
 attractive places of interest than the noble Rhine, which is about 
 800 miles in length, and rises in the Swiss Canton of the 
 Grisons. 
 
 If you speak the language^well and good — you will be 
 delighted with all you see and hear. Mark Twain is of opinion 
 that any gifted person ought to learn English in 30 hours, 
 French in 30 days, and German in 30 years. The great fault, in 
 my humble opinion, of a German is, that he cannot understand a 
 joke unless it be a very practical one, and herein he resembles the 
 matter-of-fact Lowland Scot, and the English peasant. 
 
 There are two million widows in Germany. It is said : ' Some of 
 the husbands are in heaven, but the majority are in this country.' 
 
 Ratisbon Cathedral is worth a visit. The city is on the 
 Danube, in Bavaria, near Munich, and was made a free imperial 
 city about 1200. Several Diets have been held here. It was 
 made an Archbishopric in 1806. ' Tears cannot restore her, there- 
 fore, I weep,' is on a wife's tombstone here, and attracts our atten- 
 tion as we wander through this handsome edifice. A German pro- 
 verb says : ' A German will do as much work as three Russians, an 
 Englishman as much as three Germans, and an American as 
 much as three Englishmen.' On one monument we noticed here : 
 
 ' Underneath this stone doth lie, 
 As much virtue as could die ; 
 Which in its life did vigour give,. 
 To as much beauty as could live.' 
 
 The above is a free translation. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SPAIN — DESCRIPTION OF MADRID — SEVILLE — BARCELONA — 
 GENERAL REMARKS ON SPAIN — A SPANISH BULL FIGHT. 
 
 Spain is a land of singular contrasts. I have frequently been in 
 Italy at the most flowery time of the year, but anything like the 
 gorgeous display of the Flower Fair at Barcelona, I have never 
 witnessed, and yet, for days ^nd days, you may travel through 
 this country, over arid, uninteresting, dull plains, with not a bit of 
 vegetation to enliven the scene. Even at the smallest inns, the 
 attendants use fans to keep those horrid flies away from the 
 traveller. Thirty-six hours' rail journey by mail train from Paris 
 brings you to Madrid. 
 
 The climate is a serious drawback in a place where the daily 
 official report constantly gives a variation of temperature from 6° 
 to 19°, and few days in the year the dreaded east wind does not 
 blow. 
 
 As in most southern towns, the middle of the day is the only 
 real quiet time. When the sun reigns supreme the streets are 
 deserted, blinds are closed, and the inhabitants retire to shady 
 rooms and patios, to enjoy their siesta in darkness. 
 
 The first thing in the morning you hear the tinkling of bells of 
 herds of sheep and asses, brought in by picturesque-looking 
 brigands in peaked hats, leathern jackets, and long crooks or 
 goads, so dear to Velasquez and Murillo. Cows being rare in the 
 arid plains that surround Madrid, the milk of sheep and asses is 
 used instead. Go where you will in Spain, it is bound almost to be 
 a Saint's day. Saints' days are the rule, the ordinary days the ex- 
 ception. The utter absence of small birds in most rural places, 
 seems very strange. Only near men's habitations, do you hear 
 the song of the birds. For a city like Seville of only 100,000 
 inhabitants, it is amazing what a number of idle citizens there are 
 abroad ' worshipping the rising sun,' and hoping that something 
 will turn up to-morrow to their advantage. You see no anxious 
 faces ' running to catch the first train ' ; no bustling and hustling 
 It 
 
14 -^ Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 each other, trying who shall be first at the office or the mart. 
 ' Why hurry ? there is plenty of time to-morrow.' 
 
 Barcelona possesses one of the most magnificent specimens of 
 Gothic architecture I know of in its Cathedral. In this country 
 so rich and beautiful are the churches, that one wishes they could 
 be turned inside out under the bright, clean sky. 
 
 Some old-fashioned dames still cling to the traditional Mantilla 
 de lira, which is a scarf of rich black silk bordered with lace ; this 
 fastened to the hair and wrapped round her shoulders is very 
 graceful. The Mantilla is far more popular than the bonnet. 
 In their tastes here they are decidedly national, and hate any 
 foreign innovation. The scene in the Prado, and along the 
 Alcala is very gay. The Andalusian horses are beautifully 
 shaped and step well in light conveyances, but have not enough 
 weight for large barouches and landaus. 
 
 The carriages and servants also lack the finish and perfection 
 of detail that distinguish a good English, or French turn-out. 
 But if the carriages fall short of perfection, their fair occupants 
 bear away the palm of beauty from every other city'. It would be 
 impossible to find anywhere so many pretty, or rather beautiful 
 women, as may be seen every day during the season driving in 
 the Prado. 
 
 The Spaniards, whatever their faults, are at heart an essentially 
 chivalrous people. Spain is now like a young man on his entrance 
 into Ufe, making his experiences and sowing his wild oats. In these 
 oats are many weeds, and severe will be the suffering ere they can 
 be eradicated, but there is a good and rich soil below, and in the 
 Spanish character there is a nobihty of nature, and a sincerity and 
 earnestness of purpose that will bear good fruit some day. 
 Spanish pride, however, will never endure the indignity of having 
 a foreigner seated on the throne of old Castile. 
 
 I remember once hearing Castelar, the famous popular orator, 
 speak in the House of Deputies. I did not .know a word he said, 
 but for all that it was a great treat, for he was without a doubt a 
 second Demosthenes. Oratory in Spain is very much practised, 
 and a fine Spanish speech is noble and inspiring. The speakers 
 are in general dignified and impressive, only occasionally permit- 
 ting themselves to burst forth with a vehemence that is the more 
 startling from their previous calmness. Of course we have a look 
 at a ' Bull Fight.', The wooden paling is quite eight feet high that 
 surrounds the arena. On this paling is a ledge upon which the 
 chulo can place his foot to enable him to spring over the barrier 
 should the infuriated bull pursue him too closely, and nobody is 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 15 
 
 allowed to remain in the space between it and the first row of 
 seats. The entrance of the chulos, banderillos, and three espadas 
 is a pretty sight. The stake they offer to public amusement 
 is no less than life. Each espada carries a long sharp sword with 
 a crimson flag on his left arm. They wear their hair very long, 
 either twisted up, or in a net. Lastly come the picadores on 
 horseback. I use the word advisedly ! their eyes are mercifully 
 bandaged. When it gets too tame, you hear cries of, ' Banderillas, 
 banderillas,' ' fuega, fuega,' resounds on every side till the barbed 
 sticks with the crackers on them to stick in the flesh of the in- 
 furiated bull, are brought out. How vividly such a scene as a 
 modern ' Bull Fight' brings before one the descriptions of the gladia- 
 torial fights in the Colosseum. It is gratifying to know that amongst 
 ladies of the higher classes, the amusement is looked upon with 
 disfavour. In Madrid very few ladies are ever present, young 
 girls never. In the provinces the old national feeling is stronger, 
 and few fail to attend. Bulls cost 4000 to 5000 reals, in other 
 words ;^40 to j£s°- 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CROSSING THE ALPS — ARRIVAL IN ITALY — VENICE — GONDOLAS 
 AND GONDOLIERS — THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS — MILAN — ROME — 
 HUMOROUS REMARKS OF AN AMERICAN TOURIST — THE BAY 
 •OF NAPLES — VESUVIUS — HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII — 
 BRINDISI. 
 
 Crossing the Alps, we call to mind Ruskin's words as he 
 contemplated the stupendous masses of rock, the rushing 
 rivers, the towering mountains built 'like great cathedrals, 
 with gates of granite, pavements of clouds, choirs of stream, 
 altars of snow, and vaults of purple.' 
 
 There is nothing better calculated to contrast human insig- 
 nificance with human resource, than a contemplation of the roads 
 over the Simplon and the St. Gothard Passes. In these delightful 
 parts we often meet ' far from the madding crowd,' in some dear 
 quiet little spot, perched perhaps on some overhanging cliff, or 
 nestling in a secluded valley, people possessing those grand, but so 
 rarely met with, human traits ' charity which spieth no man's 
 faults ; and tenderness towards all that suffer.' 
 
 ' What struck you most in Italy ? ' a newly returned traveller 
 was asked. ' The sun,' said he. But we will suppose we visit 
 that lovely country early in the Spring, before the hot weather sets 
 in. Is there any trip, I wonder, 'in the world so delightful as one 
 to Italy ! Well, if there is I am not acquainted with it. If I had 
 my choice, I would never want to leave it — the Northern 
 Lakes in the summer, and Naples during the winter. La Bella 
 Italia is becoming, however, a terribly prosaic land. There are 
 tramways in Rome and at Bologna j there are steam launches on 
 the Canalazzo at Venice ; and these many years past the cosy 
 little Milanese four-wheeler has been called a ' broum.' 
 
 Venice. We at last reach this city, and enter a hearse belonging 
 to the Grand Hotel d' Europe. At any rate the strange-looking con- 
 veyance w'as more like a hearse than anything else, though to speak 
 by the card it's a gondola. And is this the famed gondola, and this 
 the gorgeous gondolier ? we ask ourselves. One's first impression of 
 Id 
 
A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 1 7 
 
 Venice is not to last long, though. In a few minutes we sweep 
 gracefully out into the Grand Canal. Right from the water's 
 edge rise long lines of stately palaces of marble ; while ponderous 
 stone bridges throw their shadows athwart the glittering waves. 
 What a strange old city this Queen of the Adriatic is ! Narrow 
 streets, vast, gloomy marble palaces black with the corroding 
 damp of centuries, all partly submerged ; no dry land visible any- 
 where, and no side-walks worth mentioning; if you want to goto 
 church, to the theatre, or to the restaurant you must call a gondola. 
 
 Venice must be a paradise for cripples, for verily a man has 
 no use for- legs here. In the glare of day, there is little poetry 
 about Venice, but under the charitable moon her stained palaces 
 are white again, their battered sculptures are hidden in shadows, 
 and the old city seems crowned once more with the grandeur that 
 was hers 500 years ago. It is easy, then, in fancy, to people 
 these silent canals with plumed gallants and fair ladies — with Shy- 
 locks in gaberdine and sandals venturing loans upon the rich 
 argosies of Venetian commerce; with Othellos and Desdemonas — 
 with lagos and Roderigos ; with noble fleets and victorious legions 
 returning from the wars. 
 
 In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn, 
 poverty-stricken, and commerceless — forgotten and utterly in- 
 significant. But in the moonlight,, her fourteen centuries of 
 greatness fling their glories about her, and once more is she the 
 princeliest among the nations of the earth. 
 
 Of course, we go and see the. Bridge of Sighs, and next the 
 Church and the Great Square of St. Mark— the Bronze Horses 
 and the famous Lion of St. Mark, the campanile, and Byron's 
 house, and Balbi's, the geographer. 
 
 At Milan, we enter our ' broum' and drive through the charm- 
 ing city. It is a most enjoyable ride, believe me, and one you 
 would not soon forget.. Nothing short of the highest poetry, or, 
 the noblest art can paint it truly, or dimly shadow forth the 
 grandeur of Milan Cathedral. Gazing at this beautiful Cathedral, 
 we almost fancy we can hear : 
 
 'The pealing organ blow 
 To the full-voiced choir below.' 
 
 as the incense, with its ' odour of sanctity,' rises above. In this 
 sunny land, even the little street urchins hum, or sing snatches 
 from the Jatest- opera. The people in Italy seem to agree with 
 Marmontel's remark : ' Music is the sole talent which gives 
 pleasure of itself; all the others require witnesses,' 
 
i8 A IVizaviVs Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 We visit at Rome the tomb of Ccecillii Metella. How changed 
 to what it used to be, is Rome ! The Metelli family have been 
 renowned here for centuries. Metella, the daughter of a general 
 of this name, was taken- by- the Goddess Vesta to Lanuvium, when 
 offered up to her as a sacrifice for her father's disrespect to the 
 goddess. 
 
 ' Imperial Caesar, who, being dead and turned to clay 
 May stop a hole to keep the wind away.' 
 
 To wile away the time we visit St. Peter's, and at night the 
 Sala Dante, where the writer has frequently performed. 
 
 An American tourist says : ' I was delighted to know that the. 
 families of Brutus, Caius Fabricius, and Appius Claudius, were 
 still in existence ; their names are on the door-plates in the 
 principal street, though their founders had been dead several 
 years — at least, so our guide informed us.' ' And whose residence 
 is that ? ' I asked, drawing attention to a stately mansion which 
 was unoccupied, and having a large card displayed in the window, 
 with 'To Let, 700 lire per month.' 'Thatsignor, is the home of 
 the younger Casca ; but he is an envious, miserly man, and can 
 never. get a tenant ; he makes the rent so large.' ' Is he the son 
 of the Casca who made the rent in Caesar's garment ? ' * He is, 
 signor, and the trait runs in the family.' ' Thank you,' replied I, 
 handing Lucius a lira for being so truthful. 
 
 Our guide next conducted Us to the Roman Museum^ where we 
 viewed the numerous curiosities so well-known in history, but only 
 observable to a few. Lucius Junius pointed out a large glass- 
 case containing a flock of seven stuffed geese, headed by a solemn- 
 looking gander. ' And pray, what does all this mean, Lucius ? ' 
 asked I of the guide. ' These, signor, are what saved the city.. 
 ' And what is that garment hanging on yonder peg ? ' ' The toga 
 of the 'illustrious Caesar,' he rephed. ' What are those auger-bits 
 on the shelf there?' 'Those, signor, are the four augurs that 
 interpreted omens.' 'What are those wax figures arrayed in 
 white ? ' asked I, pointing to a row of six or eight lay figures 
 ranged against a wall. 'The vestal virgins, signor.' 'You 
 haven't got any Sabine women in your collection ? ' ' No, signor, 
 they were all carried away several months ago.' 'What are 
 those two wax babies ? ' General Prat spoke up and informed me 
 that they were Romulus and Remus. 'Where is the wolf?' I 
 asked of Lucius. ' They are feeding him, signor, in the back 
 yard.' 
 
 By common consent of 'Globetrotters,' who are competent 
 
A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 1 9 
 
 to form an opinion, the three loveliest bays on earth are those of 
 Naples, Rio Janeiro, and New York. 
 
 Let us suppose we have arrived at Naples by steamer, and en- 
 joyed at daybreak, as we enter the Bay, a view unequalled in this 
 world. After doing dear old dirty Naples, our first excursion 
 must, most assuredly, be to Pompeii by road ; so, jumping into 
 one of those rickety, one-horsed, native, bone-shaking convey- 
 ances, we tell our Jehu to drive us to Pompeii, in preference to 
 taking the train. That ride to Castlemare will never be forgotten, 
 as all the way you skirt the beautiful Bay of Naples. 
 
 Pompeii claims much of our attention. When Sir Walter Scott 
 visited the" place with Sir William Gell, almost his only remark 
 was the exclamation : ' The City of the Dead ! — The City of the 
 Dead ! ' And to think that nineteen hundred years ago the in- 
 habitants of this place knew more of comfort than we, with all our 
 boasted civilisation, know to day ! Take the baths, for instance. 
 We think we have reached the acme with our now 
 popular Turkish Baths, but the ancients, after a bath of that des- 
 cription, returned to the /(5Z>«ifi2r««/«, and then the main delight 
 and extravagance of the bath commenced. Their slaves anointed 
 the bathers from vials of gold, of alaba:ster, or of crystal, studded 
 with profusest gems, and containing the rarest unguents gathered 
 from all quarters of the world. The number of these smegmata 
 used by the wealthy would fill a modern volume, while soft music 
 played in an adjacent chamber, and the bather lay on the soft 
 cushions of the bronze seats, chatting to those around, having 
 been previously powdered and pumice-stoned. 
 
 Near the principal street, the Via Domitiana, which used, over 
 1200 years ago, to be as crowded with passengers and equipages 
 and chariots, exhibiting the gay and animated exuberance of life 
 and motion, as we find in Naples to day, stood the Amphitheatre. 
 This city was destroyed (a.d. 79, on the 24th August, and was 
 first discovered a.d. 750. Various theories as to the exact mode 
 it was destroyed have been invented by the ingenious, but little 
 doubt exists but that it was destroyed by showers of ashes and 
 boiling water, aided by partial convulsions of the earth. 
 
 Herculaneum, on the contrary, appears to have received not 
 only the showers of ashes, but also inundations from m,olten lava. 
 Volcanic lightnings were also among the engines of ruih at 
 Pompeii, as Papyrus, and other of the more inflammable materials 
 are found in a burnt state, and a bronze statue is completely 
 shivered, as if by lightning. 
 
 The small but graceful Temple consecrated to Isis stands close 
 
20 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 here. Sylla is said to have transported to Italy the worship of 
 the Egyptian Isis, whose priests arrogated a knowledge of magic, 
 and of the future. Voltaire, with much plausible ingenuity, 
 endeavours to prove that the gipsies are a remnant of the ancient 
 priests and priestesses of Isis, intermixed with those of the goddess, 
 of Syria. The superstition of the ' Evil Eye ' still flourishes in 
 these parts, and at Naples the superstition works well for the 
 jewellers, many charms and talismans in the course of the year 
 they sell for the ominous fascination of the mal-occhio. 
 
 In Pompeii the talismans were equally numerous, but not 
 always of so elegant a shape, nor of so decorous a character. But, 
 generally speaking, a coral ornament was, as it now is, among the 
 favourite averters of the Evil influence. 
 
 In the Amphitheatre at Pompeii, the gladiatorial displays took, 
 place, the wild beasts (lions and tigers) were confined in vivaria 
 looking out from the outer walls. Imagine this huge place full 
 of people. Suddenly Mount Vesuvius breaks out into eruption. 
 Such is Vesuvius, and these things take place in it every year ! But 
 all eruptions which have happened since would be trifling, even 
 if all summed into one, compared to what occurred at the period 
 I refer to, a.d. '79. Day was turned into night, and light into 
 darkness ; an inexpressible quantity of dust and ashes was poured 
 out, deluging land, sea, and air, and burying two entire cities, 
 while the people were sitting in this very theatre. Pompeii was 
 the miniature of the civilisation of that age, a sort of Brighton; or 
 Nice. Within the narrow compass of its walls was contained, as 
 it were, a specimen of every gift which luxury offered to power. 
 In its minute but glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its 
 forum, its theatre, its circus — in the energy, yet corruption, in the 
 refinement, yet the vice, of its people, you beheld a model of the 
 whole empire. It was a toy — a plaything — a show-box, in which 
 the gods seemed pleased to keep the representation of the great 
 monarchy of earth, and which they afterwards hid from time, to 
 give to the wonder of posterity, the moral of the maxim, ' that 
 under the sun there is nothing new.' 
 
 The discoveries here have controverted the long^established 
 error of the antiquaries, that glass windows were unknown to the 
 Romans the use of them was not, however, common among the 
 middle and inferior classes in their private dwellings. In the apody- 
 ieriufn (that is a place where the bathers prepared themselves for 
 their luxurious ablutions) attached to the different baths these 
 windows have been discovered. 
 
 In Pompeii, a rough sketch of Pluto delineates that fearful 
 
A Wizard 's Wa?iderings from China to Peru. 2 1 
 
 deity in the shape we at present ascribe to Satan, and decorates 
 him with the paraphernalia of horns and a tail. But in all pro- 
 bability, k was from the mysterious Pan, the haunter of solitary 
 places, the inspirer of vague and soul-shaking terrors, that we 
 took the vulgar notion of the outward likeness of the fiend, it 
 corresponds exactly to the cloven-footed Satan. 
 
 And in the unhallowed and profligate rites of Pan, Christians 
 might well imagine they traced the deceptions of the devil. Of 
 all the statues in this world commend me to that one dug up here 
 — that mutilated, but all wondrous statue — that Parian face 
 before which all the beauty of the Florentine Venus is poor and 
 earthly — that aspect so full of harmony — of youth — of genius — of 
 the soul — which modern critics have supposed the representation 
 of Psyche. It is now in the Museo Borbonico, and is decidedly 
 the most beautiful of all which ancient sculpture has bequeathed 
 to us. 
 
 Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when the city was 
 disinterred from its silent tomb, all vivid with undimmed hues ; its 
 walls fresh as if painted yesterday, not a hue faded on the rich 
 mosaic of its floors ; in its forum the half-finished columns as left 
 by the workman's hand — in its gardens the sacrificial' tripod — in 
 its halls the chest of treasure — in its baths the strigil ; in its 
 theatres the counter of admission ; in its saloons, the furniture 
 and the lamp — in its triclinia, the fragments of the Last Feast — in 
 its cubicula, the perfumes, and the rouge of faded beauty, and 
 everywhere the bones and skeletons of those who once moved the 
 springs of that minute, 5 et gorgeous, machine of luxury and of 
 life. 
 
 In the house of Diomed, in the subterranean vaults twenty skele- 
 tons (one a babe) were discovered in one spot by the door, covered 
 by fine ashen dust, that had evidently been wafted slowly through 
 -the apertures, until it had filled the whole space. 
 
 There were jewels and coins, candelabra for unavailing light, 
 and wine hardened in the amphora for a prolongation of 
 agonised life. The sand consolidated by damps had taken the 
 forms of the skeletons as in a cast ; and you may yet see the 
 impression of a female neck and bosom of young and round pro- 
 portions. It seems to the inquirer as if the air had been gradually 
 changed into a sulphurous vapour ; the inmates of the vaults had 
 rushed to the door to find it closed and blocked up by the scoria 
 without, and in their attempts to force it, had been suffocated 
 with the atmosphere. 
 
 In the garden was found a skeleton with a key by its bony hand, 
 
22 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peril. 
 
 and near it a bag of coins. This is believed to have been the 
 master of the house, the unfortunate Diomed, who had probably 
 sought to escape by the garden, and had been destroyed either by 
 the vapours, or some fragment of stone. Beside some silver vases 
 lay another skeleton, probably a slave. 
 
 The houses of Sallust, and of Pausa, the Temple of Isis with 
 the juggling concealments behind the statues, the lurking place 
 of its holy oracles, are now bared to the gaze of the curious. In 
 one of the chambers of that temple was found a huge skeleton 
 with an axe beside it ; two walls had been pierced by the axe — 
 the victim could penetrate no further. This might, from the 
 conformation of the skull so boldly marked in its intellectual, as 
 well as its worse physical developments, be the identical Arbaces, 
 the Egyptian himself for what we know! Arbaces the Wise 
 Magician, the Hermes of the Burning Belt, the last of the Royalty 
 of Egypt ! The skeletons of more than one sentry were found at 
 their posts. The Roman sentry, even in those days, remained 
 erect and motionless at his post, whilst the terrified people rushed 
 past. That hour itself had not animated the machine of the ruth- 
 less Majesty of Rome into the reasoning and self-acting man. 
 There he stood, amidst the crashing elements ; he had not 
 received the permission to desert his station and escape. 
 
 Pliny says ' In proportion as tKe blackness gathered did the 
 lightnings around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and scorching 
 glare. Nor was their horrible beauty confined to the usual hues 
 of fire ; no rainbow ever rivalled their varying and prodigal dyes. 
 Now brightly blue as the most azure depth of a s'&uthern sky — 
 now of a livid and snake-like green, darting restlessly to and fro 
 as the folds of an enormous serpent — now of a lurid and intoler- 
 able crimson gushing forth through the columns of smoke, far 
 and wide, and lighting up the whole city from arch to arch — 
 then suddenly dying into a sickly paleness, like the ghost of 
 their own life t ' 
 
 Dion Cassius says ' Far and wide, borne by the winds the 
 showers of ashes descended upon the remotest climes, startling 
 even the swarthy African ; and whirled along the antique soil of 
 Syria and of Egypt. ' 
 
 Professor Palmieri of the Vesuvian Observatory has made some 
 wonderful improvements- with his electro-magnetic Seismograph. 
 This beautiful instrument accurately notes the slightest upheaving 
 of the earth. Sitting in his rooms at the University of Naples, 
 and with his back to the mountain he can tell exactly what is 
 going on nine or ten miles distant. 
 
A Wizard 's Watiderings from C/.ina to Peru. 23 
 
 Naples delights one more than anything in. the way of con- 
 tinental sight-seeing I know of. The balmy air as it blows across 
 the lovely bay, the odd odours of roasting coffee and pine nuts, 
 the noise and haggling of the market people around you as you 
 indulge, a/ fresco, in delicious flavoured oysters, with a panorama 
 in front of you unequalled, all the world over, is perfectly enchant- 
 ing. The sky is like -a lapis lazuli, not a cloud dims it. Orange 
 trees hang over the walls of the gardens by you. Palm trees and 
 other tropical plants abound everywhere ; the dresses are of all the 
 colours of the rainbow ! 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A TRIP TO AUSTRALIA — MELBOURNE — SYDNEY — HONOLULU — 
 THE CAROLINE ISLANDS. 
 
 Suppose we find ourselves at the extreme end of the world — 
 Australia. What do ninety-nine out of every hundred people you 
 meet know about it, except that it's noted for its tinned meat, and 
 is bounded on the N., &c., &c. Bother its tinned meat and what 
 it's bounded by. How would it suit you or me ? In the first place 
 it is the most loyal colony I know of to Her Most Gracious 
 Majesty the Queen, and yet its political constitution is as purely 
 democratic as the constitution of the United States, and their 
 social manners are even more democratic than those of the 
 Americans. Politically they already enjoy all the franchises for 
 which the extreme Radicals at home are clamouring. Here there 
 is no Established Church, no law of primogeniture, no law of 
 entail ; and education is secular, compulsory and gratuitous — or 
 all but gratuitous. It's the land of Topsyturvydom. The vast 
 mass of the people are out and out Radicals, as Radicalism is 
 understood in England, but, at the same time, as regards the 
 foreign policy of Great Britain, they are as out and out Tories, 
 and the very mention at a public meeting of the name of the late 
 Lord Beaconsfield at once provokes the most enthusiastic 
 cheering. 
 
 Topsyturvydom ! The Austrahan Liberals are protectionists ; 
 the Conservatives are free-traders, or almost free-traders. 
 
 Suppose we find ourselves at the city of Melbourne in the 
 colony of Victoria. It is just as well to be precise about the 
 locality of the place, for did not His Excellency Sir Frederick 
 Napier Broome, Governor of Western Australia, inform us not 
 long ago, that when in Paris, he was addressed as ' M. le Gouver- 
 neur de I'Australie,' while at the Colonial Post Office, mail 
 matter is frequently received addressed, say : ' John Smith, 
 Victoria, Adelaide, New South Wales.' The rateable property 
 of Melbourne, I was given to understand, was worth ten milHons 
 
A JVizard's Wandenngs from China to Pei'u. 25 
 
 sterling, with a nett annual value of nearly a million, and the 
 place is not much more than fifty years old. 
 
 In the year 1836, the year before Queen Victoria ascended 
 the throne, the present site of Melbourne was known as Beargrass, 
 and there were just thirteen buildings — three of weatherboard, 
 two of slate and eight turf hovels. Only the year before one of 
 the virtual founders of Melbourne, John Prascoe Fawkner, landed 
 in the bush on the banks or the Yara River, bringing with him a 
 party of five men, two horses, a couple of pigs, three Kangaroo 
 dogs, and a cat. The place crept along, so to speak, till 1851, 
 when the discovery of gold transformed it into a mighty city. 
 ' God made the country, and man made the town,' wrote Cowper. 
 It was gold that made Melbourne 1 
 
 Charles Lamb once said that were he not an independent 
 gentleman, he would choose the vocation of a beggar. After a 
 visit to Australia, I have come to the conclusion that I should 
 very much like to be an Australian squatter, provided, always, 
 that the drought refrained from decimating my flocks and herds, 
 or destroying them right out, and that I had not over-drawn my 
 account at the bank, and mortgaged my stations to the mysterious 
 powers in the grandiose palaces of finance — Ionic, Doric, 
 Corinthian, Composite in their architecture, which confront one 
 everywhere in the Australian cities. 
 
 Omnibuses, hansoms, and hackney waggonettes swarm the streets, 
 and tram-cars will soon be all over the place. Splendid places 
 of public worship, a fine Town Hall, Post Office and University are 
 found here, but the Government House, hke Buckingham Palace, 
 is not architecturally a ' thing of beauty which should lire for ever.' 
 There are several theatres, a grand permanent Exhibition, and 
 a handsome Aquarium, very differently managed to the one at 
 Westminster. At the Melbourne Aquarium you can take your 
 sisters or daughters any evening, and enjoy a little innocent 
 amusement. One of these days possibly local manufacturers may 
 find a chance of competing with English goods ; artesian wells 
 and dams and a proper system of irrigation may give the country 
 an efficient supply of water ; the towns may then no longer be 
 dependent for their supply of green vegetables on the crapulous 
 Chinamen, who, at present, have a monopoly of the market- 
 gardening industry. Australian cooks may then not be expected 
 to be washerwomen as well, and will not then be allowed by their 
 mistresses to spoil good meat, which should not be wasted by 
 shoving it into colonial ovens to be badly baked ; then the time 
 may come when the Australian working-man may be content 
 
26 A Wizard's Watiderings from China to Peru. 
 
 with moderate wages, no longer oppose immigration and cease 
 to ' scamp ' his work. Let us hope this problematical ' good 
 time coming ' will not be long before it does come. There is 
 plenty of room for improvement in Greater Britain, believe me ! 
 You soon, in this country, get Eucalyptus trees on the brain ; go 
 where you may, it is red gums, blue guins, white gums — Eucalypti 
 for ever and ever, too often startling and horrifying the eye in 
 their skeleton nakedness, due to the ruthless axe of the ' ring- 
 barker.' There is one throughly excellent and comfortable hotel 
 here, in Melbourne, viz., ' Menzies,' and a few other far from un- 
 comfortable caravanserais. 
 
 There are, of course, asylums, markets, hospitals, coffee-palaces, 
 public and private schools, clubs, parks, gardens, racecourses, and 
 recreation grounds in profusion, in and about the city. The whole 
 . city in short, teems with wealth, even as it does with humanity. 
 Melbourne is the prosperous capital of a prosperous British Colony. 
 It is the same in our colonies as at home ; in the lower classes the 
 women are not only superior to the men, but as a rule govern them 
 completely. A friend out there who has been a great traveller, 
 assures me, from personal observation, that about one married 
 woman in forty-five is free from a look of worried care. He 
 thinks that, possibly, the fact that most husbands now get their 
 hajr cut with clippers may have something to do with it. 
 
 I noticed that the lads out here, if not quite so robust-looking as 
 Young England, had all the go in them our lads have at home in 
 the Mother Country, so well described by Mr. Max O'Rell in his 
 amusing book, ' Nos Chers Voisins ; ' where he writes : 'It is a 
 sturdy, hardy, robust, well-knitted lad, with muscles of steel and 
 mule-like obstinacy, who, sooner than let go the football which he 
 fiercely cuddles, will perform prodigies of valour; who, merely 
 for the chance of making that ball pass between two goals, will 
 bite the dust, will let his flesh be torn, his jaw dislocated, his ribs 
 staved in ; and would even be carried oif to die upon a bed of 
 anguish, with a smile upon his lips, if he could only hear as his 
 young eyes closed that his side had scored the game. Multiply 
 such an English youth up to the number of the stars of the firma- 
 ment, and you will get an idea of the martial, if not the military, 
 strength of England.' 
 
 Whether it is eating so much animal food, and so little g^een 
 vegetable food causes the young Australians to run long and have 
 such sallow complexions, I do not know, but the fact remains all 
 the same. Climate might have something to do with it, but I 
 
A J J '/sard's Wandcrmgs from China to Peru. 27 
 
 doubt it. The Australian ' larrikin ' is a very undesirable ac- 
 quaintance, and yet he is always cropping up. ' Soup, meat, and 
 pudding, 6d.' I once noticed on the window of a cheap restaurant 
 off Bourke Street, Melbourne. How much solid food, I thought, 
 could thegrowing lad, the junior clerk, get in London for that 
 price ! The abundance of food throughout Australia, and the 
 phenomenally cheap prices of butcher's meat may be one of the 
 reasons for the existence of that most detestable nuisance known 
 as ' larrikinism.' 'It's not madness, mum, it's meat,' quoth Mr. 
 Bumble, the beadle, when the parish apprentice, Oliver Twist, 
 resented the insults of Noah Claypole. In the workhouse the 
 poor little fellow had had little to eat beyond- bread and ' skilly.' 
 At Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker's, he got a scrap of animal 
 food now and then, and meat, according to Mr. Bumble,^ had 
 made the poor little parish brat rebellious. Meat three times a 
 day, and a complete dinner — what the Americans term 'a 
 square meal ' may have had much to do with the making of the 
 Australian ' larrikin.' 
 
 The arcades of Melbourne are a great feature, and, indeed, some 
 kind of shelter from the intolerable heat of the sun, occasionally 
 120° in the shade, is necessary out here. The witty remark of 
 that Spanish Ambassador to the Court of James I. (Gondomar, 
 was it not ?) who, when one of his secretaries was returning to 
 Spain, ironically bade him present on his arrival, his compliments 
 to El Senor Sol : ' For I have not seen that luminary since my 
 arrival in England,' would have had little cause for his sarcastic 
 remarks in sunny Melbourne. One might spend many pleasant 
 hours wandering up and down Bourke and Collins Streets, and 
 that arcade nearly opposite the Post Office, and the Victoria, ,1 
 think it is called, opposite the Theatre Royal. Then there is the 
 Eastern Arcade. In each is the notice, 'no smoking allowed,' 
 the crinte-de-la-crime of the fair sex of Melbourne using these 
 pleasant avenues, and objecting, I suppose, to the odours of the 
 vile German cigars and bad tobacco sold out there. 
 
 Nineteen hours railway ride through the bush, about 600 miles- 
 run, changing at Wodonga, brings you from Melbourne to 
 Sydney. 
 
 Standing on the steps of the New General Post Office, Sydney, 
 New South Wales, one must be indeed struck by the fine coup 
 Sail he gets. What crowds of busy people flock along ! Why, 
 you might almost fancy you were back in ' the little village,' but 
 for the absence of the smoke and fog. George Street, Pitt Street, 
 Market Street, Hunter Street, are all busy, handsome thorough- 
 
28 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 fares, full of well-stocked shops and warehouses. The New Post 
 Office, Town Hall, Treasury Buildings, Houses of Parliament, the 
 Courts of Law, are all magnificent buildings, difficult to surpass 
 anywhere ; whilst one of the most beautiful pleasaunces in the 
 world, a great recreation-ground, overlooks the harbour. The 
 Anglican and Roman Catholic Cathedrals, and a multitude of 
 other places of worship, a host of banks and insurance offices 
 with the splendid Gothic Hall of the Sydney University, lend a 
 great charm to the picture. Urban Sydney is not unlike urban 
 Boston, in Massachusetts, but it does not bear the slightest 
 resemblance to any other city I have seen in the United States. 
 With very few exceptions the place is thoroughly and entirely 
 English in its actual aspect and suggestiveness. Now you may 
 fancy you are in Church Street, Liverpool, or in Dale Street ; or 
 in Market Street, Manchester — anon you might, so you think, be 
 in Birmingham, or Leeds. Pitt Street has a savour of our Strand ; 
 Hunter Street might be part of our Holborn. The shops are 
 well-dressed in pleasing contradistinction to the dressing of 
 American shop-windows, which is, as a rule, careless, ugly, and 
 tasteless. The chemist's shops especially are magnificently stocked, 
 but drugs are dearer than" they should be in a free-trade country. 
 The Australians are, as a race, great smokers ; but it's a hard job 
 to find a shop in Sydney where you can get a good cigar, so one 
 has to fall back on the always safe Manilla, as the detestable 
 German cigars they sell are not fit to give to a camel. The youth 
 of the country are to a certain extent partial to cigarette smok- 
 ing ; but that baleful practice in Australia strikes one as falling 
 very short of the almost monstrous — the maniacal — proportions 
 which the habit of cigarette-smoking has attained in England and 
 in the States. Almost everything sold seems to be imported from 
 home. Some things, of course, are very dear, often twenty per 
 cent, or more dearer than in England. Fresh flowers — the love- 
 liest I have ever seen out of Nice or Florence — ^are dirt cheap. 
 
 Verandahs are found on nearly every house, on the first floor, 
 whilst the arcades — or ' squaricades,' if I may so call them, in 
 contradistinction to the Australian arcades proper, which combine 
 the features of the Parisian passages and our Burlington and 
 Lowther, afford a cool and shady promenade in hot weather, and 
 a very convenient shelter on wet days. In this marvellous 
 climate where the sun shines brilliantly, I should say at least 
 three hundred days in the year, the verandah and the arcades are 
 absolute necessities. They lend as much picturesque variety to 
 the streets of Sydney as our own Quadrant — Nash's masterpiece, 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 29 
 
 one of the few examples of street architecture of which Londoners 
 could reasonably be proud, and the wanton destruction of which 
 should ever be regretted — imparted picturesqueness to Regent 
 Street. You can get a good idea of this love of verandahs if you 
 call to mind the Marina at St. Leonard's-by-Hastings, and the 
 dear old pantiles at Tunbridge Wells. 
 
 If George IV. , when Prince of Wales, Tound Brighton a humble 
 little fishing village, and converted it into an aristocratic and 
 splendid place ; and Lord Brougham, driven from Nice through 
 the cholera, found out Cannes, and made it what it is, I suppose 
 Governor Philip must be credited with having' found but, and 
 made the splendid place it has become, of Sydney, New South 
 Wales, the ' Land of the Golden Fleece.' He little thought on 
 that bright summer morning of loth January, 1758, Sydney 
 would magnify as it has ! It is true the modern capital of Russia 
 was, from a mundane point of view, absolutely and literally the 
 creation of Peter the Great. When it was determined to build in 
 the morass, hard by the Lake of Ladoga, a window which, as he 
 paraphrased it, should look out into Europe, he took up his abode 
 in his little log cabin on the bank of the Neva, and decreed the 
 erection of a 'City of Palaces' as arbitrarily as Kubla Khan in 
 Coleridge's magnificent fragment of verse decreed the stately 
 pleasure dome at Xanadu. There were tens of thousands of 
 . Peter's slaves to lay wooden foundations in the shape of piles in 
 the marsh ; there were thousands more slaves to build the palaces, 
 the churches, the barracks, the prisons. Autocracy rubbed its hands 
 with glee, and Petropolis was created. Instead of slaves, convicts, 
 600 males, 250 females, created Sydney, which more than realises 
 Thackeray's enthusiastic description of ' Limerick prodigious,' 
 standing 'with quays and bridges,' and bringing 'muslin from 
 the Indies, with ships up to the windies ' on the Shannon shore. 
 It is the same here at Sydney, reminding one very much indeed 
 of the Boompijs at Rotterdam, where you can sit at your open 
 window and watch the gigantic East Indiamen bound to or from 
 Batavia, taking in or discharging their immense cargoes. You 
 can do the like at the Circular Quay, Sydney. You can jump in 
 a hansom, at Mr. L. Uhde's Grand Hotel, in Wynward Square, 
 close to George Street, and the New General Post Office right 
 down to almost on board the P. and O. steamer which is to take 
 you home. 
 
 In Australia, meat is absolutely superabundant, and ridiculously 
 cheap to anyone coming from dear old England. Mutton from 
 2d. to 4d. a pound, beef 3^d. to 6d. a pound, veal s^d., fresh 
 
30 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 pork at 6d. cannot be considered too high ; whilst the cauh- 
 flowers are almost as fine as those grown at Valencia, in Spain, or at 
 Salt Lake City, in Utah. The fruit is magnificent, the apples in 
 particular. Oranges are grown to a great extent as near to Sydney 
 as Paramatta, only fourteen miles off; whilst there is a teeming 
 wealth of pine-apples and bananas from Queensland and Fiji. 
 Sydney gets its supply of potatoes from New Zealand and I must 
 say, might improve her supply of green stuff a little more than 
 she does at present ; in this there is plenty of room for improve- 
 ment. The vineyards are splendid ; delicious grapes are procura- 
 ble at from id. to 3d. a pound, so the manufacture of wine is 
 steadily improving. I may mention Albury in New South Wales 
 where Mr. Fallon has a store of not less than 350,000 gallons ; 
 also Inverell, on a flat bordering the Macintyre river nearly 100 
 miles from Sydney. I would, for my part, far sooner drink the 
 Australian wines, which, after all, are the pure juice of the grape, 
 than potato sherry from the river Elbe. 
 
 ' What is meant by the Antipodes ? ' I once asked. No one 
 knew. ' Well listen, my little friends, and I will explain : If I, 
 standing here in London, you know, were to bore a hole right 
 through the earth, and go down, it till I came to the other side, 
 where should I come out ? ' ' Out of the hole,' was the unanimous 
 answer. Suppose by way of change we look in at the islands of 
 the Hawaiian group. A break in a long sea voyage is always a 
 joyful occurrence, and marks the alqiost inevitably monstrous 
 calendar of your log with the whitest of stones. Tb catch sight 
 of a shark even, or of a ' school ' of porpoises, is a kind of relief; 
 while the descent of a shoal of flying fish reminds you of Voltaire's 
 bitter apothegm, in which he likens unto fish that fly those men 
 of letters who are so foolish as to seek to shine in ' society.' 
 ' The fish that remain in the sea hate them for soaring up so 
 high ; and when they fall, exhausted, on the deck of the ship, the 
 sailors knock them on the head.' 
 
 The advent, too, of an albatross is a boon, since it enables you 
 to refresh your memories of Coleridge's ' Ancient Mariner,' but 
 land — even the dimmest, the most transient glimpse of blue — 
 that is the oasis in the vast desert of ultramarine for which you 
 most passionately yearn. We have it at last within seven days of 
 San Francisco ; first in the guise of jutting headlands and pro- 
 montories, then of low lying undulating chains of hills, glorious 
 in purple and gold in the rays of the morning sun as our good 
 ship ' Australia,' Captain Ghest, steams up alongside the harbour 
 of Honolulu. Jumping into a buggy, away we go, and ' do ' the 
 
A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 3 1 
 
 place in about four hours, meeting on our way King Kalakaua 
 and the Hon. J. O. Dominis, Governor of Oahu, Commander-in- 
 Chief of the Forces, who are reviewing the native troops, which 
 consisted, when last I visited Honolulu, of the Prince's Own 
 Artillery Corps, the Leleioku Cavalary Corps, the Mamalahoa 
 Infantry, the King's Own Volunteers and the Honolulu Rifles. 
 
 Pretty gardens laid out in all styles, one like a willow-pattern 
 plate, deep valleys and towering mountains with well-cultivated 
 fields, and sugar plantations, looked after by hard-working Japs, 
 just imported, form a delightful drive. A most useful garment, 
 worn by the inhabitants, you cannot help noticing, it is like a 
 bedgown of white, or coloured calico, and nothing else. A most 
 sensible and suitable garment for this climate — as ' mighty con- 
 vanient' as were Mr. Brian O'Lynn's nether garments of sheep- 
 skin, of which he turned the woolly side outwards in summer, 
 and inwards in winter. The Russian vwujiki, as you well know, 
 acts in precisely the same manner with his sheepskin gaberdene 
 or touloupe. Aloha ! It is a matter of etiquette to be continually 
 crying * Aloha ' while you are at Honolulu. Not being skilled in 
 the Hawaiian tongue, I cannot quite make out what it signifies ; 
 but fancy it is a convertible term for the American ' Bully for 
 you ! ' for the French, ' On dirait du veau ! ' for the Italian, ' Viva 
 la bellg. famiglia ! ' and for the English, ' All serene.' 
 
 Honolulu is serener than evei: was the ' Serenissima ' Republic 
 of Venice. It is the loveliest spot that my eyes have ever gazed 
 upon — lovelier even than Sorrento, lovelier than Ventnor, loveUer 
 than the view of the Thames from the terrace of the Star and 
 Garter at Richmond, loveher than Jackson Square, New Orleans 
 by moonlight. What more can I say ? It is a terrestrial Paradise 
 but for its mosquitos. 
 
 In these go-ahead days, what surprises you meet with ! In a 
 beautiful bungalow here, I have still pleasant memories of an ele- 
 gant collation — Heidseck's Dry Monopole — or was it Pommery 
 and Greno ? — in ' spuming ' chalices, with agreeable company, 
 and society small talk of London and Paris, of New York, and 
 Washington, and San Francisco. 'The Ladies' Gazette of 
 Fashion,' I remember, was lying on one table, the ' Girls' Own 
 Paper' and 'Young England' on another. I rubbed for a 
 moment the eyes of my mind, and wondered for a moment 
 where I was. Have you not occasionally fallen into a similar 
 condition of temporary uncertainty, wanderer on the face of the 
 earth ? ' Society,' the whole world over, has grown to be so much 
 alike. Rub the eyes of your mind — ^where the dickens are you ? 
 
32 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Sometimes you see, in a splendid saloon, a swarthy gentleman in a 
 black surtout buttoned to the throat, and with a scarlet fez worn 
 at the back of his head. You are in ' society ' at Pera or Con- 
 stantinople. Again, your neighbour at dinner is a charming lady, 
 who speaks French with much more purity than many Parisiennes 
 do, and who is talking enthusiastically about Patti, Nilsson, and 
 Van Zandt, Sardou and Sarah Bernhardt, and the wonderful 
 doings of Dr. Holden, the English Magician. But the gentlemen 
 present are mainly in military uniform, and wear large epaulettes 
 of loose bullion. You are dining out in society at St Petersburg. 
 Again you are at dinner. The ices and the coffee are of exquisite 
 quality. You are at Vienna. Somebody is smoking a papelito 
 between the courses. You are at Madrid. As you pass from 
 the dining-room to the drawing-room, you espy a shovel-hat or 
 so on the table in the vestibule, and, among the male 
 guests, there may be some old gentlemen in red stockings, and 
 some younger gentlemen in purple hose. You are at Rome. 
 
 Interest has lately been taken in the Caroline Islands. Few 
 people ever dreamed there were such isles. I have a pleasant 
 memory of a trip which I once took to those localities. The 
 principal island, Peu, is one of 48 other smaller islets, some only 
 mere coral-reefs. It is, I should say, from fifty to sixty miles 
 round, with a population of about 20,000 soul's, all very mixed. 
 The Malay element predominates, even over the native popula- 
 tion. I was most favourably impressed with the people ; they 
 seemed to me more intelligent and ruly than many other tribes 
 met with in those latitudes. They grow the bread-fruit to a great 
 extent, the land being most fertile. I do not wonder at the non- 
 residence of a Spanish Governor. Bribery exists to an alarming 
 extent in the Civil Service of Spain. I know, for a fact, of a 
 Governor, in one of her Colonies, remitting, year after year, the 
 whole of his salary as commission to the patron who obtained 
 for him the appointment. What he made out of it f aid him, and 
 paid him well. The Portuguese are just as bad — the Mexicans 
 worse. They follow out the dictum : ' ' Make money, my son ; 
 honestly, if you can, but make money ! ' 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A TRIP TO INDIA — BOMBAY— INDIAN RAILWAY — BENARES — THE 
 GANGES — DELHI — THE BUDDHISTS — HYDERABAD — THE 
 author's PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS AT THAT FAMOUS CITY — 
 EUROPEAN REQUISITES FOR THE INDIAN CLIMATE — MORNING 
 AND NIGHT IN INDIA — THE ' LOGANS ' OR ROCKING STONES — 
 THE MOSQUES OF AHMEDABAD — HINDOO CHILDREN — INDIAN 
 PILGRIMS. 
 
 India as a resort for the pleasure-seeker, or the invalid in search 
 of healthful change, would seem to be coming into fashion. The 
 steamers which at one time carried only officials, soldiers, men 
 of business, and occasional sportsmen to the East, now include in 
 their lists 'of passengers many individuals, even sometimes whole 
 families, who are going out ' for the sake of the trip,' or to pay 
 relatives a short visit in their distant homes. Sportsmen, young 
 men of means in quest, as they call it, of ' a little shooting,' have 
 become a regular feature of every saloon's company, and the 
 Himalayas and the AnamuUis familiar hunting-grounds to the 
 members of London clubs. Sightseers, also — recognisable at the 
 first glance by the old Anglo-Indian from the abundance and 
 diversity of their brand-new ' outfit ' — are shipped as punctually 
 as civilians, hurrying back with a couple of old portmanteaus and 
 a veteran hatbox to rejoin their appointments. 
 
 The knowledge of the actual pleasures of the journey itself 
 has grown into popular recognition : the Overland trip upon the 
 Continent — the run across the Mediterranean — a glimpse of Egypt, 
 and the passage down the Canal; then Suez and Aden, short 
 snatches of a world that had hitherto seemed to belong only to 
 remote travel, and so over the Indian Ocean to the wondrous 
 city of Bombay, which fairly beggars Naples in beauty as seen from 
 the sea. In all this there is enjoyment of a very vivid and unusual 
 kind. _ When, however, as is now the case, physicians are advising 
 patients to make the trip for health's sake another motive for an 
 Indian visit is added, and one which, with a great number, will 
 probably outweigh all considerations of mere pleasure. Nor 
 indeed, in those cases in which change of scene is beneficial can 
 any transition be imagined more complete or more invigorating 
 than this, from the routine of London and the all too-gloomy atmos- 
 phere of an English winter to the rapid and beautiful alternations 
 
34 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 of foreign scenery and the pleasantly equable climate of 'cold 
 weather ' in the East, which four months spent in going to India, 
 and in it, offer to the invalid. 
 
 Nor are other considerations wanting to make this change in 
 the fashion of travel thoroughly admirable and its continuance in 
 favour desirable. Even the superficial knowledge which the ' cold 
 weather ' visitor obtains of the manner of Anglo-Indian life and 
 thought is sufficient to make all his future judgments more 
 rational, more in sympathy with the East than before, while here 
 and there one or other of the pleasure-seekers is sure to chance 
 upon solid facts which, on his return, go to swell the general aggre- 
 gate of public information about our Empire of Hindostan. 
 There can never, therefore, be too many visitors to India. 
 
 European travel is of course highly beneficial. It is an educa- 
 tion in contemporary history. But the tour of the Continent does 
 not expand the mental horizons. It gives no broader margins to 
 ideas. The journeys are so frequently broken, the 'places of 
 interest,' or designated as such in the guide-books, follow so 
 rapidly, that the mind and memory become really crowded up, 
 cramped, and perplexed. There is no grand total at the end. 
 The sum stands as so many castles, so many cathedrals, so many 
 bridges, so many hotels stopped at. Recollection fails to call up 
 any spacious, mind-filling scenes ; no connected scheme suggests 
 itself; no broad and deep effects are appreciable. The constant 
 changes of language, the differences in details, the small varia- 
 tions in habit, as the traveller rattles from one country to another, 
 break up the journey into little bits which the memory can never 
 piece together again as a whole. Nor was there time enough for 
 any one nation to impress its character and spirit upon the tourist. 
 Now, in the Indian trip the result is the very reverse. One 
 immense and overwhelming nationality is perpetually present. 
 The traveller is always amongst people of a different costume, 
 tongue, and even colour from his own. Their languages, though 
 locally different, have combined in a Lingua-Franca along the 
 thoroughfares of travel which makes them all seem one to the 
 newly-arrived European. The words that he catches from a 
 Mahratta servant on landing serve him among the Sikhs in the far- 
 North, or the Bengalees in the remote East. This unity is in itself 
 a prodigious experience. The real meaning of the word 'India' then 
 sinks of its own weight into the most indifferent mind. Next, 
 perhaps, he remembers that the vast peninsula is really filled with 
 two mighty and rival creeds — the Hindoo and the Mohammedan 
 — but until the difference in the buttoning of the vest is pointed 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 35 
 
 out to him he cannot tell the one from the other. What is it that 
 has welded them together into this single and indistinguishable 
 nation ? The traveller soon finds it out — the persistent and 
 irresistible prestige of his own race. He finds scattered up and 
 down the peninsula little handfuls of Englishmen, who hold the 
 great fabric of our Empire together by the integrity with which 
 they carry on, in a just and sympathetic spirit, the administration 
 of the country. So the lesson is learned, which no libraries can 
 teach, of that wondrous position of England in India, and for the 
 first time the traveller understands what the power of his people is 
 in the East. Thus he arrives at broad ideas of the vastness, the 
 wealth, the importance of India, and*unconsciously joins the ranks 
 of those who resent the flippant indifference to the possession of 
 that dominion which is affected by a certain limited but noisy 
 class. To turn, however, from these valuable and patriotic results 
 of a tour in India, what can we say as to the pleasures of such a 
 trip? From the moment that Bombay is first seen, sweeping 
 round its harbours in a fringe of tropical vegetation, and backed 
 by vast masses of gigantic mountains — a revelation of beauty to 
 the last, when the homeward-bound steamer threads its way out 
 through the crowding commerce of the world gathered in the 
 great city's roadsteads — there is a perpetual succession of 
 surprise and enjoyment. 
 
 The railway journey itself from Bombay, ' Over the Ghat^,' is a 
 novelty in engineering, a wonder in landscape, while every stop- 
 page along the line gives glimpses of a life and scenery which, to 
 the European, are full of freshness and suggestiveness. Arrived in 
 the north of the peninsula, the traveller finds himself on a great 
 line of railway stretching from the Bay of Bengal in the east to 
 the frontiers of Afghanistan on the west, and along it are ranged 
 the great cities of the old Asiatic Empire, and the places made 
 ever memorable by the mutinies of 1857 and 1858. To wander 
 even for a day among the temples of Benares is worth a year of 
 Paris, and a week of the Ganges counts for more than a month of 
 the Rhine. Can any excursion be imagined or devised more 
 enchanting than that which, making Agra its centre, is spent in 
 visiting the neighbourhood ? Futtehpore Sikri, the most sump- 
 tuous ' folly ' the world has ever seen, is of itself worth all the 
 voyage to India, for surely nowhere else, in one single day's 
 contemplation, could such impossibihties of grandeur, such dreams 
 of Imperial caprice be forced to the front as facts of history as 
 in this labyrinth of palace and pleasaunce in which an Emperor 
 held his court for a day, and then departed. Delhi, again I 
 
36 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Where in all the world could an Englishman go to receive so 
 rapidly and so delightfully a knowledge of a splendid past, or 
 anyone, let his nationality be what it may, so just, so overpower- 
 ing a conception of the ' harlequinade ' of Empires ? 
 
 Indian travel cannot help imparting, in spite of the agreeable 
 excitement of its incidents, a really solid measure of information. 
 Even the sportsman who goes out simply to worry the bears in 
 their leafy strongholds beyond the hills, to hav^ tigers driven 
 before him from the tall grass as he sits upon his elephant 
 waiting for the jungle-raja to pass ; to ride the pig down on the 
 Cawnpore levees ; to lie up by the pools and wait for sambhur, 
 to see the far-famed ' honqua ' where the wild occupants of the 
 forest are beaten out indiscriminately in confused procession 
 from their lairs and homes, and made to defile past his ambuscade, 
 to bag his fifty brace of quail or as many snipe in a morning, to 
 ' have a crack ' at an elephant, a buffalo, a rhinoceros — even the 
 sportsman with one special object before him cannot help being 
 affected by, at any rate, the two great facts that India insists upon 
 stamping upon every mind — its vast importance to us and the 
 dignity of the Englishman's position in the East. For the ordinary 
 travellers going out to see the country and take any enjoyment 
 that may offer, the three months of exquisite English summer 
 weather — without any of its rain — which they will experience 
 almost suffice to make the adventure a perpetual pleasure. 
 When, however, to this are added the innumerable objects of 
 beauty or novelty which everywhere present themselves, both in 
 Nature and in Art, the tour cannot fail to remain on the memory 
 as ' a joy for ever.' The people, their habitations and vehicles, 
 their ways of life, are each and all so utterly different from every 
 idea acquired by Continental travel that a new world is virtually 
 opened up to the imagination, while the charms of the natural 
 history of the country, of beast and bird, tree and flower, are 
 numberless and fascinating in the extreme. The philosopher 
 and the man of science, the statesman, poet, political economist 
 artist, man of letters — everyone down to the ordinary pleasure- 
 seeker — stands assured of more than enough to interest and 
 amuse him for all his time ; while medical authority has now 
 come forward to add its weight to the value of the trip. So, as I 
 
 have already said, too many Englishmen cannot go to India it 
 
 only 'just to see what it is like,' while it certainly would not tend 
 to the decrease of the value of their public utterances if Members 
 of Parliament were to spend a year or two in the Peninsula before 
 aking their seats in the House. 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings froni China to Peru. 37 
 
 A Buddhist priest must not eat except of food given him from a 
 charitable hand, nor drink any beverage except water. Possibly 
 you have, like myself, often wondered at seeing such numbers of 
 acolytes of the monasteries pacing quietly in the streets and lanes 
 with the melon-shaped begging-bowl strapped on their shoulder, 
 but on thinking over to oneself the tenets of Buddhism it is impos- 
 sible to do other than admire and respect it. 
 
 A visit to India would be incomplete without a visit to ' Ooty.' 
 You leave the Coimbatur plain seething in the early heat of 
 the Indian summer, and within six or seven hours are plucking the 
 flowers of home in a climate like that of Perthshire in spring ; a 
 hoar-frost at daybreak overspreading the grass, and the rising sun 
 shining mildly upon a sea of white clouds laid near and far upon 
 the face of the' lower country, through which a black mountain 
 summit here and there lifts itself precisely like an island from the 
 ocean. 
 
 Invalids, it is true, might not be able thus to pass from summer 
 to spring or winter, without due precautions, and even Ootacamund 
 does not, it is said, suit all constitutions. . To the merely wearied 
 or fever-stricken denizen of the Indian plains, however, it must be 
 like Paradise to climb to the lap of the great green Dolabetta, and 
 drink in new life with every cool breeze, and every change of the 
 fair and peaceful landscape. If the Romans had conquered 
 India they would have founded a spacious and impregnable city 
 upon this grand upland, colonised it with veteran legionaries, 
 and made a dozen easy roadways up from the Malabar and 
 Coromandel seaports to the gates of their Imperial Sanatorium. 
 
 Hyderabad struck me as one of the most curious and interest- 
 ing cities in India. Everyone seemed armed to the teeth, and yet 
 a pleasanter, nicer lot of people I never once met out there. The 
 whole capital gives the idea of being as it were ' on half-cock,' 
 and ready to go off at a touch into turmoil and revolution. You 
 see here perpetually the snow-white turban of the ' true believer ' 
 mingling with the red tarboosh of the Mohammedan negro and 
 the green caftan worn by the Syed, or the Hadji, who has made 
 the pilgrimage to Mecca. In truth, it is hardly less the fashion 
 to wear pistols, sabres, daggers, guns, and spears, in Hyderabad, 
 than to carry umbrellas in Piccadilly. The Nizami has a most 
 magnificent palace here. Of, course we should visit the famous 
 ' Rock of Golcondah,' a favourite retreat, by-the-by, of His Royal 
 Highness the Nizam. I remember an armourer here showing me 
 z.Johurdar, or watered blade, worth five thousand rupees, whilst 
 the display he had of abbassis, a sort of Persian rapier, asils, 
 
38 A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 nimchas, tes.ahs, kirichis, dhopes, and ng.was kihanis — these last and 
 most murderous looking scimitars — made my mouth water. 
 Five hundred miles only from Bombay, and you seem in a 
 dififerent land altogether. 
 
 The railway carriages en route seem always full of natives, who 
 appear quite contented, and enjoy the wayside refreshment of 
 gratuitous water, cheap bananas, and cocoa-nuts, or the sticky 
 amrita sweetmeats. And, truly, a thirsty traveller might fare worse 
 than to quaff a deep draught from the green bowl of the cocoa-nut 
 when the vendor slices off the crown with a stroke of his knife 
 and discloses a pint or so of cool limpid beverage of Nature's own 
 concoction, fragrant and fresh in its white and sweet goblet. 
 
 During my last professional tour from ' China to Peru,' i 
 happened to find myself, one fine day, at Hyderabad. I had 
 given my Magical Performance at the Nizam's City Palace before 
 a large company of Muslim Court officials, dignitaries and ladies 
 from the garrison at Secunderabad, when, a day or two after- 
 wards, I was sent for, with a request that His Highness wished to 
 confer with me. I was ushered into his presence, wondering 
 what was on the tapis. He is of less than middle stature, with 
 dark, expressive eyes, and a mild countenance, and was attired in 
 a black coat crossed by the azure riband of the Star of India, a 
 diamond-studded sabre swinging at his waist. His get up, in the 
 words of Tallyrand : '_/« le trouve bien distinguL' A brilliant 
 staff of officials stood around, each of whom, in approaching the 
 greatest Prince of India, made six several and profoundly low 
 salaams, acknowledged from the Throne by a slight wave of the 
 hand. 
 
 Turning affably to me, he remarked : ' I was very impressed 
 with your ' Mind-revealing ' — I think you called it ? ' — I bowed low 
 to indicate he was right — 'when you appeared here yesterday, 
 and I want to see if you can — but our Minister, Salar Jung, will 
 explain matters more fully to you, Doctor Holden,' said His High- 
 ness, with a pleasant and gracious smile, as he took his departure. 
 Here is an adventure, I thought, and tried to look grave, to be 
 in harmony with my character. What is it ? I wondered, as I 
 inwardly took in the magnificent surroundings as I hoped, pre- 
 sently, to take them in ! Only a short distance from where I 
 was, stands Golcondah, noted for its diamonds and Sindbad's story 
 of the eagles and the joints of mutton in the '• Valley of Jewels." 
 Here the celebrated Koh-i-noor was found. The last famous 
 diamond found here was the ' Nizam,' I believe, which, after a 
 peasant had rashly splintered it by a blow on the apex, still fur 
 
A ]Vizatd's Wanderings from China to Peru. 39 
 
 nished a fragment valued at seven hundred and twenty thousand 
 pounds. I could not help thinking of this as I stood on the 
 platform of marble, under that exquisite pillared portico looking 
 over the vast, well-lighted quadrangle, surrounded by the white 
 palace buildings. 
 
 How little we ' who live at home at ease ' know of the glories, 
 in the way of palaces and temples, of India. How different from 
 all our preconceived ideas do we find the reality ! Thus I mused 
 as the Nizam slowly walked away leaving me a most peculiar and 
 unprofessional duty to undertake, as I shall now try and explain. 
 I was surrounded by all the notabilities of the Court, all quizzing 
 me, I fully believed, but all as courteous and gracious as only 
 Muslim gentlemen can be. Salar Jung, a very tall young man, 
 of thoughtful and intellectual countenance, and graceful manners, 
 and Syed Ali, Director of Public Instruction to the State, who, 
 besides talking English with fluent accuracy, and the Hindustani 
 of the Deccan, is a proficient in Persian, Arabic, and Murathi, as 
 well as Sanscrit, between them, explained that His Highness had 
 lost a rare and magnificent diamond from the hilt of his scimitar, 
 some famous stone handed down from — well, whether he said 
 Vdichaisravai, the Divine Stallion, or something or somebody 
 else, I could not catch — at all events, it was evidently highly 
 prized. 
 
 ' Could I by any means find the thief, or if not stolen, could I 
 find where it hiy perdu ? ' 
 
 Well this was a poser for me ! ' Give me twelve hours in this 
 palace,' said I ' and I will see what can be done.' I was made 
 right royally welcome, enjoyed a banquet in a private room served 
 upon gold, I remember, the cooking being quite European, except 
 for the profusion of pillaws and'curries, in which the Moghul chef 
 of the palace excels any rival. I doubt muchly if the genius of 
 Soyer, of Francatelli, and of Baron Brisse, all combined, could 
 have concocted such an appetising, highly-flavoured repast. I 
 had carie blanche to do thiiigs, I suppose, no other European ever 
 did there. I set my wits to work and inquired here, inquired 
 there, and st*ll could see no way of solving the problem. Poor 
 old Thucydides would have been shocked had he lived in 
 Hyderabad to-day, as everyone seems armed to the teeth ; even 
 in the palace it was the same. Does he not say in his First Book, 
 that no civilised citizens should carry iron ? If the Nizam had 
 taken the sage's advice, this would not have occurred, " well I won't 
 carry iron, but ' brass,' instead," I said to myself An idea had 
 struck me : arms are never carried into the presence of ladies of 
 
4° A Wizard^ s Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 the court here, so it must have been when outside those sacred 
 precincts the stone was lost. 
 
 I sauntered to that entrance and found it guarded by a black- 
 faced Sidi, whilst a Rohilla, with blue caftan and blunderbuss, 
 lounged close by. Eight men formed the guard of that particular 
 part of the palace, and they had not been changed since the stone 
 had been lost, but had all been searched and thoroughly examined 
 when the loss was discovered, as here the- Nizam was in the habit 
 of throwmg off any superfluous article he might have on his person, 
 depositing the same in an alcove hard by. I minutely examined 
 the. pesh-khats, and those little villainous knives named bickwas or 
 ' scorpions ' to see if their points had been broken by unsetting 
 the missing diamond ; also each s/ier bucha ' tiger's child,' and saf 
 shikan ' line sweeper,' as they call their wretched blunderbuss, to 
 see if it might not be concealed therein. All to no purpose. At 
 last a happy thought inspired me. I got the Ministers and other 
 officials to witness this my last test, trusting to the chapter of 
 accidents to pull me through. 
 
 Whilst waiting for their arrival, I could not but help admiring 
 the view of the city from the palace window where I stood. 
 Koolub Shah created this capital in 1589, a.d., having migrated 
 from Golcondah for want of good water, and called it after his 
 favourite concubine, Bhagmati, beautifying the place with a 
 stately edifice called Chahar Minar or the 'four Minarets,' 
 through the archways of which the main traffic of the bazaars 
 still passes ; outside the gray and white walls of the city runs the 
 river Musah, in stony channels which are filled with a turbid 
 flood during the rains, but at other seasons trickle feebly with a 
 chain of shallow pools, where elephants bathe, and the town 
 washing is clamorously done. This rocky stream is spanned by 
 three broad bridges, separating the Hincieo suburbs from the 
 town proper, wherein all, or almost all, is Mohammedan in 
 character. 
 
 The long, whitewashed streets of the capital with their shop • 
 fronts formed by Saracenic arches ; the Mosques, the tall, 
 sculptured Minarets,, the sign-boards bearing Persian, Arabic, or 
 Hindu inscriptions, and the multiplicity of beggars on the Mosque 
 steps and at the gateways, give the general impression of a sort 
 of Indian Damascus or Cairo. The main streets exhibit more 
 varieties of the Indian races, and it may be added, more elephants 
 than those of any other city from Peshawur to Comorin. 
 
 At the bottom of the staircase were drawn up a body of well- 
 mounted short and square Arab troopers, with drawn sabres and 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings fivm China to Peru. 41 
 
 silver-bound matchlocks, which they advanced as His Highness 
 and his courtiers came towards whfere I was standing, shaded by 
 tlie royal colour or flag of Hyderabad which is yellow with a 
 circular disc in its middle (if I remember rightly) a sort of Kidcha. 
 ' And now, Dr. Holden, let us see what we shall see,' graciously 
 remarked the Nizam. I bowed, and they sate about on cushions 
 of silk and gold, or carved alabaster benches on the very spot I 
 had a day or so previously ' fooled them to the top of their bent.' 
 It is a scientific fact, of which you may not possibly be aware, 
 that fear and anxiety diminish the digestion of anyone, and stop 
 the secretion of the gastric juice ; this fact I had often heard 
 of before, and now determined to put it to the test. 
 
 And what a scene presented itself. What colour, what effect. 
 How well it would look, I thought, on one of our best metropolitan 
 theatres ! In the distance peering through the gates was the 
 black-faced Sidi ; the Rohilla, with blue caftan and blunderbuss, 
 the Pathan, the Afghan, dirty and long-haired, the Rajpoot with 
 liis shield of oiled- and polished hide ; Persians, Bokhara men, 
 Turks, Mahrattas, Madrasees, Par-sees an dothers. The suspected 
 ones were marched up, and appeared to me to show more servility 
 than one notices even in the effete courts of Europe. They 
 seemed to have a' weakness ' to crook the pregnant hinges of the 
 knee ' with a vengeance ! 
 
 I procured eight brass dishes, each containing a few handfuls 
 of dry rice, and had the eight guards placed in front of me. 
 Being a mesmerist, I saw, at once, I had them under my control 
 entirely. But that would have been no use in detecting crime, 
 you say. True, it would not; but I was going to apply the 
 sin^ipler test, but combined with the magnetic force or will-power. 
 Putting on Cato-like sternness I looked into each man's eyes, 
 and never saw such unflinching, dare-devil subjects. The inter- 
 preter was then called for, and was told to explain to these eight 
 men that I, ' Dr: Holden, Magician to the Queen-Empress,' was 
 possessed of supernatural power, and could read men's thoughts. 
 Let each man take a handful of rice and chew it, spitting it on to 
 the plate he held in his hand, when told to do so; They did as 
 requested, without a muscle moving. Now, somehow or another, 
 I felt the guilty man was amongst these eight, and possibly I put 
 forth will-power to a greater extent than I should have done, had 
 I not suspected one of them. 
 
 ' if the guilty man is amongst you, he cannot chew his rice,' I 
 said, looking them well into the face. ' Spit out on your plate 
 what you have in your mouths,' I said. They did so, and there 
 
42 A Wizard's Watiderings from China to Peru. 
 
 sure enough, am^ng.^t those eight plates of chewed rice, was one 
 dry mouthful. Placing my face against that man's, I glared at 
 him and accused him of the theft. I was right. He confessed 
 liis crime, and showed us where the concealed stone was. As a Jady 
 was mixed up in this affair, and as these lines may very possibly 
 reach Hyderabad, it might be considered, possibly, a breach of 
 confidence if I said any more on this strange subject. The Presi- 
 dent, Mr. Cordery, will understand my motives for so doing, I 
 have no doubt. Amongst the presents made me is one I shall 
 ever revere. It was a magnificent abbassis, a sort of Persian 
 rapier, on which was engraved the Gayatri, or ' Sacred Verse ' 
 of the Brahmins. 
 
 Of course, my success got bruited about, and made my sojourn 
 in that hospitable country' most enjoyable ; so much so, that it was 
 with considerable reluctance I tore myself away from Hyderabad 
 — the Mohammedan Capua. Some believe it was here Cupid 
 played ' Campaspe,' a game of cards for kisses. However that may 
 be, I shall always console myself with the thought that I played 
 my cards pretty well here. 
 
 The morning and the night in India compensate well for her 
 somewhat too fiery noons. From the time when the Dum-i-gurg, 
 the 'grey wolfs tail,' first shows in the East until the sun is a 
 lance's length above -the horizon, the air and the fields are almost 
 all the year wholly delightful, and when the sun has sunk — leaving 
 the East all golden and the West all rose — the peace and soft- 
 ness of the land become again indescribable ; unless you have 
 been there, you can scarcely conceive the beauties of a moonlight 
 ride through these parts. One can then understand on such a 
 night of silvery radiance — -cooling the hot atmosphere and turnmg 
 the jungle into a fairyland of mysterious beauty — all those endear- 
 ing phrases which the Hindoos lavish upon those hours of moon- 
 time. Rat MaKapet is one of their popular proverbs. 'The 
 night is like the bojom of a mother,' and the fondest phrase 
 which the Indian lover can address to his Dilkoosha or sweetheart 
 is to call her ' Chand Ka tookra, ' a ' piece of the moon ' 
 
 Those 'logans,' or rocking stones, which attract so much notice 
 when they occur singly with us, as in Cornwall or Scotland, are 
 here, at Hyderabad, to be seen in thousands. Amid these prodi- 
 gious reefs, fifty, seventy, eighty tons balanced on each other and 
 looking as if the touch of a child's hand would send them 
 crashing down into the jungle, are found gold, iron, and precious 
 stones. It struck me a good opening might be made here with 
 proper appliances, and steam or electric power, to start a paying 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 43 
 
 ' Valley of Jewels Liability Company,' which would very soon put 
 Kimberley into the shade. 
 
 The old Mohammedan Mosques of Ahmedabad have been 
 written about so often, that nothing is left to say on the subject, 
 they are built, as everyone knows, mainly of white marble, 
 dehcately and marvellously carved. Northern Guzerat and 
 Rajpootana abound in a milky marble, often as pure in grain, I 
 noticed, as Parian. Words fail to describe the dainty lovehness 
 of many among these memorials, dusty and decayed as they are at 
 present. Some of them, like Haibat Khan's Mosque, interest by - 
 exhibiting the way in which Muslim and Hindoo styles of archi- 
 tecture were combined. 
 
 I am afraid that my tastes led me oftener to the pretty 
 Kankaria tank and Nagina Gardens near the city with its 
 enchanting island in the centre, than to the Mosques, to sport 
 with Amaryllis in the shade. You frequently see the impress of 
 a hand in red ochre on the temple gates, or wall of the city out 
 here, whilst the walls of the Burning-ghats often bear the same 
 token of that passionate love, or the deep despair which, in old days, 
 moved so many Hindoo widows to die beside their husbands on the 
 funeral pyre. It was never very common, however, I believe in 
 India, which, indeed, the eager perpetuation of their memory 
 proves. Some of them may have been due, no doubt, to the 
 miserable prospects of the widows here, for the lot of a Hindoo 
 widow was, and still is, almost worse than any death. How 
 different in our own country 1 Only the other day I overheard a 
 lady trying to console a young widow, . ' Be reasonable, my dear, 
 bear up, don't you know.' 
 
 ' Don't be alarmed, Clara, I am. resigned at heart, only you 
 know what my nerves are. It takes very little to upset them.' 
 
 The Hindoo is quite assured that he has lived many previous 
 lives, and has many more to experience, and, whether Vaishnav 
 or Shivaite, is troubled with none of the dismal doubts of modern 
 materialism. It may be safely believed that the great majority of 
 those little red-hands stamped upon temple walls, city gate, or 
 house front, commemorate martyrdoms of faithful love, well 
 meriting the respect in which they are held by the common 
 people as examples forbidden henceforward, but in bygone times 
 holy, admirable and elevating. 
 
 In the grey light of the ' wolfs brush '—that dim gleam which 
 comes before the true dawn, jackals are seen, as you pass through 
 the country, gun in hand, enjoying the sport, stealing home from 
 their nocturnal forage, and the rising sun shines on the backs of a 
 
44 A lVi:a?-d's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 herd of antelopes. What nimble little creatures those Kangaroo- 
 rats, a kind of jerboa, are. In the dust, at the door of the peasants' 
 hut, the small brown children ' mother-naked ' crouch in groups, 
 gravely playing ekee dbkee — ' odd and even.' Inside the hut the 
 ' two women ' are grinding at the mill preparing the meal for. the 
 day, with the accompaniment of not unpleasing songs. Villagers 
 on their way to work, stop to prostrate themselves before the 
 reddened 'Lingury-stone,' or the marble 'Bull of Shiva,' enshrined 
 ■under the fig-tree, and deposit there a bright flower or two, a 
 sweetmeat or a nut. The pilgrims with their bhugwa or salmon- 
 coloured flags pass over the field-path on their march to the holy 
 places of the district you happen to be in. The noise of the 
 water-wheels, and the creaking of the ox-carts, mingled with the 
 cry of the parrots, and ' cheep ' of the sand grouse, linger long on 
 one's memory. 
 
 You find nothing but friendliness and courtesy among the count- 
 less millions of this land; from strangers, townsfolk peasants, 
 servants, men, women, and children, a thousand instances of 
 simple virtues — of charity, of domestic affection — of natural 
 courtesy — of inherent modesty, of honest dignity, of devotion, of 
 piety, of glad human life do you encounter in passing, as one 
 encounters bright birds and fair flowers. I write warmly on the 
 subject because I feel it is due to this great nation to paint them 
 as they really are. It is not that I am ignorant of the crime, super- 
 stition, and ignorance yet to be combated among the masses. A 
 healthy man needs only to keep himself temperate and good- 
 humoured, and avoid unboiled water and chills in order to enjoy 
 the hottest days which India knows, and for every trait of 
 brutality, ingratitude, or folly which can be cited against the 
 Indian peoples, those who love and know them could relate many 
 true and striking proofs of their innate goodness. 
 
 I wish that there were space to speak here of the Indian wives 
 and mothers, among whom are to be counted humble saints 
 and angels by the lakh — gentle, patient, laborious, faithful, pure, 
 contented, cheerful, and affectionate souls. Let us hope that 
 some day they will be educated, but not over much, so as to know 
 how to enjoy life more, and to save their infants from dying so 
 needlessly ; that Hindoos will some day respect their own shastras 
 which forbid that a girl be married against her choice, or before 
 she is orientally of age ; it will then be a bright day for India ! 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ARRIVAL AT CEYLON — GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLAND — ■ 
 OF BANKOK — THE CAPITAL OF SIAM — THE WHITE ELEPHANT — 
 SUNDAY morning's DIVINE SERVICE AT SEA — THE MAHARAJAH 
 OF JOHORE. 
 
 Ceylon is one prodigious garden, where the forces of Nature 
 almost oppress and tyrannise the mind, so lush and lavish is 
 the vegetation. This is most of all evident in the remarkable 
 journey between Kandy and Colombo by the railway which 
 climbs the central hills. Leaving the coast, you first of all travel 
 through interminable groves of palms, between which lie sodden 
 but fruitful flats of rice ground and jungly swamp, steaming, and 
 teeming with life. It is all one hotbed of boundless propagation. 
 Every corner, where water lodges, or sun-rays fall, is seen choked 
 with struggling stems, furious to live and blossom and bear seed. 
 
 Then, as the train mounts amid splendid highland scenery, the 
 hill sides and deep valleys display the same irrepressible fertility. 
 Your carriage rolls at the bottom of one immense precipice of 
 ferns and palms ; and hangs over another clothed for a thousand . 
 feet down with this same endless garment of verdure, scarcely 
 allowing the red soil and gray rocks to show through. Left to 
 themselves, every road, every village, every city in Ceylon, would 
 quickly revert to jungle, so rich is the soil and sun-light, so keen 
 the contest of these wild trees and wilful shrubs to live and thrive. 
 The place is a huge tangled tyranny of the floral world, where 
 man is in danger from the very plants which feed and shade him 
 — an irrepressible natural garden, too thick and flourishing even 
 for birds and beasts. 
 
 It has always struck me that good Bishop Heber must have 
 been temporarily suffering from derangement of the liver, when 
 a propos of lovely Ceylon, he wrote : 
 
 ' Where every prospect pleases, 
 And only man is vile 1 ' 
 
 ' Man ' is very much the same in this beautiful island as else- 
 where — ^genial and friendly if you treat him well, suspicious and 
 dishonest if you distrust and over-reach him ; and the children as 
 
 45 
 
46 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 comely and intelligent as need be seen, but growing up often 
 under the hot sun and stress of poverty into plain-featured men 
 and women. Anyone weak in the chesty or vexed with chronic- 
 bronchitis, would find this spot an earthly paradise, as the 
 average reading of the thermometer for the year, is 76°. 
 
 Nothing, to my mind, is more impressive than a Sunday morn- 
 ing's service on board the steamer, as we pass round the world on 
 the open waters, and in the saloon of our magnificent steamer. 
 
 Some who never go to church ashore are drawn to bear part in 
 the simplicity and pathos of this maritime act of reverence. The 
 table draped with the Union Jack of Old England, the books of 
 worship decorously laid out by the quarter-master for the 
 captain's use ; the captain himself, gallant, solemn, his hair ' sable- 
 silvered,' his gold eye-glass rigged to tackle the psalms and 
 prayers ; the longs rows of beautiful, or gentle, or high-bred 
 feminine faces, of brave and dutiful Englisli gentlemen bound 
 on the service of the Queen, or the honourable toils of business 
 abroad, all these assembled on the great deep for worship com- 
 bine into a noble picture of British gravity and veneration. 
 
 Near to an illustrious traveller kneel veteran colonels, with every 
 one an honourable history, and young officers who will make it in 
 China, and when the captain has finished his supplication for the 
 ' safety of all those who sail on this ship,' the harmonium touched 
 by skilful fingers leads off a hymn of praise, and the sound of a 
 hundred blended voices passes with the wind over the blue 
 expanse upon which we are speeding. The little children, kneel- 
 ing round their mothers, the dark-skinned ayahs in their gay saris, 
 grouped outside the saloon doors, the punkahs waving to and fro, 
 the Indian boys at the window in snow-white garments and 
 scarlet turbans dreamily working them, the beat of the tireless 
 screw, the hiss of the sweeping seas, the rattle of cordage and 
 chains, and the ship's bell striking the watches, furnish elements 
 to the little floating church which deepen the solemn effect when 
 the good captain's voice is heard praying for the peace and 
 welfare of the Queen, and that glorious British Empire, of which 
 we are here a little moving isolated fragment. No wild theorist 
 has yet proposed to democratise a ship. There are famous men in 
 plenty aboad our good ship, with names known all over the civilised 
 world, but the authority of our captain is disputed in nothing, 
 what he says and does is law for all alike ; we live under a 
 benevolent but absolute monarchy, our accepted sovereign being 
 the man who, by forty years of experience, knows better than 
 anybody else what is safe for the ship, and has, humanly speaking, 
 
A JFizard's Wa?idet'ings from China to Peru. 47 
 
 the lives of all in his hands. The Caucus would have no chance 
 of influence upon the deep sea, where people come face to face 
 with the Elemental Powers, and with the Eternal Law that the 
 wisest ought to command, and the unwise ought to obey. 
 
 ' India, farewell ! I shall not see again 
 Thy shining shores, thy peoples of the sun, 
 Gentle, soft-mannered, by a kind word won 
 To such quick kindness ! O'er the Arab main 
 Our flying flag streams back ; and backwards stream 
 My thoughts to those fair, open fields I love — 
 City, and village, maidan, jungle, grove, 
 The temples, and the rivers ! Must it seem 
 Too great for one man's heart to say it holds 
 So many unknown brothers ? that it folds 
 Lakhs of loved friends, in parting? Ah ! but there 
 Lingers my heart, leave-taking : and it roves 
 From hut to hut, whispering ' He knows, and loves.' 
 Good-bye ! Good-night ! Sweet may your slumbers be, 
 Gunga ! and Kasi ! and Saraswati ! ' 
 
 The Maharajah of Jahore has some strange subjects, 
 viz., the Jakoons. The ordinary notion is that they are a 
 species of monkey, who live in trees, but possess some of the 
 attributes of humanity. This is a mistake. The Jakoons 
 are real human beings without tails, have a language of 
 their own, and are susceptible of cultivation. They have a 
 fancy for living in trees, but they are harmless, and not disinclined 
 to intercourse with strangers. Their settlement can only be com- 
 pared to huge crow-nests stuck about in the clefts of tall trees, 
 made of twigs — a mere platforiti of sticks — no walls, doors, or 
 windows ; no roof but the leaves overhead ; no furniture except 
 a few stones holding a heap of ashes with cocoa-nut shells as 
 cooking utensils, and a hollow bamboo, answering the purpose of 
 a water jug. Humanity can hardly be found anywhere in a more 
 mean and primitive condition. The dress worn is of the most 
 scanty description, and you would find that many of the Jakoons 
 are imbued with the spirit of hospitality. The youngsters 
 clamber up the trees for cocoa-nuts like monkeys, for you, not 
 as boys at home, but clasping the tree with the palms of the 
 hands and feet, and so walking up on all fours. Each family 
 seems to keep a monkey as a companion, as well as a help for 
 pulling down cocoa nuts. They eat monkey-flesh, and the boa- 
 constrictor is a favourite article of diet — families will gorge on 
 one of these massive reptiles for weeks together. An aged 
 Frenchman out here has settled down and has hard work to 
 civilise the Jakoons. He has a school of about thirty children, 
 
48 A Wizai d 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 with copper-coloured skins, projecting jaws, and long toes which 
 they can make use of like fingers. It is strange to hear them 
 singing hymns in Malay and French, and going through the 
 Gregorian Chant with surprising time and precision. A small 
 harmonium is played by one of them with surprising time 
 and precision ; you can scarcely believe your eyes or ears as 
 you look upon his jaw projecting so far m advance of his eyes. 
 
 From Galle to Singapore, passing Penang and going through 
 the Straits of Malacca, is 1,594 miles, and occupies eight days. 
 Visits to the charming botanical and private gardens, the cocoa- 
 nut groves, the pineapple plantations, and other tropical 
 attractions fully occupy your time here. A railway will soon 
 perforate, at the southern extremity of Asia and Jahore, Mount 
 Ophir, from whence gifts of gold and precious gems were brought 
 to Solomon 2,800 years ago. 
 
 You would find Bankok, the modern capital of Siam, the 
 strangest city in the world. It consists of 70,000 floating houses 
 or shops, and has a population of about 350,000 souls, of which 
 number 70,000 are Chinese, 20,000 Burmese, 20,000 Arabs and 
 Indians ; the remainder, or about 240,000 being Siamese. The 
 Catholic Missionary Society at Bankok when I was there, con- 
 sisted of one bishop and about ten priests, besides one or two 
 proselyte Chinese priests, a somewhat rara avis, the latter, I 
 take it? 
 
 They were well skilled in medicine, and even a few in surgery, 
 and if anything can win over a savage idolater to lend ear to the 
 marvellous facts of faith, it is surely when he meets a man who has 
 to him,- apparently miraculously, relieved him from the greatest 
 sufferings, and whose" doctrine in one point of view, and that one 
 by the Siamese considered an all-important one, entirely coincides 
 wij:h his own faith and religion. I allude to the celibacy of the 
 priesthood. 
 
 The ' Chief Watt,' the residence of that most beautiful animal 
 the white elephant, the most revered of all the Siarriese deities, is 
 situated on the east bank of the Menan. We followed our cicerone 
 and were admitted into the presence of this noble animal. I 
 never saw so large an elepRant, his skin was as smooth and spotless 
 and white as the driven snow, with the exception of a large scarlet 
 rim round the eyes. 
 
 The room itself was an unpresuming one, exceedingly lofty, 
 with -windows all round the loftiest . part ; but the flooring was 
 covered with a mat-work, wrought of pure chased gold, each inter- 
 woven seam being about half an inch wide, and about the thick- 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 49 
 
 ness of a half sovereign ! ! ! If this was not a sin to snakes, as the 
 Yankees say, I don't know what was ! 
 
 The • idea of a great unwieldy brute, like the elephant, tramp- 
 ling under foot and wearing out more gold in one year than many 
 hardworking people gain in ten. And then the soiled mess that 
 .this costly carpeting was in in many parts would have been sufifi- 
 cient to cause a miser to go off instantly into a fit of insanity ! ! 
 
 Several priests were busily engaged in different parts of the 
 room polishing up tarnished spots ; others, professionally gold- 
 smiths, were extracting the worn strips, and replacing' them with 
 new ones, so heavy and so bright that it made our eyes and 
 mouths water to see such shameful waste. 
 
 The Siamese ladies may, without the smallest fear of competi- 
 tion, proclaim themselves to be the ugliest race of females upon 
 the face of the globe. With their hair worn in the same fashion 
 as the men, the same features, same complexion, and the same 
 amount of clothing, the man must be a gay Lothario indeed who 
 would be captivated by their leering glances ; but as though 
 nature had not formed them sufficiently ugly, these most neglected 
 of all the human species- resort to dyes wherewith to dye their 
 teeth' and lips of a jet black colour. The darker the teeth the 
 more beautiful is a Siamese belle considered ; and in order that 
 their gums should be of a brilliant red. to form a pleasant contrast 
 to the black lips and teeth, they resort to the pleasant pastime of 
 chewing betel from morning till night. This betel consists, first, 
 of the green leaf of the betel, which has a very tart flavour, some- 
 thing like the leaf of the pepper plant; in this leaf is placed a 
 piece of chunam (the common lime used for building), then a 
 bit of the betel nut is broken into small pieces, and placed on the 
 chunam, and the leaf being rolled up into something very much 
 like a sailor's ' quid is then thrust into the lady's cheek, and is 
 munched and crunched and chewed so long as the slightest 
 flavour lasts ; it has the- effect of dyeing their gums and the whole 
 of the palate and tongue a blood red colour. 
 
 The people here believe in the transmigration of souls — a creed 
 highly beneficial to snakes and other nauseous reptiles, who but 
 for this, as the population spread in the East, would be in the 
 course of time utterly exterminated. They believe that at the 
 worst after death, they may be metamorphosed into a snail, or a 
 lizard, or some such agreeable tenant of earth or sea. 
 
 Upon the whole I found the Siamese a civil, humble and 
 willing people, .wrapped in the grossest ignorance and supersti- 
 tion, and lost to all sentiments of moral virtue ; but a reform on 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 this score can never be hoped till they have been made partakers 
 of 'the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion.' 
 
 Let us now return to Singapore famed for its strange admixture 
 of races and nationalities, Chinese, Malays, Singalese and other 
 tribes. The great George Stephenson once said : ' that if rich and 
 poor, great folk and small in worldly position, were all to undress 
 they would be found pretty much alike.' But the almost naked 
 bronzes of Singapore bore obvious marks of difference of races 
 that might be a prolific theme for Ruskinesque dissertation and 
 discrimination. 
 
 I was pleased, indeed, to see the ' Temperance Star ' reading 
 and refreshment room, with files of 'Band of Hope Reviews,' 
 ' Children's Friend,' ' Animal World.' I thought it brighter than 
 even the Southern Cross. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 A VOYAGE TO CHINA — PEKIN — THE OPIUM SMOKER — THK CHINESE 
 AND THE BRITISH CHINESE PROVERBS — LEGEND OF THE ORIGIN 
 OF THE FAN — THE JOSS HOUSE. 
 
 Now for a few words about the strange land China, with its 
 450,000,000 inhabitants, as we steam along its coast and Yellow 
 Sea. 
 
 Peking is one of the largest cities in the world — being 2 5 miles 
 in circumference and containing, in 1867, 1,600,000 inhabitants. 
 The city, has been compared to a great fair. This is especially 
 the case with Circular Street, corresponding to the Regent Street, 
 or Quadrant of London. The custom of the tradesmen here is to 
 attract attention from the shop of their neighbour, by hanging out 
 signs ■ of all descriptions, written in the picturesque Chinese 
 characters, yellow and gold — running down their neighbour's 
 goods and praising their own, till the street is more gay than a 
 fleet dressed with flags for a royal reception. 
 
 The effect of opium-smoking is almost instantaneous on the 
 smoker. He sink's gently against the cushion set at his back, and 
 becomes perfectly insensible to what is passing around. It lasts 
 about five minutes. One old inveterate opium-smoker told me, 
 that if he knew his life would be forfeited by the act, he could no 
 more resist the temptation than he could curb a fiery steed with 
 a thread bridle. It carried him into the seventh heaven ; he 
 heard and saw things n» tongue could utter, and felt as though 
 his soul soared so high above things earthly during those 
 precious moments of oblivfon as to have flown beyond the reach 
 of its heavy, burthensome cage. 
 
 Now let us suppose ourselves in Pekin. The delightful 
 surroundings, verdant foliage and shady nooks and corners 
 where we sip our own tea a la russe (that is, sans milk, and out 
 of a glass, with a slice of lemon in it), make us rub our eyes 
 and ask ourselves, ' is this really China ? ' If we remained 
 very long in this, par excellence, wonderful country, I fancy we 
 should lose a lot of our old, absurd British views about China 
 and the Chinese ! No sensible being can for one moment gain- 
 say the 'feet that here we have the country from whenci; 
 51 E— 2 
 
52 A Wizard's Wandetings from China to Peru. 
 
 originated nearly everything we so highly prize. For my own 
 part, I doubt if anything worth inventing could not (were it 
 possible) be traced to Chinese origin.' Every year brings us 
 fresh proof. We laugh and sneer at this wonderful people. We 
 think ourselves so very much superior to them. But are we? 
 They choose to go on in the same hum-drum way, century after 
 century never making the slightest change. 
 
 Why should they not do so ? They are perfectly satisfied with 
 their lot. It is quite certain some of us are not. 
 
 In no country I have yet travelled in have I ever seen such 
 true religious equality and tolerance as in China. All honour to 
 them for so doing. I cannot say I like the people, or their ways, 
 but that does not prevent me speaking well of them. Possibly 
 they thought just as little of me and my occidental hauteur as 
 I did of them. Oh, for less of our hateful British egotism, and 
 more of true Cosmopolitan brotherhood. Heaven knows we have 
 faults enough, and to spare, of our' own, what with our mis- 
 managed Hospitals, Poor Houses, and School Boards. 
 
 Some of the ordinary expressions of the Chinese are pointedly 
 sarcastic enough. A blustering harmless fellow they call a ' paper 
 tiger.' When a man values himself over much, they compare him 
 to ' a rat falling into a scale, and weighing itself.' Overdoing a 
 thing they call ' a hunchback making a bow.' A spendthrift they 
 compare to ' a rocket' which goes off at once. Those who expend 
 their charity on remote objects, but neglect their family, are said 
 to ' hang a lantern on a pole, which is seen afar, but gives no 
 light below.' 
 
 Gold fish were originally natives from China and Japan, they 
 were carried by the English to St. Helena, and from thence the 
 captain of one of our East Indian ships brought some of them to 
 England in the year 1788. 
 
 The treadmill was invented by the ^ Chinese to raise water for 
 the irrigation of the fields. It was introduced into England about 
 1818. 
 
 The greater part of the land in China is owned in small 
 properties of five acres and under, even to the sixth of an acre, so 
 ' Three acres and a cow ' is, after all, not original. 
 • ' The tongue of woman,' says a Chinese maxim, ' is their sword, 
 and they never suffer it to grow rusty.' ' Nature has given us two 
 ears and but one tongue, in order that we may repeat but one 
 half of what we hear,' is another sound Chinese proverb. 
 
 This is the Chinese legend of the origin of the fan. ' One 
 evening, when the beautiful Kau Si, daughter of a powerful 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 53 
 
 Chinese mandarin, was assisting at the great feast of ' Lanterns,' 
 she was so overcome by the heat that she was obliged to take off 
 her mask. But to expose her face to the eyes of the profane and 
 vulgar was a serious offence against the law; so, holding the 
 mask as closely as possible to her features, she fluttered it 
 rapidly to give herself air, and the rapidity of the movement still 
 concealed her. The other ladies present, witnessing this hardy 
 but charming innovation, imitated it, and at once ten thousand 
 hands were fluttering ten thousand masks,' Thus the fan was 
 evoked, and took the place of the mask. 
 
 Marriage here, is neither a civil nor a religious ceremony, no 
 priest or any person in authority being present ; the only witnesses 
 are the family and friends. In the middle of the drawing-room is 
 a table, upon which have been placed a censer, fruits, and wine. 
 In their idea, this table is exposed to the sight of Heaven. The 
 pair then prostrate themselves before the table to thank the 
 Supreme Being for having created them, the earth for having 
 nourished them, the emperor for protecting, and their parents for 
 educating them. Then the bridegroom presents his bride to the 
 members of his family, and to those of his friends who are 
 present. 
 
 The Chinese have a proverb : ' That every man who rules him- 
 self is a king.' Royal blood is not scarce in England, it would 
 seem, if every woman who rules lier husband is a queen. 
 
 In China, if you are wise, you must not inquire too closely 
 into what you eat. ' What the eye does not see, &c., &c.' It is 
 all very well to go over the floating restaurants, where the cookery 
 is exclusively Chinese, and the use of chop-sticks in preference to 
 knives and forks de rigueur. What the little round saucers 
 contain — pickled eels' feet d, la daube or sabni of frogs' giblets, 
 birds-nest soup, dried ducks, b6che de mer, snips or snails or 
 puppy dogs' tails — I never could quite make out. The maidens 
 who wait on you are clad in loose casaquins and wide trousers of 
 rich materials sumptuously brocaded. None of them are ' golden 
 lilies,' or small-footed. Their complexions are ivory-white, their 
 eyes almond-shaped and sable as sloes, their hair very black and 
 lustrous, and very well dressed. They wear plenty of jewellery, 
 and their eyebrows and lips are manifestly painted. They would 
 really be pretty but for the sickly, dejected, downtrodden, almost 
 imbecile simper playing about their ruddled lips— the simper 'of 
 the slave continually deprecating the always imminent bamboo. 
 The singing out here is the usual Chinese whine, rising now 
 and again to a screech, an ululation no doubt delightful to 
 
54 -^ Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. , 
 
 Oriental ears, but to the Occidental tympanum distressingly 
 dissonant, as bad indeed as the " Music of the future." 
 
 We have a look, of course, into the Joss house, which is always 
 kept scrupulously clean and carefully oil-clothed. It is an 
 octagonal apartment, with a high altar covered with painted mats, 
 and behind it a kind of reredos of wood, elaborately carved, gilt 
 in some places and in others daubed with garish hues. An 
 inscrutable race ! John Chinaman always reminds me of a cat, 
 from Montaigne's point of view ' you may laugh at Grimalkin ; 
 but don't be too sure that he is not laughing at you.' John 
 Chinaman, I fancy, knows a great deal more about you, than you 
 do about him. They are great gamblers, and the pawnbroker 
 a great institution. A Chinaman, when he is gamblingj will stake 
 not only his money to the last coin, but the worth of his wearing 
 apparel and his minutest personal belongings — so it follows ' mine 
 uncle ' is a very convenient accessory to the gaming-table. Is our 
 avuncular kinsman wholly unknown in the luxurious haunts of 
 Monte Carlo ? When Madame la Princesse Katerichasoif has been 
 losing heavily by backing Zero, has she not been known over and 
 over again, en plein tripot, to strip from her fair arms her dazzling 
 diamond bracelets, to pluck from her rosy ear-lobes their gleaming 
 pendants, and by the hands of a watchful servitor, send the 
 glittering gewgaws to the pawnbroker? The world, after all, is 
 not so big a village as we sometimes take it to be. Humanity in 
 far-distant lands does not vary half so much as we think, or 
 pretend we think that it varies. There is a closer bond of union 
 between distant parts than we often wot of. 
 
 The signs over the restaurants and hotels are peculiar, such as 
 ' the Heavenly Jewel,' or the ' Chamber of Fragrant Almonds,' 
 while a druggist calls his shop the ' Hall of Everlasting Life.' 
 I'here are no windows to the shops — the front takes out, showing 
 the goods inside. Wheelbarrows are the only wheeled vehicles 
 seen in the streets. The passenger sits on one side balanced by 
 his luggage.on the other. 
 
 Butcher's shops are numerous, in them are exposed for sale, 
 beef, pork, dried fish, cats, puppies, sea slugs, edible birds'-nests, 
 and frogs' legs. But my readers can easily conceive how varied 
 and full of colour the scene must be. My greatest successes were 
 made in China. Magical performances seeming to be very much 
 to the fiste of the Chinese. In no part of the world have I been 
 more kindly treated, and nowhere else haye I aci]uired such 
 excellent ideas in occult wonders, as out here. Alany of my most 
 effective feats were acquired in China. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 SHANGHAI — FISH AND FOWL IN CHINA^CHINKSE JUNKS — CHINESE 
 IMITATIONS — INVETERATE GAMBLERS. 
 
 Shanghai is by far the most important station for foreign trade 
 on the coast of . China. It exports more than one half of the 
 produce sent out of the country. It is the Great Gate of the 
 Chinese Empire. 
 
 In going up the river towards the town a forest of masts meet 
 the eye. Nowhere else in the East can be found so great a col- 
 lection of sea and river going craft. Off the coast of China you 
 are sometimes caught by that fearful gale of wind known as the 
 'Typhoon' but called by the Chinese 'Tufan' or ' Sea Devil.', China, 
 to me, seems ■ the most impregnal of all Eastern nations. They 
 are opposed to railways and telegraphs. The cable from Shanghai 
 to Hong Kong the fishermen fish up and cut, because they say the 
 fish will not cross the line, and because the shade of a wire on 
 land crossed the grave of the dead they cut the wires, and the 
 Mandarins will in neither case protect them. As to beds, the 
 inhabitants sleep on a kind of hard bench, every female having a 
 notch in the wood, into which she fits her head on lying down ; no 
 windows, no doors. 
 
 A letter in the New York-Times having asked for information 
 as to fish culture in China, an answer has been given by Mr. E. 
 H. Colton-Salter, ex-United States Consul at Hankow, 700 miles 
 up the Yang-tse Kiang. This gentleman says : — 
 
 ' On this great river, 3,000 miles long, are found thousands of 
 nurseries devoted to the artificial production of fish. The river 
 is only open for trade with the Treaty Powers at Ching Tsing, 
 Kin Kian, and Honkow, but I have explored the river as far as 
 Yochow and the Yung-Tsing Lake, the great lake of the Empire. 
 The Chinese are pre-eminently a fish-eating people, and when you 
 consider that the population is estimated by some geographers at 
 500,000,000 souls, imagine the vast demand for fish which can 
 only be supplied by artificial means. The "shad" is called by the 
 Chinese " sain-li ; " it is of superior flavour and great size. I can 
 
S6 A IVizard's Wanderings from China Jo Peru. 
 
 only repeat the information given me on the great river, tiiat tliey 
 are produced by artificial means and conveyed in congs, large 
 vessels made of course earthenware, to all parts of the empire. 
 The dense population of China has stimulated human ingenuity 
 to the highest degree so as to provide means of subsistence. 
 Take the subject of artificial incubation, for instance. How little 
 we know of it in this country, although we assume that we know 
 everything ! The traveller in China may see in every village flocks 
 of tiny chickens, ducks, and geese — say, 500 at a time — led by a 
 mere boy with a little wand of the familiar bamboo, and all 
 hatched by the artificial process. As a natural sequence of this 
 system, they are very cheap, and you can purchase from five to 
 ten good fowls for 1,000 copper cash — say i dol. gold Eggs are 
 equally cheap, because the people possess secrets to increase the 
 fecundity of the birds, and you can buy, even in the cities, five 
 eggs for the equivalent of our cent. Our people are profoundly 
 ignorant about the resources of this wonderful country, only 
 twenty days' sail from San Francisco by a swift steamer.' 
 
 When the sky turns leaden and yellow, and banks of black and 
 ragged cloud gather in a direction away from the wind — when the 
 sea rises and rolls in heavy, restless and confused billows — then 
 the China junks get out their sweeps and make for shore, because 
 the ' Storm Devil ' is out upon the waters. At Shanghai you find 
 a nuniber of Flower Boats or floating restaurants where dinners 
 are served. 
 
 Here the wealthy Chinese entertain their friends. The boats 
 are gaily .decorated, the elegantly furnished cabins have numerous 
 lanterns hanging from the roof. 
 
 There are as many kind of boats here as there are vehicles in 
 
 . Fleet Street. Ferry boats ply as briskly and are as heavily laden 
 
 as omnibuses. Heavy cargo boats lumber along and get in every 
 
 one's way as our brewers' drays do. Light Tauka boats with one 
 
 or two passengers cut in and out like hansoms. 
 
 Nearly everything you see done by mechanics in our large cities 
 you will find being imitated in China, only with simpler tools and 
 in a slower manner. 
 
 Gamblers are constantly seen here, for the Chinaman will 
 gamble as long as he has cash or a garment to pawn. They have 
 sometimes been known to sell themselves. When persons quarrel 
 in China, they call each other the most abusive names, then 
 separate without coming to blows. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 -**"'T^IP TO JAPAN — YOKOHAMA — TOKIO — YEDDO — JAPANESE 
 WINDOW GARDENING — THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS — HOW TO 
 KEEP YOURSELF COOL IN HOT CLIMATES — THE AINOS OF JAPAN — 
 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF'THE JAPANESE. 
 
 We leave Hong Kong and start for Japan — reaching Yokohama, 
 1,620 miles distant from that port, eight days after — I had 
 heard a great deal about the beauty of this part of the tour, 
 but the sail over the inland sea of Japan surpassed all dreams 
 of the beauty of that island and mountain — studded lake, of 
 500 miles of panoramic scenery, with its charming bays of Hiogo, 
 and Nagasaki, and the river port of Osaka, at all of which 
 European arid American vessels have free access. I have seen 
 almost every lake in England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, 
 and Italy, but this surpasses each of them, and combines the 
 best features of them all in one. 
 
 That Yokohama is ruled more by the alien than the native 
 will be readily admitted. 
 
 It's a most hospitable place and boasts one of the finest clubs in 
 the world — whilst several excellent hotels are to be found. The 
 houses are well built, the streets wide, and the Enghsh language is 
 heard everywhere. 
 
 To see the Japanese at his best, one must either select a 
 country village, where he lives in primitive simplicity, or go to 
 the capital, Tokio, or Yedo, as it used to be called, so at Yoko- 
 hama, which we find about half European ; we jump in the 
 train, showing our railway tickets which are printed in English 
 and Japanese to the civil ticket collector, and find the railway 
 carriages very Enghsh-looking affairs although 12,000 miles away 
 from the old country. The ride is through a flat country planted 
 everywhere with rice. Half an hour's ride brings to our view 
 Fugiama, the great volcano of the island, about 1 2,000 feet high, 
 if I remember rightly, and generally covered with snow at the top. 
 As it is the fashion out here to make the ascent, of course up we 
 57 
 
^S A J J hard 'i Wimderings from China to Peru. 
 
 go, and the view one gets from its summit, is worth all the trouble 
 taken. 
 
 There is a pretty custom in Japan with regard to window- 
 gardening, which is not, I take it, generally known. In houses 
 wherein reside one or moie daughters of a marriageable age, an 
 empty flower-pot of an ornamental character is encircled by a ring 
 and suspended from the window or verandah by three light chains. 
 The Juliets of Japan are, of course, attractive, and their Romeos as 
 anxious as those of other lands. But, instead of serenades by 
 moonlight, and other delicate ways of making an impression, it is 
 etiquette for the Japanese lover to approach the dwelling of his 
 lady bearing some choice plant in his hand, which he boldly, but 
 let us hope, reverently, proceeds to plant in the empty vase. This 
 takes place at a time when he is fully assured that both mother and 
 daughter are at home, neither of whom, of course, is at all conscious 
 that the young man is taking such a liberty with the flower-pot 
 outside their window. It is beheved that a young lover so 
 engaged has never been seen by his lady or by her mamma in 
 this act of sacrilege. 
 
 This act of placing a pretty plant in the empty flower-pot is 
 equivalent to a formal proposal to the young lady who dwells withr 
 in, and this Eastern fashion is a most delicate and harmless way of 
 proposing to a lady. The youthful gardener, having settled his 
 plant to his mind, retires, and the lady is free to act as she pleases. 
 If he is the right man, she takes every care of his gift, waters it and 
 tends it carefully with her own hands, that all the world may see 
 the donor is accepted as a suitor. But, if he is not a favourite, or 
 if the stern parents object, the poor plant is torn from the vase, 
 and the next morning lies limp and withered on the verandah, or 
 on the path below. Japan, though very interesting to travel 
 through, is getting too many absurd Occidenta lideas in her head 
 to please me. 
 
 A capital way to keep cool in 'hot climates is to spread a piece 
 of Chinese straw matting the size of your bed under the sheet 
 upon which you lie at night, and you will be surprised to find how 
 much it will enhance your comfort. Or, better still, if you canrdo 
 it get a very big hammock, and sleep in that. If the atmosphere 
 at night seems heavy with suffocating, oppressive heat, you will 
 find much relief from sprinkling water on the floor and hanging 
 up an outspread sheet, thoroughly wet, where, whatever little 
 draught there may be will fall upon it. If you are still too hot to 
 sleep take a cool bath, dry your skin lightly, and if you do not 
 then cool off, it will most probably be because you have a fever 
 
A IVizard's Wafiderings from China io Peru. 59 
 
 or a bad conscience. It seems very odd in Malabar, India, to 
 see the way the natives have civihsed the monkeys, making them 
 work the punkas. You see thousands of them at this useful work, 
 and they seem to like it. They are a fine species indigenous in 
 this quarter — the ' neilgherry langur.' 
 
 Osaka is second only to Yeddo in population and commerce, its 
 river-sides being crowded with junks laden with bales of produce 
 and commerce, and the streets, shops, and habitations of the 
 citizens 'as clean as a new pin.' Here the new Mint is estab- 
 lished and the people, you may be sure, are very proud of their 
 beautiful new gold and silver coinage, made by steam power and 
 ingenious mechanism. 
 
 Yeddo is a city of gardens, and palaces, and, with its thirty hills, 
 is unequalled in the world. It stretches out beyond the limits of 
 sight, like a vast park — built on sea — river runs through it. The 
 ''Siro,' or Taikoun's palace, rises in the centre like a huge citadel, 
 from wide-spreading glacis of turf which descend to circular lakes 
 and canals. Thirty bridges of granite unite it to the city of the 
 Princes or Soto-siro, which is quite unlike other Japanese towns. 
 From Soto to Midzt, the commercial city, the way lies along a 
 hillside, and between great granite walls which enclose immense 
 parks. Immediately above these walls are hedges six feet wide and 
 forty feet high, cut and trained to marvellous perfection ; they are 
 formed of camellias, azaleas and rose laurels, and whole flocks of 
 sacred birds, white plumaged, are always fluttering among them 
 like the hanging gardens of Babylon. It is a mark of politeness 
 to put food in the mouth of the guest. Another custom is for the 
 guest to carry a quantity of food from the dinner table to eat ' at 
 home. At a dinner given by Lord Elgin, a Japanese Governor 
 put in the folds of his shirt any food that took his fancy, and one 
 of his suite attempted to carry some strawberry jam in his bosom. 
 We visit the gardens of the Taikoun, with its wondrous falconries 
 and summer-houses ; the famous temple of Asaxa 33,333 divini- 
 ties. Crossing the Lokungo river, we find the great tea-house of 
 Meiaski, which is an epitome of the utter strangeness of things in 
 Japan. 
 
 A few years ago when I was at Yeddo, it was quite unsafe to 
 walk through many of the ■streets; this last time, I was drawn 
 by two coolies in a Gin-ricksha right through the city, the natives 
 laughing good humouredly, and cheering, and crowding round us 
 when we stopped at a shop or exhibition. Through the three 
 miles of streets not a solitary unfriendly disposition was manifested 
 in that great city of nearly a million inhabitants. I was astonished 
 
6o A Wizard's Wanderingi from China to Peru. 
 
 to see such a large number of book and picture shops, and was 
 told that the Japanese are a great reading people, and fond 
 especially of story. It is easy to see that they are very sagacious, 
 and ready to adopt whatever is hkely to contribute to their interest. 
 
 Japanese ladies' hair is grown on their heads, and here ladies 
 have quite as much liberty as Europeans. Their complexion is 
 fair, their hai r is arranged in massive rolls like the chignons of 
 European belles ; they wear robes of rich materials with long 
 flowing sleeves, and round the waist a sash of bright colours is tied 
 in the form of a ' pannier.' They have been worn here from time 
 immemorial. Previous to marriage a Japanese belle increases her 
 charms by painting her cheeks and lips — but after that event she 
 shows the affection she bears her husband by pulling out her eye- 
 brows and blacking her teeth. This the Japanese think adds to 
 the beauty of the lady. 
 
 Mr. De Long, lately United .States Minister in Japan, made 
 the following statement in his lecture at Sacramento:— 
 
 'The Japanese estimate their population at about 40,000,000. 
 This I think an over-estimate by from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000, 
 although their reckoning is supported by their census returns. 
 There is found inhabiting the island of Jesso and the Kurile 
 Islands a race of men called by the Japanese " Ainos," or " hairy 
 men." This appellation they well sustain, as they have full flow- 
 ing black beards, reaching, in many cases, below the middle of the 
 breast. We are told that they are aborigines of Japan, Originally 
 occupying all of the islands embraced in that groiip ; and Japanese 
 history records the fact that Jimoo Tenno, the first Japanese Em- 
 peror, with some followers, came from heaven in a boat, landed at 
 or near Nagasaki, on the Island of Sikoke, from whom sprang the 
 present Japanese nation ; that gradually they beat back and des- 
 troyed the Aino race, as we have don^ the Indian, until the nation 
 attained its present greatness, and the aborigines sank to their 
 present weak condition. This is all the Japanese know of their 
 origin and their race.' 
 
 ' Nothing interests their leading men more than a study of their 
 probable origin, as they treat with levity the legend recorded in 
 their country. The Embassy which accompanied me to Washing- 
 ton brought with them a large collection of stone beads, arrow 
 heads, and other evidences of the " Stone Age." These they brought 
 for the purpose of comparing them with similar relics found in 
 our own and other countries. The Embassy studied with great 
 regard such Indians as we met, and such irelics as could be found 
 at Salt Lake City and other places. Iwakura assured me that the 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 6r 
 
 appearance of our Indians, their dress, costume, and weapons 
 were identical with such ornamentation as their geologists had 
 discovered upon rude images marking the "Stone Age" in Japan, 
 and he further remarked to me that he would be almost prepared 
 to believe they were akin but- for the circumstance that our 
 Indians could not be civilised.' 
 
 The Ainos form, in my mind, a curious subject of reflection. 
 They seem to bear no relation in customs, language, or appear- 
 ance to either the Japanese, Chinese, Manchoos, or other Oriental 
 nations. They are extremely kind, mild-mannered, skilful as 
 hunters and fishermen, intelligent, and brave. Crime is almost 
 unknown among them, yet they are so completely savage or 
 barbarous that they have no idea of their origin, no mode of 
 reckoning time, no knowledge of the value of money, nor even 
 proper names. They call their children, ' One,' ' Two,' ' Three,' 
 &c. Their mode of saluting a superior is to sit down upon the 
 earth cross-legged, bow the head, and, placing their hands to 
 gether with the palms upward, raise them three times towards their 
 faces, as if in the act of casting dust or water upon themselves, 
 after which they complacently stroke their long black beards with 
 both hands three times. This mode of salutation, I believe, is 
 analogous to that of the ancient Hebrews, while the beard and 
 physiognomy of the people, in my mind, strongly resemble that 
 interesting'and wonderful nation. 
 
 Ancient mining works of a very extensive character are found 
 upon the island of Jesso, where these people live, and are 
 mentioned by Professor Pompelly, who resided there for a 
 period, while in long service in his work entitled, 'A Tour 
 Around the World.' I trust you will pardon me for indulging 
 for a moment in what may seem to . you to be a vagary. We 
 know that Solomon sent forth ships to a place called Ophir 
 after gold. The rude character of sailing craft of that period 
 forbids the supposition that they could have voyaged to either 
 Australia or California. Sailing, as we are informed, from Arabia 
 eastward, and, like all small craft, naturally keeping near the 
 shore, they would, after crossing the northern portion of the Indian 
 Ocean, reach the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, which, without effort 
 upon their part, would bear them to the Japanese islands. With 
 the death of Solomon, or the fall and captivity of the nation, it is 
 presumable that this commerce with Ophir suddenly ceased. In 
 such a case it is fairly presumable that workmen sent abroad may 
 have been left there by this accident, or that tliey voluntarily 
 remained there, rather than return and share in the enslavement 
 
62 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Fern. 
 
 of their people. Only by this theory • can I account for this 
 strange and interesting race of men, for their customs, which I 
 have mentioned, or for the existence of those ancient mining 
 works, which is unaccounted for by Japanese history or Aino 
 legendry. 
 
 When death appears inevitable in a family the patient's clothes 
 are removed, and their places supplied by others. 
 
 These are put on topsy-turvy, the sleeves at the feet, and the 
 lower part upwards. When dead a powder called dosia is intro- 
 duced into his ears, mouth and nostrils, to render the limbs 
 flexible. The floors of rooms in Japan are covered with soft mats 
 made of rice or wheat straw neatly plaited 6ft. -f 3ft. and 4ins. 
 thick. At night they are used for beds, with the addition of a 
 quilt, and a block of wood for a pillow. 
 
 The land is one of great beauty and rich fertility, also of extra- 
 ordinary interest, natural, historical, political, and social. The 
 inhabitants and the Government are rapidly transforming into 
 enlightened, peaceful, and cordial citizens. In the department of 
 the Imperial Government Proper, 214 foreigners are employed, on 
 salaries ranging from 480 to 16,000 dollars. In the interior there 
 are a number of foreigners, teachers, surgeons, engineers, &c. The 
 superiority of Japanese acrobats and jugglers is sufficiently well- 
 known in Europe, but their performances in the Sacred City 
 reach a point of such marvellous perfection, that, no doubt, the 
 masters of those arts are too well paid ever to wish to leave 
 Japan, so that the extraordinary things we have seen done by 
 them in England are only, in reality, second-rate performances. 
 
 In Japan children are rarely threatened or struck by their 
 parents— the love, obedience, and reverence manifested by them 
 is unbounded — while the confidence placed by parents in their 
 children is without limit. 
 
 The Japanese are far in advance of us in matters of private 
 cleanliness and sanitary arrangements, baths being found in every 
 respectable house. 
 
 There are public baths in every street, known by a black flag 
 suspended over the doorway. 
 
 In the large towns there are streams of clear water running on 
 each side, of the street. 
 
 The streets in most towns here are open, well paved, and well 
 swept, and the houses of all classes have their floors covered with 
 neatly-worked matting. 
 
 The people are pictures of gentleness and kindness ; docile as 
 lambs, and eager (many of them) to be led in the right way. 
 
A Wisard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 63 
 
 The Mikado, too, unlike the exclusive and secluded emperors 
 of many ages ago, mingles with the people, and holds converse 
 with the representatives of foreign states; and the numerous 
 embassies and delegations to Europe are all designed to collect 
 information and cull the best examples of ' law and order.' At 
 the present time there is a general expectation of an early decree 
 of religious toleration. 
 
 The national religion of Japan is Sintooism, or the worship of 
 deified heroes, the head of which is the Mikado or Spiritual 
 Emperor. Next to this is Buddhism, the faith of over 300 
 millions of the human race, teaching, them morality, cleanliness, 
 and the care of the poor. Then there are thirty-three religious 
 sects off-shoots of these. 
 
 Numbers of young Japanese are now learning the European 
 languages. 
 
 'J'here are two large foundries in the country with foreign 
 machinery, and several extensive dockyards. 
 
 Newspapers are published, there are four or five dailies 
 published at Yokohama alone. 
 
 While the old temples of Buddhism are going to decay, new 
 School-houses for both sexes are rising up in every direction, 
 and teachers are engaged by Government from England and 
 America, at good salaries, who are expected 10 teach Enghsh and 
 other European languages. 
 
 The Japanese now have omnibuses, steamers, gas, telegraphs, an 
 eflficient lighthouse department, sewing machines, and even a 
 railroad — they will be trying a School Board next ! 
 
 The Army and Navy have been remodelled upon our system 
 down to the drum, fife, and cat-o'-nine-tails. 
 
 A scheme of general education has also been established 
 throughout the Empire and a Japanese law tribunal has been 
 established at one or two of the principal ports. 
 
 At Yokohama you are 12,000 miles from old England 8,500 sea, 
 3,500 land. Suppose you were here and wanted to come home 
 by the route we have just taken, you would have to pay 
 ;^io4 8s. 6d. for a first and\;^6i 19s. 6d. for a second class 
 ticket on the P. and 0. Co.'s steamer. If you returned by 
 Malta and Gibraltar, it would be cheaper, viz. £^s ''^"d ;^55. 
 
 The United States mail steamers leave Yokohama every four- 
 teen days for San Francisco. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CROSSING THE PACIFIC — SAN FRANCISCO — THE CHINESE IN 
 CALIFORNIA — GIANT TREES OF CALIFORNIA — OGDEN — SPLENDID 
 SCENERY IN AMERICA. 
 
 Crossing the Pacific is terribly monotonous if you go from Japan 
 to San Francisco direct. One vast undulating rolling sea of molten 
 glass. You feel ashamed to ask the Captain orally, too often, as to 
 when he thinks you will arrive, remembering that master-mariners 
 have much to put up with both on sea and land from passengers ; 
 and I have known captains who had quick tempers and who could 
 give, upon occasions, short answers. How stinging was the rebuke 
 administered by the late Commodore Judkins, of the Cunard 
 service, to the lady passenger who, when the ship was off the 
 banks of Newfoundland, asked him 'if it were always foggy 
 there ?' ' Do you think I live here, mum ? ' quoth stern Commo- 
 dore Judkins. 
 
 A group of Catholic Sisters of Charity in their wide-sleeved 
 robes and white wimples and pinners beneath their snowy veils, 
 and with their sweet, smiling, rosy faces as they sit on deck, work- 
 ing at some embroidery or whatnot, teach us poor fretting, 
 discontented, rationalistic humbugs a lesson, I think. How 
 contented and happy they look ! I fear, cynic that I am, I have 
 but a poor opinion of my fellow men, but Diogenes himself might 
 well be proud that such good people do exist as these Sisters. 
 Yes, their pure, rosy faces are still the same even beneath this 
 torrid sun. All the world over you meet their kindly faces. 
 Rome ! Rome ! You know what you are about, in sending forth 
 such angel Missionaries to convert the heathen ! 
 
 The crew you will find on board are all Chinamen with the excep 
 tion of a few leading seamen and engineers. There is a terrible 
 outcry and strong agitation among the Sydney Trade-Unionists 
 connected with shipping against the employment of coloured hands 
 on board the ships of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company — 
 the Australia, the Zealandia, and the City of Sydney — The 
 Seamen's Union, the firemen, the stokers, the cooks, the stewards 
 
 64 
 
A Wizards Wanderings from China to Peru. 65 
 
 of the capital of New South Wales, were all literally up in arms 
 against the shipping of Mongol hands on board British ships. 
 Even the cook on board, we find, is Taas, a Celestial, who seems, 
 -however, to stick to English cookery. 
 
 To my mind all ocean steamer cookery is too substantial not to 
 say gross, heavy and insipid. The only lesson he had learnt 
 from the kitchen of California was his buckwheat cakes for 
 breakfast quite i V Amiricaine, albeit we had to put up with clarified 
 molasses, in lieu of maple syrup, to lubricate our cakes withal. 
 That loss of a day on the Pacific in the 180° of -longitude has 
 always puzzled me and, possibly, some of you, my readers, as well. 
 I remember going to rest one Friday night and on waking up in 
 the morning was dumbfounded to find it was Sunday morning, 
 and the crew preparing for Divine service. It is more curious 
 still, and a study for Sabbatarians, that on one of the Pacific 
 islands Saturday is observed as the Christian Sabbath, and on 
 another island, on the opposite side of the line, Monday is kept as 
 the Lord's Day, Sunday being the dropped day, according to Dr. 
 Prime of New York in his ' Voyage Round the World ' ; on reaching 
 the 1808 of longitude we are at the antipodes of Greenwich, and 
 London time is twelve hours in advance. We then take a leap of 
 twenty-four hours, leaving Greenwich twelve hours in the rear, 
 but crossing the Meridian line we put back our time an hour for 
 every 15 degrees, and by the time we reach London the clocks and 
 time will have righted themselves. 
 
 Lounging under the shady trees of Golden Gate Park in your 
 spider-waggon, and then on to famous Cliff House, and the Seal 
 Rock, with the broad Pacific before you, with the knowledge that 
 you have a week's rest before you and 'belonging, 'for the time to Mr. 
 Sharon, the manager of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, and his 
 obliging, courteous chief clerk Mr.- George H. Smith — is really very 
 agreeable. It is worth while — well worth while — to have come 
 so many thousand miles to behold this enchanting scene, and 
 looking eastward you think of the delightful railway journey you 
 have in front of you — the ascent of the Pacific slope — threading 
 the gorges of the Sierras Nevadas : running the gauntlet of the 
 Devil's Slide, Webber's Canon, and the snow-sheds, traversing 
 Wearyfoot Common, otherwise the Rocky Mountains — Sacramento 
 to Ogden — Ogden to Omaha, till at last you find repose at the 
 Grand Pacific Hotel at Chicago. Union and Pacific, the 
 Chicago and North- Western, and the Erie Railways, and so by a 
 Cunard steamship to Liverpool. 
 
 There is something about 'Frisco I like very much, it is not 
 
 F 
 
66 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 only the people, but the surroundings; fancy leaving snowed 
 up Eastern cities in furs, and a day or so afterwards in delight- 
 ful El Dorado, buying in the market fresh strawberries, green 
 peas, oranges and japonicas, which all flourish in the open. 
 
 Of course some hospitable friend makes us try that peculiar 
 Californian punch, which I am informed contains twelve ingre- 
 dients, comprising, its concoctors proudly boast, not one single 
 drop of water. You know what the Romans say of the Fountain 
 of Trevi. The stranger, they declare, who has once drunk of the 
 Trevi waters is bound to return again and again to the Eternal 
 City. And, indeed, as I am penning these lines, I am thinking of 
 what a very nice thing it will be if I am spared to appear one of 
 these fine days in Rome again. In 'Frisco, though, there are not 
 any fountains, but I can remember, yet, the glass of iced water you 
 quaff at your breakfast at the Palace Hotel, Market Street, as you 
 devour a couple of oranges to put you in trim for the fried oysters, 
 the tomcod, the tender loin steaks, the scrambled eggs, the stuffed 
 tomatoes, the fish balls, the buckwheat cakes, and the strawberries 
 and cream which are to follow. Pio Nono once told Kaiser 
 Wilhelm that all Christians belonged, somehow or another, to the 
 Pope. The Imperial Hohenzollern was unable to recognise the 
 cogency of the assertion ; still I am fatalist enough to think that 
 when a traveller has once drunk his glass of iced water and sucked 
 his oranges in the breakfast-room of the Palace Hotel, he is 
 unconsciously subjected to an obligation to cross the Rockies and 
 the Sierras Nevadas again and again, to ' do the block' in Kearney 
 Street, and be fascinated by the beauty of the ladies engaged in 
 afternon shopping in that fashionable thoroughfare, to be amazed 
 at the architectural magnificence of the Californian millionaires' 
 red-wood palaces on ' Nob Hill' San Francisco is one of the 
 pleasantest cities in the whole world. Being at 'Frisco we natur- 
 ally enough visit China Town. 
 
 John Chinaman's picturesqueness is apt to become, after a 
 time, monotonous, and then to cloy, to satiate, and at length to 
 revolt. Take him at his best, and with the most favourable sur- 
 roundings, the celestial, somehow, leaves a slightly unpleasant 
 tiste in your mputh. The Roman epigrammatist who didn't 
 like Zabidus, and the Oxford undergraduate who didn't like 
 Dr. Fell, might be unanimous in the expression of their dislike 
 for the Heathen Chinee, yet as incapable of giving a definite 
 reason for their aversion. If all the celestials you met resembled 
 the merchants and manufacturers of China Town generally, there 
 would be no need to recall the unreasoning ill-nature of the 
 
A Wizard^s Wanderings from China to Peru. 67 
 
 epigrams on Zabidus and Dr. Fell. Unfortunately the mass of 
 the inhabitants are the nastiest of nasty creatures, I am sure some 
 of the faces, I have seen in the lowest quarters, I shall never get 
 out of my eyes — faces awfully abominable in their distortion and 
 depravation from the normal aspect of humanity — faces which in 
 their grotesqueness and their horror made pale and jejune the 
 wildest efforts of the graphic imagination of Jacques Callot, and 
 Breughel d'Enfer, and the Spaniard Francisco Goya. 
 
 You might not possibly be aware of the fact, but most of the 
 Indians of Alaska believe in cremation, and hardly a day passes 
 when one cannot witness the peculiar ceremony gone through 
 during the burning and after it is completed. No dead Indian 
 is taken out through the door, but is either taken out through the 
 roof or through the side of the house. The body is then placed 
 on a pile of logs and the fire started, while the people stand round 
 and sing, beating time with carved poles while the body burns. 
 When all is consumed, the ashes are placed in a box, and, 
 together with many articles belonging to the deceased, are 
 placed in one of the Dead-houses, or houses built near the 
 town for the purpose of holding the ashes of each particular 
 family. 
 
 The luxury of this Pacific country is amazing. The restaurants 
 and cafds of each petty digging town put forth bills of-fare which 
 the Trois Freres could not equal for ingenuity ; wine lists such 
 as Delmonico's cannot beat. The dishes smell of the Californian 
 soil ; baked rock-cod k la Buena Vista, boiled Californian quail 
 with Russian River bacon. Sacraments snipes on toast, Oregon 
 ham with champagne sauce, and a dozen other toothsome things. 
 A few Atlantic States dishes, however, you find down — hominy, cod 
 chowder — hardly equal to that of Salem— sassafras candy, and 
 squash tart, but never a mention of pork and molasses, dear to 
 the Massachusetts boy. All these good things the diggers, when 
 ' dirt is plenty,' moisten with Clicquot, or Heidsick cahmzi ; when 
 returns are small, with their excellent Sonoma wine. 
 
 Americans certainly need not go to Europe to find scenery. 
 
 The world can show few scenes more winning than Israel's 
 River Valley in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, or North 
 Conway in the Southern slopes of the same range. Nothing can 
 be more -full of grandeur than the passage of the James at Balcony 
 Falls, where the river rushes through a crack in the Appalachian 
 chain. As for river scenery, the Hudson, is grander than the 
 Rhine, the Susquehanna is lovelier than the Meuse, the Schuylkill 
 prettier than the Seine ; the Mohawk more enchanting than the 
 
 r — 2 
 
68 
 
 A Wizard'' s Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Dart. Of the Jrivers of North Europe, the Neckar alone is not 
 beaten in the States. 
 
 In Pennsylvania, you may sometimes fancy yourself in Sussex ; 
 while in only New England you seem to be in some part of 
 Europe that you have never happened to light on before; in 
 California, you are, at all events, at last in a new world. The 
 names, The Golden State and El Dorado are doubly applicable to 
 California ; her light and landscape, as well as her soil are golden. 
 On the Pacific side. Nature wears a robe of deep rich yellow, even 
 the distant hills are wrapped in golden haze. All is rounded, soft, 
 and warm. A Coloradon going West was asked in Nevada if in 
 his country they could beat the ' Comstock lode ? ' ' Dear, no ! ' he 
 said. 'The boys with us are plaguy discouraged jess at present.' 
 The Nevadans were down upon the word. ' Discouraged, .air 
 they?' 'Why yes! They've jess found they've got ter dig 
 through three feet of solid silver 'fore ever they come ter gold.' 
 
 The giant trees of 
 
 California are situated 
 in the Mammoth Tree 
 Valley, Calaveros Co. 
 and in the Mariposa 
 Valley, about 150 
 miles east and south 
 of San Francisco. In 
 the former you find 
 the 'Big Tree Stump.' 
 It is perfectly smooth, 
 sound, and level. 
 Upon it on . the 4th 
 July, '64, thirty-two 
 persons were engaged 
 in dancing four sets of 
 cotillions at one time. 
 At 5^ ft. from the 
 ground tfie stump 
 measures 28ft. across. 
 This tree employed 
 five men 22 days in 
 felling it. It was 302ft. 
 high and 96ft. in cir- 
 cumference at the 
 bjse. The largest tree . 
 in the entire group is 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 69 
 
 called the ' Father of the Forest ' it lies on the ground, half buried 
 in the soil, 43Sft. high, i.e. 31ft. higher than the top of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, and 11 oft. in circumference. Our wonder at the 
 magnitude of these trees, becomes amazement, when we look 
 at the Cones produced by them and find that-- they are not larger 
 than a hen's egg, and the seeds a mere speck. 
 
 It would take a dozen to weigh down an apple seed. Some of 
 these giant trees are over 3,000 years old. A concentric circle 
 is formed on the bark of each tree every year, and more than 
 3,000 circles can be counted on the trunk of the fallen tree. 
 881 miles from San Francisco you find Ogden. We will suppose 
 we leave the train here and after a detour of thirty-seven miles 
 reach Salt Lake Gity. 
 
 It is possible the few words I am now about to say about the 
 Mormons, will occasion some surprise. They will differ materially 
 from accounts written by several visitors to these parts. I cannot 
 confirm all their statements without making an unpardonable 
 sacrifice of truth. Doubtless they were honest in their eulogy ; 
 but, then, they must either have deliberately shut their eyes, or 
 else have been incompetent and superficial observerss 
 
 It may be, that, going forth laden with foregone conclusions, 
 they returned home rejoicing that they were in the right. 
 
 You will find the Mormons very backward and ignorant, when 
 compared with other dwellers on the American. Continent. 
 Neither Jew nor Christian can safely and easily establish himselt 
 in Utah. As for the energy displayed by the Mormons of which 
 we hear so much- — look at the Norwegian settlement in Wis- 
 consin — more than seventy-five per cent, in advance in point ot 
 wealth, intelligence, culture, and everything which goes under the 
 name of civilisation ; and they have no grog shops nor houses of 
 prostitution amongst them. 
 
 At the northern end of the principal street you firid the Tithing- 
 office, the Endowment House, the residence of President Young, 
 and the Tabernacle, holding, in my opinion, not more than 5,000 
 sitters, though some say 8,000. It is an oblong or egg-shaped 
 structure, devoid of ornament and wholly destitute of beauty in pro- 
 portion or outline. In front of the elders' pew there are barrels 
 containing water which often being blessed is handed about in tin 
 cans to all. A sip and bit of bread — Sacrament. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF NEW YORK — THE BROADWAY — THE FALLS OF 
 NIAGARA^THE TERRAPIN TOWER — A VISIT TO THE FALLS — THE 
 LAKES. 
 
 When I first saw New York it did not appear to me a foreign 
 city in the same sense as Paris, or Frankfort, or Milan. A closer 
 and more leisurely examination produced a different impression. 
 To walk along Broadway recalls a walk along Regent Street, but 
 it also recalls a walk along the Rue de la Paix. What seems to 
 be English is rivalled, if not outdone, by what is unmistakably 
 French, while many things have neither a French nor an English 
 impress. The architectural effects are extraordinary in their variety. 
 The want of simplicity and repose is as marked as the absence 
 of a distinctively national style. Everyone has apparently followed 
 the bent of his fancy, and the straining after originality has led 
 to a confusion of ideas and a clashing of ideas. Half the 
 languages of Europe are spoken by the motley gathering. 
 
 In my opinion scant justice has yet been done to New York 
 on the whole. It has its drawbacks, as has every city on the face 
 of the globe, but it possesses excellences which more than out- 
 weigh them. The man of business finds it as good a centre for 
 his operations as London. The pleasure-seeker can amuse him- 
 self as well as in Paris, while men of letters and students of art 
 affirm that the prospects of New York becoming an honoured 
 home of literature and art, grow brighter every day. The 
 scenery of the Hudson has been highly lauded, but not over- 
 praised. It is quite as romantic as that of the Rhine. 
 
 A gentleman, who had been here three days, but who had been 
 paying attention to a prominent New York belle, wanted to pro- 
 propose, but was afraid he would be thought too hasty. He 
 delicately broached the subject as follows : ' If I were to ask you 
 to allow me to speak of marriage, after having made your 
 acquaintance only three days ago, what would you say to it?' 
 ' Well, I should say, never put off till to-morrow that which you 
 should have done the day before yesterday.' 
 
 70 
 
A Wizard'' s Wanderings from China to Peru. 1i 
 
 With money in your pocket everything that the most polished 
 Sybarite could desire is procurable. 
 
 ' Why celebrate George Washington's birthday more than 
 mine ? ' asked a schoplmaster here one day of one of his pupils. 
 ' Because he never told a lie,' was the reply. 
 
 Out here they thoroughly believe the earth turns on its axis every 
 twenty-four hours, subject to the constitution of the United States. 
 
 The leap from spring to summer is the only spring they have 
 in these parts. 
 
 Niagara is an old Indian word meaning the Thunder of Waters, 
 The roar of the cataract can be heard ten miles off, over one hun- 
 dred million tons of water rush over this precipice every hour, still 
 the great lakes above are never dry, they do not vary six inches 
 in height each year. On the brink of the precipice are a few 
 scattered rocks, on one of which is built the Terrapin Tower. From 
 this point you obtain the most magnificent view of the Falls. The 
 Tower is forty-five feet high — the bridge connecting it with Goat 
 Island is made of wood, and is always wet with spray, thus render- 
 ing it slippery and dangerous. Close to Clifton House there is a 
 circular staircase which conducts you to a ledge of rock running, 
 under the Fall — (the Canadian side). 
 
 If you have courage enough, you pay a half dollar — aguidedresses 
 you in a flannel suit, and drags you from rock to rock till you are 
 under the Fall. You can touch Niagara as it rushes down, while 
 deafened with the roar and drenched to the skin with the spray. 
 You are not at all sorry to get back again to your comfortable 
 hotel. Between Goat Island and the American mainland is Luna 
 Island — the best point for seeing on a moonlight night the beau- 
 tiful Lunar bow. 
 
 Those who say that America has no scenery forget the Hudson, 
 while they can never have explored Lake George, Lake Champlain, 
 and the Mohawk. That Poole's exquisite scene from the 
 •Decameron, Philomel's Song, could have been reaUsed on earth, 
 I never dreamt until I saw the singers at a New Yorker's Villa, on 
 the Hudson, grouped in the deep shades of a glen, from which 
 there was an outlook upon the basaltic palisades and lake-like 
 Tappan Zee. 
 
 It was in some such spot that De Tocqueville wrote the brightest 
 of his brilliant letters— that dated ' Sing Sing,'— for he speaks of 
 himself as lying on a hill that overhung the Hudson, watching 
 the white sails gleaming in the hot sun ; and trying in vain to 
 fancy what became of the river where it disappeared in the blue 
 Highlands. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A VOYAGE TO MADEIRA— DESCRIPTION OE FUNCHAL— OUR FELLOW 
 VOYAGERS — A CRUISE IN SEARCH OF HEALTH — REMINISCENCES 
 OF HOME — OUR BRITISH SAILORS. 
 
 To a man who requires (or thinks he requires) a little rest 
 sea air, and a change of scene, a trip by one. of Donald Currie's 
 mail-steamers to Cape Town should, prove to be the very identical 
 thing he needed. What an easy thing to just run down to the 
 City a day or so beforehand, take a return ticket and secure your 
 berth ; and the day the ' Something or otljer Castle ' leaves the 
 West India Docks, London, jump into a hansom, light up a full 
 flavoured Havanna cigar, which will reduce the not over savoury 
 smells of the far east (of London) to a minimum, and after a 
 rather long ride drive up almost alongside the magnificent 
 steamer. One look at her, as she lays steam up and everything 
 ready for departure, is enough. You feel you are as safe aboard 
 her as if in the Grosvenor Hotel itself. The interior arrange- 
 ments are as near perfection as possible, nothing seems wanting, 
 and a look in at the bath-room makes the vista of the Tropics 
 loose half its horrors. Why, with such accommodations, a supply 
 of good weeds, and the well-known high quality of the Company's 
 Wine List, one might comfortably do the Styx itself in her. After 
 leaving Gravesend, and a day or so later, Dartmouth, that bad 
 quarter of an hour leave-taking is got over. To me, it is ever a 
 most painful sight. As you have about twenty days or more with 
 nothing to bore you, no letters to answer, no news to speak of 
 from the other world, you feel — well — that simply depends on 
 your constitution. For my part, I know of nothing so delightful 
 . as (say, once every few years) twenty days at sea- with nothing 
 to bother you, and pleasant company. London fogs, and smoke, 
 and chilly weather, give place to dehghtful Dartmouth, which in 
 its turn makes way for Madeira, where you get ashore for a few 
 hours. I like the inhabitants here, there is no sham about them. 
 They do not pose themselves as saints, like the Dutch settlers in 
 the Cape, in fact, there is more of the sinner, I fear, about them. 
 
 72 
 
A U'izard's Wanderings froin China to Peru. 73 
 
 Madeira seems to mark the boundary line between the capri- 
 cious weather north of it and the delightful climates and smooth 
 seas south to as far as the Cape of Good Hope. I marked the 
 change when, the island being a faint bluish smudge on the hori- 
 zon, I climbed to the bridge of the steamer and gazed around. 
 The long fabric of the great vessel swept below me through the 
 smooth dark blue waters. Our speed was a fair fourteen knots, 
 there was nothing to stop us, and the engines were storming in a 
 regulated thunder of sound in the metal caverns beneath, whirling 
 with resistless velocity the giant propeller with its diameter of 
 nineteen feet and its twenty-seven foot pitch. I gazed along the 
 length of three hundred and seventy-seven feet, and upon a 
 breadth of over forty-seven feet. The shapely configuration of the 
 thrashing and thrusting structure was thrown out in brilliantly 
 clear black lines by the white waters seething past on either hand 
 like the foaming race at the foot of a mountain cataract. Brass 
 and glass flashed out to the steady pouring sunshine. Looking 
 right aft I marked the elegant curve of the elliptical stern showing 
 sharp upon the tremulous snow-like surface that went rushing 
 from under the counter into the tender distant blueness and 
 faintness. 
 
 There was a satin sheen upon the sea. Only the faintest fold 
 of swell came to put a motion as of soft breathing into the power- 
 ful steamer. The sun was westering fast, layers of pearl-like 
 clouds caught a golden tinge from the slowly crimsoning lumin- 
 ary upon their delicate brows. In the distance that seemed 
 measureless in the amazing transparency of the sweet and sunlit 
 atmosphere you saw the moonlike gleaming of a sail, otherwise 
 the circle of the sea went round unbroken to the heavens, a 
 glorious sapphire cincture east and south and north, but gather- 
 ing fast in, the west a reddish splendour from the approach of the 
 sun to its liquid verge, and from the ruddy glorifying of the sky 
 down which the orb was floating. The change from the Biscayan 
 latitudes was strongly marked now, and felt by me more keenly 
 even than when Madeira lay steady and rich before me half in 
 weeping shadow and half in sunshine, with the white houses to 
 give an inter-tropical aspect to it, and its nude, dark-skinned boys, 
 laughing, diving, and shouting out their language of the sun 
 alongside. 
 
 I remember when the evening came down dark, and after I had 
 stood watching the dull, cloudy light of phosphorus in the roaring 
 surge that coiled over and broke into milk from the vessel's bow, 
 seating myself abaft the ladies' saloon for the shelter of it from 
 
74 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 the wind which the steamer's progress through the water was 
 making to blow at the velocity of very nearly half a gale. An 
 engine-room hatchway was directly in front of me, protected by 
 gratings, and, peering down, I could see through another grating 
 into the black depths, a distance of forty feet beneath. There 
 were scarlet lights at the bottom j the glow of one or more of the 
 eighteen furnaces. You could see phantom figures moving, 
 catching, now and again, as they passed from darkness into dark- 
 ness, a gleam from the fires that seemed to give them an outline 
 of flame. The effect was extraordinary. Often voices broke into 
 song down in those mysterious, resonant depths. The shovelling 
 of coal was incessant. By listening a little you found words dis- 
 tinctly articulated by the engines. You fitted the rhythmic, me- 
 tallic pulsations with syllables which became a sentence that was 
 fast repeated over and over and over again. It seemed to me 
 as though there were some mighty giant working below there 
 in the fire-touched darkness you saw through the gratings ; he 
 breathed harshly and heavily, often with a fierce hissing through 
 his clenched teeth, as though the burden of his tremendous labour 
 grew at moments too heavy for him, and he expended his im- 
 patience in a wild and bitter sigh. There were a hundred sounds 
 to suggest the presence below of some powerful human spirit, 
 rather than the mechanical soulless action of beams of metal and 
 lengths of massive steel revolved by steam. It was the heavy 
 panting that made you think of the hidden giant. Seated on 
 deck with the stars shining in glory, the refreshing noises of foam- 
 ing waters alongside, and the wind sweeping past either hand of 
 the structure that sheltered me, raising tempestuous melodies as it 
 flew, I listened to the sounds, human and mechanical, which rose 
 through that engine-room grating, as I would to expressions of a 
 life utterly distinct from and wholly separated from our own. The 
 gushes of air com.ing up through the hatch were unendurably hot. 
 A whole forest of windsails swinging with distended arms in the 
 gloom, carried the cool wind into the region of fire beneath ; but 
 the heat, as suggested b> the fervid puffings rising from the engine- 
 room, made one wonder how men could be found capable of dis- 
 charging the laborious duties of firemen and trimmers, in an atmos- 
 phere of which the merest whiff snatched from the deck oppressed 
 and enervated the whole system. The stokers and firemen have 
 the hardest times of it on board-ship in these days, I think. Jack 
 inhabits a fine forecastle compared to what he used to sling his 
 hammock in in the old times of slush lamps, blackened beams, 
 dripping carlings, and rats as big as cats. His food, if it be not 
 
A mzard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 75 
 
 better, is surely not worse than it was, anyhow. There is nothing 
 particular to be done aloft, at least in such three-masted schooners 
 as the Tartar. There is no deep-sea lead to heave, and the duties 
 of the sailor are restricted to cleaning, scrubbing, and swabbing. 
 Besides all this, he is in the fresh air when his watch comes on. 
 But when I thought of the lot of the firemen, and of those whose 
 day-and-night work lies in the engine-room ; when I contrasted 
 the mild delightful breezes I was breathing with that stagnant 
 feverish atmosphere where the fire-god was doing his work, and 
 when I listened to the incessant sounds of shovelling, and the 
 perpetual metallic roaring of the fabric of cylinders, piston rods, 
 crank shafts, connecting rods, and the like revolving a propeller 
 weighing eleven tons, I confess it was with amazement that I 
 listened to the cheery and hearty singing of the poor fellows at 
 their toil. For it seemed to me that if I had to work in an 
 engine-room, I should have but small heart to pipe out even the 
 most lugubrious ditty I am acquainted with. 
 
 After a hurried look over the town of Funchal, a purchase at the 
 Bazaar of a few curiosities^ you make for the boat on the beach to 
 reach your steamer. The return tare is generally 50 per cent. 
 more than what you paid to land, and the wretched won't put off 
 from shore until they are paid in advance. You may abuse their 
 religious opinions like the very late member for Carlisle himself, 
 you may make use of stronger language than ever Franchise de- 
 monstrator made before the Carlton Club — you may even, as I 
 have done myself, hit the fellows with force enough to send them 
 sprawling on the bottom of the boat, the crew may play the fire- 
 hose over them, but lay not the flattering unction to your soul 
 that that will stop their thieving, cheating proclivities. If the 
 steamer takes in coal at Madeira by day, you can amuse yourself 
 by throwing coins into the sea and watching the natives dive off 
 their boats into the sea after them. It is a very good job, perhaps, 
 that I do not understand the Portuguese language, or my ears 
 might have been shocked the last time I visited that place. Using 
 penny-pieces electro-plated in preference to half-crowns for my 
 Magical Entertainments, I happened to have a pocket full of them, 
 and amused myself by holding one up at a time and giving some 
 half-a-dozen or so divers a good view of the coin. I threw it into 
 the sea. The fighting and scuffling they had over those wretched 
 coins 1 They took me for a millionaire, I suppose, until one 
 sharper than the others found out they were only the humble 
 pennies. Then the bad language ! 
 
 The experienced surgeon carried on board the ' Castle 
 
76 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 steamers as a rule finds he gets a little busier a few days after 
 leaving Madeira. Looking over some old papers, I have just 
 come across the Bill of Fare for the fourteenth day out. Here it 
 is; it may prove interesting to some. 
 
 SOUPS. 
 Mock Turtle. 
 
 FISH AND ENTREES. 
 
 Jugg-ed Hare and Red Currant Jelly. 
 
 Braised Sheep's Head. Fricass6e of Fowl. 
 
 JOINTS. 
 
 Roast Saddle of Mutton (English). 
 
 Roast Sirloin Beef. Yorkshire Pudding. 
 
 Boiled Neck Mutton and Turnips. Corned Beef and Carrots. 
 
 POULTRY. 
 
 Roast Goose, Apple Sauce. 
 
 Boiled Fowls. Parsley Sauce. 
 
 Curry of Rice. 
 
 SWEETS. 
 
 Mac^doines of Fruit. 
 
 Tipsy Cakes. Plum Pudding. 
 
 Boiled Vanilla Custards. 
 
 DESSERT. 
 Assorted. 
 
 Better regulated mail steamers, I will defy anyone to name. 
 Everything works like clockwork, and such a thing as a grumble 
 is rarely heard, at all events, in the saloon part of the ship, but 
 even the second-class passengers on this line fare better than the 
 first-class passengers do on many lines I have travelled by; a more 
 bountifully supplied second-class table I never saw. The steerage 
 passengers also are well looked after. 
 
 Of Madeira so much has been written that little or nothing 
 remains to be said. The green and beautiful island is a noble 
 refreshment to the sight after the tedious and tossing days of a 
 stormy sea passage. The lofty mass of land breaks like a slow 
 revelation of beauty upon the gaze, and it first darkens and then 
 brightens out into clear sunny and many-coloured proportions 
 from the faint blue shadow it submits to the eye when it is first 
 seen. I was haunted, as we approached, with the memory of the 
 picturesque old legend of the Englishman running away, three 
 or four hundred years ago, with the beautiful lady of his love, 
 
A Wizard^ s Wanderings from China io Peru. 77 
 
 who died soon after their arrival, and whose early death reads 
 like the historic anticipation of the melancholy uses to which this 
 fertile and gilded spot of land would be put by future travellers 
 in search of health. From the waters abreast of Funchal the 
 island offers a spectacle of soft and tender loveliness ; the towering 
 peaks have nothing forbidding m their elevation ; the vapour in 
 soft white masses wreathes itself like garlands of snow about the 
 heads of the moimtain tops. The atmosphere has the brilliancy 
 of burnished glass, but it imparts, for all that, a singular tender- 
 ness of prismatic tint to what you view through it, and every 
 colour strikes the sight with a sort of mellowness in its purity. 
 The white houses, dwarfed by distance, shine like ivory toys — 
 the foam winks in fitful flashes at the foot of the rocks. A 
 shower of rain was falling over one part of the island when we 
 brought up, and many rainbows spanned the numerous ravines, 
 gorges, and scars, with here and there the dense foliage breaking 
 through the iridescent arches ; whilst further on, where the 
 shadow of the squall lay deep, the land faded into a dim blue, 
 looming with a clear head or two of hill above it ; and the sea 
 line swept round it sharp, azure, and sparkling to its foot. If 
 you remain on board ship off Madeira, there are plenty of 
 clamorous swimming boys to take good care that repose shall 
 form no element of your survey. Dingy-skinned lads, black- 
 skinned-lads, yellow-haired lads with coffee-coloured bodies raise 
 a thousand distracting yells over the ship's side in their solicita- 
 tions to you to throw money for them to dive after. The 
 adjacent islands hung dark and blue in the distance, with the 
 sunshine feebly illuminating the more accentuated features. The 
 bright azure water spreading smooth into boundless distance 
 formed a perfect setting for these gems of land. A yacht with 
 awning spread lay near us, and our passage of four days from 
 Southampton grew dream-like when 1 contrasted that white 
 covering and the violet shadow it cast upon the decks of the 
 yacht with the bitter winds and drenching fogs we had left 
 behind us in the English Channel, and the cold air, the high 
 swell, and the broken seas of Finisterre and St. Vincent. 
 
 We got under weigh in the afternoon, with our company of 
 passengers somewhat thinned in number. It was now raining 
 heavily over parts of Madeira, and the atmosphere was rendered 
 somewhat uncomfortable by the tepid humidity of it. It seemed 
 extraordinary that so many people should, in defiance of the 
 strong misgivings which have been expressed as to the health- 
 yielding qualities of this climate, determme to land there, instead 
 
78 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 of proceeding to the magnificent skies and the wide and varied 
 climatic fields which are offered by the colonies of South Africa. 
 Madeira is unquestionably a beautiful island, but it seems to me 
 one of the saddest spots in the world. Its annals are full of 
 death, and hundreds are lured to it only to be bitterly cheated in 
 their dearest hopes. Besides,' the passage to the island is the 
 most uncomfortable part of the voyage to the Cape of Good Hope. 
 You have the swells of the Bay of Biscay, and plentiful risks 
 of the rude tempestuous weather of the North Atlantic. But 
 Madeira once passed, you straightway enter upon sunny seas and 
 steam under blue and golden skies ; and till Table Bay is entered 
 it is reckoned a novel experience if one meets with more than a 
 light head sea in the tail of the S.E. Trades. I stood leaning 
 over the rail .watching the features of the lovely land growing 
 faint at the extremity of our gleaming wake ; and whilst thinking 
 over some of the white-faced and trembling people whom we had 
 brought with us and whom I had noticed feebly descending the 
 gangway ladder to enter the shore boats, it came into my head to 
 ask the ' doctor,' as the medical officer is commonly called, some 
 questions touching the benefit to be derived by an invalid from a 
 journey to the Cape. He was a gentleman of experience, had 
 made the voyage many times, had had many kinds of patients 
 under his charge, and was well qualified therefore to give an 
 opinion. 
 
 After speaking of some of the people who had left us at 
 Madeira, I inquired what maladies he considered a voyage to the 
 Cape good fbr? He answered, ' I should say that every chronic 
 disease, no matter of what character, is sure of alleviation, if not 
 of being completely cured, by a fine weather trip hke this. The 
 change of scene, the mild, pure, refreshing breezes, the rest, the 
 absolute freedom from all worry and anxiety, are strong adjuncts 
 to the appropriate drugs or treatment in each case. Three sorts 
 of patients are chiefly benefited ; I mean the consumptive, the 
 rheumatic, and those who are suffering from what is termed 
 nervous exhaustion, the most distressing perhaps of all human 
 complaints, because of the physical suffering involving rnental 
 distress. In the case of consumption, the sweet, exhilarating air 
 and the warm weather almost invariably work wonders; but 
 always providing that the voyage be undertaken in time. Un- 
 happily, as we medical men know, it is too commonly the practice 
 of patients to postpone their departure until the disease has got 
 a strong hold of them ; and the result is that we are constantly 
 seeing patients helped on board at Southampton in the last stage 
 
A Wizard^ Wanderings from China to Peru. 79 
 
 of consumption, only to die of exhaustion on entering the tropics 
 through inability to withstand the heat and the consequent profuse 
 perspirations. If,' he continued, ' patients of this sort had deter- 
 mined to trust themselves to our tender mercies at the beginning 
 of their illness, the probability is that the round voyage, with per- 
 haps a stay of a month or two at the Cape, would have perfectly 
 recovered them.' ' And rheumatism ? ' said I. ' Well,' he replied, 
 ' for chronic muscular rheumatism — I will not speak of arthritis — 
 the warm and equable climate we have in passing through the 
 tropics possesses marvellous curative powers. I can offer myself 
 as an instance. I was .almost paralysed by muscular rheumatism ; 
 yet, after my first voyage the malady let me, and I have never 
 had an hour's suffering since from it. As to nervous exhaustion, 
 I can only say, that those, whose minds have been almost 
 unhinged by business troubles, by grief, or by mental shock of 
 any kind, find in the peaceful life of a steamer, with the change 
 of scene and the round of innocent amusements you get on board 
 ship, the only effectual kind of treatment it is possible to prescribe. 
 Again, to people recovering from almost any of the acute 
 diseases, a ship offers a nearly perfect convalescent home.' ' Can 
 you,' said I, ' tell me ot any cures which have come under your 
 notice ? ' ' It is difficult to give instances,' he answered ; ' I will 
 tell you why. You have your patient under observation for 
 eighteen or twenty days only, because people, as a rule, seldom 
 return in the same ship they sailed in ; you lose sight of them, 
 and their further progress can only be a matter of conjecture. 
 But of the comparatively small number of persons who make the 
 round trip I could tell you of several recoveries. One remarkable 
 case was that of a middle-aged gentleman, whose nervous system 
 had been cruelly prostrated by domestic trouble. When he came 
 on board he was the merest wreck of a man, and when he landed 
 in England he was, both mentally and physically, as sound as 
 ever he had been in the healthiest period of his life. Another 
 case was that of a "youth suffering from incipient phthisis, which 
 was certified by one of the leading London consultants. The 
 jwarmth and sea breezes so thoroughly restored him that, on 
 visiting, his medical adviser on his return, not the least trace of 
 the malady was discoverable.' 
 
 ' You think,' I said, ' a residence at the Cape for consumptive 
 people preferable to a residence at Madeira ? ' ' Assuredly. I have 
 visited the coast towns of the colony only, and cannot therefore 
 speak from personal experience of the climatic conditions of the 
 places up country; but the testimonies that have reached me 
 
8o A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 place beyond all dispute the certainty of cures in the Cape 
 Colonies, and of corresponding failures, not only at Madeira, but 
 at the Mediterranean and other popular South European resorts. 
 Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State, has a high local reputa- 
 tion for its climatic cures of consumption. I say local, because 
 that part of the world has yet to be discovered by or be made 
 known to our Northern sufferers. Some parts of the Transvaal, 
 too, and of the Northern portion of Natal, at the foot of the 
 Drakensberg Mountains, have also a climate that seems specially 
 designed for this class of patients. One is constantly meeting at 
 the Cape, or whilst travelling to and fro coastwise, with colonists 
 in excellent health, who assure one that when they first went out 
 to South Africa they arrived dying men. Such power does a dry 
 and genial climate possess in arresting the destructive tubercular 
 processes ! But to put the thing fairly ; those who linger at 
 home and postpone their departure to a time when help is hope- 
 less, run down hill at a fearful pace in the heat of the Cape 
 summer. We have, as you know, a lady on board who is dread- 
 fully ill with consumption ; I very much fear that the heat we 
 must expect on our arrival at South Africa will prove more than 
 her small remaining stock of strength can withstand. Should 
 she, however, happily manage to pull through it, there is every 
 reason to believe that, during the ensuing winter, she will so 
 improve as to be practically out of danger by the time the next 
 summer comes round.' 
 
 ' I notice that there is a good deal of drinking on board ; what 
 is your experience in this direction?' 'Well, I must confess 
 that a considerable amount of " nipping " goes on as a rule! It is 
 not often that you see a passenger drunk ; in truth, intoxication is 
 of rare occurrence, and a vice which the rules of the ship render 
 difficult of practice ; but people get into the habit of having cock- 
 tails before and after breakfast, drinks at eleven, sherry and 
 bitters before'lunch, and so on, not to mention many incidental 
 adjournments to the bar, when games of bull, or chess, or poker, 
 and the like, are won or lost.' ' This " nipping " as you term it, 
 can hardly serve the end of persons in search of health ? ' 
 ' Hardly, indeed 1 but I am quite convinced that passengers do 
 themselves more injury by over-eating than by over-drinking. 
 Nine out of ten persons devour out and away more food on 
 board ship than they do on shore. Of course they should eat very 
 much less, when you consider the temperature, and the little 
 exercise they take. It is anything but an agreeable sight at break- 
 fast, say, on a hot morning in the tropics, to see people plodding 
 
■ A Jfi'zard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 8r 
 
 steadily through the " Bill of Fare," Hterally surfeiting themselves, 
 beginning, perhaps, with a plate of porridge, and then working 
 away at fish, a mutton chop, a grilled bone, Irish stew, sausages, 
 bacon and eggs, ham and tongue, and winding-up with a top layer 
 of bread-and-butter and marmalade. I assure you I once at my 
 table watched a lady make just such a breakfast as I have given 
 you the details of. 
 
 ' The whole ' Bill of Fare,' as it stands morning after morning, 
 accompanied by powerful flushings of tea or coffee, is by no 
 means an unusual breakfast at sea. As a result of all this eating 
 and drinking, a passenger finds himself rather unwell ; he doses 
 himself, or comes to me complaining of headache and of feeling 
 heavy and dull. Of course he attributes it all " to the dreadful 
 heat." If passengers would control their appetites and limit them- 
 selves to one meal of meat a day, taking care to eat plenty of fruit 
 and fresh vegetables, they would have very few disorders indeed 
 to ascribe to the heat, which, in fact, is never very great, as you 
 may easily ascertain by watching the thermometer.' There is 
 much good sense, I think, in all this, and persons proposing to 
 make a voyage, whether for health, pleasure, or business, may 
 thank me for the suggestions indicated in this brief chat with 
 the doctor. I hope, in due course, to deal with the victualing of 
 ocean steamers, and from the ' Bills of Fare ' for breakfast, lunch, 
 and dinner, which I shall probably give as illustrative of the 
 quahty of living on board ship, readers will judge that, when 
 passengers are charged with over-eating, the accusation implies a 
 very large volume of food for the indulgence of their voracity. 
 As a matter of curiosity, I ask^ed the steward what he reckoned 
 as the average expenditure per male passenger for drinks. He 
 answered that he would take each passenger as spending from 
 three to four pounds a week, but in many cases the figure rose 
 to as high as nine or ten pounds a week. This is at the rate of 
 from two hundred to five hundred a year for liquor ; and when 
 you consider that spirits and wines are no dearer on board than 
 they are on shore — indeed, in some ships they are cheaper — 
 you may judge that a man who spends, say five pounds a week 
 on drink, must contrive to stow away a pretty large liquid cargo 
 in the course of the seven days. 
 
 A passenger steamer is, indeed, a kind of hotel, and obviously 
 among the most important personages on board her must be the 
 head steward and the cook, the two powers who rule the tables of 
 the saloon, and who supply us with the most welcome of all breaks 
 in the monotony of sea existence. The steward, in short, must 
 
 G 
 
82 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 needs be a feature of weight and moment in the internal economy 
 of the ship. The popularity of the vessel must depend a very 
 great deal upon him. Ill-chosen and badly-cooked provisions, a 
 meagre table, and indifferent wines will be remembered to the 
 prejudice of a vessel when the lively gratitude inspired by the 
 commander's able management in foul weather and amid dan- 
 gerous seas has long ago faded out. I could never gaze at the 
 head steward of the steamer without an emotion of respect not un- 
 mingled with awe. Care lay dark in every seam in his face. How 
 should it have been otherwise ? He had a number of stewards under 
 him who needed close watching. He had two cooks — a butcher, 
 and a baker to confer with, remonstrate with, and quarrel with. I 
 remember a man once complaining to me that his father allowed 
 him but one hundred a year, which was all he had to live upon. 
 ' For, consider,' said he, ' that there are in one year alone not 
 only three hundred and sixty -five breakfasts, but three hundred and 
 sixty-five luncheons and three hundred and sixty-five dinners ! ' 
 But think of an official having every day whilst he is at sea to 
 provide three sets of breakfast for the three classes of passengers, 
 two dinners and a luncheon, a dinner, and tjj^^teas and two 
 suppers! 'It is not,' exclaimed the steward to me, in a voice 
 broken by emotion, ' as if there was a Meat Market over the side 
 where, if I was at a- loss to knpw^iat change of dish to offer, I 
 could purchase what I wantedT*^Bfcthis lies every head steward's 
 difficulty A certain amount of p^Wistons is put on board, and 
 out of what there is a man has to provide as good a dinner as you 
 would get at an excellent table a'hbte ashore. How it is done 
 beats my knowledge, but it is done. 
 
 The conclusion must necessarily be that head stewards are 
 natural geniuses, born to move in culinary and gastronomic 
 spheres, where plenty reigns, where tinned stuff is unknown, and 
 where there are no shipboard limitations to obstruct a choice and 
 expansive taste. I will ask the public to bear with me for a 
 moment, whilst I give examples of the character of a few of the 
 meals furnished to first, second, and third class passengers on 
 board my three-masted steamer. Here are three saloon break- 
 fast illustrations: i. Bloaters, mutton chops, grilled ham, deviled 
 turkey, Irish stew, savoury omelettes, curry and rice, porridge and 
 potatoes. 2. Fried fish, mutton chops, minced veal, liver and 
 bacon, sausages, deviled bones, curry and rice, boiled eggs, por- 
 ridge, and potatoes. 3. Haddock, grilled rump steak, eggs and 
 bacon, chicken and rice, grilled bones, Irish stew, and so on. For 
 samples of a second-class breakfast : 1. Fried fish, mutton chops, 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 83 
 
 boiled eggs, porridge, and potatoes. 2. Haddock, grilled steak, 
 eggs and bacon, porridge, and potatoes. This, in my time, 
 would have been thought an exceptionally fine repast to serve in 
 a cuddy where they charged you seventy and ninety guineas for 
 a cabin. For the third class the head steward manages to make 
 out a plentiful meal of Irish stew, salt fish, steak, hashed meats, 
 and porridge without limit. As an example of a saloon luncheon, 
 the ' Bill of Fare ' offered soup, two entries, potatoes, cold meats 
 of every description, and, when I questioned the steward, he told 
 me that in hot weather he gives brawn, pressed tongue, raised 
 pies, cold poultry, fish, four kinds of pastry, fruit, and salads. 
 How is it done ? I have before me a list of the dry and wet stores 
 on board the vessel, and, on looking over it, I still find myself 
 saying, ' How is it done ? ' 
 
 One sees many things to look at and to find amusement in on 
 board an ocean passenger boat. The show of human nature 
 not, indeed, great ; perfectly natural people are not very common 
 either on sea or on shore, and voyages are scarcely long enough 
 now-a-days to suffer the mind to lapse into ingenuousness. Yet 
 an attentive •olfcel'ver will often observe human nature breaking 
 out here and thqfe, chiefly in unexpected places. One thing I 
 noticed ; the pricK fathers and husbands had in the children and 
 wives they left behind them.^ jftgr a week or two a man would 
 come up and break off in bjBRjT to put his hand in his pocket 
 and produce a little packePof photographs — his wife and his 
 children, and particularly the baby — and though there might be 
 nothing remarkable to admire in the little fat object, the sight of 
 whose portrait put a kind of yearning into the father's eyes as he 
 glanced at it a moment before returning it to his pocket, yet the 
 tenderness of the thing touched and pleased one. It would take 
 a long time to bring a man into this state of communicativeness 
 on shore ; but the feeling of distance and of isolation is strong at 
 sea, and thoughts of home and the dear ones there will thaw the 
 iciest reserve, and instil a spirit of kindliness and goodwill fore 
 and aft. It was impossible to look over the side, to feel the 
 glorious breeze full upon the cheek and whistling through the 
 teeth, to understand that the roasting African coast was, com- 
 paratively speaking, but a few leagues distant, without thinking of 
 those British sailors whose stern duty it is to watch over the 
 interests of our country in the torrid climes from between 
 Saldanha Bay and Sierra Leone. On board an ocean steamer, 
 always making a breeze of wind by her rapid progress, or stem- 
 ming the blue and invigorating breath of the South-East Trades, 
 
 G— 2 
 
84 A Wizard's Wandermgs from China to Peru. 
 
 with awnings protecting her decks fore and aft, with ports wide 
 open, with many tons of ice in her hold, and with a bar at which 
 all day long yoii'may get cool drinks passing under fifty names, it 
 is not very easy to realise the fate of Royal naval officers and men 
 anchored within an easy run of the spot through which your 
 steamer is sweeping, or creeping in gunboats or small corvettes 
 from one fiery village coast to another. 
 
 At Cape Town I met a lieutenant of a well-known vessel that had 
 been stationed for many months upon the barbarous African coast. 
 His little ship had just arrived at Simon's Bay, and this officer, 
 a fine, hearty, genial fellow, had come to the old Cape Settlement 
 for a day or two to enjoy himself and forget, if he could, life on 
 shipboard on the West African Station. He was burnt up to the 
 complexion of a coloured man, and told me some desperate 
 stories of the sick list and of fever, of thirty grains of quinine for 
 a dose, of horrible morbid thoughts causing a man as he lies in 
 his coffin of a cabin, reeking with cockroaches, to cast his languid • 
 ■ gaze about in search of any implement to end his life. I re- 
 member when we met that it was a beautiful moonlight night ; 
 the air was deliciously cool ; a light bieeze coming in soft gusts 
 down Table Mountain shook many sweet odours from trees of 
 the drooping morn-lily and from the red petals of the oleander, 
 silvered by the moon-gleams. The lieutenant stood awhile in a 
 kind of rapture, with his hands clasped. The posture and the 
 emotion were absolutely unaffected. He breathed deep, and ex- 
 claimed, ' I have not set my foot off" the ship for seven months. 
 You may conceive what this scene means to me.' He behaved 
 like a man in a dream. Before parting we entered a little draw- 
 ing-room, where there was a piano. He turned to me with a smile, 
 and said, ' Time was when I could play this thing. I wonder if 
 West Africa has left any music in me ! ' He sat down and played 
 over a tune or two, and you saw how the very sound of the 
 melodies affected him, and how they carried him many thousands 
 of miles away home to where his wife and his little children were. 
 To watch him getting up and looking at the piano was like seeing 
 a shipwrecked stranded man welcoming some sign of life and of 
 help washing up to him. It gave me a better idea of the true 
 signification of banishment to the West African Coast than I could 
 have gathered from a whole volume of description. ' He also 
 serves who only stands and waits,' says Milton, in one of the subli- 
 mest of his sonnets, and it is not necessary that there should be 
 war to test the courage, the dutifulness, and wonderful capacity of 
 self-sacrifice of the Queen's sailor. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE APPROACH TO TABLE BAY — SOUTH AFRICAN SCENERY — THE 
 lion's head — TABLE MOUNTAIN — ARRIVAL QF AN AMERICAN 
 WHALE SHIP — THE PHANTOM SHIP OF VANDERDECKEN — 
 STRANGE TRADITIONS — SPECIAL FEATURES OF CAPE TOWN. 
 
 An element of grandeur enters into the beauty of the scene of 
 Table Bay as you survey it from the spot where the ocean steamers 
 drop anchor before entering the docks. The general notion 
 amongst Europeans of South African scenery is that of leagues of 
 roasting white sands, with an inland flatness of parched and 
 stunted vegetation. This delusion is largely owing to the accounts 
 sailors have given of their shipwreck on the African coast. 
 In all the old stories it is always mile upon mile of sand, with 
 nothing in view but the distant figures of a horde of Arabs or 
 nude barbarians, restlessly awaiting an opportunity to pounce 
 down upon poor Jack, strip him of his boots and jacket, and carry 
 him off, secured to the tail of a camel, into captivity to some village 
 of small huts, filled with sable ladies and picaninnies, commonly 
 about five hundred miles inland, and, therefore, a very long and 
 thirsty walk for the castaway mariner. The real truth is that the 
 coast of Africa, certainly in its southern part, abounds in many 
 beautiful bays, enriched with romantic scenery, and ennobled by 
 towering mountains, near or distant. Table Bay is an example. 
 You get something of the impression of wonder that is produced 
 upon you by Sydney Harbour when you enter this bay for the 
 first time. The mountains lifting their eternal heads, crowned 
 with snow-white vapour, give a majesty to the perspective. The 
 water of the bay is of an exquisitely soft blue. 
 
 At the base of that grand and picturesque height named the 
 Lion's Head you see the houses standing like ivory toys, whilst 
 the white surf gleams in masses upon the beach, beautified with 
 the greenery of gardens just beyond. The mountain sides seem 
 draped in velvets of green and brown. It is the purity and 
 transparency of the atmosphere that imparts this surprising soft- 
 ness of tone. You specially note the charming effect in the view 
 
 85 
 
86 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 of the Hottentot Holland Mountains which, even in their dim 
 distance, gather a sort of richness in their azure tint and fascinate 
 the eye with a cloud-like tenderness, bland as the shining -fulness 
 of swelling summer vapour slowly sailing above the horizon to the 
 wind, but with a sky-line too cleanly cut and too deliberately fan- 
 tastic in its irregularity t6 be mistaken for anything but the high 
 sierra of a range of lofty mountains. The many colours of that 
 morning supplied me with just such a picture of Cape Town as 
 one would most like to see. From the flat summit of Table 
 Mountain, where the white vapour was beginning to gather 
 against the unspeakable blue of the sky beyond, the gaze de- 
 scended into the dark violet shadows of solemn ravines, took 
 in the twilight in deep scars, the metallic lustre of groups of 
 silvery trees, the vivid green of tracts of vine, bushes, with now 
 and again a large cloud-shadow sweeping a sort of faint purple 
 light over the sun-lit patches of red soil, of granite-like promin- 
 ences, and of abrupt falls of rock bronzed in their massive flats 
 as though the hand of old Time had coated them with iron 
 — I say — the gaze descending into those heights of nearly four 
 thousand feet came to a most lovely grouping of houses, low- 
 roofed, with windows shining, with much shrubbery between, and 
 verandahs veiling the white fronts with a delicate violet gloom. 
 In the foreground were the docks with the heavy spars of a 
 man-of-war or two giving a density to the complex tracery of the 
 lighter masts and rigging of merchant vessels and steamers. A red 
 powder-flag, fluttering at the masthead of a small vessel anchored 
 close in, sufficed to give a sharp distinctness to the houses on 
 a line with it on the hillside. It was a contrast, calculated to 
 lend to distance the precision you obtain by looking through a 
 lens ; and all other notes of colours, I observed, produced the 
 same effect, such as a red funnel, the American stars and stripes, 
 the English ensign floating at a peak. And still a wonderful com- 
 plexity of tints took the eye as it swept round the margin of the 
 bay past Woodstock, with its foreground of pleasure-boats and 
 quaintly imagined bathing-machines and the ruddy patches of 
 the soil on the mountains — of the windmill bold against the airy 
 azure of the far inland heights. The water always came round in 
 a brilliant blue to the throbbings of its own surf upon the shore 
 of dazzling white sand, of shining houses, of little spaces of soft 
 green, and the mighty flanking of the cathedral mountains. But 
 the magic that works so much of beauty here can neither be 
 expressed nor suggested. I speak of the enchantment of the 
 radiant atmosphere. Nothing is lost in this marvellous trans- 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 87 
 
 parency, and you think of the towns and plains at a dreamlike 
 distance away inland that would be visible to you from the com- 
 manding altitude of Table Mountain if those stately peaks lying 
 fifty miles distant, stretching as far as Tulbagh, did not barricade 
 the regions beyond them with their mystical altitudes. 
 
 In the days preceding the .Suez Canal, and when sailing 
 ships were making the voyage to Australia and India, Table Bay 
 was a much more familiar sight to Englishmen than it now is. 
 Vessels full of passengers were repeatedly calling here for one 
 reason or another, and the impressions people received they 
 carried away and talked about at home and elsewhere. It is 
 seldom nowadays that you see the big passenger sailing ship in 
 the bay. Reports come from L'Agulhas of many kinds of craft 
 passing that stormy point ; but the times are gone when the cold 
 blue waters of this splendid haven reflected the checkered sides 
 and the burnished masts of tall ships which had dropped anchor 
 here as a place of call and a break in the tediousness of four or 
 five months of passage to Pacific coasts, or to the hot regions to 
 the north of the Indian Ocean. Hence, often as the scene has 
 been described, a man may yet with a resonable amount of con- 
 science venture to offer a sketch of Table Bay, and of its town 
 and neighbourhood as they now are. I must confess that all the 
 while that I remained in Cape Town I was never weary of ad- 
 miring the scenery of its noble tract of waters, of the bright 
 mountain-shadowed bays, and the granite giants which looked 
 down upon the town. The dock officials very kindly placed a 
 small steamer at my disposal for a trip, and in company with 
 several gentlemen I made one of the most delightful little 
 voyages that can be imagined. To as far as Ca,mp's Bay we 
 opened a hundred novel beauties. The mountains for ever 
 accompanied us. Go where we would their dominating presence 
 was a mighty shadow in the blue heavens. To me, Table 
 Mountain looked like the ruins of some immense cathedra 1 raised 
 by hands in days when there were Titans in the land. From the 
 centre of the bay it resembles the remains of a vast wall, and 
 round the slope of the Lion's Head you seem to find the theory 
 of giants having constructed this amazing edifice confirmed by 
 vast blocks of rock and granite which might well pass for the 
 headstones and churchyard memorials of the burial grounds of 
 a vanished colossal race. It is here, especially, that you observe a 
 hundred startling phantasies in the shapes and postures of these 
 stones, prone or upright ; enormous owls, cowled monks of huge 
 stature, prodigious women in drapery carved, as one would sup- 
 
88 A Wizard^ s Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 pose, to perfection. You would say, indeed, that the remains of 
 giants reposed upon this rocky massive slope, that their sportive 
 fancies were perpetuated in these wild and grotesque shapes, 
 just as traces of their serious and splendid genius remained in 
 the spacious front of a mountain, cathedral-like in its immensity, 
 and to this day reverberating the old giant organ notes of praise 
 in the low melodious thunder of every blast sweeping down the 
 sheer abrupt from the white cloud resting upon its brow. It is 
 the cloud, the ' table-cloth,' as it is called, that gives to Table 
 Mountain and to the sentinel eminences that stand on either 
 hand of it, much of the wonder and not a little even of the 
 magnificence you find in it. 
 
 Whilst taking that cruise about the bay which I have just now 
 mentioned, I came across a ship that I would not very willingly 
 have missed. She was an American whaler, and had been out 
 for twenty-two months bagging whales in about latitude 42 ° South. 
 She had 800 barrels of oil aboard, and was certainly one of the 
 queerest and rustiest old hulls I ever had the fortune to encounter. 
 I was told that whalers are rare birds in Table Bay now-a-days, 
 though in former times they were plentiful enough. I kept the 
 steamer alongside of her for some time that I might inspect her. 
 Her metal sheathing was green as grass, and you saw the barna- 
 cles upon it through the transparency a httle way below to where 
 the sheathing came. The large blocks employed in ' cutting in ' 
 had scraped her sides clean all about her gangway, She appeared 
 to have worked half the oakum out of her, and her seams were 
 hollow. Her name was the Sea Queen, Joseph Thomson, master, 
 and she hailed, as might easily- have been conjectured, from 
 New Bedford. Boats exhibiting every symptom of hard wear 
 stood bottom up on chocks, or hung from massive wooden davits 
 over the side. Dirt and grime lay thick on the scuttles. The 
 name of Herman Melville rose to my tongue as I looked at her, 
 with her short top-gallant masts and crowfoot rings over top- 
 gallant rigging for the men to keep a look-out from. No one 
 who had read ' Omoo,' or ' The Whaler,' or ' Typee,' and saw 
 this ship, but must have thought of the brilliant Yankee sea- 
 yarner. The Sea Queen was just such another old hooker as 
 brought Melville away as a beach-comber from the Marquesas. 
 As I stood looking at the row of heads over the rail I thought to 
 ni_\self : ' Surely the right name for this craft must be the Littk 
 Jule, and if Mr. Jermin, the chief mate, is aboard I will ask him 
 to show me that wonderfid sextant with which at noon, when 
 slightly^ the worse for rum, he would go hunting for the sun all 
 
A l^izard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 89 
 
 over his grass- covered decks ! ' There is a pleasure in the unex- 
 pected confrontment of the perfect realisation of some visionary 
 ■favourite in a work of fiction. I have met Bumble, also Noah 
 Claypole, and I have shaken hands with Parson Adams. Here 
 now was the Little Jule lying in Table Bay under the name of the 
 Sea Queen. She carried thirty ot a crew ; they all came to the 
 rail to look at us, and I heartily wish some artist had been with 
 us to jot down with his pencil the dehghtful variety of countenance 
 and of costume exhibited by that array of whalers. There were 
 white men and black men ; men whose faces were all hair, and 
 who looked like sailors striving to peer through a mat. There 
 were Dutch faces and Yankee faces ; faces that might have been 
 carved out of a balk of timber, and faces of the hue of the ship's 
 bread, which I suspect might have been found crawling about on the 
 legs of innumerable weevils in the little barky's lazarette. There 
 were four harpooners, and they came over the side and exhibited 
 the small brass muskets or guns with which nowadays they kill 
 whales by firing explosives into them, though of course the old- 
 fashioned harpoon is carried in plenty and repeatedly used. Each 
 tub of oil, they told me, contained 310 gallons, and as they had 
 800 such tubs filled up in their hold, and as, moreover, they hart 
 only been twenty-two months cruising out ot the forty months' 
 voyage their owners had limited them to, there was a good chance 
 of every man's 'lay ' ending in a big pocketful of dollars. A man 
 might live a hundred years and yet never come across so quaint, 
 old, seedy, battered, and grimy a whaler as this Sea Queen, fresh 
 as she was from nearly two years' washing about in search of prey 
 south of the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 The sight was one to stir the fancy, and I certainly found no 
 great extravagance of imagination in the sudden arising in me of 
 thoughts of the * Flying Dutchman^ out of that wallowing old 
 whaler from which our little steamer was now speeding. If 
 Table Bay and all about the Cape of Good Hope be not the' 
 right neighbourhood wherein to dream and think of the Phantom 
 Ship, I know not what other parallels to choose. It was off 
 Agulhas, in the teeth of one of the wild north-westers you get in 
 these seas, that Skipper Vanderdecken swore his dreadful and 
 lamentable oath not to give up trying to weather the stormy 
 headland even though he should have to wait till the Day of 
 Judgment came. Did the Dutchman, before his fierce defiance 
 of Heaven, ever bring up in Table Bay ? No doubt he did. He 
 was from Batavia, and there is yet living an ancient Hollander, 
 who, when a boy, remembered his grandfather telling how once 
 
go A U'izard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Vanderdecken, when outward bound to Batavia, had called at 
 Table Bay for fruit and tobacco, on dit. It was during his return 
 voyage from Batavia, after his visit to Table Bay, that the skip- 
 per provoked the wrath of Heaven by his imprecations. The 
 ancient Hollander's grandfather lived long after Vanderdecken 
 had been sighted by ships struggling to windward, and this it was 
 that impressed upon the recollection of the Dutch grandsire the 
 picture of the ship he had seen straining at her hemp cable a 
 little to the westwards of where the breakwater now is. She is 
 described as having a very curious low-built bow, with a mass of 
 timbers curving at the head to the immensely thick cut-water. 
 Her bowsprit is steeved to an angle of 45 deg. ; at the end of it 
 is a round top, and standing perpendicularly up out of this top is 
 a small mast with another top at the head of it big enough to 
 admit of its occupation by two or three men. A very heavy 
 square yard hangs by lifts under the bowsprit, and on the little 
 perpendicular mast she carries what may be called a spritsail 
 yard, the foot of whose sail spreads on the yard beneath. I: he 
 has lower topsail and topgallant yards, with large round tops at 
 the head of her lower masts, and smaller tops, but of a like 
 character, at her topmast's heads, instead of cross-trees. She 
 has a very lofty stern, with a kind of castle at the end of the poop 
 where the taffrail should be ; and it is here where Vanderdecken 
 takes his stand, trumpet in hand, when a vessel heaves in sight, 
 and he desires to speak her. Her mizzen-mast rakes aft, and 
 carries a triangular sail set on a gaff, with another jib-headed 
 sail that sets flying outside like a bonnet or a water-sail. The 
 break of the poop comes to before the mainmast, so that that 
 spar pierces the poop deck whilst the athwart-ship rail is set up, 
 so to speak, on either hand the main-mast. The high bulwarks 
 end abruptly just abaft the fore-rigging. She is pierced for eight 
 guns, but it is not certainly known whether she still carries the 
 quaint old pieces that grinned in her hey-day tlirough her ports. 
 The ancient Dutchman affirmed that his grandfather used to say 
 she was painted a pale yellow. Time, probably, has left to the 
 struggling fabric" but little of its old garnishings. There can be 
 no doubt, however, that the above description is that of Vander- 
 decken's ship that sailed from Batavia for Holland in or about 
 the year 1641 on a voyage which, through the wickedness of her 
 profane master, will never come to an end as long as old ocean 
 continues to roll, if one is verdant enough to believe the yarn ! 
 
 I made many inquiries whilst at Cape Town as to whether 
 there were any traditions in the neighbourhood of Vanderdecken 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 91 
 
 having been sighted, but nobody seemed to know much about 
 him, and if it had not been for the old Dutchman I should not 
 have been able to describe her. I have ascertained, however, 
 that there is no foundation for the statement that Vanderdecken 
 was fired upon by the Dutch whilst seeking to enter Table Bay 
 during the winter season, when no vessel was allowed to come in. 
 It is quite inconsistent with the old tradition to pretend that in 
 consequence of being fired upon'the skipper put to sea and was 
 lost. It would be a harsh judgment indeed that should compel 
 the phantom of a ship that had foundered to go on sailing about 
 for ever. It is well known that the sole reason Vanderdecken has 
 for hailing a ship, is, that he may send a boat with letters ior the 
 home that he and his crew have not revisited for two centuries and 
 a half. The superstition is that if a captain heaves his ship to 
 receive one of these messages from the Dutchman, he and his 
 vessel are doomed. In this point lies the real pathos of the 
 thing. Poor Vanderdecken and his bald-headed blear-eyed, and 
 tottering sailors' are for ever yearning to communicate with those 
 homes which have long ago ceased to exist ; but the mariner, 
 knowing the penalty of accepting the mission, flies at the approach 
 of the Phantom Ship, which, after a short chase, desolately shifts 
 her helm and braces once again sharp up against the visionary 
 gale, that prohibits her from doubling the Cape. 
 
 Many years, 1 believe, have now elapsed since Vanderdecken 
 was last sighted. The latest instance I can find is that of the 
 man-of-war Leven, commanded by Captain W. F. W. Owen. It 
 was on April 6th, 1823, when this vessel, being off Danger Point, 
 bound to Simon's Bay, saw the Barracouta, another ship of war, 
 two miles or thereabouts to leeward. This was considered, extra- 
 ordinary, as it was known on board the Ltven that the other 
 vessel's sailing orders must have despatched her leagues away 
 from the place in which she was now seen. Captain Owen bore 
 down to speak, but the other stood away, though she was 
 observed some time afterwards to lower a boat. Next day the 
 Leven anchored in Simon's Bay. The Barracouta arrived a week, 
 later. On inspecting her log, it was seen that she was 300 miles away 
 from the spot where it was believed she had been seen. Twice 
 the Leven sighted the Phantom Ship. On the second occasion, 
 the Dutchman lowered a boat, but Captain Owen, perfectly aware 
 of the penalty that would attend his undertaking the delivery of 
 a letter for Vanderdecken, packed on canvas, and took to his 
 heels as fast as his ship would carry him. The authority for 'the 
 following is ' R. Montgomery Martin,' who published the statement 
 
92 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 in 1835. It will fitly close my reference to perhaps the most 
 picturesque and romantic of all the traditions of the sea : ' We 
 had been in dirty weather, as the sailors say, for several days, 
 and to beguile the afternoon, I commenced, after dinner, narra- 
 tives to the French officers and passengers (who were strangers 
 to the Eastern seas), current about the Flying Dutchman. The 
 wind, which had been refreshing during the evening, now blew a 
 stiff gale, and we proceeded on deck to see the crew make our 
 bark all snug for the night. The clouds, dark and heavy, coursed 
 with peculiar rapidity across the bright moon, whose lustre is so 
 peculiar in the southern hemisphere, and we could see a distance 
 of from eight to ten miles on the horizon. Suddenly, the second 
 officer, a fine Marseilles sailor, who -had been among the foremost 
 in the cabin in laughing at and ridiculing the story of the Flying 
 Dutchman, ascended the weather-rigging, exclaiming, " Voili le 
 volant Hollandais." The captain sent for his night-glass, and soon 
 observed : " It is very strange, but there is a ship bearing down 
 upon us with all sail set, while we dare scarcely show a pocket- 
 handkerchief to the breeze." In a few minutes the stranger was 
 visible to all on deck, her rig plainly discernible, and people on 
 her poop ; she seemed to near us with the rapidity of lightning, 
 and apparently wished to pass under our quarter, for the purpose 
 of speaking. The captain, a resolute Bordeaux mariner, said it 
 was quite incomprehensible, and sent for the trumpet to hail or 
 answer, when, in an instant, and while we were all on the qut-vive, 
 the stranger totally disappeared, and was seen no more.' 
 
 One characteristic of Cape Town lies in the number of its 
 Hansom cabs, and another feature that speedily excites the atten- 
 tion is the extraordinary posture of laziness into which the drivers 
 contrive, while their horses are standing still, to fling themselves. 
 You notice the effect of the climate in a little thing of this kind, 
 just as its drowsy influence is illustrated in the indolence of the 
 dogs, which lie about sleeping one on top of the other all day 
 long, though to be sure when the night comes, they atone for 
 their reserve during the day by a widespread barking that is often 
 hideous and distracting. Another feature is the cock-crowing. I 
 recollect one morning being awakened at about dawn. I went to 
 the open window, and saw the green light in the east gradually 
 brightening into a most delicate beautiful blue through! the lace- 
 work of greenery that festooned the verandah. I had not stood 
 a moment or two when I was surprised by an extraordinary kind 
 of groaning noise, that apparently rose from the whole surface of 
 the land on which Cape Town stands. It sounded to me like a 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China Peru. 93 
 
 mourning chorus of fanatics — thousands of Malays, perhaps, 
 smiting themselves and adoring Allah. It was not until a cock 
 in a neighbouring yard rang out its hoarse crow that I could 
 determine the nature of the multitudinous groanings. But this 
 adjacent cock having given me the key-note, I at once discovered 
 that the sounds which had puzzled me were produced by hundreds 
 and perhaps thousands of cocks crowing, for the most part, all at 
 once. Again, I may regard the horns of the fish salesmen as 
 another ' special feature ' to employ the language of trade. 
 The town is filled with carts, which are used for hawking fish 
 about, and the men who sell this fish announce their approach by 
 blowing a kind of trumpet. Throughout the day the air is re- 
 sonant with these detestable notes. The reader may conceive 
 for himself the sort of pleasure he would derive from street boys 
 passing his house every five minutes from six in the morning till 
 six at night blowing incessantly, every mother's son of them, a 
 trumpet that may be heard a mile off. This sort of noise the 
 people of Cape Town endure, apparently, for no other reason than 
 that their servants may know that some very tough and tasteless 
 fish is coming their way in a black man's cart. There are 
 thousands of crickets, too, when the blaring of these coloured 
 costermongers has ceased, to start a new sort of rhusic for the 
 night. Their utterance is like the sharp abrupt ringing of electric 
 bells. Heard afar their chimes are not without a kind of melodi- 
 ousness. The silvery monotonous singing seems always in corres- 
 pondence with the bright African moonshine, the brilliancy of the 
 twinkling stars, the deep respiration of the soft hot breeze amidst 
 boughs drooping with weight of foliage, or amidst flowers faint in 
 hue but glistening gem-like to the shining with the dew-drops 
 they offer to the moon. 
 
 Cape Town is charged with a cosmopolitanism of complexion ; 
 every shade is represented, from the ebony black of the negro- 
 born leagues away upland behind those distant blue mountains 
 there, to the white and sickly hue of the English girl languishing 
 in a chmate where the British rose may be sought for in vain.. Of 
 all the coloured folks the Malays are the oddest. These people 
 are artisans ; they drive cabs, they sell fish, they wash linen, and 
 so forth. They are all well to do, are aristrocratic from their 
 own standpoint, and are such a power in the place that the one 
 policy practised towards them, I believe, whether from the 
 Governor's table or the magisterial bench, is that of conciliation. 
 When I was in Cape Town some difficulty arose about a new 
 burial-ground that had been assigned to these Malays, who are 
 
94 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Mohammedans. They objected to the site, and affirmed their 
 intention of continuing to bury their dead in the old ground. A 
 dangerous insurrection was theatened ; the volunteers dressed 
 and armed themselves, and the troops were called out. Every 
 street corner had its little crowd of excited Malay men and 
 women, dressed in bright colours, who gesticulated furiously and 
 chattered with passionate rapidity about their grievance. Elderly 
 European ladies wandered about calling upon friends or visiting 
 liotels, alarming everybody with conjectures as to what the result 
 must be. We were all to be murdered in our beds ; we were all 
 to be poisoned in our cups ; we were all to be secretly stabbed 
 with weapons coated with some deadly mixture as we passed 
 through the streets ; our houses were to be fired, and we were all 
 to be starved by reason of the Malays (who seem to have the 
 chief victualing of the place in their hands amongst their other 
 privileges and dignities) refusing to sell food and drink to us. 
 Instead of looking for snakes under the bed we searched for 
 Malays coiled up in the darkness there ; and if Malay laundry- 
 men approached us with their little bills we kept the table be- 
 tween them and us whilst we inquh-ed into the motive of their 
 visit. Eventually the Malays, on being harangued, consented 
 to the interment of their dead in the new ground, the general 
 terror evaporated, and we ate, drank, and went to bed once more 
 without misgivings. Yet one saw in this incident the sort of 
 footing the Malays have in Cape Town. You would suppose 
 that they were an infinitely more powerful factor than the Dutch, 
 though you hear a very great deal indeed about the latter 
 element, afid next to nothing at all about the former unless there 
 be a religious riot. 
 
 I have no worse criticism to pass than this — nothing worse to 
 say of Capetown than that its drainage is extraordinarily and dis- 
 gracefully imperfect, and that its hotel accommodation should be 
 accepted as a scandal by the people. For the rest all is beauty, 
 all is grandeur. The famous drive round the mountain side called 
 the Kloof Road with its sheer descents of many hundred feet for 
 the gaze to search, the bays mountain-flanked, their green hollows 
 studded with white houses, with the giant comber of the South At- 
 lantic breaking in acres of dazzling foam upon the rugged beach, 
 leave such impressions upon the mind as years of travel amidst 
 famous scenes could not efface. The strong South-eastern sweep- 
 ing down the mountain finds children of its own in the obedient 
 trees leaning along its course. At long intervals a kind of 
 volcanic splendour is observed on the heights of the heaven- 
 
A Wizard^ s Wanderings from China to Peru. 95 
 
 seeking eminences by the burning of whole acres of the pine 
 tree ; the night is illuminated by the incandescence, the stars are 
 obscured by the masses of smoke settling in a dense fog about the 
 Blaawberg Mountains, and you respire an atmosphere charged 
 with a resinous aroma, and thick with light-grey agh. All about 
 Wynberg, High Constantia, and Claremont is pure fairy-land; 
 houses of graceful form shine amidst vegetation of tropical 
 luxuriance ; the white-faced old Dutch farmhouse stands, as it has 
 stood for years, with draped windows, silent amidst the stillness 
 of high trees, to which the shadow of the looming mountain 
 beyond imparts a deeper repose yet. A cheerful Cape cart trots 
 by with its happy family party snug under the cool cover. The 
 lively Africander whistles and shows his teeth to you with a salut- 
 ing grin, as he lolls upon the burden of his cart behind the slow- 
 moving oxen and the patient mule. And into all things the 
 marvellous blue of the heavens by day, the marvellous brilliance 
 of the stars by night, put the spirit of gracefulness, of tenderness, 
 and of romance. It is, indeed, a favoured land, for the climate, 
 for the growth of the soil, for natural beauties of a thousand 
 kinds. 
 
 Cape Town is not a sweet place, Men au coniraire. It's about 
 as dusty as Llandudno. Why, even the trees fronting your hotel 
 look ashamed and bow their heads in meek humiliation. The 
 blacks of the lower orders are about as lazy and independent a 
 lot of people you can well meet with. The Malays, if you get to 
 know them, you cannot but help Uking ; the Africanders also, but 
 Heaven save me from some of the Dutch I came across out 
 there, especially at Worcester ! 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 WITCHCRAFT IN SOUTH AFRICA — AN IMPOSTOR — STRANGE PREDIC- 
 TIONS — THE AMAXOSA — HOW THEY WERE DUPED — CETEWAYO'S 
 WITCH-DOCTORS — HOW CETEWAYO's HIDING-PLACE WAS DIS- 
 COVERED — KIMBERLEY — THE DIAMOND FIELDS OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
 
 The adventures I went through in South Africa would fill a three- 
 volume book, I fear. The Fates forbid that I may ever inflict 
 the same on the reviewers ! I gave my Magical performances 
 out here more with a view of exposing modern superstition than 
 anything else. 
 
 In South Africa Witchcraft holds a dreadful sway. I need hardly 
 remind my readers that every rising of the natives during this 
 century may be fairly ascribed to their witch-doctors. In 1857 
 when the Cape was almost stripped of troops because of the 
 Indian mutiny, occurred one of the most extraordinary instances of 
 self-immolation I ever heard of. The Amaxosa, unwarned by all 
 they had suffered from similar delusions in the past, suffered them- 
 selves to be persuaded by a madman or impostor, of the name of 
 Mhlakaza, into an act of almost incredible folly, which well-nigh 
 resulted in the entire extinction of their nation. He foretold that 
 on a certain day all the dead warriors and great men of old, were 
 to rise from their graves, and all the living to be endowed with 
 strength and beauty. Immense herds of the finest cattle were, to 
 come forth out of a cave, and wide fields of corn to spring up, and 
 the white man to wither like a leaf. 
 
 And the one condition of this great Kaffir millennium was faith 
 — faith that was to prove itself by the utter sacrifice of everything 
 that they possessed, except the arms of the warriors. The cattle 
 were to be killed, the grain destroyed,' and their fields suffered to 
 remain unsown. The one exception of the arms seems to show 
 that there was method in the madness of this Mhlakaza if madness 
 it was. He was supported by the predictions of a girl, who also 
 pretended to have communications with the Spirit World ; and also 
 by the chief Magoma who assured the people that he too had 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 97 
 
 received communications from the Unseen World, and that all 
 that the Prophet said would surely come to pass. 
 
 Incredible as it may appear, the Amaxosa not only believed 
 but were willing to prove their faith by their works. Corn and cattle 
 were destroyed. In vain did the Government try to dispel the 
 illusion by sending agents among them. The very interference 
 of Government seemed to confirm them in their extra- 
 ordinary belief, till at last the whole nation was on the verge of 
 starvation. Nearly 50,000 perished — one third of the entire 
 nation ! ! ! The colonists did what could be done, to provide 
 food for the famished thousands who invaded their homes, not as 
 conquerors but as beggars ; but many ghastly tales I heard of on 
 the spot of the dire extremities to which many were driven. The 
 Amaxosa never fully recovered from this act of national suicide. 
 In the early part of 1850 it was known that great excitement pre- 
 vailed in Kaffirland, through the prophecies ofanother rank impostor 
 named Umlangein. For some time past he had been inciting the 
 Kaffirs to rebellion as secretly as possible, assuring them of super- 
 natural aid in driving the white man into the sea. The late 
 disastrous war in Zululand was likewise brought about by the same 
 causes, Cetewayo's Witch-Doctors having assured him that the 
 Spirits had appeared to them and prophesied that he, the King, 
 would be successful. I shall not forget, for some time, the remark 
 Cetewayo made to me in October, 1879. ' I wish I had had you 
 for my Witch-doctor.' There was not much in the remark itself, 
 but there was in the meaning of it. It was as much as to say, ' I 
 see how I have been humbugged and brought to my present 
 position by believing too implicitly in my native Witch-doctors. 
 It is to be hoped his fa:te will be a warning to other savage 
 rulers. To see a brave man, as he undoubtedly was — a king with, 
 at one time at least, 50,000 fighting men at his beck and call, ready 
 to lay down their lives for him — a miserable prisoner cramped up 
 in the old Dutch Castle at Cape Town, at the time I visited him ; 
 and all because he put his trust in witchcraft was only a stronger, 
 inducement to me (if I needed it) to persevere and expose this 
 detestable form of humbug. It's a great mistake to suppose 
 Cetewayo was abandoned by his people. He was not ; and, with 
 all their faults, it speaks well for them, that though several of them 
 were flogged to try and get them to divulge the ex-king's hiding- 
 place, it had no effect upon them, and it was only by strategy 
 the desired information was obtained. Three of the prisoners 
 who were flogged, were blindfolded, and each taken to a separate 
 spot when two gun shots were fired, and each of course supposed 
 
 H 
 
98 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 that the other two were killed. And so the secret was obtained 
 from one or more of them, by this not very dignified proceeding. 
 
 The diamonds fields of South Africa, like the gold-bearing 
 streams and ravines of California, have brought to some fabulous 
 "Wealth, while to others they have been ' will o' the wisps,' leading 
 to ruin, despair, and death. As the pan washing and cradling of 
 the adventurous prospector of '49 has given way, on the Pacific 
 slope, to the operations of organised and scientific mining industry, 
 so the individual operations of the individual diamond diggers of 
 Griqualand, South Africa, in 187 1, with their rude bucket and 
 windlass, followed by the inclined wire, have been replaced by 
 skilled labour. Tunnels have been blasted through solid rock, 
 shafts have been sunk hundreds of feet into the earth, and yet 
 the precious bits of carbon are found in quantities to supply the 
 greed of avaricious man and furnish a Uving to thousands, and 
 wealth to a lucky few. 
 
 What is now known as Kimberley was called De Beer's New 
 Rush, and had already been yielding up its carbon crystals until 
 a city of tents and corrugated iron houses, with one huge music 
 hall and between 306 and 400 drinking places had clustered 
 around the enormous excavation, whence the earth had been 
 removed by single bucketfuls. This marvellous result of the 
 labours of the human ants who swarmed in its depths and on 
 its borders was the spot which became known the world round 
 as the Kolesberg Kopje, before it ' became the Kimberley 
 mine. 
 
 Some idea of the size of the Kopje, and the number of 
 people working on it daily will be gathered from the state- 
 ment that, at the time now spokeii of, 800 claims, each 
 being thirty feet square, and an average of about thirty men 
 — say twenty-six black and four white — worked in each claim, 
 giving a total of 24,000 working there. The first licenses to work 
 claims at the Kopje were issued on the 20th of July, 1871, and 
 in little more than a year the claims were carried down so deep, 
 many over eighty feet, that none of the roadways were left stand- 
 ing complete, though immense portions of them having the 
 appearance of huge broken walls remained. 
 
 Standing on an embankment, many feet high, one looks down 
 on an immense basin-shaped excavation, covered in with a 
 perfect cobweb of ropes. Wherever one's eyes rest, whether it 
 be on the sides of this excavation or the great chasms below, or 
 down in its lowest depths, there are human beings energetically 
 at work. The Kopje has been aptly described as a vast human 
 
A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 99 
 
 ant-hill. I do not know a more effective simile. Human beings 
 are everywhere moving about with an activity and in numbers, 
 like ants. They pass over the narrow roadways, glide down the 
 face of the excavations, or are at work at a depth which dwarfs 
 their statures into that of mere miniature men. Here men are 
 feverishly risking their necks day after day in the pursuit of 
 wealth. They pass over places where a false step — the slipping 
 of a foot, or the incorrectness of the eye in measuring a distance 
 — will cause their death. They climb up 'ascents that to the 
 inexpert seem unascendable. They slip down ropes that are only 
 fastened to frail tree branches driven into the loose earth. They 
 stand on ledges that are, perhaps, forty feet from the roadway 
 above, and forty feet above the bottom of the claim below. 
 They wheel barrows along narrow pathways that would startle 
 even some expert mountaineers. They work beneath tottering 
 masses, and every now and then these fall, maiming and 
 killing. 
 
 A friend and I visited the Kopje by moonlight, and the pic- 
 ture we witnessed could only be done justice to by the pencil 
 of an artist, and not by the pen of a liner. The lime-like soil 
 thrown up around the Kopje might well have been taken for the 
 sand of a Desert ; and the masses of earth standing upon the 
 hollow below, the remnants of the roadways, and the fantastic 
 workings of the various claims as broken pillars and crumbling 
 walls of the, monuments Jeft of the gorgeous palaces of the 
 ancientSi The galvanised iron ropes were now as a veil of silver 
 falling over the softly-illumined mine, into which the rays of the 
 moonlight streamed, making dark shadows that contrasted 
 strangely and brought out more conspicuously the columns and 
 walls on which the moonbeams played. 
 
 On the 25th of November, 1885, the Kimberley Railway 
 from Cape Town to the city of Kimberley, once ' De Beer's 
 New Rush,' was opened with imposing ceremonies partici- 
 pated in by many of the leading officials of South Africa. The 
 excursionists from Cape Town found themselves in a large city 
 with paved streets, elegant buildings and all of the evidences 
 of modern metropolitan prosperity. Thousands and tens of 
 thousands of people, embracing the entire population of the 
 district, which includes several smaller mines, were gathered to 
 welcome the arrival of the train bearing the distinguished guests, 
 some of them riding far beyond the hmits of the city and acting 
 as an escort of honour into the municipal boundaries. An 
 immense procession comprising all of the city officers, the mining 
 
 H 2 
 
loo A Wizard'' s Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 and business magnates, the various lodges and singing societies 
 of the city, and four companies of local military testified to the 
 marvellous and solid growth of the city. 
 
 The Great Mine of today is one of the grand enterprises 
 of the age, and the arrival of the excursion party was made 
 the occasion of opening communication between the inner 
 and outer shafts ■ at a distance of 550 feet below the sur- 
 face, the two shafts being 750 feet apart. The holes had 
 been drilled and charged with explosives in the last curtain 
 of rock in the tunnel — the key of the instruments to cause 
 the explosion was touched by a young lady, the obstruction 
 crumbled, and she was the first to walk through the opening in 
 the bowels of the earth far below the spot where, so short a time 
 ago, the bucket, the windlass and the wire rope had been the 
 only means of bringing to light the sparkling treasures hidden 
 by nature in her ample bosom. 
 
 It does not matter what part of -the world you may be in, you 
 are morally certain to find a Scotchman there. Whether it be 
 that the Scotch emigrants are, for the most part, men of better 
 education than those of other nations, of whose citizens only the 
 poorest and most ignorant are known to emigrate, or whether the 
 Scotchman owes his uniform success in every climate to his per- 
 severance or his shrewdness, the fact remains that wherever 
 abroad you come across a Scotchman, you invariably find hira 
 prosperous and respected. The Scotchman crosses the seas in 
 calculating contentment ; the Irishman, too frequently, in sorrow 
 and despair. 
 
 In the hot regions of Central Africa, sheep imported from 
 colder regions lose their wool in the course of a year, and thin 
 hair takes its place. The lion, I noticed, which in Northern 
 Africa has a long thick mane, in Central Africa has none. 
 
 The Tunisian gentleman is gifted with a never-failing instinct 
 of good taste ; however violent the juxtaposition in their dress 
 the tints, somehow, never seem to clash ; exactly the right tone 
 is chosen and put by the side of something whose shade har- 
 monises with it to a nicety. I do not believe the colours have 
 been yet invented that would not go together if properly ad- 
 justed as to tone. People talk with horror of blue and green, 
 and at the same time the Tunisians are very fond of the amalga- 
 mation. They seem to have a penchant, however, for extreme 
 delicacy of tint, wearing a rose-coloured robe with a jacket of 
 lovely tea-green, or canary-yellow nether garments, with a pale 
 blue bernbuse. The women retain the white linen veil and 
 yashmak while walking in the streets; 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE ' DARK CONTINENT ' — STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE — LORD 
 WOLSELEY — GORDON — KHARTOUM — A SAIL DOWN THE NILE — 
 REMINISCENCES OF PAST AGES — UJIJI— THE SIMOON — THE 
 SPHINX — THE PYRAMIDS. 
 
 The ' Dark Continent ! ' The very mention of it calls up to our 
 minds thoughts of dear old Livingstone, and of General Gordon, 
 the discovery of the former by that marvellous, intrepid explorer 
 Stanley, and the lamentable failure to save the latter through the 
 half-hearted grandmotherly policy of — well — somebody. Only 
 by travelling through this country as I have done, can you 
 conceive the difficulties which have to be encountered. General 
 Wolseley's magnificently planned march across the Desert ranks 
 high in the annals of mihtary glory, although he was unsuccessful 
 in re-leaving Khartoum. The fault was not his. Those fatal 
 words, ' Too late,' will haunt those whom the cap fits till their 
 dying day ! 
 
 The date forests are very picturesque in Egypt, the early 
 seat of political civilisation, where the first epoch was the dynasty 
 of the Pharaohs, or ' great kings,' and commenced, we are taught 
 to believe, with Mizraim, the son of Ham, second son of Noah, 
 2188 B.C. The population of the present vice-royalty is about 
 8,000,000. 
 
 We sail down the Nile, occasionally landing to visit the old 
 temples of the past. 
 
 Take, for instance, Denderah. How marvellously distinct are 
 the hieroglyphics on the columns of this Temple ! Athotes, son 
 of Menes, it is believed, was the author of them, and wrote the 
 history of the Egyptians, 2122, B.C. Here physic was first prac- 
 tised by the priests. Pythagoras, on these very steps, endeavoured 
 to explain the philosophy of disease, and the action of medicine, 
 529, B.C., whilst Hippocrates, the father of medicine, flourished 
 out here about 422, b.c. Hieroglyphics, or sacred engravings, 
 have, during the present century, iBjm- much elucidated by such 
 101 
 
I02 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 men as Young, ChampoUion, Rosellini, and others. The popu- 
 lation of Egypt Proper is 5,583,000, out of whom 5,000,000 are 
 Egyptians Proper; 95,000 Bedaween, 290,00c Copts, 12,000 
 Jews and Armenians, 40,000 Negroes and Abyssinians, 16,500 
 French, 7,000 Germans, 6,000 British. We naturally pay a visit 
 to the Temple of Abone, and likewise the Temple of Maharrakka, 
 Nubia near New Dongola, hard by the third cataract. 
 
 Is it not astonishing what a wonderful state of preservation 
 these interesting places are in ? In the bright dry climate of 
 these parts, 'time passes with no heavy tread, and leaves light 
 footprints in its track.' Marble and granite are almost perennial 
 in their duration, which is very noticeable as we proceed on our 
 journey from Lake Nyanza, the great feeder of the Nile, to 
 Gondokoro, following the White Nile due north till it meets the 
 Blue Nile at Khartoum. 
 
 MEETING OF STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE. 
 
 Let us suppose ourselves in the very centre of Africa. What a 
 marvellous feat of endurance and pluck was there depicted. After 
 a tedious journey of 236 days the gallant American explorer, 
 Stanley, met that glorious pioneer of truth. Dr. David Livingstone, 
 at Ujiji, on the eastern shores of that vast Lake Tanganyika. 
 ' Dr. Livingstone, I believe, sir ? ' he said, as he raised his cap, 
 just as if he was addressing a friend on 'change. How happy 
 must dear old Livingstone have felt to think he was not forgotten 
 by those at home ; only those who have lived away from their 
 fellowmen in an alien country for any period of time can con- 
 ceive how truly thankful he felt to again speak to a white man, 
 and get news from the outer world. Stanley found him in a very 
 exhausted condition and it was some days before they started 
 together to explore the northern end of the Lake. 
 
 You, of course, remember Dr. Livingstone had left England, for 
 the third time on the 16th August, 1865, for Zanzibar, an island 
 off the east coast of Africa, and from 1865 to 1872, various 
 rumours were current that he had lost his life, &c., &c. At last, 
 finding that nothing was to be expected from us ' who live at 
 home, at ease,' here, Mr. Stanley was sent out by the Proprietors 
 of the l^ew York Herald, and our Daily Telegraph, to try and 
 clear up the mystery and ' find and relieve Livingstone,' at a cost 
 of ;^8,ooo or more. His party consisted of 190 persons, and 
 left Zanzibar in January, 187 1. A mutiny broke out, as might be 
 expected, and his company was greatly reduced by the time he 
 met Livingstone. 
 
A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 103 
 
 Slave traders, after devastating a tract of country, say the size 
 of Ireland, have been known to only bring away alive 2,300 
 female slaves, and 2,000 tusks of ivory, whilst possibly 2,500 
 people were shot, and 1,300 died on the wayside through scant 
 provisions and the intensity of their hopeless wretchedness. 
 
 I noticed that banana beer is drunk by the natives of Equa- 
 torial Africa as a preventive of fever. 
 
 David Livingstone was born at Blantyre, near Glasgow, March 
 19th, 1813. 
 
 Stanley, after spending four months with him, bade him adieu 
 on March 14th, 1872, at Unyanjembe, and from that day no 
 white man saw Dr. Livingstone alive. 
 
 Stanley, Selim, his intrepreter, and party reached Zanzibar, 
 May 7th, 1872. 
 
 The Arab's tent is made of camel's hair cloths, their dress is a 
 cotton shirt, over which the more wealthy wear a kombar, or long 
 gown of silk or cotton stuff, and the poorer classes a woollen 
 mantle. 
 
 They live almost entirely on dates and a coarse kind of bread ; 
 they use coffee in large quantities and smoking is universal, knives 
 and forks are never used, they eat with their fingers. 
 
 The knowledge of physic among the Arabs is limited, and the 
 sort of doctoring they do practise is such as to terrify away all 
 complaints. Cauterising the part affected is a certain cure. A 
 red-hot iron clapped on the forehead cures the headache, at least 
 few persons are known to complain twice. 
 
 Dates are here as large as a finger, and of an orange hue j 
 their fiesh is solid, vinous in taste, sweet, and somewhat viscous ; 
 they contain a nutritive principle helpful to horses. The fruit 
 is softened by boiling in water, and goats' milk is added. The 
 Arabs in their pilgrimages across the desert make a species of 
 bread from them, and use the pulp, extracted by pressure in 
 earthenware colanders, for butter and sugar. Great Britain's trade 
 with West Africa amounts to more than ;^4,ooo,ooo per annum 
 including both imports and exports. 
 
 The chmate of Egypt, during the greater part of the year, is 
 remarkably salubrious. 
 
 The general height of the thermometer in the depth of winter 
 in Lower Egypt, in the afternoon and in the shade is from 50** 
 to 60° ; in the hottest season it is from 90° to 100° ; and about 
 10° higher in the southern parts of Upper Egypt. 
 
 But though the summer heat is so great, it is seldom very op- 
 pressive, being generally accompanied by a refreshing northerly 
 
104 -^ Wizard's 'Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 breeze, and the air being extremely dry one great source of dis- 
 comfort arising from the dryness is the excessive quantity of 
 dust. 
 
 The Simoon, as it is called in Arabia, or the Sirocco in Africa, 
 comes in sudden gusts, levelling your tents with the ground, and 
 almost blowing the clothes off your backs. The whole at- 
 mosphere appears to be on fire. The heat is very oppressive. 
 Buckhardt has seen thermometer stand at 121'' in the shade. 
 The camels kneel down and bury their nostrils in the sand, 
 keeping them there till the squall is over. One passed over as 
 we reached that most wonderful monument of Egypt — the 
 ' Sphinx.' It is cut out of the red sandstone rock, only the head 
 and neck are above the level of the Desert. 
 
 What a wonderful land Egypt is if we only think a moment. 
 The land over which Joseph ruled, and in which he glorified the 
 God of Israel ! Where Israel groaned under cruel task-masters 
 — Where Jehovah called forth his distinguished servants, Moses 
 and Aaron, to their arduous work, and stretched forth His hand 
 in marvellous and miraculous ministration, on behalf of a people 
 whom He had chosen for Himself, and bound to Him by a lasting 
 covenant. 
 
 To this land the tender Babe of Bethlehem was transported 
 by night, in obedience to a divine command, beyond the reach 
 of the tyrant Herod. 
 
 The Sphinx has a human head and a lion's body, denoting, 
 according to some — wisdom and strength, the attributes of the 
 ancient Egyptian monarchs — chin to top of forehead twenty- 
 eight feet, at one time painted red. There is yet another opinion 
 which is by far too prevalent, it seems to bear the stamp of con- 
 tradiction on its front. 
 
 It is, that this figure was a representation of Vice, which, while 
 it presents a fascinating aspect of beauty, is the treacherous and 
 merciless destroyer. This may form a very pretty allegory, and 
 look very well if made the subject of some two or three cantos, 
 but it seems very doubtful how far, it has any application to or 
 with the Sphinx. It is, perhaps, best to take the matter as it 
 stands, and leave it simply as it stands to make its own moral and 
 to point its own tale. 
 
 A Bedawee Arab will haggle and drive the hardest bargain, 
 in order to get the very last piastre ; and for that purpose will 
 descend to any meanness ; but when once the contract is- made 
 with him, he honestly fulfils it to the minutest particular, and 
 considers that he has enlisted himself— life and heart in your 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Feru. 105 
 
 service. The customary salutation of the Bedawee consists in 
 striking gently the palm of each other's extended hand, and 
 then pressing one's own hand first upon the lips, and next 
 upon the forehead. They generally go barefoot, or wear sandals 
 of fish skin made at Tor. 
 
 It is now, I believe, generally agreed that the Bedaween are all 
 the progeny of Ishmael. I have never met with a deformed 
 Bedawee. They walk as nature intended. They have never 
 been drilled into awkwardness by dancing or posture masters. 
 Every muscle, tendon, and sinew, performs its proper office. 
 These men have a wild-bird-o' -th'-wiliterness look about them. 
 
 Dean Stanley says, ' that if the Sphinx was the giant represen- 
 tative of Egyptian royalty, then it fitly guards the greatest of all 
 royal sepulchres, and with its half human, half-animal form, is the 
 best welcome we can have to the history and religion of Egypt.' 
 
 This country is now before all eyes beginning a second and 
 more wonderful history, if possible, than that of her old glories. 
 Instead of actually marking the places of sepulture it really seems 
 most probable that the Pyramids are merely Cenotaphs, com- 
 memorating and committing to tradition the memory of those 
 persons whose names they bear. 
 
 It may not be out of place to compare the height of the Great 
 Pyramid with other buildings : 
 
 The Great Pyramid is 
 
 Antwerp Cathedral 
 
 Strasburgh Cathedral 
 
 S. Etienne, Vienna 
 
 S. Peter's, Rome 
 
 Porcelain Tower, Nankin 
 
 Salisbury Cathedral 
 
 St. Paul's, London 
 The three Great Pyramids contain, it is computed, 4,693,000 
 cubic metres of masonry, and if a wall was made of the same 
 9 feet high by i foot thick ; it would extend 1,400 leagues — say 
 from Alexandria right across Africa to the Guinea coast. 
 
 479 
 
 feet high 
 
 472 
 466 
 460 
 
 
 434 
 
 
 414 
 
 
 410 
 
 
 404 
 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PALESTINE — THE HOLY SEPULCHRE— THE TALMUD — THE MISHNAH 
 
 — DEAN Stanley's book on the holy land — the cedars of 
 
 LEBANON — BETHLEHEM — DISTINGUISHED MODERN JEWISH 
 MUSICIANS. 
 
 I AM sure, from the tenor of the books I have read, that many 
 who have visited the Holy Land in years gone by were Presby- 
 terians, and came seeking evidences in support of their particular 
 creed ; they found a Presbyterian Palestine, and they had already 
 made up their minds to find no other, though possibly they did 
 not know it, being blinded by their zeal. Others were Baptists, 
 seeking Baptist evidences and a Baptist Palestine. Others were 
 Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, seeking evidences endors- 
 ing their several creeds, and a Catholic, a Methodist, an Episco- 
 palian Palestine. Honest as these men's intentions may have 
 been, they were full of partialities and prejudices, they entered 
 the country with their verdicts already prepared, and they could 
 no more write dispassionately and impartially about it than 
 they could about their own wives and daughters. 
 
 The Holy Sepulchre must, without dispute, be considered as 
 the most important of those sacred places which, in all ages of 
 the Christian dispensation, have commanded the attention of the 
 ♦Christian world. From the day when Christ consigned His weep- 
 ing Mother to the care of the beloved apostle, and gave Him- 
 self up as a Sin Offering for the whole human family, the exact 
 locality where the greatest crime of man was consummated, must 
 always appeal to his heart as that spot of earth where the 
 deepest curse was converted into the highest blessing. 
 
 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre embraces under its roof 
 all the places marked by every peculiar event connected with 
 Christ's death. The Stone of Unction, the Pillar of Flagellation, 
 the spot where His garments were parted, and every other locality 
 connected ^with the awful wonders of that eventful day. One 
 altar here is dedicated to the Roman soldier, who exclaimed : 
 
 106 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China io Peru. 107 
 
 ' Surely this was the son of God ' Here they used to keep the 
 copperplate Pilate had put upon the Cross, 'This is the King 
 of the Jews.' St. Helena, the mother of Constantine found it 
 there. She found many interesting objects. It is in Rome 
 now. The description is very distinct. ' The Talmud,' says 
 a modern Jew, ' is a complete system of all our learning, and 
 a comprehensive rule of all the practical part of our laws and 
 religion.' 
 
 The Talmud of Jerusalem was really compiled at Tiberias about 
 the close of the fourth century, the second, viz., the Talmud of 
 Babylon, was drawn up at Syra in Babylonia a few years later, 
 though not completed till the end of the fifth century. In it 
 there are many resemblances to the New Testament. That grand 
 dictum : ' Do unto others as thou wouldst be done by,' was spoken 
 by Hillel, who died ten years after the birth of Christ, ' not as any- 
 thing new, but as an old and well-known dictum that comprised 
 the whole law.' The law said, ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself (Lev. xix. 18.), and an Apocryphal book said, ' Do to no 
 man that which thou hatest,' and Hillel's words were, ' Thou shalt 
 not do to thy neighbour that which is hateful to thyself, for this 
 is the whole law.' 
 
 To the Jew the Mishnah is the ' Oral Law,' which Moses 
 taught; and was handed down by word of mouth from age to 
 age until it was written. The Gemara is reverenced as embody- 
 ing the opinions and wisdom of the Fathers. 
 
 I am aware that I am upon Holy ground, but I hope I may, 
 without irreverence, be permitted to describe this part of the 
 world, and the manners and customs of the natives as I found 
 them, without giving offence or wounding the slightest suscepti- 
 bilities of anyone. 
 
 That I choose not to take my belief from the mouths of 
 * babes and suckhngs,' is no earthly reason why others should be 
 deterred from so doing. 
 
 If any of you are sceptical regarding the Arabic legends, and 
 are prepared to be guided by sound sense, extensive information, 
 and acute reasoning, read the Dean of Westminster's charming 
 book upon the ' Holy Land,' and your local faith will be settled 
 upon a sure foundation. 
 
 Fergusson, Robinson and others, consider the true site of the 
 Holy Sepulchre to be the Mosque of Omar — the ' Home of the 
 Rock.' The question is still undecided, I believe, and is likely 
 to be ! What an odd thing it seems that Keble, who had never set 
 foot in the Holy Land, was able to write the magnificent descrip- 
 
io8 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 tion of that land he has been able to do, and to be even compli- 
 mented by the late Dean Stanley on his correct description. 
 
 Josephus tells us the famous Temple of Solomon here in Jeru- 
 salem was seven years in building, yet during the Whole term it 
 rained not in the day-time that the workmen might ' not be ob- 
 structed in their labour; and from the sacred history it appears 
 that there was neither the sound of the hammer, nor axe, nor any 
 tool of iron heard in the house while it was building. This 
 famous fabric was supported by 1,453 columns, and 2,906 pilasters 
 all htwn from the finest Parian marble. There were employed 
 in building it three Grand Masters, 3,300 masters or overseers 
 of the work, 80,000 fellow-crafts and 70,000 entered apprentices, 
 or bearers of burdens. All these were classed and arranged 
 in such a manner by the wisdom of King Solomon, that neithel: 
 envy, discord, nor confusion was suffered to interrupt that uni- 
 versal peace and tranquillity which pervaded the world at that 
 important period 
 
 The Cedars of Lebanon (the ancient ones) are twelve in 
 number — seven of them clustered -together, and the other five 
 at various parts of the grove. I did not measure the girth of 
 any. 
 
 ' And are these the trees — the very trees,' you ask — ' of which 
 Solomon spake ; and which have supplied the inspired penman 
 with imagery to symbolise spiritual dignity, and the glory which 
 is of righteousness?' Why should they not be? I know not. 
 Certainly they bear traces of the lapse of ages upon ages. I 
 have seen noble cedars in Europe — the growth of centuries — but 
 compared with those of Lebanon they are but saplings. They 
 appear as old as Lebanon itself — as if they had never been seed- 
 Hngs. If they are not the very trees, surely they have sprung 
 from the seeds of the most ancient ones. The seven which are 
 clustered together go up like gigantic pillars ; and their interlaced 
 arms above — each in itself a vast tree — form a verdant dome 
 through which the vertical sun, never penetrates. I delighted 
 in cherishing the persuasion of their full antiquity, as I mused on 
 Israel's history, and thought of the glory of Lebanon. 
 
 The Arabs call the Mirage ' Serab,' which agrees with the 
 Hebrew "yyi} and in both languages it means a glowing 
 sandy plain ; which in hot countries, at a distance, has the appear- 
 ance of water. 
 
 Sir John Chardin and others speak of it as the effect of the 
 repercussion of the sun's rays from the sand of the Desert. 
 
 It generally has the- flickering appearance of a landscape 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 109 
 
 seen through the columns of heat and vapour proceeding from 
 a brick-kiln or furnace. 
 
 Out here there is but a short — scarcely any — interval of twilight 
 between sunset and darkness. 
 
 'The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; 
 At one stride comes the dark.' 
 
 Coleridge's ^ Ancient Mariner' 
 
 The late General Gordon, as you may possibly have heard, 
 like myself, delighted in being at times, alone, and was an expert 
 camel rider. He was always far ahead of his party, frequently 
 riding miles in advance of anyone else. This desire for solitude 
 was one of the general's strongest characteristics. 
 
 The Holy Land is considered to have been settled by the 
 Canaanites, 1965, B.C. The land was divided among the 
 Israelites by Joshua, i44S, ^.c. 
 
 Travelling out here now is very easy, thanks to such enter- 
 prising pioneers as Messrs. Cook and Sons, Gaze, and a few 
 others, but the country, though deeply interesting, is desolate and 
 unlovely. And why, as someone asks, should it be otherwise ? 
 Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land ? 
 
 The best way to thoroughly see the country is to start from 
 Damascus and travel south. At this important city the cele- 
 brated attar of roses is manufactured in large quantities. It 
 takes eighty pounds of roses (nearly 200,000 roses) to make an 
 ounce and a half of attar, which is worth, on the spot, about jQ/^ 
 sterling an ounce. 
 
 The women are homely, and anything but beautiful. ' They 
 wash clothes at the public tanks half the day but they are pro- 
 bably someone else's,' remarks Mark Twain, ' or may be,' he 
 adds, 'they keep one set to wear, and another to wash, because 
 they ever put on those that ever have been washed. When they 
 see anyone with a clean shirt on it arouses their scorn.' 
 
 Damascus was a city even in the time of Abraham, 1913, B.C. 
 It is the most important city in Syria, and the third largest city 
 belonging to Turkey, which country seems to be getting ' small by 
 degrees and beautifully less.' Seen from a distance it is really 
 a charming picture, especially if you visit it, as I did at the time 
 the roses are in full bloom. It takes 800 full-blown roses to 
 make a tablespoonful of perfume ; whilst one shilling's-worth of 
 cooked onions will scent a whole neighbourhood. 
 
 The Turks are as little complimentary to their own nation as 
 Voltaire to his, for they say, ' the Turks hunt hares in carriages 
 drawn by oxen,' and of the Persians, whom they regard as 
 
no A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 heretical Mohammedans, they say, ' that in the other world they 
 will be transformed into asses to carry Jews into a locality not to 
 be named to ears polite.' Of a great liar they say : 'Send him to 
 Persia to teach Persians to lie ' ; and the Russians they describe as 
 'Bears in kid gloves.' Damascus was taken by David, io40,b.c. 
 
 It is intensely hot here at Damascus. You have here the house 
 where a most wicked, sinful man died — he died impenitent. Three 
 days after his death he sent a message up asking his widow to 
 send him dOwn a few blankets. 
 
 Taken With the proverbial particle of granulated chloride of 
 sodium, it might be possible to swallow all you hear in these parts. 
 
 Bethlehem contains a large convent enclosing, as is said, the 
 very birth-place of Christ ; a church erected by the Empress 
 Helena in the form of a cross, about the year 325 ; a chapel, called 
 the Chapel of the Nativity, where they show you the manger in 
 which Christ was laid ; and a third, of the Holy Innocents. 
 
 Adrian, at the time of his persecution of the Christians erected 
 a Temple of Jupiter on Mount Calvary, and a Temple of Adonis 
 on the manger here. 
 
 Bethany takes its name from a boat-house. ' It was a cave, 
 and a stone lay upon it.' Its population cannot possibly amount 
 to more than 500, and they are mostly Latins. 
 
 The Tomb of the Virgin Mary is just outside the Garden of 
 Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives. The eight trees are 
 decidedly old, in one it is possible to crowd in three or four 
 persons, the trunk being hoUow. . 
 
 The Virgin Mary being one of the three holy women appointed 
 by the Prophet Mahomet to be held in reverence by fhe true 
 believers, the spot which is assumed to be her burial place is 
 shared by them with the Greek and other Christian bodies. 
 
 It is partly an excavation, and partly an elevation, enclosing 
 within its limits a cave known as the place of sepulture. Before 
 reaching the Tomb within, you notice an arched recess on either 
 hand, in them the remains of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin, 
 and of Joseph her husband are said to rest, while further on is 
 the Mausoleum covered with marble, simple in form, and alto- 
 gether unmarked by any peculiarity. 
 
 Here the Turks have their praying place, and here the mem- 
 bers of the Greek Church offer up masses, while the chapel it- 
 self boasts of a large amount of decoration. 
 
 Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, look for the Great Assize 
 of the Judgement Day to be held just underneath the East Wall 
 of Jerusalem, in the valley of Jehoshaphat. 
 
A Wizard 's Wanderings from China to Peru. 1 1 1 
 
 How little has the country or the people changed ! The in- 
 habitants will ever remain the same. 'The leopard cannot 
 change his spots, nor the Ethiopian his skin. These people's one 
 grand aim is to fleece the stranger ; it's one of the unpleasant 
 reminiscences of eastern travel. We can only echo Themistocles' 
 wish, ' Give me the art of oblivion,' as we, in after years, think 
 of the way we were swindled. 
 
 Jerusalem was razed to the ground, and not one stone allowed 
 to remain on another by the Emperor Adrian in a.d. 130, and 
 who built ^lia Capitolina on its site. 
 
 The history of the Jews is a wonderful story. Where are 
 the Egyptians ? Taxed by foreign masters ! Where the Assyrians, 
 onceso mighty and powerful ? Edom and Philistia — ^great in their 
 ay — what know we of them now ? 
 
 The Greek* are not the Greeks who, when they met in hostile 
 fight, exhibited in all its force the ' tug of war.' And Rome is 
 well, almost a ruin — Rome twice mistress of the world, once in 
 pagan and imperial splendour, and once again -in Catholic Chris- 
 tianity. Nations have risen and decayed, raceslhave mingled 
 with races, and all the rivers run into the sea — but the Jews are 
 the exception the Jews are as much alone now in this nineteenth 
 century as when they wandered in the wilderness. They are still a 
 peculiar people, a waiting people — a people who have stood aloof 
 from the Gentiles and who'do so still, rfheir history since the dis- 
 persion is most remarkable and reminds us of their river Jordan, 
 which, it is said, goes through the bituminous lake of the Dead Sea, 
 without in the least degree mingling with its waters. Surely a people 
 thus singularly preserved are designed for some great purposes- 
 something yet to be developed — something yet to be wrought out. 
 
 Great had been the privileges of the Jews, and for abused pri- 
 vileges great was the penalty. ' There is much that is impressive, 
 striking, and instructive in the history of the Jews. 
 
 The weird old legend of the Wandering Jew seems but a type 
 of the nation. 
 
 ' And eighteen centuries now have sped 
 On the dark wrecks of Rome and Greece ; 
 They have seen the ashes scattered 
 Of thousand shifting dynasties ; 
 Seen good, unfruitful good, and ill 
 Prolific while the tempest rolled, 
 Seen two new worlds the circle fill 
 Which one world occupied of old ; 
 
 Ever, ever. 
 Earth revolves— they rest them never.' 
 
112 A. Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Jews have been by intolerant laws compelled to turn their 
 attention to the accumulation of money. 
 
 In every age they have been celebrated for their wealth, ' rich as 
 a Jew! has become a proverb. Their supposed wealth has 
 brought upon them cruelty and persecution ; their real wealth is 
 a known fact. 
 
 But modern Jews can do something more than make money. 
 The melting music of the ' Midsummer Night's Dream,'— the 
 melancholy strains of 'Elijah,' the solemn music of 'Saul 'owe 
 their origin to Felix Mendelssohn, a Jew. Who has not been 
 enchanted with the beautiful iictions of lyric poetry, and charmed 
 with the graceful melodies of Heine ? Jewish genius has enriched 
 our collections of art. Was not Rossini a Jew? Was not 
 Meyerbeer a Jew ? 
 
 The Rev. George Fisk, LL.B.,.says: ' I shall not weary you 
 with a description of the Holy Sepulchre. I felt myself surrounded 
 in it, by the various kinds of Popish apparatus with which I 
 had become familiar, even to disgust, in France and Italy, and 
 hastened through the mere exhibition that awaited me, perfectly 
 convinced that if any of the scenes of our Blessed Lord's humilia- 
 tion and sufferiing were actually beneath that roof, they were as 
 utterly obscured and disfigured by outward decoration, as His 
 finished and perfect work of redemption effected there is obscured 
 and disfigured by the corruptions of an apostate Church.' These 
 beautiful traits of Christian feeling and goodwill one towards 
 another are most charming. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE ARABS AND THEIR HORSES — ARABIAN AND TURKISH CUSTOMS 
 — THE BEARD — STRANGE ADVENTURES OF THE AUTHOR — OUT 
 AND ABOUT — THE AUTHOR'S BOHEMIAN NOTES. 
 
 The Arabs are famous for their splendid horses. After being 
 foaled, the colt is attended to as though it were a young child 
 It is not mounted until it is two years old, and then the saddle is 
 rarely off its back. It becomes the intimate companion of his 
 master, sharing all his comforts, and, also, all his privations. 
 They thus become docile, gentle and intelligent in a high degree. 
 It is a common practice to give them flesh, both raw and 
 cooked before, commencing a fatiguing journey. 
 
 The Arab is very hospitable ; he entertains his guest with the 
 best provisions he has at his disposal, and he is careful not to 
 lodge and feed the rich above the poor. Arabs never turn a deaf 
 ear to the complaint of the way-farer, but you must remember 
 that there are Arabs and Arabs. 
 
 Among the Arabs and Turks the beard is reckoned the greatest 
 ornament of a man, and is not trimmed or shaved except in cases 
 of extreme grief. Many an Arab would rather risk the loss of his 
 head than part with his beard. 
 
 The total absence of it or a spare and stinted sprinkling of hair 
 upon the chin, is thought by the Orientals to ,be as great a deformity 
 to the features, as the want of a nose would appear to us ; while, 
 on the contrary, a long and bushy beard, flowing down in luxuriant 
 profusion to the breast, is considered not only a graceful ornament 
 to the person, but as contributing in no small degree to respecta- 
 bility and dignity of character. When a man's veracity is doubted 
 in the East, ' Look at his beard,' they will say, ' the very sight of 
 it will satisfy you of the truth and probity of the owner.' ' Shame 
 on your beard ' is a most severe expression of reproof. To treat 
 the beard with irreverence, has, in the East, been for ages con- 
 sidered the grossest insult. ' May God preserve your beard.' ' It 
 is worth more than one's beard ; ' and other expressions of regard, 
 
 I 
 113 
 
114 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 show the intense veneration entertained for this appendage. The 
 slaves are shaved as a mark of servitude. 
 
 One morning, sauntering into the open space used as a market- 
 place at Fez, with fancy bernouse thrown carelessly over me, I 
 had a look around on the qui vive for ' something to turn up,' as 
 poor Micawber used to say. In travelling through Morocco, I 
 always dressed in the Oriental style, and when necessary passed 
 myself off as a native. My readers may easily imagine, without 
 too great a stretch of the imagination, the bright picturesque scene 
 presented. Wild swarthy men from the Atlas slopes bargaining 
 for one thing or another, yelling and shouting and cheapening 
 what they wanted — no such thing as ' prix fixe ' seeming to be 
 in vogue at Fez. I used to think Naples the queerest spot under 
 the sun to strike a bargain in, but it is ' nowhere ' compared to 
 Fez. Slaves were led through the crowd, in batches of three, 
 or four together, and contented enough they looked poor souls. 
 You see, the unfortunate wretches had had no School Board edu- 
 cation crammed into them, neither had they — poor benighted 
 ones — ever had the advantage of attending Exeter Hall : the con- 
 sequences were that they, knowing no better, were quite satisfied 
 with their lot, and seemed to take things as they came. Piles 
 of juicy fruit, many of them unknown to dear old Covent Garden, 
 lay about, watched over by bright-eyed Moorish women, who 
 seem to work like beasts of burden. There is very little poetry 
 about them, and they are all as ignorant as well can be. The 
 bazaars around were full of people chatting and yelling, who were 
 pushed aside as the Sultan's body-guard strode along in all their 
 glory ! And what magnificent looking men they are ! They 
 walk along, glancing first on this side, and then on the other, 
 nodding to their friends, with all the grace of Salvini himself. 
 These Moors are bronzed, it is true, but it is not the sooty hue 
 with which our tragedians depict the Swan of Avon's Othello. 
 At one stall were hanging a number of partridges, quails, some 
 queer- looking unknown birds, and hares, presided over by a 
 brigandish-looking-penny-plain-twopence-coloured-looking moun- 
 taineer, with fierce moustache and armed cap-h-pie. ' What will 
 you take, not what are you asking, Ali, for this wretched, half- 
 starved heaven-forsaken hare ? ' I asked him in Arabic. ' Salaam, 
 aleikoom ' (so and so,) was the reply, ' and it's worth double. 
 I shot it myself,' he added with a proud chuckle, ' the day before 
 yesterday, miles from here.' 'Reach it down,' I said, 'and tell 
 me no more of your lies, Ali. Shot it the day before yesterday? 
 It's pretty high then.' ' Yes,' he answered, ' I shot it up a tree ! ' 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 115 
 
 ' Why, it is alive, you dog,' I said. Taking it up by the ears I 
 showed it to the crowd around me, and sure enough aUve and 
 kicking it was. I then let it jump off the board, and off it 
 bolted down the street, pursued by a number of onlookers and 
 all the mongrel dogs in the city. Ali's face was a study ! Shall 
 I ever forget his look — I think not. He thought I was Yama 
 himself. Like wild-fire the tale spread, how the Magician had 
 put life into a dead hare, which in due time was run to earth 
 just inside the garden of the Palace, and the tale was told to 
 the Sultan himself who was passing out at the time on his way 
 to the Mosque. 
 
 That afternoon, I remember, I was sent for to the Palace, 
 and it was arranged I should give a display of my powers the 
 following day before the Court. For the evening, I had already 
 announced my intention of giving a public performance in the 
 then empty bazaar of Aboulhassen Ebn Becar, which my readers 
 may remember if they have ever visited Fez is, or was, situated 
 close to the Mosque. 1 need hardly remark, that before publicly 
 anointing myself that night with what the audience took to be 
 Meemi-ke-tale, I had the satisfaction of seeing the place crowded 
 to almost suffocation, scarcely allowing me room to grow the 
 mangosteen in. So full, indeed, was the place, that numbers 
 failed to obtain admission. Over twenty performances did I give 
 there, and all through the simple device I practised. 
 
 Oh my way to Fez from Fighig, after crossing the Atlas range 
 of mountains, my dog caught a hare, which I carefully attended 
 to, and on the morning I have just mentioned this hare was 
 carefully concealed in a pocket, very get-at-able, just underneath 
 my bernouse. As I took the dead hare from Ali's hands, I 
 substituted the living one, and pocketed the dead hare in a far 
 shorter space of time than it takes to tell. The fanatic, ignorant 
 people about, thought I was possessed of supernatural power. 
 This belief was also shared in by far higher people in Morocco, 
 but I do not feel at liberty to mention names, as very likely these 
 lines may be read by many out there who might not feel flattered 
 at reading that they swallowed as gospel truth, and ' divine 
 afflatus,' something the very reverse. I can only add that the 
 chivalrous, hospitable character of the higher classes will never 
 be forgotten by me, and I look forward with much pleasure to 
 another tour through Morocco before long. It is true the 
 dangers of travel there are many, and hardships in plenty have 
 to be met, but the country is so romantic and wild,, that it well 
 repays one for a.ny inconvenience experienced. One word of 
 
 I — 2 
 
ii6 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 advice, however, I may give to intending toi^rists, that is, never 
 travel in these parts without an armed escort, or you may repent 
 the day you forgot the old French proverb, ' There is no such 
 thing as small economies.' 
 
 In my wanderings through North Africa from Morocco to 
 Egypt (about the most exciting and interesting journey I know 
 of) I found two large mackintosh sheets most useful. They had 
 an opening in the centre, which buttoned and unbuttoned, and 
 they formed a sort of tent by night, and in the wet season an 
 overcoat or cloak. My camel used to form a nice soft warm 
 mattress at night, as we both rested together. What a delightful 
 feeling was that dip in the nearest running stream, whilst a brace 
 of partridges just shot were cooking in my camp kettle, made 
 savoury with fresh-gathered mushrooms and wild carrots, herbs, 
 and sometimes truffles ! As a rule I used to prepare these 
 things overnight, never forgetting to bait a few hooks for fish. 
 Land-turtles were so plentiful that one was never at a loss for a 
 good meal, whilst oranges, dates, and numerous kinds of de- 
 licious fruit could be had in sackfuls. 
 
 When the nights were lighted by Selene's rays, then was the 
 time I used to like to push along, covering a great distance at a 
 stretch, and resting during the heat of the day under a clump 
 of date trees. During my rides across the Desert, I used often 
 to be thankful for a species of bread made from dates, and 
 for butter and sugar was content with the pulp which was 
 extracted by pressure in an earthenware colander. At those 
 periods of my existence, visions would rise up of the excellent 
 square meals I had in days gone by grumbled at, and I really 
 do believe, just then, I should have been even contented with 
 Loveridge's Strand cuisine, and have thought his waiters the very 
 pink of perfection, smartness, and politeness ! 
 
 If no date palms were at hand, I used to content myself with 
 any shady trees, if I could find them, or even a sage bush to 
 make shift with. At first my camel rather kicked against this 
 un-Oriental style of travelUng, but in time soon got used to it. 
 Oh ! the heat, and the flies ! I don't believe you can conceive 
 what it is like unless you experience it. But it was only for 
 a short time I felt it. Regular living, the leaving off spirits 
 and some secret preparation like a sort of pomatum I obtained 
 from a Moslem fakir, with which I anointed my head, kept off 
 all kinds of flies most effectually, whilst camphor plentifully 
 sprinkled over my clothes, was very welcome. The people, 
 when I did come across them (far removed from any city, I 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 117 
 
 mean), were a fine race of people to look at. They were bold 
 and determined fellows, and as they came clustering round you, 
 all speaking together, if you happened to be faint-hearted, God 
 help you. Before now, single-handed, I have come out scot 
 free from a crowd of as murderous-looking wretches as you 
 would never wish to meet, by simply playing on their ignorant 
 superstitious feelings, and passing myself off as gifted with 
 supernatural powers. An eclipse of the moon once even saved 
 my life. I knew by my almanack the exact minute it would 
 take place that night, and having been made prisoner by a tribe 
 of thieves- on, the borders of the Sahara Desert, who assured 
 me they lived almost entirely on milk (here a rather curious 
 ethnological query will persist in presenting itself: 'When did 
 some of them settle in England?') I told them if they took 
 my life Diana, Queen of the Night, would most surely avenge 
 me ; and to prove to them what interest I had with Luna I 
 promised in so many minutes to cause a total veil to cover the 
 moon. It luckily came off to time, or I muchly doubt if ever 
 I should have penned these lines. The miserable, poverty- 
 striken, dirty Arabs will swallow anything. Of course, many of 
 the sheiks are right good fellows. 
 
 The Sultan of Morocco has one thousand wives. Solomon had 
 only seven hundred. But Solomon was a wise man ; he knew 
 when he had enough ! 
 
 I have met many noble examples of their good nature and 
 generosity, but then I travelled under exceptional conditions. I 
 had a pass-word or sign worth fabulous wealth, which took me 
 through many parts of the ' Dark Continent,' where I know for 
 certain no European dare travel alone, and even with a large 
 escort it would be full of danger; and yet Sed Hamlah, two 
 slaves, and myself traversed thousands of miles without harm or a 
 scratch, more than a slight sword-cut I received with the tribe 
 I have just mentioned, for which they dearly paid afterwards at 
 Castillejos. I had only to raise my finger to obtain anything I 
 wanted ; my magic power awed them into obedience to my 
 will ; so my readers can easily conceive I had a right good time 
 of it — sometimes. 
 
 On arriving at Cairo, a rather amusing incident occurred, 
 which may not be out of place here. In the delightfully cool 
 general room of the Royal Hotel, which is situated on the 
 Boulevard Esbekich, Cairo, and is about as comfortable a hotel 
 you can well find out there, we were chatting together, enjoying 
 the fragrant weed, when I thought I "would play a joke during the 
 
1 1 8 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 evening on W , and mentioned to one or two present that I 
 
 would do a trick with his scarf-pin. An hour or so later the 
 chance presented itself. "You might show us a trick before you 
 go to perform at the theatre, Dr. Holden,' said one. ' Do, men 
 ami,' said another. ' Gentlemen,' I said, ' I never perform a 
 magical experiment except on the stage, but as you are so very 
 pressing, and if it will relieve un mauvais quart d'heure, as I see 
 the ladies have all left, I will just show you a feat I saw per- 
 formed once out here. Will anyone kindly lend me a scarf-pin ? ' 
 I asked. W^ — -, after a httle hesitation, said he would. ' Do 
 not let me touch it, nor even see it,' I replied, ' but take this 
 envelope, place your scarf-pin inside, and seal it up with wax, 
 a stick of which I beg to hand you.' By this time all eyes 
 were on me, but by a dexterous move I managed to get hold 
 of the envelope, and instantly changed it for another one, 
 sealed up like the other, and containing a dummy scarf-pin. 
 Having ' rung the changes,' as it were, I now felt secure, and 
 
 prepared to sit upon poor W . The airS I gave myself 
 
 (Englishlike) none can tell. Before now, gentle reader, have 
 you not often felt inclined to hurl the soup-tureen or the spit- 
 toon at the head of some egotistical, self-conceited, fellow- 
 countryman abroad, as he makes, himself a lineal descendant 
 of Balaam's Ass before a company of sensible foreigners ? Well, 
 had you been present that evening at Cairo, you would not have 
 even drawn the line at the sofa itself, I fear, as far as it concerns 
 me. I gave myself more airs than all Gatti's waiters put together. 
 
 I not only sat on poor W , but pulverised the fellow. He 
 
 bore it, I must confess, like a lamb. ' Observe, gentlemen, what 
 a marvellous feat I am about to demonstrate. Waiter, bring me 
 in three lemons, please.' He did so, and I managed to get 
 
 W 's pin out of the envelope in my back pocket, palm it, 
 
 and soon insert it in one of the lemons I had carelessly 
 taken up. 
 
 'I shall now command the scarf-pin to leave- my hand,' I 
 said, as I took up the sealed envelope by the tips of my fingers ; 
 and pass into either of those lemons.' One was selected — of 
 course the one with the pin in it. That I placed in the centre 
 of the table, in a borrowed hat, and vanished by a sleight of 
 hand the dummy pin and sealed envelope. 
 
 ' I'll bet you a level " pony " my pin is not inside that lemon 
 
 in the hat,' said W . 'And champagne round as well for 
 
 the good of the house ? ' I added. ' Done,' said W- and 
 
 done I was. 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. tip 
 
 I cut open, bombastically, the lemon, and there was a pin 
 
 right enough, but it was my pin, not W 's. Some kind 
 
 friend, it seems, had told W of the ' sell ' I had prepared 
 
 for him, and he had gone to my room and exchanged pins, they 
 being very much alike, but inside his was his name and where it 
 was presented to him. So I had to pay up. 
 
 I think practical jokes are very silly things. 
 
 I propose now to conclude our ' globe-trotting,' and to devote 
 a little time to superstition, and magic. My readers will have 
 noticed ere reaching these lines, that I have touched very slightly 
 on the subject, for the reason I mentioned at the commencement. 
 This enables you, gentle reader, to read so far, and if the subject 
 in hand is not to your taste to now, throw the book down and 
 part company — Friends, I hope ! 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 SUMMONED TO BALMORAL — AN ENTERTAINMENT GIVEN BEFORE 
 THE QUEEN — A MUSICAL DISTRIBUTION — THE SILK CLOTH — 
 THE BOUQUET— THE ROYAL PROGRAMME OF THE AUTHOR'S — 
 PERFORMANCE BEFORE HER MAJESTY — GENERAL REMARKS ON 
 SCOTLAND. 
 
 Thoroughly agreeing with Goethe's hero, when he says, ' 'Twas 
 for wandering in it that the world was made so wide,' it caused 
 me but shght surprise one morning in May, 1879, when Mr. 
 Mitchell, of the Royal I jbrary, informed me that he wanted me 
 to go to the north of Scotland, to give a conjuring entertainment, 
 of an hour's duration. ' It's at Balmoral Castle, and Her Majesty 
 will be there. Just a little private family party, you know,' said 
 Mr. Mitchell. 'Oh, yes, I understand,' I said, trying to look 
 as unconcerned as I could. ' Everything shall go comme ilfaut.' 
 I have often heard about being ' knocked over with a -feather,' 
 but must say I was never nearer the consummation of that pecu- 
 liar contretemps. Never in all my Scottish Castle buildings in Ayr, 
 had I ever dreamed of such a tour, and performing before the 
 Qu^en herself Double-distilled Conservative that "I have always 
 been, the honour seemed all the greater. The performance was 
 to take place on the following Saturday, May 24th, 1879, Her 
 Majesty's sixtieth birthday, and as several of the younger members 
 of the Royal Family were to be present, it was necessary for a 
 magical distribution to be made. 
 
 As my readers may not understand what that means, I may as 
 well mention that it is my custom to borrow a silk scarf or a shawl 
 and, standing in the middle of my audience, produce from the 
 said shawl a quantity of little presents for the juvenile portion of 
 the auditory, who, of course, think muchly of any little article of 
 vertu produced by magic. Having procured from Liberty, of 
 Regent Street, sufficient oriental curiosities for the occasion and 
 made my preparations. I left London by Midland from St Pancras, 
 on Thursday night at 9.15, for Aberdeen. 
 
 I know of nothing so pleasant, in the way of travelling, as a 
 night ride with an agreeable companion (or else nobody at all) in a 
 
 ISO 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 121 
 
 fast train on the Midland railway. Was it not Dr. Johnson whose 
 idea of tlie greatest happiness was to travel in a fast post-chaise, 
 with an' intelligent and pretty woman for a companion ? I think 
 it was, if I mistake not. What a treat it is to bid. adieu, or rather 
 au revoir, to noisy, unsociable London ! Having visited every 
 city of importance in this wicked world, I speak advisedly when 
 I say take away Regent Street and part of Oxford Street, and 
 London would be anything but my beau ideal of what a city 
 should be. Soon after daybreak next morning, Edinburgh was 
 reached, and, having half an hour to wait, I availed myself of the 
 opportunity of a flying visit to the ' Modern Athens.' The half- 
 mile or so of Edinburgh to the right and left of the Waverley 
 Station is, without exception, unsurpassed for architectural beauty 
 and the picturesque in the Queendom. The view, even from the 
 railway-station alone, is one of exceeding beauty ; but it strikes 
 me one sees all there is worth seeing in the mile I have men- 
 tioned, as Edinburgh itself is dusty and badly local-boarded. 
 The ride northwards, after leaving Edinburgh, is full of interest. 
 So many historical places of interest pass as it were before one. 
 Sterling, Perth, and other noted spots conjure up the brave 
 Scottish chiefs of old, but in vain do you look for the merest 
 soupfon of the national Highland dress. 
 
 Unless one is a good sailor, how far better it is to go to Scot- 
 land by the fast through express train than go by boat from 
 London, occupying thirty-two hours to Leith, near Edinburgh. 
 I remember once hearing a friend who had left London on 
 the Saturday, had had all day Sunday on board the Leith boat, 
 exclaim : Sic transit gloria Mimdi ; ought to be translated, ' sick 
 en route. Monday be glorified ! " 
 
 Passing Bridge of Allan, a beautifully situated watering-place, 
 famed, as everyone knows, for its mineral waters, Dunblane was 
 reached. What a charming view one has here of the old Cathe- 
 dral, dating from— well, I haven't got a guide-book by me, so I 
 can't say — but there is no mistake in saying it is a very fine 
 specimen of Gothic architecture. The town of Dunblane is on 
 the banks of Allan Water. What a magnificent series of wild 
 picturesque views is lost by not branching off to the left at 
 this point, instead of continuing the main hne on to Perth ! 
 We lose Cambusmore, distinguished by being the place where 
 Sir Walter Scott wrote the ' Lady of the Lake ; ' Callander at the 
 entrance of one of the main passes to the Highlands, and one of 
 the finest railway rides in the world along the west shore of Loch 
 Lubnaig, with a view of the Braes of Balquhidder, at the foot of 
 
122 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 which is the famous ' Rob Roy's ' Grave. We continued our way 
 due north, however, through some very interesting Perthshire 
 scenery, until we reached the famous Tay Bridge, which was 
 crossed very carefully by a single line, when Perth was reached. 
 
 As an early train in the morning went to Ballater, about 50 
 English miles from Aberdeen, as far as the railway route went, 
 I stopped the night at ' Forsyth's ' Temperance Hotel, Aberdeen ; 
 and in the morning arrived at Ballater, which is romantically 
 situated in the Highlands. There, hiring a trap, I was soon 
 bowling along an excellent road to Balmoral, about eight miles 
 distant from Ballater. My Jehu was chatty and communicative, 
 pointing out places of interest on the way. 
 
 The ride from Aberdeen to Balmoral is most enjoyable, along 
 the banks of the River Dee, passing Banchory and Aboyne. The 
 hills are very wild and grand. Morven Hill, near Ballater, being 
 2,862 feet. Mount Keen, 3,077 feet. Lochnagar in Balmoral 
 Forest 3,768 feet, whilst Ben Avon in Glenavon Forest reaches 
 3,843 feet. A httle to the west you notice Bracriach, and Ben 
 Macdhui, both mountains being over 4,200 feet. 
 
 How invigorating the mountain air feels after a city life. It 
 must be a delightful place to sojourn in during the dog-days, but 
 awfully dull in the winter. Had I been anything of a botanist, 
 instead of an illusionist, I should have found much to interest, I 
 have no doubt. After the south vegetation seemed very back- 
 ward, snow covering the mountains to a great depth. Passing by 
 Abergeldie, the Prince of Wales' Highland residence, which is 
 separated from the high road by a wide, and I daresay, at times, 
 surging river, over which an ingenious contrivance has been made 
 to draw over, on a rope, the mail bags, &c., we were soon at 
 the gates of Balmoral Castle, where we were challenged by two 
 private policemen beside the gate-keepers. As I had been ex- 
 pected at 3 a.m., by the Queen's Messenger-tiain to Ballater, and 
 then on to the Castle, a room was already prepared for me, with 
 fire and every convenience. A gorgeous footman, in scarlet and 
 gold livery, opened the door as I descended. Of course, as per 
 usual, when I looked for my card-case it was non est. Did any- 
 body ever find theirs when they most needed it ? Is it not nearly 
 always left in the other coat pocket? However, I was soon 
 shown into Viscount General Bridport's room, where that gentle- 
 man met me, and after a little chat, handed me over to Mr. 
 Heale, the House Steward's tender care. His kindness and atten- 
 tion I shall not soon forget. It must have been about eleven 
 o'clock when I arrived, and my entertainment was not to 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru 123 
 
 commence till half-past two, so I had plenty of time to make 
 my necessary preparations. 
 
 It was in the State Ball-room where I was to perform. Here, 
 Mr. John Brown coming up to me, shook me heartily by the 
 hand, and in his broad Scotch dialect, asked me what he could 
 do for me. ' Anything you want for your arrangements you have 
 only to say the word, you ken, and I'll see that you have it,' said 
 John Brown. ' I suppose,' he said, ' your apparatus is coming up 
 from the station by cart ? ' ' Not at all,' I replied. ' All the 
 apparatus I use, is contained in that Gladstone bag ' ' That's 
 the style ! ' Brown heartily blurted out. ' Some sense in that. 
 Why the last conjuror we had here, and it's many a long year 
 ago, Anderson, the " Wizard of the North," it was, I remember, 
 brought a van-load of stuff, and it took us half a day or more to 
 rig it up. Anything you need, only give it a name, and I'll see 
 you get it.' 
 
 With him, my deus ex machina to assist me, I soon got a table 
 fixed ready for the performance, and a few fur rugs and flowers 
 completed mise en scene. Brown seemed rather amused, I thought, 
 at the small quantity of paraphernalia I brought with me. 
 ' Ventre affame n'a point d'ornlles,' they say, so after refreshing 
 the inner man with a repast worthy of Lucullus, I was ready for 
 the ordeal, and. I ensconced myself behind a screen, a pair of 
 which I had on either side of the table. Presently, the audience 
 entered through a door, in front of which hung heavy tartan- 
 plaid curtains, and picking their way over the highly polished, 
 slippery, oak floor, took their seats. They consisted of members 
 of the Royal Household, Dr. Marshall's family, and, I presume, 
 a few of the local gentry. The silence they kept, seemed to me 
 rather monotonous. 
 
 At ,]ast, up they all stood, and by that I guessed (and guessed 
 rightly) that Her Majesty was entering the room. I looked for a 
 hole in the screen, but could not find one, so had to imagine what 
 was going on. And is it really possible, I thought to myself, 
 that I am in the same room as the Queen, and am about to 
 address her, and humbug her — for conjuring is nothing else ? 
 That expression of Coleridge, ' Its own exceeding great reward,' I 
 thought, applies to my perseverance with a vengeance. 
 
 Fortunately, I am not nervous, and a certain conviction an 
 artiste in such a moment has, which may be summarised, as the 
 Americans would say, thusly : ' The perfection of art is to con- 
 ceal art,' and 'There is not a solitary soul in this room could do 
 what I am about to do ' gave me the most perfect nonchalance 
 
124 -A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 as I stepped from behind the screen, and bowing low to Her 
 Majesty, who sat on a raised dais exactly opposite me, with their 
 Royal Highnesses Princesses Louise and Maud of Wales on either 
 side, the late lamented Prince Leopold to the extreme right of 
 her, and Princess Beatrice to the extreme left, whilst the Ladies- 
 in- Waiting sat behind. A gracious inclination of Her Majesty's 
 head was the sign to commence my stance. 
 
 ' I shall have extreme pleasure, I am sure, Your Majesty, 
 Your Royal Highnesses, and ladies and gentlemen, in iritroduc- 
 ing to your notice, this morning, several feats of high-class conjur- 
 ing and Oriental magic, feeling convinced that when this skance 
 is over, you will all be able to go through everything, I shall have 
 the honour of showing you, as conjuring is so easy. Any person 
 can conjure if they only know how.' 
 
 In spite of the excitement, I must admit I felt, I could not 
 but feel inwardly amused, as I watched Her Majesty's face as I 
 commenced the first few words of my address. It seemed as 
 much as to say ' What confounded impudence not to com- 
 mence, "may it please Your Majesty,"' or some other like 
 form, but it changed immediately as I proceeded, and a most 
 pleasant smile settled on her fa,ce. My first trick was. — taking a 
 silk cloth, and after showing it quite empty standing in the 
 middle of the room, producing from it a huge bouquet of 
 flowers, then bowls of water and gold fish, and tumblers of 
 wine and water, changing, afterwards, the wine to water and 
 water to wine. My first experiment went immensely well, 
 and I saw at once as I bowed to the Queen, at its conclusion, 
 that she was pleased. I next manipulated with cards, and got 
 John Brown to select a card from the pack. He was pretty 
 artful and looked at me as much as to say 'She was no se 
 heelan,' which is Gaelic for, 'I am not so green,' if I re- 
 member rightly. John Brown having selected his card out of 
 the pack, I made the spots leave his card and pass on to a 
 piece of blank paper held in somebody's hand, my favourite 
 tour de jorce with cards. 
 
 Viscount General Bridport at this point was sent by the 
 Queen to tell me that anything I required the audience to 
 do for me in the way of assistance to my tricks, the Royal 
 Princesses, or Prince Leopold would only be too pleased to 
 do it 
 
 That put me at my ease at once; I had raised, however, 
 a good laugh at John Brown's expense, when, turning to 
 the Royal Family I remarked — as he selected the card from 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 125 
 
 the pack — 'I hope you don't imagine Mr. Brown to be a 
 confederate of mine, you can always, Your Majesty, tell a 
 confederate by his sinister looks, and I am sure that there 
 is nothing of that about Mr. Brown's honest face.' 
 
 The Queen laughed heartily at that, and so she did at my 
 cutting remarks about some of her subjects believing in modern 
 ' Spiritualism,' and my comparing them to ' lineal descendants of 
 Balaam's Ass.' 
 
 In illustration of the same I used a common slate free from 
 any writing on either side, placing the same on a chair with 
 a piece of chalk underneath it. I took a ' Nuttall's Dictionary,' 
 Warne's Edition, up to one of the Princess of Wales' children 
 and asked her to open the Dictionary at any page she liked, 
 as I was about to' command, that the very top or first word 
 on that page, should instantly appear written on the blank 
 slate. She selected the word ' Inkling '. Someone went to 
 the slate, lifted it up, and there sure enough was the word 
 * Inkling,' clearly and distinctly written on the slate 1 ' Very 
 clever indeed ', remarked the Queen, as I passed by her to 
 receive back the book. I will not trouble my readers with 
 a description of all I did as it seems like egotism, but there 
 was one experiment I cannot help mentioning. Taking a 
 white cambric handkerchief I rolled it up and tied it round 
 with a piece of Turkey red ribbon, and then threw it on to the 
 centre of the floor, where it lay visible to all. 
 
 I then gave Prince Leopold a piece of blank paper having 
 some embossed crest on it and asked him to place any three 
 figures he liked on it, then another three — then another three, 
 and three more figures again — then to fold it up. 
 
 Taking it from him, I asked : ' Did Your Royal Highness 
 add it up ? ' 
 
 ' No, I did not, but I will if you like,' he replied. 
 
 'Never mind. Your Highness, I will not trouble you again. 
 
 ' Will you add it up ? ' I asked some one amongst the auditory. 
 
126 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 It was added up accordingly and I made the exact total 
 appear in letters of blood on the white handkerchief lying on 
 the floor. 
 
 I need scarcely say * it goes without saying,' as our French 
 neighbours have it, this trick went capitally, and the Queen 
 again made a complimentary remark to me when I was near 
 her. 
 
 I have performed, I think, to every kind of audience it is 
 possible for a Professional Entertainer to perform before, but 
 I can conscientiously say, I never, in all my life, was made 
 more at ease, or performed before anybody who seemed so 
 thoroughly to enjoy the same, than before Her Most Gracious 
 Majesty the Queen that day. Apart from being a red-letter 
 day in my eventful life, it will be a day I shall ever look back 
 to as being oneofthe most enjoyable I ever spent. Besides 
 which, it was my first visit to the 'land o' cakes,' and certainly 
 few could have visited it under more favourable circumstances. 
 
 Everyone is familiar with the features of Her Majesty and the 
 Royal Family, so I need not trouble my readers with attempt- 
 ing to describe the same. I thought I never saw the Queen 
 looking so well as on this, her Sixtieth Birthday ! 
 
 After I had packed up, Mr. Heale showed me the Queen's 
 rooms. Tartan plaid seemed to prevail everywhere, even to 
 the chair covers. The drawing-room has a remarkably light, airy 
 appearance, the plaid suite being of a pale colour blending 
 very softly. 
 
 Shall I ever forget the beautiful view out of the windows ? 
 I can well understand the Queen's preference for Balmoral ! 
 That vista will ever be imprinted on my mind. Round the 
 room are statues in, I think, Plaster of Paris, or some kind of 
 composition, of the Prince of Wales and his Royal brothers 
 on horseback. Landseer's picture of the 'Stag at Bayi' hung 
 on the wall, or if it was not the ' Stag at Bay,' it was the stag 
 somewhere. My visit to this room being sub rosa, it was of 
 very short duration, as can be easily imagined, as every foot- 
 step we heard we thought was the Queen herself coming in. 
 
 Right royally was I treated at the Castle, and after finishing 
 a bottle of champagne to toast the Queen with, I took my 
 departure about five o'clock that evening. 
 
 I could not help laughing to myself at the contrast between 
 my one-horse-chaise at the tower entrance, and the Royal car- 
 riage, also at the door, waiting to take the Queen and Prin- 
 cess Beatrice out for a drive. Through the well-kept grounds 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China io Peru. 127 
 
 we drove, the horse was fresh, the driver ditto, and must I 
 
 admit the soft impeachment, your humble servant ditto. It 
 
 might have been the mountain air, but I fancy it was the 
 
 champagne. 
 But what a glorious evening it was ! What a sunset you get 
 
 in these high latitudes ! I shall not forget that ride in a hurry. 
 
 ' Put a beggar on horseback, and he'll drive ' ^you know 
 
 the rest ? 
 
 I felt several inches taller and elated up to the seventh 
 
 heaven, as everything had gone so satisfactorily. There's a 
 great deal in feeling within yourself, if you are an artiste, that 
 your performance has gone down well. Not one contretemps 
 had I experienced all day and that was something to be proud 
 of, for, entre nous, a conjurer, never mind how careful he may 
 be, is certain at some time or another to make a faux pas. 
 
 One is struck by the house arrangements of the middle classes 
 in Scotland. People in the large towns live in flats. From the 
 street you enter a dark and, generally speaking, dirty-looking 
 passage, leading to a flight of equally grimy-looking stone steps, 
 these you mount, perhaps, to the height of four or five stories, 
 on each landing are several doors with brass door-plates, bells, 
 knockers, &c., and here reside the people of that particular 
 flat. Every convenience being there, and the poor unfortunate 
 postman having to bring up your letters, his lot is anything but 
 enviable. Amongst the lower classes, instead of an ordinary 
 bedstead standing in the room it is placed in a recess with a 
 door to match the door you enter by. The bedstead reminds 
 one of a bunk on board a ship, and is not at all pleasant to a 
 stranger, besides being decidedly unhealthy. 
 
 As a detailed list of each, and every trick I performed 
 might be tedious, I subjoin the Royal programme through 
 which I religiously went, occupying about an hour. 
 
 Balmoral Castle, 
 
 Saturday, lifh May, 1879. 
 
 Dr. HOLDEN'S MODERN MAGICAL MARVELS. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 EUROPEAN MAGIC. 
 
 "Le vin de Chypre," 
 Choice Morceaux from the repertoire of advanced Prestidigitation. 
 
 " The Ubiquitous Coins of Croesus," 
 " Les Cartes Magnetiques," 
 
 Mystic Calculation, Drawing or Music, Divination of Thought, &c., after the latest 
 physical methods. The via Metiia of the Magic Art, or cinq Minutes tii Spiritisms. 
 
128 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Part 2. 
 
 ORIENTAL MAGIC. 
 
 " The Mysterious Cloth of Sed El Manchuc, the Bedouin M arabout; 
 
 or, Le foulard Magique," 
 
 A refutation of " Ex nihilo nihil fit," 
 
 " Albumazar's Stygian Feat," 
 Far eclipsing the Son of Thetis, as Dr. Holden Styx at nothing, 
 
 " Marvellous Flowers of Barbary," 
 (Les fleurs Animdes) 
 
 '* Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose, 
 
 With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed." 
 
 " Moorish and Egyptian Surprising Wonders." 
 Concluding with the Sensational Illusion, 
 
 " The Blade of Zamalxis." 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 LIFE IN SCOTLAND — PORT GLASGOW — LOCH LOMOND — ^TOURISTS TO 
 THE SCOTTISH LAKES —GENERAL REMARKS ON SCOTLAND. 
 
 Anyone being at Glasgow can make a delightful day's trip 
 down the River Clyde, calling at Greenock and Gourock, two dull, 
 washed-out, two-hundred-years-behind-the-times-looking places, 
 then crossing to Dunoon, a perfectly charming little town, pro- 
 ceeding through Loch Long, and calling en route at Kirn and 
 Blairmore, go as far as Lochgoilhead. I think I never saw more 
 enjoyable scenery than in these parts, far grander in every respect 
 than the Rhine and the Dart in Devonshire. 
 
 The steamer, ' Edinboro' Castle,' takes the trip daily ; and the 
 tourist has a couple of hours at Lochgoilhead, a tiny village con- 
 sisting of half a dozen or so houses and a small hotel. Every- 
 thing seems very primitive, the only excitement being the arrival 
 of the steamers and stage coach on its way to and from Inverary. 
 Dark gloomy mountains rise from the Loch, from whence there 
 seems no entrance or exit, whilst at times beautiful verdure- 
 covered hills surround the steamer with pretty villas or estates 
 scattered about. It must require a good pilot to take a huge 
 steamer through these parts. 
 
 People here seem to have a natural liking for flowers which is 
 very pleasant to see. Englishmen emigrating to lands where 
 Flora holds a gayer court, often seem to lose their gentleness 
 towards flowers. The pedestrian in Cape Town, for instance, 
 does not step aside lest his foot should crush the spilt camelUas. 
 There are so many camellias. 
 
 Nor in Madeira where clothes-baskets may be filled with 
 violets, ca,n the last handful or two at the bottom hope to be 
 cared for. There are whole wildernesses of violets in Madeira 
 as there are near Luss, on Loch Lomond. 
 
 The woodlands and breaks, hedgerows and lanes, are ex- 
 quisitely beautiful in their seasons with a prodigal wealth of 
 wild things, but they here cultivate in their pretty gardens the 
 flowers which in other countries run riot iq v^§te places. . Here, 
 129 K ■ ■ ■ , 
 
130 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 every good head of bloom is the reward of patience and almost 
 affectionate care. 
 
 A positive tenderness towards the pretty things is thus engen- 
 dered and there are few who, seeing a very beautiful flower do 
 not check the farst impulse to pick it with a thought that it is a 
 pity to dp so — this feeling of tenderness prevails not only among 
 the more refined Scotch people, and better educated, but in all 
 classes alike. Indeed it seems to me it is more striking among 
 those who cannot afford to buy the luxury of flowers than among 
 those who have all the treasury of botany at their command. 
 
 The fact is a pleasant one. Like the heroine of Jules 
 Sandeau's charming story, Mdlle. de la Seiglifere, Luss on Loch 
 Lomond is unconscious of her beauty. 
 
 Why do tourists in search of scenery want to visit the Scotch 
 Lochs through? I admit the beauty of the surroundings, but 
 for the same money one can visit foreign parts and I am sure 
 there is more satisfaction in doing the Rhine, and being done in 
 an unknown tongue than .in broad Scotch ; for ' do ' you they 
 certainly will, if they get a chance, in "either place, especially in 
 bonny Scotland ! I shall be told, I know that I ought to be- 
 lieve in the old axiom of Butler that ' the pleasure is as great of 
 being cheated as to cheat' But we don't always see things in, 
 the proper light, I fear. Abroad, again, you may get as diable- 
 ment en colore as you please over an imposition. There is 
 some satisfaction in that, but in Scotland, if you try it on, you 
 frequently get , a Rowland for an Oliver. 
 
 It strikes me that the Scotch bear a great resemblance to the 
 Jews, in many ways ; and I could not perhaps pay them a 
 greater compliment than by saying so. With the male popula- 
 tion the same shrewd look is observable in both their faces ; a sort 
 of-take-care-of-number-one-look-certainly, but, at the same time, 
 an expression not noticeable in the generality of Englishmen, 
 viz., a look of conscious superiority over us. I know' well it's 
 not a palatable truth, but it most assuredly is so. Take even the 
 little ragged Street Arabs in any large Scotch city or town, 
 watch them for a few minutes, and then say if there is not a 
 manliness and sang froid abaut them perfectly charming. 
 
 Ask 'an outside porter at the railway station how much he wants 
 to carry a basket or box, he could place on his brawny shoulders, 
 just down the street, ' A shilling,' he will answer, and a shilling 
 he will have, and no abatement. In London, a railway porter 
 will do the same job and thank you for a sixpence. The stock- 
 in-trade of a Scotch shoe-black-boy is not extensive, it would 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 131 
 
 go easily into his coat-tail pocket, provided it would only remain 
 there without dropping through ; not like the gorgeous affair that 
 Cockney confrlre possesses in Whitehall, just before you come 
 to Parliament Street, opposite the War Office, in London. How 
 many years I wonder has that man been there ? He was an 
 institution when I was a lad at school, at dear old Clapham, and 
 on him I used to reckon to smarten me up a bit before I was pre ■ 
 sentable enough to appear before my pater at the Athengeum 
 Club. If such is the case with the lower orders, it is still more 
 observable in the middle-class. 
 
 Though I am an Englishman myself, I must say I like to 
 see it, for we are the most egotistical people in the world, without 
 raison d'etre, that I can see. An Englishman can hold his own 
 anywhere, I admit. I don't for a moment — understand me — 
 uphold the gaunty-gilt-gingerbread look of superiority a Commu- 
 nistic Frenchman puts on ; or the blustering, swaggering look of 
 conceited superiority (if he has a revolver in his pocket) a Repub- 
 lican American puts on ; but does not a ragged, heaven-forsaken 
 Arab of the Desert, with his majestic walk, come up to one's, beau 
 ideal of what a man should look like more than those I have just 
 mentioned ? I think so. In a certain degree my remarks apply 
 to the Scotch. To me, they appear decidedly superior to us — 
 in many things — blackguardism included. And what a fine race 
 they are ! What physique ! What an air of independence. It may 
 be, that education has a great deal to do with it — and I should 
 not be at all surprised if such were the case. I have so far, 
 simply touched upon the.men. Well the fact is, one must not 
 touch the women at all, or rather not touch upon the subject. 
 With the. Scotch women — so with the Jewish — -there is a look 
 on the face I like to see. It seems to say; ' I have got so much 
 to do to-day and I'll do it — I am all there. You may look, 
 but do not touch please ! ' 
 
 But here the similarity ends. The former face lacks expres- 
 sion and fire. In fact, I admit I am not qualified to pass an 
 unbiased opinion on the people. Chacun d, son gout I It -.would 
 never do if everybody held the same opinion or had the same 
 tastes. 
 
 The few remarks I have made apply to the lower and middle 
 classes, and even then there is no rule without an exception. 
 In the higher Scotch circles, as everyone knows, my remarks do 
 not so well apply. There, we find the loveliest women, and the 
 most intelligent women we would ever wish to meet with, while, 
 as for the men, well — it's all the same whether a man be English, 
 
 K— 3 
 
132 A IVizard's Wanderings from China to F(.ru. 
 
 Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Italian, Spanish, French, or German, if he be 
 a gentleman. There can be. but one kind of the species, climate 
 can make no earthly difference — the '■pundonor' of the Spanish 
 gentleman runs through the blood of all alike who take for their 
 proud motto, 'Noblesse oblige/' 
 
 Leaving Glasgow at 9.15, p.m in one of the Midland Company's 
 comfortable carriages, the return journey to London seems 
 nothing, as by 8 a.m. the next morning — London — much abused 
 London ('with all thy faults I love thee still') is reached. 
 
 It's an immense pity that, in spite of all the excellent arrange- 
 ments on that line, the traveller has just cause to complain of the 
 practice they have of continually coming round to one's carriage 
 all night long — perhaps just as you get off into a nice nap, and 
 asking for your ticket. Seven times, if I remember aright, niy 
 ticket was examined between Glasgow and London — and bear in 
 mind please, in ike same carriage ! Surely something could be 
 arranged to dispense with so much ticket examining. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 NECROMANCY — ROGER BACON — THE ELIXIR OF LIFE — SUPER- 
 STITIOUS IDEAS — THE CHINESE — SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT BIRDS — 
 THE SWALLOW — KINDNESS T6 ANIMALS A NOBLE QUALITY. 
 
 We may laugh and sneer at those ancient necromantic ' philoso- 
 phers ' we read about ; at poor Roger Bacon and the pains he 
 took to prove the famous Elixir of Life was aqua regia, which 
 now, every schoolboy at all versed in chemistry knows to be gold, 
 dissolved in nitro-hydro-chloric acid — but are we so very perfect 
 ourselves ? Augustin Nicholas relates, that a poor peasant, who 
 had been arrested for sorcery, was put to the torture for the pur- 
 pose of compelling a confession. After enduring a few gentle 
 agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively 
 asked his tormentors if it were not possible for one to be a sorcerer 
 without knowing it ! He was immediately and righteously put to 
 death, and by this instructive example we are taught the folly of 
 raising irrelevant issues to embarrass the solution of grave and 
 weighty social problems. 
 
 But let us look at home, and bear in mind the proverb about 
 ' Glass-houses and stone throwing.' In many parts of this Queen- 
 dom, some very strange things are still believed in, according to 
 the Rev. Thistylton Dyer, in his excellent and comprehensive 
 work, on 'English Folk Lore,' of which I strongly advise a perusal. 
 In Yorkshire, a child suffering from whooping-cough is taken to 
 a neighbouring convent, and given a drink of holy water by the 
 priest, out of a silver chalice which the little sufferer is forbidden 
 to touch. By Protestants, as well as Catholic parents, it is consi- 
 dered an excellent remedy, or was until very recently. 
 
 In Gloucestershire, a good cure for whooping-cough is a roasted 
 mouse, eaten by the patient. In some parts of Devonshire, 
 it is believed that if a child be carried fasting, on a Sunday 
 morning, into three parishes he will soon get much better. 
 Whooping-cough is a favourite subject for charms. In Corn- 
 wall, a slice of bread and butter or a piece of cake eaten by 
 
 133 
 
134 ^ Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 the patient, and given by a married couple whose names are 
 John and Joan, is considered to be a certain cure. In York- 
 shire, owl broth is believed an infallible specific; and in 
 Staffordshire, hanging an empty bottle up — the bottle is an 
 unfailing cure ! And yet the School Board flourishes in all 
 the towns and villages in these parts. 
 
 It is considered highly unlucky by many to kill a swallow. 
 No doubt this form of absurd superstition has come down to 
 us from the ancients, by whom the swallow was held sacred 
 to their household gods, and therefore preserved. They also 
 honoured it as the harbinger of the Spring, and it is related 
 that the Rhodians had a solemn song to welcome it in. The 
 Germans have a great veneration for the swallow, and its 
 presence on a house is said not only to preserve it from 
 storms and fire, but also from evil. 
 
 What a wonderful nation is China — if we only give a moment's 
 attention to it. Let people hold what religion they think proper 
 — for my part, until I find out a purer faith, I incline towards 
 the ancient religion of China. I do not mean Buddhism nor 
 TaOnism, nor even Confucian philosophy, but I go back more 
 than twenty centuries B.C. Most interesting would be found a 
 perusal of the ancient . Chinese 'B,ook of Rites,' and the 'Rules 
 of Propriety.' To me, there is something very grand in their 
 conception of that early • spirit worship ' from which all other 
 systems of barbarous worship sprang. I need not here dwell 
 on their idea of meditation, consisting of three days occupied 
 in thinking of a deceased ancestor until his form was actually 
 presented to the mind's eye ; and of music in worship, as the 
 means by which spirits and men were brought together, because 
 lam not exactly prepared to endorse all there told us. But, at 
 the same time, the ancient Chinese religion is the oldest dogma 
 I know of, and I respect it on that account more than anything 
 else. 
 
 Archseological discoveries convince me that even in England, 
 centuries before the dawn of history, two races existed side by 
 side. The one burned the dead, as all Aryan nations did ; the 
 other buried the body whole, but in a contracted posture as the 
 Chinese do to-day, and they, without doubt, were the Turanian 
 race. 
 
 To the almost exclusive attention which scholars have hitherto 
 bestowed on the former, our ignorance of the latter is due. Two 
 great factors appear to have been at work in the construction 
 of primitive society in Europe, the earlier was the Turanian ; the 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru 135 
 
 latter the Aryan. It is a great pity the Chinese language is so 
 meagre and difficult in its tones and monosyllables ; it reminds 
 one of the same difficulty that poor Frenchman found in learn- 
 ing our language, which he at last gave up in despair, on being 
 informed in reply to a question how two games of karte were 
 going on. ' These two are two to two, and those two are two 
 to two, too.' A recent translation by Dr. Legge of the ancient 
 Chinese native classics, entided the ' Book of History,' is also 
 well worth a perusal. There is no doubt, for an instant, too 
 much prominence has been given to Aryan studies, to the ex- 
 clusion of those of the furthest east. Europe and Asia are not 
 two, but one, connecting links haying been found between the 
 nations of North-Central Asia, and Europe from Manchouria 
 to Lapland. A Turanian race allied to all these nations pre- 
 ceded the Aryan element in Europe, and so accounts for what 
 I hive just mentioned. In these thoughts I have just suggested 
 there is a mine well worth working out. 
 
 We are too much in the habit of laughing and sneering at 
 the. blue-coated, yellow-skinned, pig-tailed, heathen Chinee, and 
 allowing him no claims of brotherhood, a brother perhaps, but 
 not by the same father and mother ! Great as our progress has 
 been, compared to his, and immeasurable as is our advantage 
 over him on the deepest question which affects humanity, we 
 stand in equal ignorance side by side. 
 
 The casual reader may imagine these remarks of mine are un- 
 called for, and many may .say that they had better not have 
 been made. Pardon m^ if I beg to disagree with you. I 
 shall presently have to make some rather cutting remarks on 
 'Spiritualism,' so that such remarks, coming from one who has 
 just avowed his admiration for the ancient Chinese belief in 
 'Spirit Worship,' must, I.fancy, convince you no bigot is making 
 the assertions here made. The most advanced of modern 
 thinkers can but stand in the face of the Infinite, like old 
 Confucius, the great philosopher of China did, and stretching out 
 his arms exclaim with him : ' There is no man that knows me — 
 there is One alone that knows me, that is Heaven.' 
 
 The criterion of finite beings is a striving after truth in the 
 sense of the words of the immortal Lessing, ' If God were to hold 
 in His right hand all truth, and in His left the everlasting 
 active desire for truth, though veiled in eternal error, and were 
 to bid me choose, I would humbly grasp His left praying: 
 ' Almighty Father, gretnt me this gift — absolute truth is for Thee 
 alone.' 
 
136 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 " It is in this respect that the modern conjurer differs from his 
 ancient craftsman. No conjurer would dare to insult his audi- 
 ence by laying claim to supernatural power now-a-days, because 
 he knows well no one in the auditory would be so ignorant as 
 to believe him. It is to expose imposture, and hold it up to 
 ridicule, I strive after, so let no spiritualist charlatan, or canting 
 humbug expect quarter from me. With us, it is war a Foutraruf. 
 Looking for a moment at Miracles. What is a miracle ? 
 According to the nearest Dictionary I can lay my hand on : ' A 
 wonder, a prodigy — in theology, an event or effect contrary to 
 the known laws of nature — a supernatural event.' 
 
 According to my common sense — something that has not taken 
 place during this present century, at all events, consequently 
 non-existent, so far as human agency is concerned. 
 
 A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature and as a firm and 
 unalterable experience has established these laws, the prbof 
 against a miracle from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as 
 any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. 
 
 The martin, as well as the swallow, are very often coupled, 
 and, in travelling about, you hear many queer sayings about 
 them. 
 
 ' The martin and the swallow 
 Are God Almighty's bow and arrow.' 
 
 ' The robin and the redbreast, 
 The martin and the swallow, 
 Ifye touch one o' their eggs. 
 Bad luck will sure to follow.' 
 
 By all means, I say, teach children to be kind to the swallow 
 and martin, but not the above-mentioned birds only — to all living 
 birds and creatures alike, if you want to be logical. Religion, 
 inculcating that, and a command to ' do unto others, as you would 
 be done by,' never mind what name it may go by, cannot be 
 far wrong, and can do no one any harm. 
 
 Plants have always held a prominent place in Folk-lore, you 
 remember, rCest-ce-pas Plutarch's statement, that a few mules, 
 laden with parsley, threw into a complete panic a Greek force 
 on its march against the enemy? As this herb was very largely 
 used in Greece, to bestrew the tombs of the dead, it had acquired 
 an ominous significance, and ' to be in need of parsley,' was a 
 common phrase used to denote those on the point of death. All 
 superstition with regard to parsley has- not yet died away, for, in 
 some parts of Devonshire, it is widely believed that to transplant 
 parsley is to commit a serious offence against the guardian genius 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 137 
 
 who presides over parsley-beds, certain to be punished, either on 
 the offender himself, or some member of his family, within the 
 course of the year. In Hampshire, too, many people will refuse 
 to give any away for fear of some misfortune befalling them, 
 and in the neighbourhood of Cobham, Suffolk, it is believed by 
 many persons, that if parsley-seed be sown on any other day 
 than Good Friday, it will not come double. There are, of 
 course, innumerable stories and legends connected with the rose, 
 which was also largely used by the Greeks for funereal purposes 
 because of the belief that it protected the remains of the deceased. 
 In Wales, to this day, it is customary to plant the white rose on. 
 the grave of an unmarried woman j and a red rose is appropriated. 
 to anyone distinguished for benevolence of character. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 SPIRITUALISM — MEDIA — DR. RADCLIFFE — SHAKESPEARE'S MAC- 
 BETH — impostors' SEANCES — EXPOSURES OF SPIRITUALISM BY 
 SIR GEORGE SITWELL AND HERR CARL VON BUCH. 
 
 The most mischievous kind of humbug I know of is ' Spiritua- 
 lism,' as practised by paid Media, i.e., people who make their living 
 out of it, and who stoop at nothing to gain their ends. These 
 barefaced impostors will pretend to call from the grave — well 
 perhaps the spirit-form of your poor long-departed-dead-and-gone 
 mother-in-law! As if we had not had enough of her and to 
 spare — while alive, poor soul — without troubling us when d^ad. 
 It's much too too awfully awful ! 
 
 Those, who assume a special organ of dreams, which niay be 
 acted upon by the magnetic abstraction of vital energy from one 
 body and its transferrence to another, are certainly much nearer 
 to a solution of the vexed question of bona fide ' Spiritualism' and 
 ' Animal Magnetism.' If, as Dr. RadcHffe says, every muscle-fibre 
 or nerved-fibre in us is a Leyden jar, provided with a dielectric, 
 which separates the two kinds of electricity, then much of 
 the phenomena may be accounted for. As soon as we admit 
 that our brain may be acted upon by our ganghonic system ; that 
 it may receive impressions from within as well as from without, 
 I see nothing incredible in the fact that so called ghosts and 
 spectres have often appeared and still do appear, but only to the 
 one so situated. Two or more people at the same time have 
 never yet seen a spirit-form unless the lot of them had been 
 suifering from D.T. Shakespeare, who made many a ghost 
 ' revisit the glimpses of the moon, to make night hideous,' has 
 clearly touched upon the ' Spirit Question ' in Macbeth, when he 
 Cff Bacon makes the ambitious Thane exclaim : — 
 
 ' Is this a dagger which I see before me, 
 The handle toward my hand ? Come, let me clutch thee ! 
 I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 
 Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
 To feeling as to sight ? or art thou but 
 A dagger of the mind, a false creation, 
 Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? ' 
 
 This last question might have served as an answer to all 
 spiritualistic manifestations, if people would only study Shake- 
 speare, not for mere amusement as a powerful poet, but also as 
 
 138 
 
A Wizard's Wandeiings from China to Peru. 139 
 
 a deep philosopher, who gave us in his works a whole system 
 of psychological truths. Let us adopt some simple means to 
 cure society of this mental and bodily disease ; let there be a 
 Hoyal Commission sent out to investigate the spiritual pheno- 
 mena of our spiritualistic publicans from a scientific point of 
 view. We have Commissioners in Lunacy, Commissioners to 
 inquire into the vegetable and animal condition of water, to 
 test whether food be fit or unfit for human consumption ; and 
 Royal Commissioners in Agriculture ; why should we not also 
 have Commissioners to look after the working of ' Psychic 
 Force ? ' Yet these Spiritualists are allowed to go their way. 
 
 Those who have had time to occupy themselves with a his- 
 torical survey of psychology, know that Thomasius made an end 
 to witchcraft as soon as he ceased to believe in it. 
 
 Let us courageously face the mysterious Spirits of our times 
 and they must vanish. It is a mis-directed charity of society 
 which allows those to be imposed upon whose deranged nervous 
 system makes them an easy prey to spiritual charlatans. Nobody 
 can doubt that there is a propelling, and lifting force in us. Our 
 muscles possess the power of expansion and contraction ; still we 
 are not allowed to expand our arms with contracted fists and to 
 propel them towards the faces of our neighbours. The police 
 would take cognizance of such a mechanical experiment, and 
 fine or imprison us. But as soon as our intellect is concerned, 
 spiritualistic quacks of every kind are allowed to play upon other 
 human beings, as if they were but wooden instruments. These 
 Spiritualists pretend to know all our psychical stops, they deem- 
 themselves authorised to pluck out the very heart of our life- 
 mystery, to sound every one from his 'lowest note to the top 
 of his compass of vitality ' Why so ? Because ' we think less of 
 man, than of flutes, and pipes and drums.' 
 
 We may spread mental disease in the form of hallucinations, 
 spectral visions, or spiritual manifestations, because we like to 
 enjoy our freedom and to make fools of ourselves. The electric 
 and magnetic forces with which we are endowed have been attri- 
 buted, by Dr. Gassner to the Evil Spirit; our modern Spiritualists 
 use the same spirit only in another form ; with them it is an 
 accommodating spiritual servant of some Medium. These 
 ' Media ' arrogate to themselves infallible powers ; they know the 
 general condition of all the other worlds of the universe, except 
 our own, and for half-a-crown, ten-and-six, or a guinea, will hear, 
 and cause others to hear, the harmony of the spheres resound- 
 ing in front parlours and back drawing-rooms; they are perfectly 
 
14° A Wizard's Wandeiiti^s from China to Fern. 
 
 acquainted with all the occurrences of the Spiritual Kingdom of 
 ghosts and spectres, but can rarely speak Latin, though this advan- 
 tage was enjoyed by Father Gassner and his spiritual famulus, 
 who, at least, had the merit of being scholars. 
 
 But if we abhor Commissioners, let us at least have the School- 
 master, not ' abroad,' as the saying goes, but ' at home.' Let 
 us not be altogether only technical, but let us consider that we 
 are spirit as well as matter. That we are bound to study our 
 psychical construction ' goes without saying.' For spirit and 
 matter are in everlasting causal connection. ' As there can be no 
 bile without a liver,' ' there are no thoughts without a brain.' I 
 heard once of a very eflicacious remedy for all spiritual 
 phenomena. 
 
 An English physician was called in at a ladies' school, where 
 one hysterical girl infected many others with hysteria, this malady 
 being, as many other psychic derangements are infectious. After 
 he had in vain tried various remedies, he one day observed to 
 the mistress, in the hearing of the patients, that there remained 
 but one chance of effecting a cure ; the apphcation of a red-hot 
 iron to the spine to quiet the nervous system. Strange to say the 
 red-hot iron was never applied, and the hysterical attacks ceased 
 as if by magic. 
 
 A similar instance occurred in a large school near Cologne, 
 where the revival mania, encouraged by a bigoted head-master, 
 had infected some weak-minded students. But the Government 
 soon cooled the religious excitement, remembering that much 
 mischief had been done by one James Bohme, in the year 1612. 
 A Commissioner was sent out to inspect the schools. The boys 
 were assembled, and the Commissioner, after many irrelevant 
 questions, at last touched upon the religious fervour of the 
 students with the remark that he had heard with regret that they 
 were afflicted with visions of holy, and unholy personages, and 
 that if this should continue the school would have to be closed 
 as a haunted place ; the chief visionaries would be altogether 
 expelled, and the head-master dismissed. The effect of this 
 admonition was perfectly miraculous. Not one single revival took 
 place any more. Remedies of this description might be profit- 
 ably applied in treating the cases of our own Spiritualists, who, 
 according to their own ideas, ' never tell a lie.' With regard to 
 that historical interview between the transgressing little George 
 Washington and his aggrieved parent, I have always considered 
 the confessed inability of the former to tell a he, a most unfortu- 
 nate moral pecu//aHty. Had he been able, I have no doubt 
 
A l^izard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 141 
 
 he would have executed a piece of matchless mendacity that might 
 have stood as a model for all future generations of Spiritualists : — 
 ' A slippery and subtle knave ; a finder out of occasions, that 
 has an eye can stamp and counterfeit advantages.' — Othello. 
 
 The appearance of a Spirit's hand in a semi-dark room is 
 one of their special phenomena. Let me explain how this is 
 performed : — While sitting round a table the Medium fastens 
 to his boot a wax hand, which is attached to an elastic band, 
 so that at pleasure it may fly up the legs of his ' ditto dittos,' or 
 be slipped down again when needed. Some Media use an 
 india-rubba or gutta-percha hand; in either case the effect is 
 the same — very striking. Only a small portion of the hand is 
 made to appear at the edge of the table. It requires a man 
 with long legs, and the more athletic he is the better for the 
 success of the manifestation — save the mark ! It seems that 
 certain people have a singular superstition to the effect that 
 if a baby afflicted with — or afflicting — the whooping-cough, shall 
 kiss the back of a jackass, it — or the whooping-cough — will 
 experience immediate relief. If the disease and the supersti- 
 tion shall ever walk hand in hand through Southampton Row, 
 W.C., the Editor of a certain paper, not a hundred miles from 
 there, will have a golden opportunity to receive many a chaste salute. 
 
 The same Editor has lately shown a remarkable instance of 
 self-possession. He owns a mule. 
 
 'Spiritualism,' as an imposture, is the more shameful because it 
 trades on grief. From small beginnings and an obscure pro- 
 paganda it now impudently assumes the dignity of a religion. 
 ' Professors ' live by it, indulging themselves in idleness and 
 luxury at the expense of public credulity. There are, at the 
 West-end of London, private houses where every sort of spirit- 
 ualistic trickery goes on from day to day, and where dupes in a 
 good rank of life are eased of their cash in return for interviews 
 with supposititious ghosts. The audacious quacks, who make 
 believe to recall the dead, not content with a personal connec- 
 tion of well-to-do simpletons, preach 'Spiritualism' as an evangel, 
 describing the details of an after-life in Heaven, and affecting an 
 intimacy with the unknowable, which should excite contemp- 
 tHOus laughter but for its back-ground of mischief. The victims 
 of the spiritualist craze are more to be pitied than the slaves to 
 opium. For while the one may leave to the sufferer intermittent 
 flashes of reason, the other clouds the mind completely and per- 
 petually with a curtain of fallacies hung upon the most daring 
 of all modern forms of imposture. 
 
142 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Exposure cannot silence nor disgrace suppress the professional 
 spiritualist. Driven with contumely from one place he settles in 
 another, still further to unhinge weak minds, and in many in- 
 stances to sow the seeds of insanity. What will most strike the 
 visitor to the wards of a mad-house, is the number of patients 
 afflicted, with 'voices.' The unhappy creatures, often weak in 
 body, and always with poorly-nourished brains, cherish the piti- 
 able fancy that voices from another world continually sound ia 
 their ears. That, however, is but a single item of the evils 
 fostered by the encouragement of ' Spiritualism.' Persons of sensi- 
 tive brain, bowed down with grief and yearning after loved ones 
 taken hence, are apt to be persuaded that the spirits of their dead 
 return to them in ^ome shadowy shape, and at the paid call of 
 the spiritualist impostor. Thus the pure sentiment of natural 
 sorrow is cheated of its dues, and the noblest longings of the 
 human heart are made the mock of jugglery. The influence of 
 this disgraceful trade in lies is peculiarly dangerous in a so-called 
 age of reason like the present. Just as in a. religious period the 
 majority accept the dogmas of faith without inquiry, so in a con- 
 dition of wide-spread scepticism unbelief itself becomes crystal- 
 lised into a creed, which the unthinking adopt because it is the 
 fashion. History and tradition of civilised and savage races, 
 however, agree in recording that the gross sum of humanity, 
 cultured and uncultured, will. hold to some hope beyond the 
 portals of the grave where stands : " The shadow cloak'd from 
 head to foot. Who keeps the keys of all the creeds." Where 
 recognised religions fail an imposture-like ' Spiritualism ' steps in, 
 and for the greed of gain pretends to impart the secrets of the 
 Spirit-world — pretends to call back the souls of the dead from 
 where we may hope, but cannot know, they dwell. Working 
 behind the veil of secrecy and in the dark, it is not often that 
 these mountebanks are exposed. When, however, such good 
 fortune does reward inquiry, the wider the publicity given to the. 
 information, the greater is the prospect of warning the weak- 
 minded against the evils of this dangerous and growing form 
 of rascality. 
 
 Forsaking generalities for the firm ground of fact, we have to 
 deal with a remarkable exposure of pretended 'Spiritualism,' which 
 were it not for the natural credulity of mankind, should strike 
 a fatal blow at this insidious superstition. Sir George R. Sit- 
 well and Herr Carl von Buch, F.C.S., wrote a letter in «rhich 
 they detail their experience of the results of experiments into so- 
 called ' Spiritualism.' Being anxious to put its pretensions to the 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 143 
 
 proof, they sought the advice of a person ' eminent ' in the art, 
 craft, creed, or whatever it be, and by him were recommended to 
 attend certain meetings at an influential Institution, at which, 
 they were assured, the seances were the most genuine in England 
 and held under strict test conditions. On the occasion of their 
 first visit no manifestations took place, probably because the 
 inquirers themselves tied the- Medium. At the next seance which 
 they attended, the Chairman of the company assembled, himself 
 an officer of the Institution, directed the tying process, and this 
 time a ' spirit ' did appear, in the form of a pretended ghost of a 
 female child, aged twelve years, and answering to the name of 
 ' Marie.' Looking intently at the messenger, assuming to come 
 from beyond the boundaries of another world, the inquirers spied 
 what seemed to be a corset beneath the diaphanous robes of 
 ghosthood, and,, doubting whether spirits wore stays, they re- 
 doubled their attentions, and ul'.imately came to the conclusion 
 that, judged by voice and mabner, ' Marie ' was no other than 
 the professional Medium hers/if. Influenced by the true scien- 
 tific spirit, these gentlemen wire not content with the result of a 
 single experiment, but made a third visit of inquiry, this time 
 accompanied by Mr. John C. Fell, engineer, and his wife. Once 
 more ' Marie ' appeared. These four independent and credible 
 witnesses heard audible sounds of undressing behind a curtain, 
 and were shocked at the levity of 'Marie's ' behaviour and con- 
 versation. It is certainly not surprising that suspicion, already 
 on the alert, should be confirmed by a display of volatility so 
 inconsistent with the assumed character of the 'appearance.' 
 Determined to make a still closer acquaintance with the viva- 
 cious and apparently youthful ghost, one of the four darted 
 forward and laid hold of ' Marie' by the wrist. According to 
 the argument by analogy, the possession of the wrist postulates 
 the attachment of a material body, and proves to demonstration 
 that ' Marie ' is a common cheat. When one. of the party had 
 laid hold of the 'spirit' another drew aside the curtains and 
 discovered the Medium's chair empty, and with the knot of 
 the rope slipped, while, to make assurance doubly sure, the 
 stockings, boots, and other discarded garments of the Medium 
 lay about in ungraceful confusion. 
 
 According to the report of Sir George Sitwell and Herr Carl 
 von Buch, the objects named were handed round among the 
 strangers and friends present to make certain of their identity. 
 It is almost needless to add that an official connected with the 
 show, hastened to put the company in total darkness, or that the 
 
144 ^ Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 persons belonging to the Institution took refuge in recrimination 
 and abuse. Sir George Sitwell, Herr von Buch, and Mr. Fell 
 put their case fairly and temperately before the public when they 
 said, that leaving general conclusions on ' Spiritualism' to others, 
 they claimed to have proved that in a Society recommended to 
 them as the first of its kind in England, the Medium has been 
 publicly detected in the fraud of personation. When certain other 
 famous Media, whose names are familiar to the public, at dif- 
 ferent .times found London no longer suited to the object which 
 they had in view, the Metropolis knew them no more ; and should 
 'Marie ' find Bloomsbury untenable that ingenious but disingenu- 
 ous materialised wraith, like the ' uncouth swain ' in ' Lycidas,' 
 may probably flit to-morrow to ' fresh woods and pastures new.' 
 If it were possible to credit the ex-patie announcements of pro- 
 fessional Spiritualists, it might be worth while to establish regular 
 communication — a sort of ghostly postal system — between the 
 material and the immaterial worlds, and, were such an innovation 
 desirable, persons fitted, by pretension, for the office of postmen 
 in space would, doubtless, be forthcoming. Indeed, the excep- 
 tional cleverness of advertisers who seek patrons from among the 
 readers of Spiritualist prints can only be realised by the study of 
 that form of literature. It would seem to be possible to purchase 
 a series of papers and essays ' by individuals now in spirit life.' 
 It is, however, to be regretted that the advertisement announcing 
 this remarkable work does not explicitly state whether the authors 
 produced their ' copy ' before leaving this, or sent it on from 
 another place. It is, likewise, consolatory to know that for the 
 small sum of one penny we may obtain the portrait of a noto- 
 rious ' appearance ' sketched by an artist ' who saw him materialise 
 in daylight.' There exist and flourish, so it would appear, 
 healing as well as trance Mediums; and there would seem to be 
 but a narrow line of demarcation between the spiritual, the 
 medical clairvoyant, and the professional astrologist. A lady 
 imdertakes to cure all classes of disease for one guinea if pro- 
 vided with a lock of the patient's hair, a specimen of his hand- 
 writing, and two leading symptoms. Persons afflicted with 
 anxious doubts on the diverse subjects of business, marriage, and 
 absent friends may have their minds set at rest for a half- 
 crown's worth of postage stamps. At a comparatively small 
 outlay the public are invited to read all about life beyond the 
 grave, ' described by a spirit through a writing medium,' and a 
 fashionable tailor retails garments of the best quality, ' at special 
 prices to Spiritualists.' It by no means follows that all these 
 
A Wizard'' s Wanderings from China to Peru, 14S 
 
 people are impostors. Some may be self-deceived, others may 
 seek to advertise their wares in this manner simply as a matter 
 of business. As a question of public policy it is open to dis- 
 cussion whether a professed spiritualist discovered in the com- 
 mission of a. palpable fraud should not be proceeded against 
 by the Public Prosecutor. Scarcely a week passes in which some 
 ignorant hag is not brought before the magistrates and convicted 
 of imposing on servant-girls and pretending to tell their fortunes 
 by occult means. The mischief arising from pretended com- 
 munications with the 'Spirit World' cannot well be over-estimated ; 
 and if, for the sake of argument, it were allowed that some so- 
 called Spiritualists really and honestly believe themselves to be 
 possessed of the powers which they assume, they should be 
 among the first to encourage prosecutions such as I have 
 indicated. 
 
 Apropos of the latest craze of Society, ' Amateur Palmistry,' 
 you can hardly now find any social gathering, from a wedding 
 breakfast to a picnic, at which some lady or gentleman 
 does not profess the occult art or science; and as curiosity 
 is quite as prevalent a social curse as ever it was, of course you 
 have, in your turn, to surrender your hand for investigation. 
 Let me at once admit that the requisite manipulations of one's 
 hand by a fair experimenter are not altogether unpleasant to the 
 corpus vile, and one does not mind hearing a little harmless 
 nonsense about ' lines of life,' ' mounts of Jupiter and Mercury,' 
 ' stars,' ' crosses,' and the like ; but I do not like to be told 
 that my finger-tips are ' quarrelsome,' and when the young lady 
 gravely raises her eyes to mine and says, ' You have twice be- 
 trayed a trusting heart, and once it was through avarice,' I feel 
 positively uncomfortable. Especially annoying is it to have 
 one's wife come up just in time to hear, ' From first to last your 
 career has been, and will be dominated by the influence of three 
 women ! ' Worst of all you are expected to admit that there 
 may be something in all this, and that the Sibyl has certainly 
 made some startling hiis. If you pooh-pooh it, everyone at 
 once concludes that you resent being told bitter home-truths. 
 
 The palmist of the clubs has no redeeming features. His 
 touch is unpleasant, and he does not strive to say what he can 
 in your favour. On the contrary, I believe that, under cover of 
 his pretended art, he delights in a disagreeable plainness of 
 speech, for which under ordinary circumstances one would kick 
 him. On the other hand, I have heard him butter some of my 
 friends in a manner wholly contemptible. 
 
 L 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 FORTUNE-TELLING BY CARDS — A SPANISH SUPERSTITION — 
 THOUGHT-READING — ITS FALLACY AND ABSURDITY — A FEW 
 COMMON-SENSE OBSERVATIONS — CURIOUS INSTANCES WITH 
 REGARD TO THE SO-CALLED ' SECOND SIGHT.' 
 
 TELLIN.G fortunes by cards, and lucky and unlucky numbers is 
 another very popular belief. In southern Italy where the game 
 of Loto is much indulged in by all classes, from the Phelebian, 
 down to the Lazonori, the latter superstition is very patent ; and 
 the reasons given very absurd. I remember once, at Naples, being 
 told by a priest that No. 4 was his lucky number, and he 
 accounted for it by reminding me, not only did the ancients 
 venerate that number, on account of it representing the perfect 
 square ; but that the Deity in nearly all the modern languages 
 was spelt with four letters. 
 
 ... Persian 
 
 ... German 
 
 ... Spanish 
 
 ... trench 
 
 There is a stupid Spanish superstition that it is unlucky to 
 touch a dead or drowning person, which no doubt accounted 
 for the death of poor Miss Probyn, who was drowned under the 
 very eyes of her friend Lady Sebright at Biarritz, only a short 
 time ago, whilst a hulking, ignorant Spanish fisherman, who 
 was on the spot with his boat, rendered no assistance until a 
 wave dashed the lifeless body on to the beach at Lady Sebright's 
 feet. 
 
 My readers may remember in my last papers I made reference 
 to the belief in the supernatural power of some men indulged in 
 by our poor benighted brothers (save the mark) in South Africa. 
 There is some excuse possibly for them, poor wretches, as they 
 know no better, but what can we think when we see in this 
 country, and America, people well up in the social scale, lend- 
 
 146 
 
 Deus ... 
 
 ... Latin 
 
 Syre 
 
 ©eos 
 
 ... Greek 
 
 GOTT 
 
 Aydi ... 
 
 ... Turkish 
 
 DiOS 
 
 ILAH 
 
 ... Arabic 
 
 DiEU 
 
 Tewt ... 
 
 ... Celtic 
 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 147 
 
 ing themselves to about the most arrant impositions evei 
 introduced. 
 
 I refer to ''Thought Reading ! ' As if any man, woman, or child, on 
 the face of the earth, could read what you or I thought of. Say, 
 the day before you had seen a Magic Lantern Entertainment and 
 from amongst the various pictures you selected one of those 
 pictures representing, let us say, a greasy-looking individual in 
 furs, looking like ' 'Arry,' of the East Whitechapel Amateur Com- 
 pany in ' Called Back,' with one of his eyes on an Aurora Borealis 
 and the other on an old kflacker of a Rein-deer-scene-Iceland. 
 Does any sane man believe that the 'Thought Reader' can tell 
 what we are thinking of? We think ourselves so very superior 
 to everybody else, so immaculate, in fact, in everything, that to 
 an observant foreigner we must really at times seem a paradox. 
 Of course I, as a Magician, ought to be the last man in the 
 world to object to it you say. Still, I cannot help thinking at 
 times, Carlyle was not far wrong when he said the population ot 
 this country was fifty miUions — mostly fools ! Have you not, ovei 
 and over again, noticed people walk right out in the road, and 
 get covered with mud, sooner than pass under a ladder ? They 
 refuse to sit down to table if thirteen are to be the number. 
 Would I ? Try me ! 
 
 I like a liar — a thoroughly conscientious, industrious, and 
 ingenious liar. Not your ordinary prevaricator who skirts along 
 the coast of truth, keeping ever within sight of the headlands 
 and promontories of probability — ^whose excursions are limited to 
 short fair-weather reaches into the ocean of imagination, and 
 who paddles for port as if Beelzebub himself were after him 
 whenever a capful of wind threatens a storm of exposure, but a 
 bold, sea-going liar, who spurns a continent, striking out for the 
 blue water, with his eyes fixed upon the horizon of boundless 
 mendacity; therefore, whenever I meet a professional Thought 
 Reader now, my hat is at half-mast in token of profound esteem 
 and conscious inferiority. 
 
 Common-sense is, of course, against the attempt to see through 
 brick walls, but many people are superior to common- sense, and 
 are not to be deterred by its dictates from encouraging the en- 
 deavour by the sacrifice of time and money, and by applause. 
 Scientific men, philosophers, and theologians are all at one with 
 common sense in this matter ; but this is to some minds only 
 another reason why they should persist in their experiments. 
 Not much encouragement is obtained even from the Seers. 
 Even that heterodox one, Swedenborg, whom dealers in mysteries 
 
148 A Wizard'' s Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 are fond of quoting without reading, who claimed that he had 
 been on the other side of most brick walls, and could describe 
 the scenery beyond, does not really give much satisfaction to 
 those who wish to see through on their own account. He, how- 
 ever, does not venture to approach the brick wail of the future, 
 and is very vigorous in denouncing all attempts at converse with 
 the departed as a disorderly delusion which leads to insanity — 
 a warning which has found abundant confirmation since his day. 
 Rossetti, in his ' Aspecta Medusa,' has the fine idea that one's 
 eyes should not know any forbidden thing itself, but that its 
 ' shadow upon life ' should be enough for us ; and certainly 
 the shadow seen by friends brooding upon the lives of those 
 who have given themselves up to penetrating this last-mentioned 
 brick wall is, in all conscience, dark enough. A more unhealthy- 
 looking and generally ' unfit ' lot of human beings than a number 
 of ardent Spiritualists in seance assembled, it would be difficult to 
 find out of a lunatic asylum, and if a tree is to be known by its 
 fruits, that tree is certainly one that cumbers the ground. Dis- 
 ordered, nervous systems, shattered mental powers, and inca- 
 pacity for healthy life and work are the sole rewards of the 
 devotees of this particular fine art, as anyone can testify who 
 has had the misery of their friendship. 
 
 One turns with pleasure, however, from the crazes of ' Spiritual- 
 ism' to the follies of 'Thought Reading,' as a doctor might turn from 
 a case of delirium tremens to one of hettlerash. The latter is a 
 comparative innocuous amusement, and its outcome is not likely 
 to be very serious. It will, no doubt, ultimately, after' the pro- 
 verbial nine days' wonder is over, develop into a form of pastime 
 for evening parties in the winter, to be brought forward when a 
 hostess is at a loss for something wherewith to entertain her 
 guests. And if young ladies are to have their thoughts guessed, 
 and young men are allowed to guess them, I can conceive that 
 it will become a very popular pastime indeed. The privilege of 
 placing his hand on the forehead of a fair ' subject,' and the pro- 
 pinquity which the experiment necessitates, will not come amiss 
 to susceptible youths, nor will ingenuous maidens, whose innocent 
 thoughts might, of course, be read by anybody be averse to so 
 scientific an excuse for flirtation. Beyond this sphere, however, 
 I do not expect to hear much about ' Thought Reading ' or 
 Amateur Palmistry. 
 
 There is a connection between the three brick walls I have 
 mentioned, the endeavour to see into the future — to talk with the 
 departed — and to penetrate into the minds of the living : they are 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru 149 
 
 all attempts to subject the human mind to influences which it is 
 obviously not intended to bear or cope with. The philosophical 
 reason, if anyone wants it, why Thought Reading is a brick wall, is 
 the same reason which shows that foretelling the future, and inter- 
 course with the dead, are brick walls ; and is simply this, that if these 
 things were not brick walls, men might possibly continue to exist 
 but they would cease to exist as men, because their freedom of 
 mind would be gone. The knowledge of the future, the control of 
 the departed, and the influence of other men's secret thoughts, 
 would be to them a Gorgon's head which would deprive them of 
 the liberty of thinking and acting for themselves. The reason is in 
 the very nature of things. 
 
 There is, of course, a great difference between the dabbler and 
 the devotee. The man who takes up ' Thought Reading ' to-day 
 as a fashionable craze, and, perhaps, rhododendron growing to- 
 morrow — if that happens in its turn to be fashionable —is not 
 hkely to do himself or anybody else much harm. And there is 
 this also to be said. If a man will spend his time in intently 
 looking upon a brick wall, he will note a score of facts in con- 
 nection with that wall which escape the eye of him who only 
 looks as he runs by. The colour and texture of the brick, its 
 interstices, and the particular bond in which the wall is laid, will 
 all be revealed to him ; and in this sense — but in this sense only 
 — it must be allowed that he sees further into a brick wall than 
 does the other man. He will know a great deal more about the 
 brick wall than the man to whom it is a yellow primrose — I beg 
 pardon — a brick wall — ' and nothing more ! ' 
 
 So the present pursuit of Thought Reading, no doubt, will 
 bring to light many useful facts in regard to mental operations. 
 We may, therefore, rest content to let the gazer gaze as long as 
 he likes, and make all the notes he can ; but when he starts up in 
 ecstasy and tells us that he has at last seen through the wall, we 
 are bound to tell him that the phenomenon is subjective, and 
 advise him in the kindest possible manner to go and get his head 
 shaved. 
 
 A person gravely informs the world that at the burning of the 
 Archiepiscopal Palace at Bourges, among other valuable manu- 
 scripts destroyed, was the original death-warrant of Jesus Christ, 
 signed at Jerusalem by one Capel, and dated a.u.c. 783. Not 
 only so, ^ut he kindly favours us with a literal translation of it. 
 
 One cannot help warming up to a man who can lie like that ! 
 Talk about the 'Emma Mine Swindle,' or the 'Glasgow Bank 
 Directors' Fraud ! ' Compared with this tremendous fib, they are 
 
i'5o A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Ptru. 
 
 as but the stilly whisper of a hearthstone cricket to the shrill 
 trumpeting of a wounded elephant — the piping of a sick cock- 
 sparrow to the brazen clang of a donkey in love ! I have 
 Endeavoured to expose silly superstition in these pages. It is 
 so degrading, so utterly absurd, that the only wonder to me is, 
 that an educated man can ever confess to being superstitious ! 
 . Have I succeeded ? 
 
 If, gentle reader, I have convinced you (as I honestly believe 
 myself), there is truth in nothing supernatural, and that those 
 teachers who would teach you otherwise, have, as a reason, that 
 it is their living to propagate these doctrines, that it is a matter 
 of pounds, shillings and pence to them to make the ignorant 
 beUeve the nonsense they teach them — then, I say, my efforts 
 have not been in vain. 
 
 ' SECOND SIGHT.' 
 
 Among the numerous crotchets which have, at one time or 
 another, excited popular interest and demanded the attention of 
 even our learned men, may be reckoned ' Second Sight.' Indeed, 
 no less a person than Dr. Johnson was so favourably impressed 
 with the plausibility of this notion that after, in the course of his 
 travels, giving the subject full inquiry, he confessed thai he never 
 could ' advance his curiosity to conviction, but came away at last 
 only willing to believe.' Sir Walter Scott, too, went so far as to 
 say that ' if force of evidence could authorise us to believe facts 
 inconsistent with the general laws of nature, enough might be 
 produced in favour of the existence of ' Second Sight.' When we 
 recollect how all history and tradition abound in instances of this 
 belief, oftentimes apparently resting on evidence beyond impeach- 
 ment, it is not surprising that it has numbered aniong its ad- 
 herents advocates of most schools of thought. Although, too, of 
 late years the theory of ' Second Sight ' has not been so widely 
 preached as formerly, yet it must not be supposed that, on this 
 account, the stories urged in support of it are less numerous, or 
 that it has ceased to be regarded as great a mystery as in days 
 gone by. 
 
 In defining ' Second Sight ' as a singular faculty ' of seeing an 
 otherwise invisible object without any previous means used by the 
 person that beholds it for that end,' we are at once confronted by 
 the well-known axiom that ' a man cannot be in two places at 
 once' — a rule with which it is difficult to reconcile such statements 
 as those recorded by Pennant, of a gentleman of the Hebrides, 
 said to have the gift of foreseeing visitors in time to get ready for 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 151 
 
 them, or the anecdote which tells how St. Ambrose fell into a 
 comatose state while celebrating the Mass at Milan, and on his 
 recovery asserted that he had been present at St. Martin's funeral 
 at Tours, where it was afterwards declared that he had been seen. 
 It must be remembered, however, that believers in the theory 
 of ' Second Sight ' base their faith not so much on metaphysical 
 definitions as on l,he evidence of daily experience, it being of 
 immaterial importance to them how impossible a certain doctrine 
 may seem, provided it only has the testimony of actual witnesses 
 in its favour. In spite, therefore, of all argument against the 
 so-called Second Sight as contrary to every natural law, it is 
 urged, on the other hand, that visions coinciding with real facts 
 and events occurring at a distance — often thousands of miles 
 away— are beheld by persons possessing this remarkable faculty. 
 Thus Collins, in his ode on the ' Popular Superstitions of 
 the Highlands,' has the following allusion to this notion : — 
 
 ' To monarchs dear, some hundred miles astray, 
 Oft have they seen Fate give the fatal blow ! 
 The seer, in Skye, shrieked as the blood did flow, 
 When headless Charles warm on the scaffold lay.' 
 
 In 1652, a Scottish lawyer,-Sir George Mackenzie, afterwards 
 Lord Tarbat, when driven to the Highlands by fear of the 
 ' Government of Cromsvell, made very extensive inquiries con- 
 cerning this supposed supernatural faculty, and wrote an elabo- 
 rate account of its manifestations to the celebrated Robert Boyle, 
 published in the correspondence of Samuel Pepys. Aubrey, too, 
 the famous antiquarian, devoted considerable attention to the 
 subject, and in the year 1863 appeared the treatise of ' Theophilus 
 Insularum,' with about one hundred cases gathered from various 
 sources. From the numerous narratives recorded of this belief, 
 it appears to have had a specially strong footing in Scotland. 
 In the year 1799, a traveller, writing of the peasants of Kirkcud- 
 brightshire, relates that ' it is common among them to fancy that 
 they see the wraiths of persons dying which will be visible to one 
 amd not to others present with him.' Within these last twenty 
 years it was hardly possible to meet with any person who had 
 not seen many wraiths and ghosts in the course of his experience. 
 Indeed, we are told that many of the Highlanders gained a 
 lucrative livelihood by enlightening their neighbours on matters 
 revealed to them through 'Second Sight;' and it is not many 
 years ago since a man lived at Blackpool who possessed, as he 
 pretended, of this faculty, was visited by persons from all parts 
 iinxious of gaining information about absent friends. One of the 
 
1 52 A Wizard! s Wanderings from China to Fern. 
 
 best accounts of this superstition, as it prevailed in the Highlands 
 has been bequeathed by Dr. Johnson in his 'Journey to the 
 Hebrides : ' — ' A man on a journey, far from home, falls from a 
 horse ; another, who is perhaps at work about the house, sees 
 him bleeding on the ground, commonly with a landscape of the 
 place where the accident befalls him. Another seer, driving 
 home his cattle, or wandering in idleness, or musing in the 
 sunshine, is suddenly surprised by the appearance of a bridal 
 ceremony or funeral procession, and counts the mourners or 
 attendants, of whom, if he knows them, he relates the names ; if 
 he knows them not he can describe the dresses. 
 
 ' Things distant are seen at the instant when they happen.' 
 This belief, too, it may be added, has not been confined to our 
 own country, curious traces of it being found among savage 
 tribes. Thus Captain Jonathan Carver obtained from a Cree 
 medicine-man a correct prophecy of the arrival of a canoe with 
 news the following day at noon ; and we are further told how 
 when Mr. Mason Brown was travelling with two voyageurs on the 
 Coppermine River, he was met by Indians of the very band he 
 was seeking, these having been despatched by their medicine- 
 man, who, on being interrogated, affirmed that 'he saw them 
 coming, and heard them talk on their journey.' Mr. Jamieson, 
 referring to its existence in Scotland, says : ' Whether it was com- 
 municated to the inhabitants by the northern nations who so 
 long had possession of it, I shall not pretend to determine ; but 
 traces of the same wonderful faculty may be found among the 
 Scandinavians.' In recent years one of the most interesting 
 instances of so-called ' Second Sight ' occurred in connection 
 with the death of Mr. George Smith, the well-known Assyrio- 
 logist. This eminent scholar died at Aleppo on the 19th of 
 August, 1876, about six o'clock in the afternoon. Curious to 
 say, on the same day, and at about the same time, as Dr. 
 Delitzsch — a friend and fellow-worker of Mr. Smith's — was 
 passing within a stone's-throw of the house in which he had 
 lived whilst in London, he suddenly heard his own name uttered 
 aloud in ' a most piercing cry.' which a contemporary record of 
 the time said ' thrilled him to the marrow.' The fact impressed 
 Dr. Delitzsch so much that he looked at his watch, made a note 
 of the hour, and recorded the fact in bis pocket-book, this being 
 one of the many straightforward and unimpeachable coincideijces 
 which, even to an opponent of the theory, is difficult to explain. 
 
 Again, persons gifted with the faculty of ' Second Sight ' are 
 said, not only to know particular events at a distance precisely 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 153 
 
 at the same moment as they happen, but also to have a fore- 
 knowledge of them before they take place, for — 
 
 ' As the sun, 
 Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image 
 In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits 
 Of great events stride on before the events, 
 And in to-day already walks to-morrow.' 
 
 A Scottish seer, for instance, is said to have foretold the unhappy 
 career of Charles I., and another the violent death of Villiers, 
 Duke of Buckingham. Mr. Tylor, in his ' Primitive Culture,' 
 relates the case of a Shetland lady, who affirmed how, some 
 years ago, she and a girl leading her pony recognised the familiar 
 figure of one Peter Sutherland, who they knew to be at the time 
 in ill-health in Edinburgh ; he turned a corner and they saw him 
 no more, but next week came the news of his sudden death. It 
 appears that coming events are mostly forecasted by various 
 symbolic omens which generally take the form of spectral ex- 
 hibitions. Thus a phantom shroud seen in the morning on a 
 living person is said to betoken his death in the course of that 
 day; but if seen late in the evening no particular time is in- 
 dicated, further than that it will take place within the year. If, 
 too, the shroud does not cover the whole body, the fulfilment of 
 the vision may be expected at some distant period. Waldron, 
 in his 'Description of the Isle of Man,' alluding to 'Second 
 Sight,' tells us how, ' before any person dies the procession of a 
 funeral is acted by a sort of beings which, for that end, render 
 themselves visible ; ' and we are further told how the people of 
 St. Kilda used- to be haunted by their own spectral wraiths, 
 certain forerunners of the impending death, visions of this kind 
 having been denominated by the ancient Gaels as ' Shadow 
 Sight.' 
 
 In my various entertainments I ■ make a special feature of 
 'Second' Sight,' and manage to produce most wonderful effects; 
 but cannot help thinking of what Cicero said about one augur 
 meeting another, whenever I meet a brother professional ' Second- 
 sightest 1 ' verb. sap. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI, 
 
 EXPLANATION OF A FEW EASY EXPERIMENTS IN MAGIC PRO BONO 
 
 PUBLICO. 
 
 The Art of Magic is one of the oldest sciences we have. Ever 
 since ' Wild in Wood the Noble Savage Ran' — Humbug in some 
 form or another has existed, and always will exist. Was it not 
 Dean Milman, who said he believed in ' the immortality of 
 Humbug ? ' I do not for one moment gentle reader, mean to 
 say that the mere perusal of these pages will make you a perfect 
 full-blown Necromancer ! 
 
 As Tyndall says : — ' All great things come slowly to birth ! ' 
 Copernicus pondered his great work for thirty-three years; — , 
 Newton for nearly twenty years kept the idea of gravitation before 
 his mind ; for twenty years also he dwelt upon his discovery of 
 fluxions ; the late Mr. Darwin, the greatest naturalist of our tirfie — 
 and perhaps of all time — for two and twenty years pondered on 
 the problem of the origin of species. So, to become a really 
 successful Magician, years and years of arduous study must be 
 devoted con aniore to the Art before one can hope to write Vicil 
 
 I wish, in these pages to explain to the reader a number of 
 interesting experiments, which, performed amongst a circle of 
 acquantances or a small audience will cause much wonderment. 
 The old style of Conjuring is now out of date altogether, the less 
 apparatus you have the more you are thought of. For that 
 reason I here confine myself to simple natural Magic — not Stage 
 Experiments requring an outlay of hundreds of pounds. 
 
 Several startling tricks can be performed by the merest tyro, 
 after perusing these pages, at a very nominal outlay. The 
 endeavour of the writer being to enable his readers to perform, 
 say before a few friends at an evening party, a Punch, a 
 Smoking Concert, or Penny Readings ; he will select from his 
 extensive repertoire the easiest and at the same time the most 
 effective ones. 
 
 15* 
 
A IVizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 155 
 
 THE DEMON COIN. 
 
 Smear a little soap, (or virgin wax mixed with Venice tur- 
 pentine and melted together) over one side of a florin, five franc 
 piece, dollar, or penny, and place it behind the door, or under 
 a plate, a glass or anywhere in the room you like ; say behind 
 a picture, stuck to the wall paper, unseen, of course, by anyone 
 present. Now, you must have a round piece of metal or one 
 of the above mentioned coins very carefully sewn up in one 
 corner of your pocket-handkerchief by laying another piece of 
 the same pattern over the disc or coin, and then sewing it over, 
 so that when the handkerchief is opened it is utterly impossible 
 to detect anything suspicious about it. Unless these instruc- 
 tions are carried out, it stands to reason, someone present would 
 notice the peculiarity of the corner of your handkerchief. 
 
 Now for the modus operandi ! Take a coin from your pocket, 
 or borrow one of the same value as the one you have ' planted ' 
 (if I may be permitted to use the word), and showing it to those 
 present, remark that you have the wonderful power of making 
 money fly. ' Nothing very wonderful about that,' someone may 
 very possibly remark, ' my wife can do that with a vengeance ! ' 
 
 ' Pardon me, I did not mean what you mean, this is what I 
 would demonstrate.' 
 
 'I place this coin in the centre of my pocket-handkerchief. You 
 feel it do you not ? Hold it firmly — so. Sure you have it ? One, 
 two — three ! ' Abracadabra Arabi Pasha Pass,' which is Gum 
 Arabic for ' Vanish,' and lo ! the coin has passed from where it 
 was, right through the closed door ! Open the door — please — 
 and there it is stuck fast to the other side ! ' 
 
 You have guessed, of course, how it was done, but not so your 
 audience. As you cover the coin you slip it either down your 
 sleeve, or on to your knees, if you happen to be sitting down, and 
 get the prepared corner just under the centre, thus, whoever, holds 
 the handkerchief naturally mistakes for the coin. Catch hold of 
 one of the other corners — whisk it quickly away — and there you 
 are — don't you know ? 
 
 'THE Vi^IZARD'S POCKET-HANDKERCHIEF.' 
 
 This is made by getting two silk handkerchiefs, of a dark pattern, 
 exactly the same pattern,and joining them together at the edges so 
 that when held up they look hke one handkerchief. In the very 
 centre of one of them you cut a slit, and hem round its edges. Let 
 the sht be large enough to slip an egg or a large watch in it. You 
 will perceive that if you now take either of the above articles, or 
 
156 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 a card, or in fact anything not too large, and covering the pre- 
 pared handkerchief over it, at the same time shpping whatever it 
 is inside the slit a few inches or so, you may safely pretend to. 
 mysteriously vanish it by catching hold of one corner and jerking 
 the handkerchief away, taking care, of course, to keep the slit 
 towards you. It really appears, if you are quick enough and 
 take care to put your handkerchief in your pocket at once — it 
 really appears, I say — :as if by some uncanny process you had 
 caused the disappearance of whatever article you are performing 
 with. 
 
 'hints on conjuring.' 
 
 Never perform a trick over twice. Do not of course say you 
 cannot do so, but make up any little joke you like, such as : 
 ' This is the one day in the week I dare not do so, now had it 
 been yesterday, I would have repeated the trick with pleasure. 
 Always bear this in mind : Your audience follow your eyes. So 
 if you want them to beheve you have something in your empty 
 hand, pocket-handkerchief or whatnot, look intently there and 
 there only, until you have managed to get rid of what you wish 
 to. Directly, lay claim to no supernatural power whatever; if 
 you have amongst your audience any educated people nothing 
 shows so much bad taste. Without patter, or perhaps I should 
 say, appropriate remarks, tricks go for very little. A successful 
 Wizard is not a man who performs to perfection sleight-of-hand, 
 or Oxford-Street-Toy-Shop-Mechanical-Tricks, but a man gifted 
 by education and travel able to cope with all he may come in 
 contact with, and never at a loss with some happy repartee. In 
 short to be a successful Wizard, you must not only be a con- 
 summate actor but an artiste in every acceptation of the term. 
 In England such men may be counted by one's fingers on one 
 hand, and then there may possibly be a vacancy. You see, I 
 insist very strongly on this pomt. In time, you will arrange your 
 little by-play and remarks to each trick you perform. A golden 
 secret is : Imagine you are really what you pretend to be, viz., a 
 Magician— and a disciple of Zoroaster himself. At the same 
 time bear in mind that nothing is so annoying to your audi- 
 ence as a domineering, half-and-half-sort-of-style. Try your best, 
 to find the happy medium natural style, and if you intend to 
 take a course of lessons, be most careful whom you study under. 
 
 There are so-called Professors of the Magic Art, who pretend 
 to give lessons, who evidently have mistaken their vocation, and 
 appear more at their ease dabbling with the Three-card Trick on a 
 
A Wizard'' s Wanderings from China to Pern. 157 
 
 suburban race-course than murdering the Queen's English and 
 trying to teach the young idea how to shoot, or rather ' conjure ' 
 in Oxford Street ! Give such people a wide berth. 
 
 There ought to be no such word as fail in a Magician's voca- 
 bulary, test everything before you perform, and if at all shaky, 
 get new lines, silk, or whatnot ; don't trust to chance, and expect 
 no pity from your audience ; neither give nor take it. Was it 
 not Talleyrand who remarked : ' There is something not alto- 
 gether displeasing in the misfortunes of our best friends ' ? Prac- 
 tise your tricks before a looking-glass, and be as hypercritical as 
 you can with yourself. Even when you fancy yourself perfect — 
 every time you have any spare moments — practise. You cannot 
 have too much of it. I never let a day pass without trying over 
 a palm or two. I hope these few hints may prove of some little 
 service to my reader. Never expose a trick by showing how it 
 is done. Your audience expect to be humbugged. I never 
 knew an artiste yet who publicly did so. A man must be 
 beneath contempt who would so degrade the art. 
 
 THE TRICK OF TRICKS. 
 
 You take a seat, and then borrow a walking-stick, or an um- 
 brella, or even perform with the poker. Pretend to mesmerise 
 the article passing the hands over it in the orthodox style, and at 
 last it will be apparently under your influence, so much so that 
 you can make it stand upright or incline to the front at com- 
 mand. This' really marvellous trick is simplicity itself. Take a 
 needle and sew a piece of silk twist (Tailor's Twist it is called) 
 from knee to knee, eight inches in length will suffice, fasten off 
 both ends with a strong knot. It is not visible to the company, 
 and you can walk about with it on your ' ditto-dittos ' till ready. 
 
 You will at once perceive, that, opening out your legs will 
 make the silk taut, so much so, that placing, say the poker 
 against the silk, and, of course, nearest to you, it must of 
 necessity stand upright, slack it, and the poker bends forwards. 
 There is the whole secret in a few words. 
 
 'THE GREAT INDIAN SAND TRICK.' 
 
 I well remember once, at Benares, being mystified over this 
 very illusion, and paying a handsome sum for the secret. The 
 performer takes a bowl of water, and a bowl of sand, and asks 
 anyone present to fake a handful of the sand, and throw it in the 
 water, and bring the sand out of the water dry I Someone tries, 
 and, naturally enough, fails. The performer, however, accom- 
 
158 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 plishes the feat with ease, and this is the simple method. Before 
 performing this trick, get a new frying-pan, fill it half full of silver 
 sand (which has been previously well washed and dried in an 
 oven), and when warm stir the sand with a sterine or wax 
 candle, stir it well until the whole of the sand has been mixed 
 thoroughly with the wax candle, and then let it dry and cool. 
 Place it in a dish or bowl, or anything you have handy, and get 
 your hand full of ordinary unprepared sand. This you hand to 
 someone to insert in the Water. The audience think it is a fair 
 sample of the prepared sand, which will be found to come out of 
 the water quite dry, for the simple reason that it is coated, as it 
 were, with the wax, and so the water has no effect on it, whilst the 
 genuine sand melts away. 
 
 'the enchanted segar.' 
 
 Borrow a tall hat, and a segar or cigarette, of anyone present. 
 Place it on the crown of the hat and it will stand upright, and 
 bend about as commanded. Explanation : — To the end of a black- 
 lead pencil fix a strong needle. Conceal it in your hand, or, 
 better still, slip it in the lining of the hat. The moment you 
 borrow the hat, push it (the needle) through the crown of the 
 same and stick the segar on it. It will then move about as 
 required. Your hand being inside the hat conceals any move- 
 ment you make. You might, for instance, remark '. — ' To 
 accomplish this experiment, you see I have only to draw an 
 imaginary line from here to here, i.e. from the segar to the 
 glasses, and it is but a narrow line that separates the sublime 
 from the ridiculous,' as someone somewhere remarks : — ' Do 
 you see that imaginary line, Madam ? ' ' No.' ' Ne moi non plus,' 
 still you know we must draw the line somewhere. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 WEATHER SUPERSTITIONS. 
 
 Many people are so foolish as to believe in weather super- 
 stitions. In our changeable climate, fo^ days reckoned any- 
 where in the year are likely to afford a supply of rain. The St. 
 Swithin legend is, that when the holy rnan died in 868, after 
 holding the Bishopric of Winchester for eleven years, he was 
 buried, according to his own, desire, in the open churchyard — 
 a sensible protest against intramural interment. After he was 
 canonized, the monks intended to move his body in solemn 
 procession, and inter it in the choir. This the Saint resented 
 with floods of rain for forty days, and thus caused the design to 
 be abandoned. Legends with mystical numbers of days in them 
 are of doubtful authenticity. The number forty became one of 
 the favourites from its occurrence in the Bible, and if Noah's 
 Flood had been occasioned by a shorter rain, St. Swithin would 
 no doubt, have been satisfied with the smaller quantity. As a 
 matter of experience, many rainy days are found to occur as 
 summer gradually passes into autumn; and whether the 15th or 
 the 26th of July is wet or dry, the chances are about the same, 
 and St. Swithin's votaries keep their faith intact whether the 
 clouds confirm or contradict the prophecy. On the Continent, 
 Swithin is not a weather Saint, but the popular desire for con- 
 necting weather changes with such a personage is gratified by 
 taking St. Mddard, whose day is now on the 8th of June. 
 When the Romish Church reformed the Calendar, I do not 
 know if all the Saints were moved on, but the date mentioned 
 is the starting-point for the imaginary forty days of rain, or fine, 
 as the case may be. Popular rhymes refer to each Saint ; a 
 Scotch one says : — 
 
 ' St. Swithin's Day, gif ye do rain. 
 For forty days it will remain ; 
 St. Swithin's Day, an ye be fair, 
 For forty days 'twill rain na main' 
 159 
 
i6o A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 The first lines of a French rhyme say : — 
 
 ' St. Mddard pluvious, 
 Forty days dangerous.' 
 
 The Germans have a similar verse, but the accident of tag 
 (day) and naeh (after) making a rhyme-like gingle, caused theii: 
 proverb to refer to six weeks instead of forty days. Another 
 German verse makes the weather on St. Medard's Day the rule 
 for succeeding days till that moon ends. An Austrian proverb 
 says : — ■' 
 
 ' If St. Mddard is wet, 
 Much rain you will get.' 
 
 Other Saints are supposed to influence the rainfall ; amongst 
 them are Peter, Paul, Barnaby, and Gervais. The last Saint has 
 the merit of occasionally converting Swithin from his watery 
 intentions, and a French proverb may be rendered — 
 
 ' If St. Gervais is fine, 
 St. Swithin may shine.' 
 
 This day is the 19th of June. Peter and Paul take thirty instead 
 of forty days under their control. Their rhyme says : — 
 
 ' Peter and Paul pluvious. 
 Thirty days dangerous.' 
 
 A reference to Cruden's ' Concondance ' will show that many 
 remarkable thirties occur in the BiWq besides Judas's thirty 
 pieces of silver. . St. Barnaby acts like Gervais, but begins his 
 work earher, on the i ith of June. A French verse has it : — 
 
 ' If St. M^dard gives a soak, 
 Tou will surely want your cloak ; 
 If 'tis fine on Barnaby Day, 
 Then at home your cloak may stay.' 
 
 Antiquaries have not traced the origin of St. Medard's claims as 
 a weather Saint. He was Bishop of Noyon, and of Tournay, 
 and died in 545. He is credited with having established the 
 Rosary of Salency, a prize for. virtue to be given to the most 
 deserving maiden — la Rosiere. In England, it is considered 
 unlucky ^by the peasantry to gather applet before St. Swithin has 
 baptised them, and certainly there is a probability of their being 
 very sour. SwitKin has quite supplanted M6dard in modern 
 English memory, but Chaucer, without mentioning his. name, 
 then no doubt well-known, wrote : — 
 
 ' If on the eighth of June it rain. 
 It foretells a wet harvest mtn-sain.' 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. i6i 
 
 The I St of July is dedicated to a swarm of Saints — Rumbolt, 
 Simeon, and several more — and Chaucer said :— 
 
 ' If the first of July be rainy weather, 
 
 'Twill rain more or less for four weeks together,' 
 
 which is a prudent prophecy, having a due regard to uncertainties. 
 The 2nd of July was dedicated by Pope Urban VI. to the Cele- 
 bration of the visit of the Virgin Mary to the mother of St. John 
 the Baptist, and rain on this day was supposed to predict forty 
 days of wet. St. John the Baptist has his day on June 24, 
 and an old proverb quoted by Dr. Forster repeats the forty days' 
 rain notion, and adds ' certain harm to nuts,' which prolonged 
 wet at that time is likely to cause, and to other crops also. Our 
 forefathers had, or fancied they had, so much assistance from 
 the Saints in prognosticating the weather, that they ought seldom 
 to have been wrong ; but there were exhibitions of doubt and 
 infidelity at various periods, and in 1697 the author of 'Poor 
 Robin's Almanack,' quoted by Dr. Foreter, put into it the follow- 
 ing poem, which must have been thought as bad by the priests 
 then as some of the things lately said by Huxley, Darwin, ot. 
 Herbert Spencer have been pronounced : — 
 
 ' In this month is St. Swithin's Day, 
 On which if that it rain they say 
 Full forty days after it will, 
 Or more or less, some rain distill. 
 This Swithin was a Saint, I trow, 
 And Winchester's Bishop also. 
 Who in his time did many a feat, 
 As Popish legends do repeat. 
 A woman having broke her eggs 
 By stumbUng at another's legs, 
 For which she made a woeful cry, 
 St. Swithin chanced for to come by. 
 Who made them all as sound, or more, 
 Than ever that they were before. 
 Better it is to rise betime 
 And to make hay when the sun do shine ; 
 Than to laelieve in tales and lies 
 Which idle monks and friars devise.' 
 
 M. A. Lancaster, writing in del et Terre on Medard as a ' Weather 
 Saint,' supplies the verses relating to him I have cited, and 
 observes that over the greater part of Europe Spring is the driest 
 season, and that after a prolonged absence of rain a few wet days 
 attract a good deal of attention. In any changeable climate the 
 statistical method will not do much to correct a popular belief. 
 
 M 
 
i62 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Feru. 
 
 At Brussels, for example, from 1833 to 1882, M. Lancaster finds 
 Medard had twenty-eight of his days rainy, and twenty-two with- 
 out rain. After the rainy Saint's day the average of those years 
 gave 20.4 of days on which rain fell, and on the contrary occa- 
 sions there were 1 8. i days of rainfall. Thus the Saint's claims 
 to be a 'weather prophet ' had a little the best of the figures ; but 
 if, instead of taking an average, some ' infidel' person looked to 
 the facts of each one of the fifty years, in no case would he find 
 the forty days' wet or fine follow as they should have done. In 
 England, while the other Saints have been forgotten, Swithin is 
 still remembered, perhaps on, account of a popular, though 
 certainly not authentic story, that he wept for forty days on 
 account of a severe beating administered to him by a termagant 
 wife. I'he faith in St. Swithin as a ' weather prophet ' is fast de- 
 clining in this unbelieving age, and in another generation may 
 become extinct. Arguing against a popular superstition is of no 
 avail — perhips, even, it strengthens the credulity ; but there is a 
 quiet and scarcely noticed filtration of knowledge from the in- 
 telligent and inquiring few through the credulous many, that 
 gradually undermines foolish notions. Prophecy-makers have this 
 advantage — that the cases, if any, of their success, produce a 
 strong and abiding impression upon ordinary mortals, while their 
 failures are soon forgotten. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 'SPIRITUALISM ' — AN EXPOSE OF THE IMPOSTURE — HEAR BOTH 
 SIDES OF THE QUESTION A REMARKABLE INCIDENT WITH RE- 
 GARD TO SO-CALLED 'SPIRITUALISM' — ^' THE FLOATING TABLE' 
 
 'SPIRIT RAPPING' — THE SPIRITUALIST MUSICAL BOX — 
 
 'INVISIBLE WRITING.' 
 
 Allow me now, if I am not boring you too much, to touch on a 
 different subject, viz., 'Spiritualism,' and after reading the same, 
 if you feel so inclined, you will be able, I make so bold as to say, 
 to fill up a very considerable portion of an evening's entertain- 
 ment by performing the different feats here mentioned. 
 
 If, according to the Jesuite teaching, ' the end sanctifies the 
 means,' then I submit, one has little difficalty in dealing with 
 such a subject as ' Spiritualism,' as it is right outside the bounds 
 of theology and, par consequence, no sensitive mind can feel hurt 
 at any remarks, I may make, and to cope with such a siibject as 
 this they must be to the point believe me. Were it otherwise, I 
 would be the last person in all the world to take up the subject 
 for I respect, equally, everyone's religious belief. I think I hear 
 someone say : ' Mr. So-and-So believes in it, and he has a sen- 
 sitive mind, and is a good, a very good man — and would do 
 nothing wrong on any account. Don't be quite so sure about 
 that, if you please, and don't judge always by appearances. Such 
 dear, good, worthy, pure-minded souls, to my certain knowledge 
 have turned out very queer fish 'ere now — not that Mr. So-and- 
 So may do the same — oh dear me, no ! 
 
 Such being the case, it suggested itself to me that I could 
 find nothing moire in my line than the expos6 of this doctrine. 
 What do they say, 'Set a thief to catch a thief, ' don't they? 
 
 Now I believe in always hearing both sides of a question. 
 I never forget an old African proverb I once heard during my 
 professional tour through the Dark Continent, which translated 
 ran, ' An one-sided story is always right. Ear, hear the other 
 side before you decide.' 
 
 163 
 
164 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 I hear the Spirituahsts say, ' Expose it ? Cui bono ? Cui bono, 
 indeed? Not much, I fear me — still I will now plunge like 
 ' Homer ' in medias res. Let's hear what they have to say for the 
 defence. Says one of them : — 
 
 ' I tied up an accordion with tape, binding it round and 
 round, and sealing it with wax, and my crest {tite d'un rossignol 
 d' Arcade), so that it was impossible to play it. I placed it 
 on the Medium's knees and a committee handcuifed his hands 
 behind his back. The lights were lowered and yet that accor- 
 dion played, as did also a guitar which was placed out of reach 
 of the Medium. Marvellous to say that guitar floated over our 
 heads ! ! ! Who but Spirits could produce such manifestations ? 
 ' My dear sir, you are as much .mistaken as a Sporting prophet. 
 As I don't believe in ' beautiful myths,' I will hasten to answer 
 you, I could and so could you ! Procure a small tube, place 
 it in the valve-hole of the accordion, breathe and blow into it 
 alternately, and then, by fingering the keys, you will be able 
 to produce precisely the same effect. 
 
 A telescopic-rod extending several feet, is concealed about 
 the Medium's person, who fixes to it the guitar, in which is a 
 musical box with a small piece of writing paper so placed as to 
 touch the steel, or vibrating tongues of the box and you will 
 find this closely imitates the well-known twang of the 'light 
 guitar.' 
 
 If ' Balmain's Phosphor Paint ' is covered over one side of a 
 tambourine previously exposed to the day-light, and this is fixed 
 to the end of the telescopic-rod, and shaken over the heads of the 
 audience it is immediately put down to Spirit agency. The same 
 with an old glove with a wet sponge inside. Outside you smear 
 it over with oil of cloves and phosphorus, and then fasten it on 
 the rod, and then we have the Spirit Hand. Or 'another way' as 
 Mrs. Glasse would say : 'use Phosphorus, melted gently in oil of 
 cloves, and' then rubbed over the instrument you mean to float.' 
 But use very great care. Let me ask you — did you ever know 
 one single — now orAy one — I don't want you to strain yourselves 
 too much — one single instance where any good came of this belief 
 in Spirit Power ? If I paused until the Greek Kalends I should 
 not get an affirmative reply. On the other hand — did you ever 
 know any ill come of it ? If you don't, I do. ' Spiritualism ' is like 
 Macbeth's dagger ' there's nothing in it.' Such being the case, am 
 I to remain silent for fear, forsooth, of saying something that might 
 offend someone who seems to forget we are in the enlightened 
 Nineteenth Century and not in the Dark Ages ? How apparently 
 
A Wizard'' s Wanderings from China to Peru 165 
 
 educated people believe such rubbish caps the climax. On this 
 subject, I am come to no rash conclusions. 
 
 For years I have watched its spread, attended its siances and 
 tried my level best in vain attempts to find one redeeming point 
 in its favour. 
 
 I am reminded of a very touching incident which took place 
 not a hundred miles from Southampton Row, London. The 
 daughter of a much respected widow of a leading Spirit Medium 
 just before she died, exclaimed, ' Papa, take hold of my hand and 
 help me across ! ' Her father had died two months before. Did 
 she see his ' spirit-form ' ? There is not the slightest doubt of it, 
 say the Spirituailists. But, I ask, with all due respect, were those 
 the exact words she made use of ? Is it not far more probable 
 that what the poor child said was, ^ Papa, take hold of my hand, 
 and I will help you out of that ? ' 
 
 Mankind are constantly starting at events which they con- 
 sider extraordinary. But a philosopher acknowledges only one 
 miracle. Let us, if we can, coolly and philosophically look at 
 the subject before us and we may then possibly 'pluck the 
 flower safely from the nettle danger.' Either it is true, every 
 mortal word, or marvellous manifestation you have ever heard 
 of, or, on the other hand, it is a tissue of wicked lies from 
 beginning to the end. There's no medium— I will admit none— 
 You see, I am not like the Spiritualists! 
 
 I think I hear someone present muttering, sotto voce : ' The 
 floating table is a marvellous manifestation ! It actually floats 
 round the room just where the Medium wills it to go ! Nothing 
 shall ever convince me but what this is a genuine manifestation ! 
 My -own table. Sir ! If it had been a prepared one I might- 
 mind I only say I might — have been sceptical. But to see that 
 dear good Mr. So-and-So the, Medium, after harmonising the 
 influences with a hymn forced to follow that table whither it 
 listeth,' first up one side of the room and then the other— enough 
 to convince anyone. Sir— except a thick-headed Conjurer— Sir, I 
 don't beheve you would beheve anything." 
 
 I should certainly not, my easily beguiled Spirituahst, believe 
 in table floating. Here's the very thing that would lift the table 
 round the room. Look— a movable steel rod to draw out from 
 your sleeve and so made to grip under the edge of the table 
 and then fly back when done with by means of au elastic band. It 
 is generally attempted with a confederate, who has another of 
 these articles up his or her sleeve, but where the table is a 
 light one, one is quite sufficient I find. 
 
1 66 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 ' Spirit Rapping ' is frequently performed by the aid of electro- 
 magnetism, but more often by far simpler methods. The magnet 
 is enclosed in a little mahogany box, and can be readily fixed in 
 any required position, passing the wire down the leg of the table, 
 then under the carpet to wherever the assistant is concealed. 
 Now be good enough not to misunderstand what I say. I am not 
 here dealing with Animal Magnetism, but with ' spirit-forms ' who 
 are said to have appeared materially to human beings, here on 
 this earth we inhabit. . I will not even go so far as to say, that 
 you have not seen what you honestly believed to be a spirit. A 
 man in a fit of delirium tremens has been known to have seen, 
 what he thought, any amount of them. You have possibly seen 
 Charles Warner in ' Drink.' The play by Charles Reed, I mean. 
 But what does that prove ? Neither he nor you really saw a 
 spirit. It was simply imagination, and if more than one of you 
 saw what you thought to be a ' spirit-form,' there was evidently 
 a stronger will-force, or odylic-power present than your own. 
 Many people beUeve in will-force — look at the Grand Old Man at. 
 Westminster, for instance. You say, ' How about the spirit raps 
 we heard ? ' In reply, will you allow me to ask you a most per- 
 tinent question before I answer you. ' Where is your keeper?' 
 
 My poor silly, misguided imbecile, haven't you got sufficient 
 sense in your poor cracked head to know that an immaterial 
 being, that which you call a ' spirit form ' has no bones to its 
 incorporeal knuckles or toes to rap with, and that they are not 
 allowed to bring material walking-sticks or umbrellas with them. 
 You surely don't mean to say, now that you come to think of it, 
 that those raps you heard were caused by ' spirit power ? ' No, of 
 course not. But do you remember being told by that good dear 
 soul, Mr. So-and-So, that they were ? Yes, you do. Does it not 
 strike you very forcibly that if you are gammoned over one little 
 thing in this doctrine, that the chances are you have been done 
 so in many ? No ? I expected such an answer. Thanks ! Don't 
 concede too much, or I fear me you won't have a leg to stand 
 on before we get half way through. 
 
 When I tell you that everything Spiritualists have done, 
 have been done by the Profession to which I have the honour 
 to belong. What does that prove? 'Nothing at all,' you 
 say, and might add very likely, ' Possibly you are a Medium 
 yourself, and don't know it.' 
 
 There are some people in this world with whom it is a mere 
 waste of time to argue any given subject, for it leads to nothing 
 in the end. I can say this much. I certainly do not mean to 
 argue with Spiritualists, for 1 have too deep a sympathy for -their 
 
A Wizard^ Wanderings from China to Peru. 167 
 
 affliction, poor creatures. Let us hope and trust they will be 
 cured by degrees— not too sudden — for if they saw what sorry 
 idiots they made of themselves, it might be quite too utterly 
 too much for their nerves, and they might collapse altogether. 
 Would there were a few more men hke Prince Rudolph, of 
 Austria, about to expose their shams. 
 
 'How?' you ask, 'does the Medium free himself after being 
 tied up by the committee ? ' Nothing in the world is easier — 
 when you know how. The rope-tying feat is beneath our notice. 
 It is done at every fair and often at street corners. 
 
 Some Media permit themselves, you say, to be tied by one of 
 the audience. Well, in this case, the Medium inflates his body, 
 and sits in such a position that all his muscles and limbs are 
 distended. When he resumes his normal position the ropes 
 become loose and he releases himself 
 
 To get out of the handcuffs, you have a duplicate key attached 
 to an elastic band get-at-able behind your back. When tied with 
 braid or strips of linen, a slip-knot on one wrist is bound to be 
 there. It matters not how you tie up the Medium's wrists ; so 
 that while talking, before the lights are lowered, he has only to 
 ease the knot, and is- free in an instant, and back again in another 
 instant. 
 
 At the end of the telescopic tube, I have previously mentioned, 
 you may fix a trumpet or whistle, and by blowing through the 
 tube sound can be evolved, and when the tube is floated about the 
 dark room a discordant band of Spiritualistic music appear to the 
 materially and physically benighted audience to be in the room 
 a la Wagner. The floating in the air is done with a lay figure, 
 got up to resemble the Medium. 
 
 The bulls-eye lantern in the hands of an assistant is so worked 
 that a change is effected reminding one of the scenes so artistically 
 worked out by Mr. Henry Irving in the ' Lyons Mail.' 
 
 ' How about the Spiritual Musical-box ? ' you ask. ' Simple in 
 the extreme,' I answer. An oblong piece of plate-glass is sus- 
 pended by means of four cords hanging from the ceiling, and on 
 this slab is fixed the Musical-box, which plays and stops at com- 
 mand. ' But how ? ' you ask. In the box is put a balance-lever, 
 which, when the slab is in the slightest degree tilted, arrests the 
 fly-fan and so stops the machinery. When you give the com- 
 mand, the slab is made level, and, the fly-fan being released off, 
 the machinery starts, and plays the time. When you want it to 
 stop the cord on either side is slightly pulled, the balance-lever 
 falls, the fly-fan is arrested, and; of course, the music finishes. 
 
i68 A Wtza7-d's Wanderings from China to Feru. 
 
 Having, I hope, shown you the fallacy of ' Spiritualistic Rap- 
 ping,' there still remains the ' Invisible Writing ' manifestation I 
 am reminded. True ; I had almost forgo tten that, and yet I ought 
 not to have done so, considering I was the inventor of a conjur- 
 ing trick closely allied to the same, viz., 'The Slate Trick.' 
 Though I don't' believe in raps, I do in chalk ; so, by-the-bye^ 
 does my Writing-spirit, Miss Jennie Sarah Ann Jones, related on 
 her mother's side to Joe King, the great Spiritualist — pardon 
 me, I am not joking, it is an historical fact ! Whenever I require 
 a message I call on Miss Jones, and; on blank slates (Welsh ones 
 preferred), I get written what I require. There's a sort of grim 
 irony in the fact, entre nous, that, when alive, Miss Jones kept a 
 milk-shop near Burton Crescent, and died of milk-fever; not, of 
 course, that that has anything to do with chalk ! As I make a 
 point of never exposing a conjuring trick of my own invention, I 
 must be excused from stating how this is effected. If you come 
 often enough and see my performances, you will possibly find it 
 out. The writing by Spirits on the ceiling is done by means of 
 the telescopic-rod, chalk being rubbed on the Medium's head to 
 make the sitters believe it was done with his head. Now comes 
 a poser from some infuriated believer. ' I'n my own room, my 
 own family, only, being present — well, with the sole exception of 
 Mr. So-andSo — I wrote the maiden-name of my great-grand- 
 mother's cousin's washerwoman ! I placed it — folded up — under 
 a volume of Dr. Samuel Kinn's 'Moses and Geology,' which is 
 heavy — I mean a heavy book. 
 
 ' The lights were all turned out, we were all sitting round the 
 table, and, yet Mr. So-and-So was able to tell me the name I 
 wrote. Mind without the lights ; being turned up — but in pitch dark- 
 ness — what do you think of that ? You and your miserable, weak 
 milk-and-water-jokes about Jones and the chalk, I'm a Welsh- 
 man myself Sir, and theres not a dishonest man amongst us, Sir, 
 and we are all George Washingtons and never tell a lie. Bah ! I 
 thought I should give you a clencher ! ! ' 
 
 ' It's a good thing something did not leak out during the 
 time the room was in darkness,' I answer. If Mr. So-and-So 
 had in his pocket a phial containing phosphorus and oil of cloves 
 all he had to do was to take quietly the paper, open it under 
 the table cloth, then open the cork of the phial from which a 
 blue flame would be emitted quite sufficient to read the name, 
 or even tell the exact hour and second a watch was previously 
 stopped at, whilst none present could see the slightest hght. 
 
 I have, however, slightly improved this method. Cut a round 
 
A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Feru. 169 
 
 piece of ' Balmaines Phosphorescent Card and fix it inside your 
 hat lining and you can see to read distinctly by it, of course 
 being mindful to keep the opening of the hat away from the 
 audience. They say 'There's a silver hning to the darkest 
 cloud.' 
 
 Be careful that yours does not show in this case, however, or 
 this excellent trick would be exposed. 
 
 Did it ever strike you, how illogical these people are ? Grant 
 for one moment the bare possibility of a Spirit appearing here 
 below. That means that you, a good angel soaring in heavenly 
 bliss above, are to come down into a back parlour, let at los. a 
 week-gas-and-coal-extra in Bloomsbury, or elsewhere, at the beck 
 and call of a souless beer-imbibing-radical-money-grasping-Spirit- 
 Medium, to play tambourines, or a cornet, the only instrument 
 whilst alive that you could perhaps play being a barrel-organ. 
 Why, it is rank blasphemy ! to use the mildest term ! 
 
 Of course it would not be quite so hard on you if you had to 
 take an upward journey. The change then from 197' in the 
 shade to the stuffy back parlour, might be an agreeable change ! 
 
 And yet, I have heard these people say that this is a grand 
 sublime religion which enobles them ! ' De gustibus non est 
 disputandum. There must be in this belief some attraction, or 
 it stands to reason we should not hear of so many converts. 
 One has not to look very far to find the same. 
 
 Tell me. Is there a man of honour who would allow any dear 
 relative, of the opposite sex, to sit in a dark room with these paid 
 Media men ? If you answer yes — I say — and I don't intend to 
 eat my words, you are a disgrace to the name of Englishman, 
 and I don't envy you your feelings. Were a daughter, or sister 
 of mine to attend one of these stances, after I had duly warned 
 her of the danger she ran, I would never allow her to enter my 
 doors again. I have challenged these people over and over again 
 in every part of the world — almost everywhere I have visited — to 
 show me a ' spirit-form ' under any conditions they hke — but in 
 my own room — and with this proviso, viz., that I am allowed to 
 put a bullet through the Spirit's head, which would, one would 
 think, be quite immaterial, but they have always failed to see it 
 in that light, and seemed to think it very material. Well — 
 possibly there is something in that ! 
 
 In conclusion, I can only say, that, whatever remarks I have 
 made are fully justified. I firmly believe that many good people 
 have got somewhat mixed up in their ideas. They confound 
 ' Spirituahsm ' with that grand, undeveloped yet, mystery, 'Animal 
 
170 A Wizard's Wanderings from China to Peru. 
 
 Magnetism.' They have only to give this subject a very short, 
 deep thinking over, asking themselves, are they rational human 
 beings — endowed with one spark of logic in their brains — or 
 must they hereafter be put down as hneal descendants of 
 Balaam's Ass. 
 
 And now, gentle reader, I hurry to write Finis, as I fear I 
 have bored you long enough with \ny cacoethes scribendi / If, 
 however, these pages prove of value to any future Bohemian 
 who may wish to carve out his future alone and unaided, I shall 
 be doubly rewarded. Let him, however, also read Gaboriau. He 
 is at least suggestive, and as he is an author much studied by 
 Prince Bismarck, he will, at the worst, lose his time in good 
 society. One cannot be altogether certain about anything, and 
 I have a great horror of being dogmatic, but this I can say, if 
 one takes for his motto. Noblesse oblige, remembering that a 
 gentleman should live chivalrously and lovingly to God, and the 
 King, and his lady, not attending to the little wants and totally 
 forgetting the great and only real ones — that man will have little 
 to reproach himself with when Jinis indeed arrives. Nothing 
 can be nobler than honour, love, and faith, and I have always 
 striven to command my ways upon that rule. It is not only 
 written in all noble histories, but in every man's heart, if he will 
 take care to read. Falmam qui meruit ferat. 
 
To Secretaries of Institutes, Clubs, A.D.C.s, &c., 
 Managers, Entrepreneurs, and the Public at large. 
 
 r)R. HOLDEN, The Queen's magician 
 
 (From the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, &'c., &'c.). 
 
 Has the honor to announce he is prepared to repeat, either in 
 private or in public, the Marvellous Entertainment entitled 
 
 " CHARMATION," 
 
 As given by him at Balmoral Castle, before Her Most Gracious 
 Majesty The Queen-Empress, 
 
 who personally complimented him on his success, 
 
 and twice within three months before T.R.H. The Prince and 
 
 Princess of Wales. Verb. sap. 
 
 " Charmation " is also art anged as a Comedietta in one act for 
 
 three performers and supers. 
 
 THIS refined histrionic stance embraces all the latest novelties in 
 high-grade prestidigitation and illusions no other artiste can 
 possibly present. 
 
 Dr. HoLDEN is indebted to Zio (care of Era OfSce) for many of 
 his original and startling experiments, which are duly protected. 
 Any copyist infringing any of these illusions will be legally dealt 
 with for infringement. 
 
 ZiO is now preparing for Dr. Holden a mysterious and mar- 
 vellous illusion which will, without doubt, surpass anything hitherto 
 attempted in the magic art. He has appeared, by special appoint- 
 ment, before 
 
 The Royal Family of England, I King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands, 
 
 His Majesty the King of Siam, Mikado of Japan, and also 
 
 His Highness the Sultan of Johore, | His Highness the Sultan of Pahong. 
 
 |gp Entertainments of Magic ; Panorama, illustrating a Tour " All 
 the World Over"; Special Side Shows for Bazaars, including 
 "Akas," "The Electric Lady," Indian Basket Trick," &c., &c.^ 
 provided at the shortest notice. Distance no object. 
 
 " Charmation " can be given in the open air if necessary, and can be 
 adapted to suit any audience. 
 
 For Terms : Address Mitchell's Royal Library, 33, Old Bond Street, 
 London, W. 
 
Works by GORDON STABLES, Esq., M.D., R.N. 
 
 Third edition, handsomely bounds cloth gilt, 6s. 6d., post free is. (with photo portrait of * SA VE 
 when a Baby ' on front cover)^ and richly illustrated with 18 page-cute of Champion Dogs, . 
 and 48 smaller illustrations, 
 
 OUR FRIEND THE DOG. 
 
 THIS PRACTICAL BOOK CONTAINS:- 
 
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