\fo? 
 
 ^ (^ 
 
 
JItiiaca. S^ctu lath 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 
 1918 
 
Cornell University Library 
 G 463.S13 
 
 Farthest east, and south and west 
 
 notes 
 
 3 1924 023 257 037 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis 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/cu31924023257037 
 
FARTHEST EAST, AND SOUTH AND WEST 
 
 
SOLITARY COVE, DUSKY SOUND. 
 
FARTHEST EAST, AND SOUTH 
 AND WEST 
 
 NOTES OF A JOURNEY HOME 
 
 THROUGH 
 
 JAPAN, AUSTRALASIA AND AMERICA 
 
 AN ANGLO-INDIAN GLOBE-TROTTER 
 
 LONDON 
 
 W. H. ALLEN & CO. Ltd. 13 WATERLOO PLACE 
 Vu<iltsi)n:e to fcjt Intiia Office 
 
 1892 
 
V/./6/7 
 
 LONDON : 
 WOOlDFALL AND KINDER, PRINTERS, 
 70 TO 76, LONG ACKE, W.C. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These notes of a Journey Home were not written 
 with any definite intention of having them printed 
 and published, but rather (though not without a 
 vague idea that such might possibly be their fate) 
 with no more distinct object than to keep a journal 
 for the perusal and (I hoped) amusement of rela- 
 tives and personal friends. 
 
 What I have set down is just my own impres- 
 sions of countries and climates, men and manners, 
 as I have seen them ; and I have not devoted 
 myself to transcribing from Cyclopaedias and Year 
 Books and Compendia of Useful Knowledge facts 
 and figures which those who yearn for may seek for 
 and find in books of that class. For these reasons, 
 persons who require their mental provender to be 
 set before them elegantly, in a pure and polished 
 literary style, are respectfully warned off, equally 
 with those whose delight is in statistics and his- 
 torical disquisitions and political perpendings — in 
 the Serious and the Solid. For here is but a 
 careless style, with no more merit in its matter 
 thatl accuracy and absence of exaggeration, so far 
 
 b 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 as these may be attained by mortal pen, and a 
 frankness of expression such as a man may use in 
 writing to his friends. An Anglo-Indian know- 
 ledge (a very different thing from a Globe-trotter's 
 knowledge) of India is assumed as already existing 
 in the reader, and he is accordingly spared the 
 descriptions of things Indian which are apt to 
 figure largely in the book of the returned round- 
 the-worlder. It is a book by an Anglo-Indian for 
 Anglo-Indians ; (chiefly, that is ; and for as many 
 more as care to read it, of course). 
 
 The plates are reproduced from photographs 
 selected from a large number purchased at various 
 places, and of varying merit Those of Morris (of 
 Dunedin, New Zealand) are — many of them — per- 
 fectly beautiful pictures. 
 
 I should like to add a remark to the little para- 
 graph on page 285, in which I ask where the vent 
 will take place from the subsidence of Kilauea in 
 March, '91. Is not the answer given by the terrific 
 earthquake in Japan in October, '91 ? And the 
 earthquake being over, I read in the Morning Post 
 of (I think) December 17th, a paragraph stating 
 that the crater of Kilauea is again in full activity. 
 
 C. R. SAIL. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 FARTHEST KAST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Start — Straits — Java 3 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 China 24 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Japan 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Miyanoshita — NiKKO — Ikao 72 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ISE 107 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Kioto — Theatres — Enp of Farthest East , , ji§ 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 FARTHEST SOUTH. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hongkong to Sydney 141 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Sydney — Melbourne 150 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 New Zealand South of Christchurch . . -173 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Otira — The Buller — Nelson . . . .189 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Region of Unceasing Fire 206 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Wanganui— Auckland 221 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Austrausia ajQ 
 
Contents. ix 
 
 PART III. 
 
 FARTHEST WEST. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HONOLXJLU — Haleakala 255 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 KiLAUEA 274 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Hawaiian Kingdom 289 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The Pacific Slope 301 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 The CP.R. and U.S.A. 321 
 
 Appendix 339 
 
LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 Solitary Cove, Dusky Sound 
 
 Telaga Warna . . . . 
 
 On the Canton River, 
 
 Australian Blacks 
 
 The Weeping Rock 
 
 At Wairoa after the Eruption. 
 
 Taranaki 
 
 Diamond Head, Honolulu . 
 Hawaiian Women . . . . 
 The Bay of San Francisco . 
 Near Pasadena . . . . 
 On the C.P.R. : Leatnchoil 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 Face page 2 1 
 
 32 
 
 H3 
 160 
 
 219 
 
 233 
 262 
 
 297 
 
 306 
 
 314 
 
 325 
 
PART I. 
 
 FARTHEST EAST. 
 
FARTHEST EAST, SOUTH 
 AND WEST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE START — STRAITS — JAVA. 
 
 " Furlough for two years is granted to Mr. C. R. 
 Sail, with effect from the date on which he may 
 avail himself of it." 
 
 So said the Gazette ; and gazettes never lie. 
 Two years' furlough : such a holiday as one has 
 never before had in one's life. After some eleven 
 years of service in the East, it is a holiday worth 
 making the most of. Not that those eleven years 
 have been without their pleasant breaks — little 
 snatches of holiday taken as occasion offered — now 
 a couple of months' privilege leave, now a week's 
 casual, or again (it may be), a little " French " leave. 
 At such times one visited the glories of old Delhi, 
 the marble magnificence of Agra, Jeypur with 
 its pink-and-white wide and well-kept streets, or 
 the dirtily holy and wholly dirty Benares ; one 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 sought Elysian heights touched with viceregal 
 splendour, the delights (tempered with dysentery) 
 of Poona in the season, or fled to salubrious caeru- 
 lean hills, to pick wild strawberries in the " sholas " 
 and flirt with the nymphs that dwell, rosy-cheeked 
 as those in England, among these mountains of 
 Madras. It was then that one wrote verses such as 
 these : — 
 
 Ah ! Love shall live with a life eternal, 
 Though Death take all things below, above; 
 
 If he spare nought else of the things supernal. 
 He shall spare at least the sweet spirit Love. 
 
 And our love shall live though to mortal seeing 
 Death bear us away to his loveless shore ; 
 
 For our hearts are merged in Love's deathless being 
 For ever and evermore. 
 
 And found, when one went back to the plains and 
 to work, that that "ishweet ishpirit " didn't survive 
 one busy season or one hot- weather shikar expedi- 
 tion. What good times they were, those shikar 
 expeditions ; when one was one's . own general and 
 adjutant-general and commissariat officer and trans- 
 port officer all in one, and marched off with one's 
 little army of shikaris and beaters, and long line of 
 coolies and bullocks, into the hills, where dwelt, bar 
 a few hillmen scant in number (and in clothing), 
 nothing but the stately sambar, the clumsy-looking 
 but wary blue bull, the tiger and the bison and the 
 bear. 
 
 But all these were but little by-blows, as it were, 
 of holiday ; and now that one has really got two 
 years to do nothing but amuse oneself in, let us 
 
The Start. 5 
 
 hand over to the next man in, saying, " For this 
 relief much thanks," and bid farewell to the wide 
 plains where the rain comes not and the cotton- 
 plants wither and die for want thereof; to the 
 mighty but muddy river that rolls flooding down 
 till, over-full, it tops its banks and inundates and 
 fertilizes 'the lowlands, as who should jeer at the 
 parching uplands and say, " No lack of rain where 
 I come from ;" to the meagre little metre railway 
 and the muggy and monsoon-bedraggled seaport at 
 the end of it. Let us clear out of the winding river 
 and the narrow shallow bay with its brown and 
 greenish waters, where the screw is so near the 
 bottom that it stirs the sand below and leaves its 
 wake marked with a muddier brown in the muddy 
 waters, out into the open sea where the waves are 
 blue, curling over into snow-white foam-crests, and 
 where it is likely I shall be very ill for a time. We 
 will wander round the world ; Ulysses-like, we 
 " cannot rest from travel." What though the good 
 ship Pataliputra does only nine knots an hour 
 (for has not the Bison a practical monopoly, and 
 why should it hurry itself?), still there is ample 
 time in two years to go and gain fresh experiences 
 "among new men, strange faces, other minds." 
 
 I doubt whether the Anglo-Indian can find so 
 much enjoyment travelling about the Far East as 
 his brother globe-trotter straight from home. To 
 the latter everything is new, and if not everything is 
 pleasing, yet at least this novelty is interesting and 
 in itself a source of pleasure. But to the Anglo 
 
6 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Indian many features of Eastern travel are stale and 
 unprofitable. He has met daily for years past 
 people clad in outlandish garbs or in almost utter 
 garblessness, so that a further small variation in 
 clothing, or the absence of it, does not strike him as 
 anything remarkable. The vile and variegated 
 odours of oriental towns are so accustomed to him 
 that they pass him by scarce noticed, except to 
 recall to him with a shudder the questions of village 
 sanitation and the due disposal of the defaecations of 
 the dusky millions, and how in many and various 
 ways he has been plagued about them from farthest 
 Burma in the East to the West (Sir R. West) 
 in Bombay. He has seen many races, made him- 
 self unintelligible in many languages, admired much 
 fine scenery, marvelled at curious customs, mixed 
 with many strange people, all in the course of his 
 service as ordinary and commonplace incidents 
 thereof ; how, then, can he have retained the fresh- 
 ness of the griffin, the tireless eyes of wonder with 
 which the globe-trotting brother from England will 
 gaze on the peoples and places of the East ? Per- 
 chance also he may become an unmitigated and 
 irretrievable bore (a terrible variety of Sus Indicus), 
 saying at each new people, " They are not a patch 
 on the people in the part of India where I come 
 from," and at each new place, " Reminds me of 
 Parigpur, only not so good." 
 
 " Howsoever these things be, a long farewell " 
 — a two-year long farewell — to British India, 
 and off we go. Penang shall not keep us long : it 
 
The Start. 7 
 
 is not a globe-trotter's place ; no sights but an 
 " ornery " sort of waterfall in an " ornery " orna- 
 mental garden, and a good view from the top of the 
 hill behind. Considering how it rains in Penang, it 
 would be a sight worth seeing if they could show a 
 place where there isn't any water ; or better still, a 
 place where water doesn't fall. The view is neither 
 better nor worse than any other coast view along 
 the east side of the Bay of Bengal from Maulmain 
 to Singapore. The whole line of coast is beautiful ; 
 the best bit, to my mind, is the mouth of the 
 Pakchan, the boundary between Burma and Siam. 
 From Victoria Point the prospect is splendid. A 
 poor place to live at, though ; if you bathe in the 
 sea, sharks will shikar you, or in a creek you will be 
 consumed of crocodiles ; walk through the grass, and 
 leeches will find you luscious ; while monkeys mock 
 you from the rocks, and from the forest gibbons 
 gibber at you. All down the Malay Peninsula 
 nature is too mighty for man : her rain-fed forests 
 overpower him ; they crowd him out, so that he lives 
 in scanty numbers on the edge of the sea and the 
 creeks on the lowland and the island ; but the inland 
 and the highland know him not : they are virgin, 
 clothed in eternal verdure, untamable. Almost 
 extinct are the Negrito races — black, beast-like, 
 stunted as the pigmies of Darkest Equatorial Africa, 
 who yet survive here and on the Philippines and on 
 the Andamans, " where fragments of forgotten people 
 dwell." The browner, robuster Malay stock has 
 spread itself far and near, over the islands of 
 
8 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Australasia to isolated Madagascar, antipodean 
 New Zealand, eastward to Formosa; but the virgin 
 forest of the Peninsula remained inviolate. She 
 affords a last refuge in the Old World to that singu- 
 lar beast the tapir ; in her shady recesses " that 
 murmur at morn " the argus pheasant builds his 
 bower. " Under the shadow of her fair vast head " 
 dwelt safely the nats of wood and hill and water ; 
 " solemn, undisturbed, unruffled, like high gods they 
 lived and moved." But, enter the Britisher. Then 
 " crv aloud, for the old world is broken." He has 
 no particular respect for virgins or for high gods or 
 low ; he regards nothing as untamable. He strips 
 from her her forest raiment, and plants her with 
 coffee and tea, tapioca, tobacco, and spices ; burrows 
 into her, and washes her sands for tin, and smashes 
 her rocks for gold. Here, as ever where "floats a 
 European flag," floods in the Chinaman, and the 
 ceaseless, unwearying industry of the yellow-skin 
 from Farthest East joins the restless energy, the 
 capital and the science of the white-skin from the 
 remote West. Between them they will conquer 
 nature ; the argus pheasant will have to build else- 
 where his bowers, and the tapir will become as 
 extinct as the dodo. But not without a struggle. 
 The virgin Peninsula is an expensive mistress ; she 
 requires much toil and treasure to be poured into 
 her; "with travail and heavy labour" shall her 
 favour be won. 
 
 Southward and eastward through summer seas, 
 with here a waterspout and there a shark, and 
 
Straits. g 
 
 everywhere the flying-fish. I have no opinion of 
 this strange wild-fowl ; he is a fraud, and ought 
 to burst like the frog in the fable. The proper 
 function of fishes is to swim and to eat smaller fishes 
 and be eaten by bigger ones ; why can't he stick 
 to his business, instead of trying to be a bird ? 
 Through the Straits of Malacca in perfect weather ; 
 cloudy, rainless days, and a breeze that is soft and 
 balmy ; whiling away the hours now with Zola on 
 the social condition of France under the Second 
 Empire, now with Wallace on Darwinism. It is 
 curious how so clever and convincing a writer should 
 close with such an inconclusive and unconvincing 
 argument as is the latter half of his last chapter ; 
 nor is his account of Weismann's theory of heredity 
 so complete as to carry to the reader the strong 
 impression it seems to have made on the writer. 
 
 Singapore has nothing remarkable except its 
 harbour. It is the Clapham Junction of the East. 
 Steamer lines small and great cross one another 
 here, and little local lines run out in all directions. 
 Men-of-war come to coal, and colliers bring coal for 
 them from England, from India, from Australia. 
 It is never winter here, and is said to be always 
 raining ; but that is a slander, for I stayed as long 
 in Singapore as Jonah did in his strange host's 
 stomach, and it rained never a drop. Nor, when 
 the rain does come, is it, as some describe it, a brief 
 cataclysmic downpour, for, on other two days that I 
 waited for a boat in Singapore, the rain was steady, 
 continuous, hours long. To each globe-trotter, I 
 
lo Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 think, a place will present itself differently ; and as 
 we arrive alongside the wharf the crowds of curio- 
 mongers that should beset a new arrival are nowhere 
 to be seen. Prickly heat (as usual) spares me ; I 
 know it not. The " bloom profuse and (scarlet) 
 arches " are out of season ; the trees on the roadside 
 are flowerless, save here and there some intem- 
 pestive blossoms. Nor is the ricksha in Singapore 
 the favourite and fashionable vehicle that it has 
 been represented to be ; it is good for the coloured 
 races, but little patronized by the white. The white 
 man takes a gari — a superior article to that with 
 which the dwellers in Rangoon and Calcutta are 
 content to put up, but not so good as the victoria 
 of Bombay. And all these Indian cities might 
 learn from Singapore and Penang in the matter of 
 hotels : here is comfort and decent service, very 
 pleasant to the " wanderer out of ocean " who re- 
 members sadly past hotels and their badness in 
 Bombay, their equal inferiority in Calcutta, the 
 wretchedness of Rangoon, the misery of Mandalay. 
 John Chinaman has been growing more and more 
 numerous as we go on. India proper hardly knows 
 him ; there is a good deal of him in Burma, but 
 almost always without Jane Chinawoman; Mrs. John 
 is generally a Burman, and easily obtained, for does 
 not John reckon as the best of husbands, the 
 Indian second, the European third ("chiefly because 
 he is apt to depart in peace, leaving madame dis- 
 consolate), and the unindustrious, unthrifty Burman 
 last of all ? But in the Straits John comes to stop. 
 
Straits. 1 1 
 
 and brings his womenkind with him ; and all through 
 the long, monotonous streets, with houses all of 
 nearly one size and pattern and all of a painful blue, 
 the Celestial pigtail is not unaccompanied by the 
 Chinese woman's neat little teapot-handle bob of 
 hair low at the back of the head, bound with a plain 
 band of silver, or here and there of gold. (I did 
 not notice any jade, which all wear in China.) 
 
 The museum has a good collection of fishes, and 
 some beasts, but is poor ethnologically. The 
 Botanical Gardens are very fine and large ; the 
 gardens of private bungalows are beautiful with a 
 wealth of tropic foliage ; the bungalows themselves 
 are good to look upon, and no doubt to live in. 
 But the residents do not appear altogether happy — 
 what man ever is ? — and the British contingent 
 seems to think some other place would be prefer- 
 able. What Britisher could live without grumbling? 
 So they "dwell with eternal summer, ill content." 
 The wanderer, too, wearies of Singapore, and 
 spends much of his time there wondering by which 
 line he shall leave— whither wend his way next. 
 Shall it be the Native States ? But they are likely 
 to be inferior versions of Penang and Singapore, 
 with less conveniences, and taking much time to do. 
 And besides, throughout Malaya there is an absence 
 of any "sight" but nature unadorned and man as 
 nature has made him here. Endless change of hill 
 and vale, "the mountain wooded to the peak," with 
 patches of vivid green where thikke grass grows 
 thick on the taungyas or hill clearings, the valley 
 
12 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 dense with flower and foliage, or cleared into fertile 
 field ; but altogether wanting are the works of man, 
 such as have covered India with mighty old-world 
 temples and marvellous tombs, planted on knoll and 
 hill-top in Burma the shining white or gilt pagoda, 
 and built the curious and quaintly-carven kyaung. 
 Or shall it be Bangkok ? But it is a beastly place, 
 and the only interest about Siam is how long it will 
 last, and whether any of it will fall to France, or all 
 to England. Already England has extended her 
 "protection " over the independent Malay states, so 
 that the Malay provinces of Siam (Ranaung and the 
 rest) are wedged in between British India and the 
 Straits Government. By the French in Tonquin 
 and the English in Upper Burma, Siam proper and 
 the Siamese Shan States are shut in on all sides but 
 the sea, that is, Siam is shut in altogether; and 
 how can a state so situated survive ? It is not a 
 question of either France or England wanting her, 
 except to prevent the other having her ; it is 
 merely a question of time and inevitable fate. 
 Britain has made three mouthfuls of Burma, and to 
 digest each of the first two she took about one 
 generation. The third may take as much. Tonquin 
 is likely to take France a good deal more. And 
 then Siam will belong to herself no longer ; protected 
 like Zanzibar, or mediatized as Cashmere, or annexed 
 like Ava — in some form she will have to submit. 
 
 Sumatra, Java, Borneo Dutch and English, 
 Manila, all offer themselves to the one who would 
 trot somewhat out of the beaten tracks. Of the 
 
Java. 13 
 
 Dutch possessions Java is the chief, the central, the 
 seat of Government; let us go to Java, " the Pearl of 
 the East." Cheaper and quicker than any other 
 line, the French mail takes us to Tandjong Priok ; 
 we cross the Equator quietly, performing no cere- 
 monies, yet meaning no disrespect, to that august 
 entity. We enter the harbour that cost 40 million 
 gulden, and wonder vaguely how many official and 
 contracting Dutchmen lined their little nests at home 
 with pickings from that noble sum. On by rail to 
 Batavia, and here shall be seen many new things. 
 The town intersected by canals of muddy water 
 whereon boat and wherein bathe publicly (not that 
 that is anything new) a big population of many 
 shades of brown ; houses that know not punkhas lest 
 the solid headpiece of the Dutchman take cold from 
 the wind of the waving thereof. European ladies 
 that appear in public — at tiffin, gardening in their 
 gardens, playing croquet on the lawn (croquet ! I 
 thought it had long ago passed away in the evig 
 keit), or sitting in open street-fronting verandah in 
 the cool of the day — undressed in the costume of 
 the country, a loose-fitting white jacket fastened 
 low on the neck, and a " sarong " or simple petticoat 
 of many colours and marvellous patterns. Fancy 
 an English lady appearing at tiffin, at Watson's or 
 the Great Eastern, attired in choli and sari and 
 slippers ; or showing herself out of doors in such 
 garb at 5 r.M., where the public " as it passed by 
 her garden might mark with one eye" her casual 
 costume. Curious also it is to see such ladies as 
 
14 Farthest East, Sotiik and West. 
 
 take an evening drive take it hatless and bonnetless, 
 though otherwise dressed as Europeans ; and 
 comical are the Malay or Javanese coachmen in 
 glazed bell-hat with gaudy band and cockade, and 
 the footmen behind with short jackets, Eton style, 
 but bright coloured, not black, and jockey-caps of 
 vivid green or what-not. It looks like part of a 
 circus company let out for the job. Meals too are 
 a source of amusement to the mind, though perhaps 
 not of much satisfaction to the appetite. First 
 appears a bowl of rice from which you help yourself 
 into a soup-plate ; six, seven, any number of dishes — 
 some distinguishable as chicken, some unrecogniz- 
 able, messes "undreamt of, unheard of, unwritten, 
 unknown ; " and from each of these you shall take 
 here a little and there a little, and if the soup-plate 
 will not hold them all, a second plate is waiting to 
 receive the overflow. To these must be added some 
 half-dozen flavours and condiments : curry-gravy, 
 pickled cucumber, chutney and the like. If you 
 shall not greatly enjoy such a " portion " yourself, 
 you shall at least not be unmoved with admiration at 
 your Dutchman devouring his. Follows beefsteak : 
 at least one fondly hopes it beef, and sadly knows it 
 buffalo. Mutton you shall sigh for in vain, it is not 
 deemed by the Dutchman fit for food. At dinner — in 
 all hotels to which my fate led me— the joint was 
 always cold meat : never a hot joint. Your coffee 
 comes to you in cold decanted extract instead of fresh 
 from the berry. Yet shall your pre-prandial gin and 
 h\tt&rs— free — be a pleasant arid acceptable offering. 
 
Java. 1 5 
 
 But enough of the table ; let us go out into the 
 town. It is a big one, goo.coo people some one told 
 me ; perhaps he was in the running for the biggest 
 liar in Asia. Wallace gives it barely half a million, 
 suburbs and all. Any way, it is a large wide- 
 spreading town, traversed by steam tram, and well 
 supplied with light little pony-cars to get about in. 
 The bail-gari has disappeared ; pony-carts replace 
 it. The ricksha is altogether absent. There are not 
 so many Chinese to be seen as in Singapore, not by 
 a long way ; the Chinese woman is absent, but the 
 China- Malay half-breed is plentiful. So indeed are 
 half-breeds of all kinds. It is curious how the Dutch, 
 who, unlike the English, steadily discourage their 
 subjects from learning their masters' language, are 
 yet so much more native than the English in the 
 matter of clothes (already referred to), of intermarry- 
 ing (left-handedly, for the most part, but some- 
 times formally), and in drawing no impassable line 
 between the pure white and the half-breed. Wander- 
 ing into the museum, you find a really good collec- 
 tion of spears and swords from all the islands of the 
 East; dresses of strange design; strings of shells that 
 serve for the Mosaic figleaf ; gods ancient and 
 modern — the ancient are Shiva and Vishnu and 
 Ganesha, and more besides, old friends of the 
 Hindu Pantheon, Buddha, and others unknown — 
 the modern idols of wood, rudej unclothed, disdainful 
 of the figleaf, realistic (in strictly proper Hongkong 
 they are prudishly draped in petticoats of red); 
 models of the dwellings, terrestrial and aquatic, of 
 
1 6 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 these children of the sun ; drums, gongs, cymbals, 
 and all kinds of music ; skulls — and what not else ? — 
 a splendid ethnological collection. Add to this a 
 noble library ; and you have a museum as worthy of 
 commendation as the " Planten und Dierentuin " — 
 the Botanical and Zoological Gardens — are of 
 unstinted condemnation. They are a fraud and a 
 foolishness. That is no doubt why you pay a rupee 
 — a gulden rather, but it is nearly the same thing — 
 for the gardens while the museum is free. The 
 public buildings — Government House, the Secre- 
 tariat — are externally plain and simple ; so are the 
 clubs — the Concordia, the Harmonie — but, like the 
 king's daughter, the latter are " all glorious within ; " 
 their pavement is of white marble, the rooms are 
 spacious and lofty and cool. Their names are 
 sweetly suggestive of unity and peace ; but as a 
 matter of fact Dutch and English are not particularly 
 friendly. Perhaps the Englishman does not like 
 some one else being boss while he is around, and 
 thinks regretfully (as well he may) of the days 
 when Java was his, and of the ignorant unwisdom 
 that gave it back to the Dutch ; perhaps as in other 
 matters, so in the give and take which renders 
 social intercourse cordial, " the fault of the Dutch is 
 giving too little and asking too much." Certainly 
 to the travelling Englishman nothing can be more 
 hospitable and friendly than the English resident in 
 Batavia, or less so than the Dutchman. The Dutch 
 Government does not care for the stranger within its 
 gates ; within three days he must report himself and 
 
Java. 1 7 
 
 get a permission to abide on Dutch soil, else shall he 
 be fined 5 gulden a day up to a maximum of 100 
 gulden. It is true I did not get a permit, and was 
 not amerced ; but then I was there but eight days, 
 and doubtless they prefer to wait until the possible 
 maximum is reached, which clearly takes twenty days. 
 Dutch railway arrangements are perverse and 
 incomprehensible to the uninitiated traveller. You 
 journey by one train and get a certain weight of 
 luggage (30 kilos., I think) free, the rest charged for ; 
 by another, and all charged for ; by a third, and all 
 free : the luggage remaining the same throughout. 
 Accustomed to the meteoric speed of the Dhond and 
 Manmad, the Oudh and Rohilcund, the Burma 
 State railways, the Anglo-Indian will not grumble 
 unduly at the slowness of the " Staats Spoorweg ; " 
 but he will confound the fuel which lands him at his 
 destination as grimy as coal-grit can make him. But 
 " travellers are communicated that a large bath to 
 swim is at theirs disposition in the Hotel " du Chemin 
 de Fer at Buitenzorg (so says an affiche in the dining- 
 room) ; so that although, unless provided, it is a case 
 of " What, no soap ? " one may yet wash and be 
 clean. Buitenzorg, I was told, is the Simla of 
 Netherlands India, and when I saw it I wondered 
 how any one could have invented so foolish a name. 
 The Governor-General lives there, it is true ; but 
 there all similarity ends. It is only about 1,000 feet 
 above sea level, and not thirty miles from the sea ; 
 the climate is hardly cooler than on the coast. For the 
 mighty slopes and snowclad peaks of the Himalayas, 
 ^ c 
 
1 8 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 you look on the forest sides and crater tops of Salak 
 and Gedeh, volcanoes dormant or extinct. The 
 scenery has beauty ; but it is not that of Simla. Round 
 the Governor-General's palace are botanical gardens, 
 this time worthy of the name ; a splendid avenue of 
 fine old banyan-like trees leads up to the house ; in 
 the park are herds of spotted deer. At the 
 " Societeit " the band plays ; Dutch society parades 
 on the Mall. It is a pleasant drive out to Tjampeac, 
 where you will find an Armenian. Like the Parsee, 
 the Armenian is a race scanty in numbers, but 
 spread everywhere ; busy, and successful in business ; 
 nothing comes amiss to him, from Minister for 
 Foreigners — Kalawun — to the King of Burma, to 
 shipping in Calcutta, hotel- keeping in Singapore, 
 or farming (the revenues) in Java. You will find 
 an old gentleman — Malay or China Malay — ^whp 
 was in London at the Exhibition of 1851, and never 
 since, speaking hesitating English, and the English- 
 less Chinaman who " hires the mountain " where 
 the birds build the edible nests beloved of Chinese 
 epicures. To see these, the Chinaman will give you 
 a guide, if you are disposed to wade thigh-deep 
 through streams and wet grass where leeches lurk ; 
 your " Pistis and Pelekanos " he will accept, and in 
 exchange give you the little brown cigarettes of 
 Java, and he will converse withal in friendly panto- 
 mime. "■->;: , 
 But in this land of volcanoes, we must not leave 
 without seeing one ; so on by rail to Bandong 
 through beautiful scenery, now huge hill and forest. 
 
Java. 19 
 
 now bare round hills like the Ooty downs, now long 
 declivities terraced into paddy-fields. From Bandong 
 to Lembang by three-horse pony-car, and thence on 
 horseback up Tankoebanprahoe, the hill of the Upset 
 Canoe. For long ago, when all this land was wide, 
 wide sea, there came sailing a Prince and Princess, 
 and their "prow " (prahoe the Dutch spell it), unfor- 
 tunately got upset (tankoeban), and there it remains 
 to this day. So the "mahrchen" was told me in 
 German ; and I could not, for the weakness of my 
 German, ask for further details. The narrator's 
 wife thought the canoe was a steamer, which the 
 narrator would by no means have. But I think she 
 was right ; else how account for the fire and smoke } 
 Up through plantations of much cinchona and some 
 coffee, until we enter the primeval forest. Ferns 
 everywhere, gigantic fern-trees, minute and almost 
 moss-like delicate-fronded ground ferns, tree-ferns 
 innumerable ; trees a botanist only knows how 
 many species and genera, each tree a garden 
 with its creepers and mosses and orchideous plants ; 
 an excess of vegetation profuse and impenetrable. 
 Over the edge into the crater, and behold the vast 
 vegetation changed to a desolate waste. The odour 
 of sulphur assails one ; and fire and brimstone are 
 not sweet to smell. The forest fades away into a 
 few stunted bushes, into absolute barrenness. In the 
 double bowl of the great crater, divided into two 
 by a rough and ragged ridge, curl up unendingly 
 sulphurous clouds, here hot and silent, there bursting 
 out with a roaring as of a great waterfall, or a loco- 
 
 c 2 
 
20 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 motive letting off steam, and colouring the vent 
 holes of the giants " dungeoned in opaque element " 
 below with bright yellow, and the rocks here and 
 there with red and purple. In the bottom of the 
 crater the rock is like the slag cast out from a smelt- 
 ing furnace ; grey blocks of old lava stand out grim 
 and bare round the sides. Altogether it is a sight 
 worth seeing, if you have not seen many or any 
 volcanoes before ; and as the mist drives up and 
 fills the crater, it is eerie to sit on the edge and 
 listen to the hissing and roaring of the steam 
 hundreds of feet below, and watch the blasted trunks 
 and branches of old trees show weirdly as the mist 
 half lifts, only to drift over and hide them again. 
 
 Returning to Batavia, it is well to leave the rail- 
 way at Tjandjoer (transliterated in British India, on 
 the approved system, this would be Chanjur) and 
 drive by Sindanglaija and Poentjac to Buitenzorg. 
 At Sindanglaija is a " Gesondheits Etablissement " 
 — a sanitarium, and a climate really cool. Poentjac 
 is the head of the pass, some 5,000 feet high, between 
 Gedeh (about 10,000 feet) and Pangerango (some- 
 what less). It is a six hours' drive, say forty miles, 
 and a steep and stony ghat ; but they do it with only 
 one change of ponies, and charge only 16 gulden — 
 say Rs.i6. The scenery is really exquisite. The 
 cloud-capped crater of Gedeh stands out boldly to 
 the south and west ; the long sloping sides, seamed 
 with precipitous ravines, are terraced for 5,000 feet 
 or more into endless paddy-land, and the terraces 
 dip over into the hollows and turn every possible 
 
Java. 2 1 
 
 foot of ground into food-producing fields. To water 
 all these miles of rice, every stream that comes down 
 from the mountain is caught and diverted into 
 fertilizing channels, that run perpetually ; under the 
 sunny sky an ^av/jpiOfiov yeXacr/ia of rippling water. 
 Above the terraces there are grass-grown hill- 
 clearings, and, for some thousands of feet above 
 them, the steep acclivities of the cone with its dark 
 green raiment of eternal forest. To the north and 
 east stretches away an endless panorama of hill after 
 hill, volcanic peaks, dormant or dead; but who shall 
 say when they may not again put forth their 
 might, and wreak ruin on man and his works ? The 
 double Shiwa of the Indian, half woman and half 
 man, is a true type of nature ; in her, destruction 
 and reproduction are indissolubly combined. Below 
 the pass at Poentjac there slumbers in an old crater 
 the little pool of TelagaWarna; the all but perpen- 
 dicular sides are dense with that ever exhaustless 
 forest; it is very still and silent save for the splash 
 of a fish leaping in the pool, or the single voice of 
 some strange bird calling in the wood. 
 
 To the tourist Java ought to be far more widely 
 known than it is. I have seen only the western 
 corner of it, and but little of that, and I find it ex- 
 tremely beautiful ; nor is the climate — at least to an 
 Anglo-Indian — other than delicious. But go into 
 Central and Eastern Java, and visit the volcanoes 
 and hot springs of Tengir with its Brama and 
 Watangan (Hall of Audience) cones, Papandagang 
 Galunggong, Arjuma, Semero, Grobogan, Talaga 
 
2 2 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Bodas, Taschem ; the temples and ruins of Maja- 
 pahit, Brambanam, Chandi, Sewa, Borobodo, 
 Gunong Prau ; if you are for Shikar, shoot 
 rhinoceri in the jungles; if ethnology be your hobby, 
 study the curious customs of the Malays, their races 
 and their dialects ; or if natural science tempt you, 
 you shall find a perfect paradise for the geologist, 
 the botanist, the ornithologist, the " bug-hunter " 
 generally ; or, again, there will present itself to you 
 much matter for thought on the manner of govern- 
 ment. The country is administered for the benefit 
 of its conquefors, not of its people ; but, at the same 
 time, the people prosper and increase and multiply ex- 
 ceedingly. Whether is it better to keep the people 
 ignorant and exploit them, a la Hollandaise, or to 
 " feed them and fill them" with all the learning of 
 the West, making nothing out of them except what 
 comes by way of open trade, as is the British fashion ? 
 The Dutch Empire in the East has to pay its own 
 way, and its surpluses go into the Home Exchequer. 
 It must find its own army, for not a regiment from 
 home may be sent to the Indies ; and its army it has, 
 Europeans and natives enrolled in the same regi- 
 ment and battalion, Europeans of all races, and all 
 alike allowed to keep in barracks, and to take with 
 them on expedition, their temporary wives of the 
 women of the country. Besides the regular army, 
 every European in the land (unless medically certi- 
 fied as unfit, and then he has to pay a composi- 
 tion) has of necessity to undergo a military training in 
 the Scutterij every year ; and is liable to be called out 
 
yava. 23 
 
 for duty when the work is too heavy for the regular 
 troops. There is no disputing that Java has done 
 extremely well under the rule of the Dutchmen ; but 
 in other possessions they are content with the coast 
 or but a portion of it, or at most make but feeble 
 and necessarily futile attempts to reduce the tribes of 
 the interior. Most have heard ere this of the eighteen 
 years' war in Atyeh (Achin), no nearer an end than 
 when it began. Floris has got an expedition now 
 attempting to reduce it, with about as much prospect 
 of a speedy issue as in Atyeh. The Bataks in Mid 
 Sumatra, tlie Dyaks in Dutch Borneo, all the natives 
 of half a hundred islands of Malaysia — what step has 
 been taken to bring them into line, to open up their 
 country, to subdue it and rule it ? I trow none. When 
 the Anglo-Indian surveys the Dutch East Indies 
 and casts a glance at Tonquin, he cannot fail to con- 
 gratulate himself on his nation's superiority over her 
 nearest neighbours at home in the art of establishing 
 and maintaining peace through all the borders of a 
 subject empire. 
 
24 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHINA. 
 
 If you wish to be comfortable and well fed, do — 
 but, if you wish to make a quick passage, do not 
 — go by the French mail from Singapore to Hong- 
 kong, for she calls at Saigon, which adds nearly 
 two days (quite forty-four hours) to the journey ; 
 and the Saigon river is not lovely, nor the town 
 delectable. It is — in August — atrociously hot ; the 
 river banks are, except at the mouth, about Cape 
 St. Jacques, flat and swampy ; the women are ugly 
 and hideously dressed ; there are no scenery and 
 no sights. It is called " Indo-China ; " but the 
 " Indo " part of it has all but disappeared, and 
 little but China remains. It is true the ricksha is 
 not present, and only the victoria and the gari 
 appear ; but the sampans on the river, with their 
 little josses, and whole family living on board, are 
 thoroughly Chinese ; the brilliant-coloured g^- 
 ments of the women of India and Burma have 
 given place to the dreary black of China — ^paijamas 
 and nightgown and all (of a somewhat different 
 make, however) ; nor are the women adorned as 
 the Chinese are with jade on hair and ear and 
 
China. 25 
 
 wrist, or by anything but simple silver circlet on the 
 neck. The Anamites are believed to be first cousins 
 to our Talaings or Mons in Pegu and Tenasserim : 
 it is said their languages prove this. They are not 
 much like one another to look at. The town of 
 Saigon is laid out in wide streets and tree-planted 
 boulevards, and is not without its cafds and cafd 
 concerts — a feeble little Paris in petto in the East 
 The French are ver\- welcome to keep it, and I 
 hope they like it. Let us get on to Hongkong, 
 and admire the town and harbour opening out 
 before us, as we steam through tlie narrow Sulphur 
 Channel. It is night, and as we round the point, 
 "the lights begin to twinkle from the rocks," climb- 
 ing high up the steep hill-side : on the broad lake- 
 like harbour they " glitter like a swarm of fire-flies " 
 from sampan and hakau and launch and steamer. 
 And when we land next morning we shall not need 
 to lav aside our admiration through finding that 
 the fair outside is foul within. The Praya is sub- 
 stantial and handsome, the streets, though narrower 
 than in Indian cities, are well laid out, well kept, 
 and wide enough for the wants of the place ; the 
 absence of carts and carriages, garis and trams, 
 maikes the busy town singularly quiet, for the 
 ricksha nms smoothly and the chair is noiseless. 
 The City Hall (why can't they be content to call it 
 the Town Hall?) is not a bad building, and the 
 Hongkong- and Shanghai Bank is palatial ; number- 
 less roads go straight and steep, or staircased, or 
 in slanting zig-zags up the lower slopes of the 
 
26 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Peak, for there is very little level space between 
 the hill-foot and the sea, and up to the Pass runs 
 the Funicular Railway, landing you in ten minutes 
 1,500 feet above the sea. The Peak — I beg its 
 pardon — Victoria Peak is the glory of Hongkong. 
 Rising abruptly over 1,800 feet, it affords to the 
 dweller in Hongkong a rapid change from (in the 
 town) the climate of Bombay at its worst, to (at the 
 top) that of Poona at its best. It fancies itself 
 greatly, and, not content with the modest hotel that 
 once had to suffice for all wants, it is enlarging 
 the old and building new guest-houses of great size. 
 Hither shall be attracted (an enthusiast told me, 
 and he ought to know, being, as I surmise, a share- 
 holder in the venture) the invalids and seekers of 
 health and repose from all the East — from Japan, 
 from the Treaty Ports, from the Straits, yea, from 
 India and Ceylon ; here shall asthma and rheu- 
 matism (so prevalent in India !) derive positive 
 benefit from the cold sea-mists, and weakly lungs 
 be restored again. And "thereout," doubtless, 
 shall the shareholders " suck no small advantage." 
 But verily they will have to wait a weary while, if 
 their profits depend on their Peak outshining 
 august Simla and naughty Naini, and more so 
 Mussoorie and all the hill stations north and west 
 and south. Not that the Peak is to be despised ; 
 for any one whom stern decrees of fate condemn to 
 exile in Singapore or Hongkong, Macao, or Canton, 
 it is a splendid place, cool and bracing, and with 
 lovely prospects. Abrupt and rugged mountain 
 
China. 2 7 
 
 slopes, gaunt in their bareness — absolutely tree- 
 less, save where artificially planted : such a contrast 
 to the forest-hidden hillsides of the Straits and 
 Java ;— a far-stretching view over island and bays 
 and harbour and the mountains of the mainland ; 
 pleasant walks in a brilliant atmosphere — all these 
 \'^ictoria Peak affords, and only ten minutes up 
 from narrow streets, crowded by rickshas and busy 
 men and coolies and chairs and mosquitoes and 
 heat. The drive or ricksha ride out to " The 
 Happy Valley " takes one through the East End 
 of Hongkong, which is the more respectable and 
 the more European quarter — barracks, naval-yard, 
 &c., lie out this way — and in the Happy \"alley 
 there is in the bottom the Racecourse, as pic- 
 turesque as, and somewhat suggestive of, that at 
 Wellington, with the advantage that there is more 
 room to turn in ; while upon the hillsides on the 
 west — the entrance almost facing the Grand Stand 
 — is the last resting-place for those whose race is over 
 — the Cemetery, filled with " the grassy barrows of 
 the happier dead." It is a beautifully kept garden, 
 lovelier than the formal Public Gardens, but the 
 tombstones are sadly many for so young a colony. 
 Neighbouring close is the Parsee Burying Ground ; 
 for the Parsee community is numerous, and here 
 are no Towers of Silence — the Fire \^^orshipper 
 must bury his dead. On the other side the 
 R. C. with its unkind reminder, " Hodie mihi 
 eras iibi;" and next it the Mohammedan. In the 
 centre of the town (it calls itself Victoria, though 
 
28 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 every one calls it Hongkong) the public buildings 
 are poor — Post Office and Supreme Court and 
 Clock Tower. The Club is located in the central 
 street, and looks more like a large office than a 
 club. Naturally it has no grounds or garden, no 
 coolness, no outlook ; it is just about as ill situated 
 as a club can be, if a club is meant to be a place 
 of pleasant ease and comfort ; but if it is meant to 
 be a convenient place of business, then it is well 
 located, for there is no "'Change," and business 
 seems to be conducted very much in the street, 
 from the Hongkong Bank as far as the Club, or in 
 the porticoes and door-ways of the shops and 
 offices along that portion of Queen's Road, and 
 the Club verandah itself West of the Club 
 stretches the populous Chinese quarter; above it, 
 on the hillside, are the Police Court and Jail. I 
 found it interesting to go round the Jail ; the turn- 
 keys are polite and obliging. About 600 may be 
 taken as the average jail population, and the 
 cramped, confined space which the building occu- 
 pies is turned to the best account to accommodate 
 the small number of prisoners. With such scanty 
 numbers it is, perhaps, difficult to work a complete 
 system of remunerative labour (they manage it in 
 Japan, however), and I wondered not a little at the 
 excessive proportion of convicts who were earning 
 nothing — ^labouring at the crank or at shot or stone 
 drill. Under-trials are not kept in a separate ward 
 (which seemed to me wrong), and there is no pro- 
 motion of well-behaved criminals to become convict 
 
China. 29 
 
 warders. The health is good. The daily number 
 of sick is quite a small percentage on the daily 
 strength, and includes sufferers from floggings for 
 refusing the crank, and " general debility " — i.e., 
 opium-smokers. I saw one such — a young man of 
 twenty-six, weight seventy-six pounds, stripped ; 
 he was a ghastly scarecrow, a yellow skeleton. 
 Across the harbour is Kawloong, an important 
 place, with a fine dockyeu-d ; and behind the Peak 
 is Pokfoolum, a pretty suburb, with a charming 
 road running round Mount Davis, and coming in 
 by the fort at the west end of the town. A board 
 at the approach to the Fort forbids entrance, ex- 
 cept on written permission of the O. C. ; but 
 the gate being open, I walked in ; nor did the 
 Sikh policeman on duty object. He said he recog- 
 nized me — which was clever of him, never having 
 seen me before. The Fort appears to be wanting 
 in armament. They call the police force Sikh, 
 but it evidently includes a good many others — 
 Pathans, Panjab, Mussulmans, &c. The Chinese 
 police seem to correspond to the civil police in 
 Burma. They do not look smart in their platter- 
 hats and trousers and shambling gait. 
 
 Hongkong is a wonderful place for only fifty 
 years of growth. Its roads and its pra)a and its 
 great Tytam waterworks are things it may well be 
 proud of. But it is not content ; it must enlarge 
 itself, and reclaim much space from the sea. Let 
 us hope the Praya Reclamation Scheme will ha^■e a 
 more prosperous course than the Back Bay. It 
 
30 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 was born, as I understand, in just such a time of 
 inflated speculation as was the Bombay fiasco ; and, 
 in the inevitable reaction, I fancy it does not present 
 itself to all the colony in quite the rosy colours that 
 its promoters (or would promoter be more correct ?) 
 made it wear. At all events, it is started and 
 blessed by Royalty — for is not a memorial stone 
 extant laid by H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught? 
 and perhaps it may be complete in ten or twelve or 
 more years. Meanwhile the colony celebrates its 
 jubilee, and begins to light itself electrically, and 
 yearns for a railway to Canton. And in time no 
 doubt the forts will be duly armed, and the club re- 
 moved to a better site (it is too shoppy), and the 
 cricketers provided with a ground where they will 
 not need to field hits for two out in the main road 
 among the rickshas and road-menders and coolies, 
 and the huge new and extended old hotels will be 
 making the shareholders' fortunes — or going "phut," 
 like that floating one in the harbour which rernoyed 
 to Canton and started a fresh course there as a 
 "flower boat." 
 
 Macao, some three and a half hours' steam from 
 Hongkong, is a very dead-alive little place. Of all 
 the once mighty Portuguese power in the Farther 
 East there remains now but this somnolent little 
 settlement and half the island of Timor, eleven days' 
 steam to the south. (The Dutch have the other 
 half) There is a governor-general for this Empire, 
 who holds his state at Macao, and subordinate to 
 him a governor in Timor. The place is picturesque 
 
China. 3 1 
 
 enough : a sort of miniature of Hongkong, with the 
 extra seasoning of churches, convents, &c., that is 
 usual where a Roman Catholic power holds sway. 
 There are no sights to go to, unless a statue of 
 St. Francis Xavier across the bay, and the Grotto 
 of Camoens in the middle of the town, may be 
 counted as such. The Grotto is in the gardens 
 attached to some government building — war and 
 admiralty and municipal office it seemed to me to 
 be ; the hall adorned with quaint old chairs and oil 
 paintings black with age, in twopenny-halfpenny 
 frames, of kings and governors and ladies of high 
 degree. A memorial bust, with poetical effusions 
 inscribed on headstones all around it, marks the 
 Grotto — interesting probably to a patriotic Portu- 
 guese, but not particularly so to the impartial globe- 
 trotter. I could not decipher the English sonnet, 
 but the guide-book says that the " pote," Sir John 
 Bowring, begins it thusly : — 
 
 Gem of the orient earth and open sea, 
 Macao that in thy lap and on thy breast 
 Hast gathered beauties all the loveliest, 
 Which the sun smiles on in its majesty. 
 
 If this be so, and if it be the poet's province to ex- 
 pound the truth, then friend Bowring is no poet. 
 The "beauties all the loveliest" of Macao are 
 second-rate scenery, half-caste Portugooses, opium- 
 smoking, and licensed gambling. This empire pour 
 rire keeps itself afloat financially by the opium and 
 gambling revenue. As to opium, I dare not cast a 
 stone, which leaves me all the freer to condemn the 
 
32 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 gambling. " Fantan " is the game. From a heap 
 of counters or cash in front of him, the croupier lifts 
 out a handful, and covers them with a metal cup ; 
 the gentle sportsmen make their stakes on one or 
 two or three or four. The croupier removes the 
 cup and counts the counters or cash out four at a 
 time ; there remain over, of course, sometimes three, 
 sometimes two, or one, or again a full four. Who- 
 soever has staked on the number which remains 
 over receives three times his stake, the rest pay up. 
 Seeing that the odds are three to one against the 
 punter every time he stakes, and that when he wins 
 he is mulcted seven or eight per cent, by the bank, 
 it is clear that the banker has a good time. This 
 splendid game is patronized by the Hongkong 
 sportsmen, who find a Saturday to Monday run to 
 Macao pleasant, and a little fantan exciting. The 
 game is slow, the counting of the counters being 
 done very deliberately ; but there is no doubt of the 
 intense interest the heathen Chinee takes in it : 
 observe him as he watches the croupier counting, 
 and as it appears that his last coin, and his watch, 
 and the rest of the portable property about him are 
 all engulfed in the bank. 
 
 But to see the Chinaman of the south at home, 
 it is necessary to go to Canton ; and the day steamer 
 is the pleasanter to go by, else how shall we see the 
 Canton River, where the captain (a good sort) will 
 point out what was a pirates' lair, and regale you 
 with anecdotes as you pass the forts and the barrier 
 and Whampoa with its dock and torpedo-boats, a 
 
> 
 
 s 
 
 z 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 < 
 u 
 
 w 
 re 
 
 H 
 
 z 
 
 o 
 
China. 33 
 
 pagoda all aslant, like the leaning tower of Pisa, 
 gunboats, fishing-boats with crews in the costume 
 of Adam before the Fall, rice-junks, salt-junks, 
 duck-boats, stern-wheel paddle-boats, where the 
 propelling power is the muscles of many coolis' 
 legs working on a sort of treadmill arrangement in 
 the poop — until you arrive at Canton, where the 
 number and variety of boats passes enumeration. 
 The sampans and slipper-boats are ever active, and 
 }et there are ever scores at rest, tied up in long 
 streets from shore almost to mid-stream. You 
 will notice that the crew li\'es on the boat, 
 small as it is, and admire how neatly cooking-pots 
 and fireplace are stowed away ; you will observe 
 how the crew generallj- consists of four (sometimes 
 three or only two), and how (almost invariably) it is 
 four males or four females, rarely a crew of mixed 
 sexes. The girls, with a fringe of hair over the 
 forehead, and hair done up in a plain coil behind, 
 are not uncomely, though too short, especially in the 
 leg, and the dress is very ugly ; but the older 
 women are not pleasing to look on — fringeless, and 
 with hair done up in the formal teapot fashion 
 proper (I believe) to married women. Jade wrist- 
 lets and hair-band and earrings all wear, the jade 
 earring being slung not direct on the lobe of the 
 ear, but on the broad band of a metal earring, the 
 thin shaft of which passes through the lobe. The 
 women are far more decent, to European notions, 
 than the cooli women of India, or Burma, or what 
 we shall shortly see in Japan. You never see them 
 
 D 
 
34 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 bare-breasted, or so much bare-limbed as even a 
 Boulogne fishing-girl. (Even in Burma, though 
 there is nothing indecent in a married woman being 
 bare to the waist, and if she covers at sight of you 
 it is not modesty, but the respect due to you, that 
 impels her ; still, for an unmarried girl to expose 
 so much of her person would be highly improper.) 
 The men wear no ornaments, and few clothes. 
 The working women have feet of normal size ; tiny 
 feet are for those who need not toil. 
 
 But if the river be busy with boats, what of the 
 shore .'' What shall be said of the 
 
 Marts and the thronged 
 Quays, and the noise and the din ? 
 
 A cacophonous clamour rises from the crowding 
 Celestials. The subjects of the Son .of Heaven add 
 the stifling odour of a mass of perspiring men to the 
 legion of powerful perfumes which exhale from 
 reeking refuse and river and tight-packed town, and 
 seize you by the nose and wring it till even the 
 potent trichi fails to protect you. Ah Cum, that 
 guide, philosopher, and friend of all the sightseers 
 who do Canton, has you in his charge, and he 
 parades you, as if you liked them, through smells 
 such as you never dreamed of before ; and you shall 
 not escape till you have smelt them every one. 
 Not that he states explicitly that he has brought 
 you to see these ; but he takes you, on pretexts of 
 sorts, up and down the long and narrow streets, 
 into all sorts of impossible corners, so that the 
 
China. 35 
 
 result is the same : you taste them all before you 
 have done. How interminable they are, these 
 passages and alleys that serve for streets ; barely 
 wide enough for two chairs to pass one another, 
 the garish daylight shut out by overhanging roofs 
 and extended awnings, and all those signboards 
 depending from the shop-fronts, red and black and 
 white, with word-symbols, gilt or black, or white or 
 red, largely worked on them. How strange the 
 noisy silence seems — noisy, for the cry of the cooli 
 and the chair-man, the clatter of bare or clog- wear- 
 ing feet, the call and the bell of the itinerant vendor, 
 these never rest ; yet silent, for the wind finds no 
 way in, and no wheel of ricksha or gari, no iron- 
 shod fall of horses' feet, sounds on the uneven 
 granite. Yet stay ; here are horses — rough, ill-kept 
 ponies rather — passing in procession, ridden by big 
 Tartars who wear bowl-shaped hats adorned with 
 red crest and " button at the top." They are part 
 of the Viceroy's body-guard; there is the great 
 man's chair borne in tlie midst of the procession. 
 You cannot see him ; the blinds or curtains are 
 down. But it is enough to see the procession : the 
 lictors, with hats of impossible shape and strange 
 garments; the soldiers shambling along anyhow, 
 rifles with fixed bayonets on the right shoulder, 
 fans hard at work in the left hand, and their uniform 
 a marvel of sartorial fantasy. These Tartars and their 
 ponies look the only business part of the show ; the 
 rest seems burlesque. The present Mceroy is, I 
 hear, unpopular. He lays on the people burdens 
 
 D 2 
 
36 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 grievous to be borne, on pretext of improving the 
 defences, really (it is supposed) to fill his own 
 pocket ; and lately he caused a man to be taken out 
 to execution gagged — a most unprecedented and 
 improper proceeding. For usually an accused is 
 compelled by peine forte et dure to confess, and 
 without confession is no conviction legal. But in 
 this case, as Ah Cum related, the man had never 
 confessed. A friend of his killed a schoolmaster, of 
 which most heinous crime he was eye-witness ; both 
 were arrested and placed on their trial — i.e., under 
 torture. The actual murderer died in jail, so that 
 when orders came from the higher powers that 
 sentence of death must be passed for this murder, 
 there was no one on whom to pass it except the 
 luckless witness. As he would not confess to 
 having done what he had not done, he was taken 
 out to execution gagged, lest he should proclaim 
 his innocence and bring discredit on Justice ; 
 whereat the righteous soul of Ah Cum was in no 
 small degree moved, as at a terrible injustice. 
 
 I am not going to put down all that Ah Cum 
 took me through — there is a printed guide-book to 
 Canton, and therein whoso wills may read of all the 
 regulation sights. I did not have the good or ill- 
 fortune to see any one being tried (or tortured — it 
 is the same thing in China) in the Court of Justice, 
 or any one's head taken off in the Potter's Ground ; 
 wherefore I cannot give you soul-harrowing descrip- 
 tions of awful agony and exquisite death, such as 
 some have indited, though whether they saw all 
 
China. 37 
 
 that they describe as seen is doubtful. Writers 
 certainly do over-colour their accounts most 
 strangely. I read of men in cangues unable to rise 
 from the weight thereof ; of others screaming and 
 shouting and banging themselves against the bars 
 like frantic monkeys ; of prisoners as half-famished 
 foaming demoniacs ; of children jeering and hooting 
 and aping the outlandish white man, or shrieking 
 and hiding at the horrid sight of him ; and I say 
 that the eye does not witness these things, nor the 
 ear hear them ; that they are only what it enters 
 into the imaginative mind of man to conceive. The 
 cangue-wearers that I saw rose easilj', and put out 
 their hands through the prison bars for coin — • 
 silently, sadly. The prisoners that crowded round 
 when I went in were plump and cheery : some 
 working at bootmaking, some at nothing, but all in 
 good condition — delighted when I gave one my 
 half-smoked trichi, and only when I threw a handful 
 of small coin amongst them to scramble for did 
 they become over-bold and riotous. Then I beat a 
 hasty retreat amid laughter from me and the " half- 
 famished and foaming" ones, and mild expostula- 
 tions from the janitor. As to hatred of the 
 " fangkwai," it does not take any active form in the 
 streets. The people certainly are not cordial or 
 friendly, but you cannot fairly go farther than this 
 negative account of their demeanour towards you. 
 The children chin-chin and ask for coppers; mothers 
 point you out to them, or they to their mothers, as 
 you pass. Seeing that there are getting on for a 
 
38 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 dozen mission chapels and churches scattered about 
 the city, each with its padre (he, it is true, some- 
 times attired as a Chinaman, pigtail and all), and 
 that the dwellers in Shameen and curio-hunters 
 from Hongkong occasionally visit the native town, 
 the people must be accustomed to seeing white men 
 going about ; so that you are after all only one more 
 specimen of an inferior and objectionable race. 
 Why should a Celestial soul worry itself to annoy 
 or insult you ? 
 
 It is something of a relief to emerge from the city 
 into the Burlington House of Canton — the Ex- 
 amination Halls, with their wide courtyards, where 
 grass and weeds grow green, their long rows of 
 cells, where each examinee is immured solitary for 
 the whole examination, — all tenantless until the next 
 triennial examination comes on ; or to make the 
 circuit of the wall to the five-storied pagoda, whence 
 to view the city and the country round. Except in 
 the Tartar quarter, where the public ways are a 
 trifle less narrow, no streets can be seen from above. 
 It is one sea of roofs and awnings, unbroken save 
 where rise the Water-clock Tower, the Roman 
 Catholic cathedral (very fine and large), the square 
 towers of the pawnbrokers — strong-rooms in which 
 they keep pledged property, the slender fire-watch- 
 man's stations, and here and there a double-storeyed 
 gateway — that of Eternal Purity or Everlasting Peace, 
 or something equally high-sounding (purity and peace 
 in Canton — what irony !) ; a pagoda or two ; a fort 
 on the nearest knoll outside, a powder magazine 
 
China. 39 
 
 down in the hollow ; and fertile plains of paddy 
 lying between lines of treeless and rugged hills. All 
 these hills are graveyards : a Chinese grave is 
 always, if possible, on the slope of rising ground, and 
 much care must be exercised in the choice of a site. 
 To my mind the strangest thing in Canton is what 
 Europeans call the City of the Dead, which lies out- 
 side the Eastern gate (there are others, I believe, 
 but this is the largest). In the rooms here provided 
 the deceased, duly placed in his enormous coffin, 
 awaits the proper time and place for his burial to be 
 fixed. The coffin seems to be fashioned of two logs 
 slit down the centre, and the four pieces joined 
 together so as to enclose a square, leaving the 
 rounded sides on the outside, so that the section is 
 thus <%> ; it lies in an inner room, and in the front 
 room "josspidgin" of sorts is arranged: flowers 
 and figures and fruit and incense-sticks, and a light 
 always burning ; in some a table set in front of a 
 chair empty but for a painted board or scroll bearing 
 words — perhaps the deceased's name. Sometimes 
 the due place of burial is never fixed, or the 
 relations cannot find the funds >for the funeral, 
 and the coffin remains here neglected ; sometimes 
 the ' ' fungshiu " goes wrong, and after burial tlie 
 thing has to be dug up again and buried elsewhere. 
 When I was at Canton there was a religious 
 tamasha on, which I understood to be on behalf of 
 those who never got buried at all — the drowned, and 
 all Avho by similar accidents got their bodies lost 
 beyond recover}-. Large house-boats were hired 
 
40 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 after dark, and the interior made resplendent with 
 European oil-lamps, and the exterior with single or 
 double tier of Chinese lanterns round the sides, and 
 a string of them depending from the mast or pole, a 
 crowd of oil-buttis making the front of the house a 
 blaze of light. A joss rigged up inside, priests and 
 acolytes with many changes of vesture genuflect and 
 prostrate before it ; the band plays, and away goes 
 the boat, followed by half-a-dozen like it, floating 
 down with the ebbing tide to return again with the 
 flow, and setting afloat (as they do in Burma or in 
 India) numerous little lamps that go shining down 
 the stream like aquatic glowworms. The sight is 
 picturesque, and the eye is pleased by the various 
 lights swaying with the boat's motion on the tide ; 
 but the ear is tortured by the Celestial music. What 
 some one calls " the implacable beat of the drum " 
 is not so marked as in India, or even is absent, but 
 the instruments used are of piercing shrillness, 
 and the tunes (?) of a deadly monotony. The 
 steamer's crew furnished out one boat — half-a- 
 dollars worth of merit per man ; the Flower Boats 
 supplied more than one. These Flower Boats are 
 the scene of staid and solemn revelling. Here 
 is a party of Chinamen having a festive dinner ; 
 most of them bare to the waist — and no wonder, for 
 it is stifling hot ; behind the chair of each sits his 
 belle amie for the evening, she not eating nor speak- 
 ing unless spoken to : face painted, hair plastered, 
 dress of the universal blue. (I am fond of blue, it 
 is my favourite colour, but one gets too much of it 
 
China. 41 
 
 here ; one does not want to see always blue and 
 nothing but it.) In another boat, a few men loung- 
 ing on couches, smoking opium, each with his tartlet 
 (if the word may be permitted) sitting by him, silent 
 and demure ; in a third they are playing some in- 
 comprehensible game with dominoes for cards, 
 smoking the idiotic waterpipe, which holds just one 
 whiff and no more (a waiter stands by constantly re- 
 loading), and as usual the fair ones sitting by as 
 prim as prudes and prunes and prisms. A domino 
 player asks me in ; I sit down, fanning myself 
 violently with the fan I boned from my boat-girl, for 
 it is abominably close ; one of the houris giggles and 
 hides her face behind her fan, another laughs at a 
 joke made by a player, and m}- host's partner gazes 
 at me solemnly through enormous goggle specs. 
 My host gives me tea, lukewarm and acrid, and 
 accepts a trichi, which he lights at the wrong end 
 and without removing the straw. We discourse in 
 such pidgin English as either can muster ; after a 
 decent interval I say I wish to go, and escape into 
 the air. INIusic and singing are going on in another 
 boat, but nowhere any dancing such as the nautch- 
 o-irls of India wear)* you witli, and I am told no 
 dancing is done by these girls. Altogether, for a 
 scene of dissipation, anything more decorous, more 
 dreary, it would be difficult to devise. Of course 
 this is the public side ; as to what is behind, ask your 
 boat-girl : she knows all about it. But the foreigner 
 mav not investigate in person ; John reserves the 
 private apartments for himself. So says old Susan, 
 
42^ Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 and she knows a good deal, for her age has consider- 
 ably depassed the septennate. 
 
 To other places in Canton I went with Ah Cum 
 the Less — for Ah Cum the Great has a son who is 
 known by that name ; to his parents and elders he 
 is Ah Choy ; and to his juniors and friends Po Shan 
 (quite a Burmese ring about the last name). This 
 youth has never left Canton, but has acquired a 
 tolerable amount of English — I mean English, not 
 that horrible hybrid known as pidgin English; 
 (Old Susan is fluent and puzzling in the latter). He 
 is, however, by no means perfect As w^e went up 
 the muddy waters among the innumerable boats, 
 " This," he said, " is Fa-ti Crack." " Fa-ti Crack ? " 
 I queried, getting out my handkerchief "Yes, 
 Fati Crack," said he, pointing to the water. " Oh, 
 creek — c,r,e,e,k, creek," I explained, and put away 
 the wipe. Ah Choy has a way of exclaiming, 
 " Here we are ! " in a tremendously jovial extra- 
 English fashion as we reach our destination, and so 
 he " Here we are's " me to the Fati Gardens. They 
 are called gardens, but you cannot call the art 
 horticulture. It is the culture of the grotesque ; trees 
 deliberately and cunningly stunted and dwarfed and 
 madeto growtheir branches downwards ; the graceful 
 bamboo forced into strange serpentine convolutions ; 
 plants trained over wires, and clipped and con- 
 strained into shapes of baskets and boats and beasts 
 and men. Here is a steamer with masts, paddle- 
 wheels and so on, but the funnel has been forgotten. 
 The lions and fish and dragons and deer are of 
 
China. 43 
 
 impossible form, and on these are clay eyes, with tin 
 tongues for the dragons, while on the human figures 
 are clay heads and hands and boots. Those of 
 Europeans are uncomplimentary^ caricatures, but 
 those of Chinese men and women are almost as 
 unflattering. There are some fine chrysanthemums 
 and poor camellias and other flowers that make a 
 brave show ; but there is no attempt at an artistic 
 grouping of colours. The miniature rockeries, with 
 little painted clay men, and pagodas and bridges 
 and boats, and all kinds of things disposed among 
 the ferns and other plants with which they are 
 skilfully clad, are by no means unpleasing. After 
 that are fruit trees and vegetables. The Honam 
 Temple Garden is like unto these. It is evident 
 that the idea of a garden, as we understand it, does 
 not exist here. As we go up the " Crack," with much 
 yelling of boatmen and girls, we come to the Duck 
 Farm. Here are hatched thousands of canards. I 
 asked Ah Choy how the)' were hatched ; and after 
 much thoughtful search for a word he could find none 
 better than " by fire." So 1 taught him the word 
 incubator, and when he asked how it was spelt, spelt 
 it for him as little Archibaldus H olden spelt his 
 name : i,n, in, and there's your in ; c,u, cu, and there's 
 vour cu, and there's your incu ; b,a, ba, and there's 
 your ba, and there's your cuba, and there's j'our 
 incuba ; and so on. He said he would remember. 
 I hope he may. The ducks hatched here — I saw 
 say a couple of thousand yellow ducklings — are sent 
 out in those duck-boats we met on the river, and then 
 
44 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 into the country to be fatted for market. But I do 
 not care myself, for reasons, to eat duck in China. 
 There were no eggs incubating, and the only curio 
 they had to show me was a three-legged gosling. 
 He was not doing so well as his two-legged coeval ; 
 and, indeed, I do not know how he was arranged 
 internally so as to work at all, for the third leg 
 occupied the whole of that important space under the 
 tail ; and it wasn't any good either, for he waddled 
 on the other two. 
 
 " Here we are!" said Ah Choy heartily, a little 
 later ; and we went into the South Pearl Hall or 
 Merchants' Guildhall. Thisplace pleased me. It is 
 clean and well kept — which alone makes it a curi- 
 osity in Canton ; and the Shrine of the Queen of 
 Heaven is ornamented, but not over-ornamented, 
 with gilded wooden carving, very handsome. " And 
 what are the vessels on the altar made of ? " I asked. 
 " All brrrass," said Ah Choy. 
 
 Ah Choy is not a little proud of being able to 
 pronounce an r, and rrrolls it with unconcealed self- 
 gratulation. So I asked him, " What was that you 
 said ? " and he answered, " Yes, all brrrass." 
 
 "Yes, all blllass," chimed in an unlearned by- 
 stander. And Ah Choy glorified himself exceed- 
 ingly. 
 
 So I asked him where certain big stones came 
 from that lay in the inner room ; and he said, 
 " From a Chinese woolwich." 
 
 I gkzed on him sadly, and said, " Where ? " and 
 again he said, " From a Chinese woolwich." Then I 
 
China. 45 
 
 jumped on him : "V is not pronounced w, nor is 
 village pronounced woolwich." And I said " Let us 
 go to the Honam Temple." 
 
 " ^'^elly well," said the crestfallen one, forgetting 
 his r's in his confusion. 
 
 " I wonder," he remarked, questioning!}-, as old 
 Sue's little girls oared us across the river, " I wonder 
 if I went to England and studied for three years, I 
 could speak English just like Englishman ? " 
 
 Unwisely I comforted him. " Knowing so much 
 already, you might do it in half that time." 
 
 " \ es," he said, brightening up, " and then I 
 could write an English poem." 
 
 Whereat I collapsed. There is quite enough bad 
 poetry in the world, O Ah Choy, without you 
 studying for three years to add to it. 
 
 The Honam Temple is in the usual style, but large 
 and clean and spacious. It is not Buddhist, as I under- 
 stand Buddhism ; which only proves that I don't 
 understand Chinese Buddhism, for it is Buddhist, and 
 I admit that the proof is just. Why don't these priests 
 wear yellow robes, leaving the right shoulder bare, 
 instead of grey-grass coats with ample sleeves ? 
 (grass-piper coats Ah Choy calls them, for they 
 are made of fibre). \\'hy do they keep sacred pigs ? 
 (Buddha and pigs seem incongruous) which are 
 never killed and eaten as an orthodox Chinese pig 
 certainly should be (did not the Chinaman discover 
 roast pork ?) but live on till they die of age and fat- 
 ness, and then are decently buried. Why do they 
 have three Buddhas and a score of images in the 
 
46 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 temple, and say mass before them ? for they say mass ; 
 I heard them. (At this time they did wear a small 
 yellow robe over the grey one, covering the left 
 shoulder and not the right ; it had an oblong patch 
 of red on the border where it fastened across the 
 chest.) What they sang I do not know, for Ah Choy 
 said it was Buddhist language, and he did not 
 understand that. Nor did I know what language 
 he meant. Anyhow, they burnt incense and sacri- 
 ficial paper, they intoned and genuflected and lit 
 candles at the altar, and they beat the big drum and 
 the little drum, and the gong, and the sounding- 
 board, and the small bell and the great — not all at 
 once, thank goodness, but each at what was no 
 doubt the proper place in the ritual ; and then they 
 marched in Indian file solemnly thrice round the 
 temple, and as they went they sang — 
 
 ITM J J r M J J J 1 
 
 -§ ^ * " ['f i\ J J 
 
 O wai lum o mo mi taw, 
 
 with occasionally variation on the " o mo mi." 
 Then, with some intoning, they thrice prostrated 
 themselves, and departed. So did I. 
 
 Ah Choy has a " blother," a sweet youth named 
 I Ting or ATing or some Ting like that. His 
 English is in a very callow state. He met me as I 
 was starting to go to the White Cloud Mountain, 
 and said " Are you lady ? " but I was too much the 
 gentleman to begin teaching him before all the 
 people in the hotel verandah. But at the White 
 
China. 47 
 
 Cloud Temple he was exasperating. He gave no 
 signs of understanding or not understanding what 
 was said to him, and went on his way unheeding me, 
 until I swore. I think he understood that. " Will 
 you lite ? " he asked. So I wrote in beautiful copper- 
 plate words that I deemed suitable to his simple 
 mind : " First I like go topside hill, then come back 
 Temple, eat tiffin, then go back Canton." He read 
 and pondered deeply, and exclaimed, " Ah, yes, I 
 know ; " but dubiously. Then again, as with mind 
 made up, " Ah, yes, I know," and started down hill, 
 tiffin and all. I was searching for some way to 
 make him understand, when suddenly he stopped 
 and shouted jubilantly, " Ah, yes, I know ; you want 
 go highest — most high — m,o,s,t, most, h,i,g,h, high." 
 I admitted that that was about it, if he preferred to 
 put it that way. So we went up. I told him that 
 he " no sabe "-d English ; but he reproved me 
 severely : " ' My no sabe ' not glamma-tickle ; ' I do 
 ■ not know ' glamma-tickle." And at the top he told 
 me " You cannot see if you not bring telescope." 
 Bookish youth, who can talk about grammatical and 
 telescope and such long words as these, but can't 
 understand the simplest word said to him. The 
 hills on the way out to and at the W^hite Cloud 
 Mountain (White Cloud is purely fanciful, and so 
 is Mountain, for it is not much of a hill) are one 
 vast cemeter)'. I never saw such a lot of graves, 
 or hills more completely bare of trees or anj- ver- 
 dure — {as bare I think the Deccan can show in 
 plenty, amongst its numerous Reserved Forests), 
 
48 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 The view from the top is expansive and not wanting 
 in the charm that wide stretches of hill and fields 
 and winding river are wont to own ; and here you 
 overlook a large city and a busy crowd of shipping. 
 I said to the Ting that a point near us was the 
 highest and not the one we were on ; but he said, 
 " That more high ; this most high — m,o,r,e, more, 
 m,o,s,t, most." I turned and left the most high, 
 and solaced myself with sandwiches and stout in the 
 Temple. But the Ting pursued me and tried to 
 draw corks without removing the wire, and wrestled 
 with the letter r, and after consulting his pocket vo- 
 cabulary asked conundrums from the spelling-book. 
 " Which is the most beautiful country .'' " I said I 
 had seen many countries, and China was the worst ; 
 but he didn't understand, and asked another. 
 " What wine is that ? " pointing to the stout. I told 
 him it was not wine ; wine is made from grapes. 
 " Grapes " floored him. But he returned to the 
 stout, and murmured softly to himself, " 0,u,t — out ; 
 s,t,o,u,t — stout." I gave him some to keep him 
 quiet ; but it only made his tongue wag faster and 
 more unintelligibly. So I wrote him out copy-book 
 sentences, and made him learn them. After tiffin 
 came in an old priest from Honam Temple, polite 
 and friendly like many old Buddhist priests that 1 
 have known elsewhere. Like them too, he politely 
 inquired my age, and, still like them, when I told 
 him through the Ting to guess it, guessed it 25 per 
 cent, too high. Soon the object of all the politeness 
 appeared in request for payment for use of the room. 
 
China. 49 
 
 I said I was a poor man — the Ting laughed rudely 
 — and Honam Temple very rich, which was true, for 
 it has houses and land and shops in a way that no 
 Buddhist monastery ought to have. But this temple 
 is poor, Sciid they : which may or may not have 
 been true. The journey back across the plain was 
 unpleasant For Canton is a large city ; and as the 
 night-soil is carefully collected and carried out raw 
 in open pails, to manure the not too fertile soil, you 
 meet a file of open scent-boxes every few hundred 
 yards. And so through " leagues of odour stream- 
 ing far," and through these noisome alleys, miscalled 
 streets (they pall on you terribly after a day or two), 
 to the comparative freshness and the actual quiet of 
 the little foreign settlement on the concession at 
 Shameen. The dwellers therein are to be pitied ; 
 the place is so small, and the surroundings so un- 
 pleasant, likewise the mosquitoes are lively. 
 
 In Shanghai city there is not the same busy life 
 as in Canton ; the streets are as narrow, and poorer 
 and meaner. Here eu-e no large shops which, how- 
 ever dark and dull in their doorways on the alley, 
 are bright within, with light let in from above that 
 shows up well the handsome carving — much of 
 it gilt — and good upholstery and show\- wares ; 
 here is no profusion of gorgeous signboards ; the 
 chairs are rare, and infrequent tlie burden-bearing 
 cooli. You can walk about in Shanghai city with- 
 out being rammed by pole-borne goods, and also 
 without being mobbed and jostled by an impolite 
 crowd, as you are sure to be in Canton if you afe 
 
 E 
 
50 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 venturesome enough to foot it through the streets 
 of the southern city. For the natives of Shanghai 
 side are decidedly less hostile to the foreigner than 
 the Cantonese. They are, in comparison, quite 
 friendly. But of sights Shanghai city is empty; 
 it has no cucio-shops to speak of, and it has all the 
 dirt and smells that it should not have. Of course 
 there are porcelain shops, and jade shops, and silk 
 stores, and wood carvings, and what not ; and I 
 doubt not that a wily and experienced curio-hunter 
 could find things that would delight him ; but to the 
 inexperienced and guileless there is nought. Of 
 course, too, you may light on strange tortures that 
 the Chinese dignify as trial or as punishment, and 
 you are certain to see some few wearers of the 
 cangue— the thing is too common to deserve much 
 note. But you will, I fancy, soon weary of Shanghai 
 city, nor find great fexcitement in the temple or the 
 tea-house with its corkscrew] bridge meandering 
 across a cesspool (the tea-house stands in the midst 
 thereof), or the garden with its miniature rocks and 
 grottos and tunnels. And the site of Shanghai, 
 how unlovely ! A low flat land, cut up by a 
 labyrinth of dirty creeks, the land half-liquid, the 
 water thick with mud ; no hill, not a hillock or a 
 mound or ever so slight a rise to relieve the dreary 
 monotony of level endless expanse. After behold- 
 ing these things the globe-trotter decides that the 
 foreign town or concession is the best part of 
 Shanghai. Here is no lack of busy life. The 
 wharves are crowded with goods and coolis, and 
 
China. 5 1 
 
 the stream with ships ; not so extensive, but at least 
 as busy, are the quays of Shanghai as those of 
 Hongkong, that second junction (let us say Willes- 
 den, as we have already appropriated Clapham to 
 Singapore) of the Far East. What constant traffic 
 on the Bund! (why the remote Easterns call the sea 
 face the Bund is more than I can make out). How 
 different from the quietude of the Japanese Treaty 
 Ports ! Shanghai is proud of having converted a 
 dismal swamp into a handsome town ; and it has 
 reason to be. The club is the best of all those 
 that have hospitably opened their doors to me as a 
 visitor, and the town is a pleasure to walk or drive 
 through : it is so well laid out and well kept. Here, 
 as a resident expounded to a group of globe-trotters, 
 are all things municipal managed by a committee 
 freely elected by the ratepayers, and here, he went 
 on, is no meddling officialdom (I said I was off, but 
 he laughed, and I didn't go) to overrule and red- 
 tape and leading-string the committee. A truly in- 
 dependent republic, with consular courts for justice, 
 and all else in its own hands. Here is the British 
 bobby in complete British uniform, and the Chinese 
 policeman in a much better-looking kit than his 
 brother at Hongkong. The racecourse is large 
 (and the ponies small), the community sportive, the 
 climate vile for not so very many months in the year. 
 Altogether the dwellers in Shanghai make their 
 remote existence pass pleasantly enough. But the 
 hotels are very poor. I doubt if in any place money 
 is so freely spent as in this model settlement 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Farthest East, South and West, 
 
 A visit to these outside edges of China — Hong- 
 kong, Canton, Macao, Shanghai, — did not raise in 
 me any desire to see more of the country. The 
 Chinaman in British Farther India is to my liking ; 
 he is industrious and skilful, and not troublesome. 
 Of course he is a terrible gambler, and apt to fight 
 if his pet sport is "rushed " by the police ; and now 
 and again his secret societies bring him into conflict 
 with Western notions of right. But, take him 
 all round, he is a good sort of subject. It is a 
 different matter to see him in his own country. 
 Here his dirt and his cruelty and offensive manners 
 render him unlovely and unloveable. His country 
 is not beautiful, nor is he, nor his women, nor any- 
 thing that is his, except, it may be said, certain .art 
 works, and even these are (to my unaesthetic mind) 
 rather curious and grotesque than beautiful. As a 
 servant, he is not to be mentioned in the same street 
 with a good Indian boy (say a Surati for choice). 
 He brings nothing until told to bring it ; he rolls or 
 strolls about in a lazy, indifferent manner, and, when 
 the thing is brought, chucks it down before you in a 
 loutish contemptuous fashion, that make it a difficulty 
 to keep one's hands off him. There is no pleasure 
 in travelling among a sordid unfriendly people, who 
 are lacking in that cheery briskness which makes a 
 tour among the Japanese so pleasant. Let who will 
 go to Pekin, or up the Yangtsze, or the Canton 
 River ; I say good-bye to China, with no wish to see 
 more of it now, or any more of it hereafter. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 JAPAN. 
 
 There were four men who sailed from Hong- 
 kong to the Land of the Rising Sun. And the name 
 of the first was the Duke. In the begrinninof he 
 was created alHteratively Marquis of Melbourne, 
 but because of his Dookishness he was raised to the 
 rank of Duke of Melbourne and Sydney. And the 
 second and the third were 'Arry and Alf ; men also 
 called them the Bounder and the Other Bounder ; 
 likewise they were known as the Bank or the 
 Manager, and as Tapioca or the Huguenot, and by 
 any other name that the brilliance of their own or 
 their companions' wit could devise. The fourth man 
 gave himself the name of Charlie, others that of the 
 Major ; a man of not much speech. Perhaps he 
 thought a lot. Howbeit, he did not think much 
 of the Dook's whist. Yet was the Duke a great 
 man, belonging to a great country; wherefore he 
 could not and did not refrain from instructing the 
 Bounders and the Major on the abject inferiority of 
 the countries in which they dwelt and earned their 
 bread — to wit of India and the Straits and China ; 
 
54 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 he expounded to them the folly of existing in such 
 awful climates as those countries are famed for. " I 
 would not be in them for any pay," he said. " They 
 can manage without you," said the Major. But the 
 pachydermatous dook did not cease to pour out the 
 vials of his wrath on all the climates he had ex- 
 perienced since he left the country of the kangaroo. 
 Yea, also to those three Bounders and to the officers 
 of the ship whereon they sailed he enlarged on the 
 imbecile idiocy of accepting the pay of any master, 
 be it a government, or a company, a corporation, or 
 a firm ; why not strike out a line and be your own 
 master in a country fit to live in, as he had done ? 
 Whereat the officers and the Bounders marvelled 
 greatly because of his exceeding breadth of vision, 
 and the exquisite delicacy of his tact. Yet was their 
 marvel misplaced ; for was he not a B.C. ? (and this 
 may be writ large, yet somewhat softened, as Bally 
 Colonial). And they reviled him, and made him a 
 Dook. Now as these four men sailed from Hong- 
 kong to the North and to the East, even to the ex- 
 tremest islands of the East, the wind blew and 
 the contrary current ran, and the channel that is 
 called Formosa seemed not lovely in their eyes ; so 
 that the Major waxed less and less speechful and 
 more pensive, and the Bounders and the doctor (for 
 was there not a doctor of rubicund visage, ever 
 ready to be stood a drink ?) imbibed mournfully 
 their modest potations, and the Dook read guide- 
 books and the books written of globe-trotters ; until 
 they came into still, smooth waters, and a gentler air, 
 
Japan. 55 
 
 where sea and sky alike were suffused with delicate 
 gradations of softest grey-blue and dashes of sudden 
 silver, and they steamed swiftly (at least pretty 
 swiftly, say twelve knots) through the delicious haze, 
 past abrupt islets and the death-dealing rock of 
 Pappenburg, into the all but land-locked harbour of 
 Nagasaki. Nagasaki is the southernmost, the hot- 
 test, the prettiest, but not the busiest of the open 
 ports of Japan ; yes, the prettiest, whatever the 
 lovers of Kobe may say. To call at Nagasaki on 
 your way into Japan is to get a small foretaste of all 
 that you are going to see in that now delectable, 
 now detestable, country. Here are temples of a 
 fashion new to you, yet reminiscent of China — far 
 short of the ornate magnificence that we shall see at 
 Nikko, less severely simple than in Ise ; here are 
 the little houses, like toy-houses, with their sliding 
 walls of paper on thin lattice work, the boats with 
 coolis in the universal blue (they do not row, but 
 waggle about a strange oar which they never lift 
 out of the water, the same as the stern oar in a 
 Chinese boat) ; here too are busy docks and coal 
 wharves (coaling at Nagasaki is a wonderfully clean 
 business), and a jail of European construction. In 
 the streets are many art-dealers of modern Japan, 
 with store of wares made expressly for the unwary 
 globe-trotter ; and besides these signs of modern civi- 
 lization and modern degradation, here, lastly, are the 
 simple unconventionalities of old Japan : the smiling 
 tea-house girl, the nearly-naked cooli, the maid or 
 matron bathing by the wayside in unclad innocence 
 
56 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 and a common wash-tub. On a bright sunny day 
 Nagasaki is beautiful. It is all up and down, 
 nowhere level, and yet no great height ; the hill 
 tops and slopes of all shapes and outlines. It is like 
 a big mountain district looked at through a tele- 
 scope reversed : the hills of the kingdom of Lilliput. 
 So those four men — having been well mobbed by 
 the rickshamen — verily those of Nagasaki are the 
 most persistent and unescapable of all the men who 
 drag rickshas — and having ridden across to Mugi 
 and back, admired, and passed on well pleased into 
 the Inland Sea. Now the country of Japan has 
 weather, but no climate ; and the weather is 
 occasionally good, but most often bad. When the 
 people and their rulers revolutionized the kingdom 
 some twenty or so years ago, and started things all 
 afresh on the most approved modern principles, they 
 forgot to include their weather among their reforms, 
 and it remains unreformed to this day. What d'-you- 
 call-him, who dwells in Yokohama, said, in that 
 formal precise manner of his : "I have lived ten 
 years in Japan, of which nine-and-three-quarters 
 have been wet ; " and the local poet delivered him- 
 self thus : — 
 
 Dirty days hath September, 
 April, June, and November ; 
 From February unto May, 
 The rain it raineth every day ; 
 All the rest have thirty-one. 
 Without one blessed gleam of sun. 
 And if any of 'em had two-and-thirty. 
 They'd be just as wet and twice as dirty. 
 
Japan. 57 
 
 In such weather as that there may be a large 
 amount of beauty lying around, but as you can't 
 see it for the fog and the rain, it might just as 
 well not be there. So they passed sightless 
 through the Inland Sea, and hoped there would be 
 more to see inland. And thus they came unto Kobe, 
 and the Dook departed and went his ways, but the 
 other three sailed on to Yokohama. (Howbeit 
 the Dook feared greatly lest he should die of cholera 
 in Osaka ; for the folk of that place died daily in 
 hundreds.) There are many people who have heard 
 that Japan is a beautiful and charming country to 
 visit, and they come determined to find it so, so that 
 nothing, be it ever so commonplace or ever so 
 dreary, shall choke them off from enthusing ecstati- 
 cally — nothing, not even Yokohama or Tokio. 
 These are certainly the least interesting places in 
 Japan, the least beautiful ; yet shall you find people 
 who rhapsodize thereon. Here be dithyrambics : — 
 " When the tide is in, the moat is a joy for ever. 
 Faint grey mists tremble over it in the morning 
 each mist a separate phantasm, and through them 
 the dusky, wide-roofed temples rise, the shaggy 
 arms of the pine suggest themselves, and the water 
 full of beautiful pale half-lights below gives back 
 amongst its deepest shadows a gleam of the gold 
 that is broadening in the sky beyond. In the 
 evening the sky is red, and the tangle of pines black 
 against it. A great ragged crow flaps lazily past the 
 low white imperial walls, which cluster thick in the 
 darkness of the water. And presently the paper 
 
58 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 lanterns begin to come out, pendulous drops of 
 light, mysterious swaying globes of black and 
 rose and gold, and the Japanese night is alive, en- 
 chanting us," &c., &c. ; but for mercy's sake no 
 more. All this rhodomontade on Tokio is proof 
 positive of the poorness of the place as a sight ; 
 else why waste words on a moat that is a joy for 
 ever, and yet is so only when the tide is in ; on 
 temples that rise through mists which tremble over 
 the moat (are, then, the temples in the moat ?) ; on 
 pine arms suggesting themselves (let us trust they 
 were not unpleasantly suggestive) ; on water that 
 gives back what it hasn't got ; on the extraordinary 
 phenomena of a red sky at night, a crow flying, 
 walls clustering in the water, and pendulous drops 
 of light coming (it would seem) out of that same 
 water ? " Imperial walls " sounds well, but the 
 phrase does not alter the fact that the walls are 
 deuced little to look at ; and no excess of verbiage 
 or power of word-painting will make Tokio a de- 
 lightful place. The streets are long enough (ye 
 gods, how long they are !) and most of them amply 
 wide, but they are always muddy ; and how can a 
 street look handsome with low little houses of a 
 ground floor and one squat upper story, and no 
 more, and most of them coloured a dull black with 
 tiled roof to match ? The effect is dreary and depress- 
 ing in the extreme. The tram-car is here, but none 
 too well got up, and it does not enliven the scene ; 
 the shops — for the most part — show no wares 
 nothing but lattice-work wall and door ; all the 
 
Japan. 59 
 
 goods are stored away within. The exceptions are 
 where European style has been copied, even to 
 the signboard, often with ludicrous effect, e.g., 
 " General Wine Keeper ; Foreign Beer, Spirits 
 & Co." Why, the streets of Canton are far more 
 cheerful (barring the smells) and interesting to roam 
 through than those of Tokio. The taste of the 
 Japanese is usually applauded ; but that of the 
 Emperor — or whoever chose for him — was certainly 
 at fault when he abandoned such a charming place 
 as Kioto, and located himself on the flat unlovely 
 site of his present capital. As for the moat, it is 
 merely a nuisance, winding spirally about the heart 
 of the city, ugly when the tide is in, and most in- 
 tolerable and not to be endured when it is out. Yet 
 it is strange to see the wild duck placidly resting in 
 protected safety on those city waters. The gentle 
 and patriotic Japanese is apt to speak and write in 
 a strain of oriental hyperbole about the places and 
 things of his country and people ; much is well 
 deserved, and much of it he really means, for he has 
 a keen sense of some kinds of beauty, and some 
 kinds of worth ; but, surely much is exaggeration. 
 Yet the European writer seems to think it right to 
 take it all as gospel, to give up his own judgment 
 and merely reproduce the Japanese tall talk with his 
 own endorsement that it is all correct ; and when 
 the globe-trotter comes round he swallows whole 
 all that his guide-book tells him ; and when he 
 writes his book, he tries to go one better. And thus 
 a place that may really have many good points 
 
6o Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 may yet fall terribly flat when you find it far 
 short of the earthly paradise described by the book- 
 maker. Tokio, for instance, no doubt has much 
 of beauty and interest : when the cherry-trees of 
 Uyeno or the wisteria of Asakusa are in blossom it 
 may be granted that they are lovely, though pro- 
 bably more enchanting to the Japanese than to the 
 European. The shows and shops in Asakusa are 
 lively and cheerful enough at any time that they are 
 open ; the Museum at Uyeno has many fine works 
 of art and many relics of old Japan, well housed 
 and well arranged ; Shiba has temples that are a 
 good introduction to those at Nikko : indeed the 
 tomb of the Second Shogun is equal to anything 
 at Nikko ; the Yoshiwara is the largest in Japan, 
 and a curious sight (some of the inmates are dressed 
 in European clothes of a decidedly dowdy style, 
 and are even less alluring than their fellow houris in 
 their native costume). But granting all these things, 
 Tokio is disappointing. Nor is Yokohama much 
 better. The Bund is nothing great, and is deso- 
 late and almost trafficless. The Bluff may be a 
 pleasant place to live on, for those who have to 
 live here, but is not much to look at ; and of sights 
 that the guide-books fill their pages with, none is 
 worth seeing. Exception must be made in favour 
 of Kamakura and Enoshima. The Shinto temple, 
 near the station, at the first-named place, is famous 
 in Japanese history, and has a goodly store of relics 
 of famous heroes of the olden time — Yoritomo, the 
 founder of the shrine, and others ; but outside the 
 
yapan. 6i 
 
 temple little remains to show that all around was 
 once a mighty city, an ancient capital of the 
 Shoguns. It is all gone ; and now there is a 
 " Marine Sanitarium " down on the sea-shore — a 
 very modern and European hostelry. And so we 
 ricksha to the great bronze image of Buddha, the 
 Dai-butsu, and read with some admiration the good 
 English of the inscription on a notice-board at the 
 gate : " Stranger, whosoever thou art, and whatso- 
 ever be thy creed, when thou enterest this sanc- 
 tuary, remember that thou treadest upon ground 
 hallowed by the worship of ages. This is the 
 temple of Buddha and the gate of the Eternal, and 
 should therefore be entered with reverence." I fear 
 that clambering about the massive figure, both out- 
 side and in, and being photographed upon it, are 
 not conducive to rendering the reverence claimed ; 
 but, doubtless, the photographer does not mind so 
 long as the dollars come in. The figure is Indian 
 in style, with long drooping ears, largely pierced, 
 and boss on the forehead ; but the robe is not dis- 
 posed, nor the hands arranged, as they are in 
 Burmese Buddhas. Not far off is a large erect 
 figure of Buddha, not exposed to the open air like 
 the seated bronze one, but carefully enshrined 
 behind the screen in the temple. For ten cents a 
 priest runs a couple of farthing dips in dilapidated 
 lanterns up on a creaking pulley, and makes a show 
 of his God. Your rickshamen soon have you over 
 the hill, round the foot of which Yoshisadu won his 
 way by prayer and by flinging his sword into the 
 
62 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 sea, so that the tide retreated and gave him dry- 
 passage, whereon he marched to meet his adversary 
 the Shogun Hojo, and greatly defeated him ; and 
 so you reach the bay of Enoshima. As you come 
 abruptly round the corner on to the beach-road, the 
 prospect is certainly of great beauty. The bay on 
 your left, volcanic Oshima like a cloud in the dis- 
 tance, the island of Enoshima in front of you, and 
 behind it hills that look low and small when you 
 glance to the right front where Fujisan raises its 
 12,000 feet up into the clear bright air, and catches 
 the warm sunshine on its snow-clad cone. I think 
 the Jap is really justified in bucking boastfully 
 about Fujisan. There are many higher mountains 
 in the world, many ruggeder, more awe-inspiring^ 
 more terrific in precipice and moraine and glacier, 
 but I do not believe there is any more perfect pic- 
 ture than Fujisan seen on a clear autumn day from 
 Enoshima, or from Gotemba on the railway, or, 
 better still, from Iwabuchi at the mouth of the Fuji 
 river. The smaller hills stand off respectfully at a 
 distance, and give the Peerless Mountain clear space 
 to raise itself almost from the very brink of the ocean ; 
 and it rises with inimitable and exquisitegrace. There 
 is but a narrow strip of paddy-land and a few broken 
 peaks of Ashidakayama between the southern foot 
 of Fuji and the sea ; and I do not know where else, 
 unless at Teneriffe, you will find a mountain rising 
 with one continuous sweep right from the sea-shore 
 up to over 1 2,000 feet ; where you will see a pic- 
 ture so well composed by nature, or where in the 
 
Japan. 63 
 
 whole world you can match Fujisan for exceeding 
 gracefulness of contour and curve. Enoshima has 
 a cave, that, being here, you have to go and see ; 
 but you need not come so far to see just as good. 
 It is a curious little islet (I use intentionally the 
 double diminutive), full of temples and shell-sellers 
 and country-houses ; and one is sorry when it is 
 time to get back to the weary insipidity of Yoko- 
 hama. It must in justice be admitted that 
 Yokohama is, as far as hotel comforts go, the best 
 place to stay in in Japan, or indeed anywhere in 
 the Far East ; yet the creature-comforts of an hotel 
 are hardly enough to counterbalance the dulness of 
 the settlement. Nor is there much to be gained by 
 looking about the native town. It is a trite saying 
 that Japan is becoming yearly less Japanese and 
 more European ; and, of course, in Yokohama, 
 which was nothing before the foreign settlement 
 located there, the foreign fashion is stronger than 
 in any other place. Here is a racecourse — all in 
 miniature, of course — but all in correct European 
 style ; not a detail wanting ; not a European there 
 but two blue-jackets and ourselves ; everything 
 managed by Japs for Japs. The course is a little short 
 of half a mile ; the ponies are not much to look at, 
 ranging from, say, 12-3 to 13-3, shaggy, clumsy, 
 and untrained. Let us watch a half-mile race. 
 Four starters ; innumerable false starts ; at last, off 
 they go ; and our selection — the only pony in the 
 lot that appears to have any care taken of him — 
 romps in an easy winner in the magnificent time of 
 
64 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 I I of. Or again, a formal dinner to the Governor. 
 The war paint of the white man is de rigueur ; the 
 whole procedure, the food and the courses, are 
 strictly European. And so with the Army and 
 the Police and railway servants and officials gene- 
 rally ; and most of the men in the street — bar 
 coolis — are in Western attire. All except a few 
 old men up country have given up the ancient 
 national style of hair-dressing in favour of a short- 
 cut mop and a billycock hat. Thank goodness, the 
 women stick to their own costume — I mean the 
 vast majority of the women that the globe-trotter 
 sees in his wanderings — for they look awful in 
 European clothes. Taste deserts them, and they 
 dress like those creatures in the Tokio Yoshiwara, 
 or in garish and ill-assorted colours that remind 
 you of similar fair ones nearer home. Doubtless 
 there are ladies who dress well in European fashion 
 — it is compulsory for them to adopt it at Court. 
 But how should they look well in foreign garb, 
 when not even in their own — devised, no doubt, to 
 show them off as well as possible — are they fairly 
 entitled to be called pretty ? They are not pretty. 
 Young girls have a freshness and a rosy complexion 
 that is decidedly pleasing after the yellow of Bur- 
 mese girls and the darker shades of India, down to 
 the blackness of Madras ; but it is merely the 
 prettyness of youth, a beauti du diable. I do not 
 believe in the existence of a really beautiful 
 Japanese girl, and I am sure there cannot be a 
 beautiful Japanese woman — I mean a woman of 
 
Japan. 65 
 
 thirty or more. The beauU du diable gone, there 
 remains nothing but plainness. But, pretty though 
 they are not, yet they are charming. Wherein the 
 charm lies I can hardly tell. Not in gracefulness, 
 for their gait is hideous. The skirt of their gar- 
 ment ties in the limbs too closely for them to take 
 an honest stride, even if the said limbs were long 
 enough to take it, which they are not ; the feet 
 (generally ugly and shapeless) turn toes inwards, to 
 keep on the useful but ungainly clog or patten ; 
 the knees are never straightened, and so they go 
 forward in a totter, a toddle, a shuffle, that who will 
 may admire — I cannot. Then the dress : an enor- 
 mous bunch of cloth fastened in the middle of the 
 back and extending to the end of it. What grace- 
 fulness is there in that } (not to speak of its incon- 
 venient obstructiveness if you wish to slip your arm 
 round her waist. You will find the sleeve more 
 kindly made.) Again, the hair: an obtrusive bob 
 in front, and side-wings, well gummed to keep 
 them in correct curve. Yet again : the shaved 
 eyebrows and blackened teeth of the matrons — how 
 hideous ! And yet they are charming. A pleasant 
 cheerfulness, unfailing good spirits and a wish to 
 oblige, readiness to understand your imbecile at- 
 tempts at the lingo, that beaidd du diable already 
 spoken of: take them altogether, and you will find 
 them fetch you. After Japan, those Cantonese, 
 whom awhile ago we called not uncomely, appear 
 decidedly dowdy and plain. When I go to a 
 Japanese hotel, I am glad to find, not men ser- 
 
 r 
 
66 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 vants, as at Tokio, Kioto, and Shidzuoka, but 
 nesans waiting on one, as at Miyanoshita, Nagoya, 
 and all the tea-houses in the country. (Nikko 
 Hotel was in a transition stage — half-and-half.) 
 The " boys " are not good attendants, unless 
 they are boys, not men. The young ones 
 are sharp enough, but the men, though polite 
 and willing, are stupid and slow. Howbeit the 
 tea-house girls round the Treaty Ports of Yoko- 
 hama and Kobe are spoilt. Contact with the 
 European wanderer has changed too many of 
 them from charming maidens into something that 
 those words would not accurately describe. As to 
 Japanese Europeanization generally, it may be 
 said that they are going ahead too fast — shoving 
 on railways that do not pay (at any rate, the shares 
 of only two lines or sections of lines stand at a 
 premium, for all the Government guarantees), and 
 claiming to be a full-grown civilized power, when it 
 is only some twenty years since the barriers of ex- 
 clusion were thrown down and Japan emerged from 
 a, barbaric feudalism. The European residents in 
 Japan do not apparently yearn to be placed under 
 Japanese law ; and why should they ? Who will 
 guarantee that the state of affairs which resulted from 
 a revolution shall not be swept away by another, 
 bringing back to power the anti-foreign party ? or that 
 — reaction or not — the brand-new codes will be worked 
 up-country in fairness, with no race-prejudice, and 
 above all honestly ? Wherefore, the Treaty Revision 
 is something of a burning question, and the " Soshi " 
 
Japan. 67 
 
 (may I call them an association ?) bestir themselves 
 against the philo-foreigners. 
 
 Talking of burning reminds me that there is a 
 very neat and well-arranged crematorium at Yoko- 
 hama : in this matter the Japanese is actually 
 ahead of his Western model, and has no wrong- 
 headed objection to burning his dead. I wish the 
 Hindu would burn his as cleanly and decently. 
 In jail affairs, too, there is nothing left for the 
 Mikado's Government to learn. I visited a jail 
 at Tokio — one of three — small, but they think 
 too large a number could not be properly looked 
 after ; and extraordinarily insecure and unfenced, 
 but the Japanese criminal is docile and rarely 
 attempts to escape. Its arrangements were just 
 about as good as they could be. Hospitals, sleep- 
 ing cells, work-sheds, complete and clean and 
 perfectly kept. Here were no prisoners toiling at 
 useless crank and unremunerative shot and stone 
 drill as in Hongkong ; all were occupied in hard 
 labour, useful to the jail, pounding rice (with such 
 pounders as the Burmese women use, but here and 
 in China men do that work), cultivating vegetables, 
 doing the service of the jail ; or manufacturing 
 simple products for sale for outside use — mats, straw 
 shoes, coarse papers, &c. The diet scale appeared 
 ample ; the precautions to prevent the spread of 
 contagious disease are complete. (In passing, one 
 may remark that though the Japanese seem cleaner 
 than the Chinese, yet skin diseases, especially on 
 the shaved heads of children, appear much more 
 
 F 2 
 
68 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 common among the former than among the latter.) 
 Flogging is not resorted to as a punishment for 
 breaches of jail discipline ; punitive diet and solitary 
 cells are, as I understand, the only authorized 
 punishment. But one form of solitary cell is cer- 
 tainly a severe one. All light is excluded ; the 
 ventilators are so arranged as to admit air, but not 
 light ; and food is supplied to the convict through a 
 little sliding panel in the door, to which the box 
 containing the food fits exactly ; the food tilted in, 
 the panel is shot to again. In this solitary darkness 
 the wretch remains for the term of his sentence. 
 It is true that he is inspected daily by the doctor, 
 and that the maximum term is five days. 
 
 Tokio beats Hongkong again in keeping under- 
 trials apart from convicts ; and it is like it, and all 
 other civilized jails, in keeping the women apart 
 from the men. The women-warders in the female 
 portion of the prison are inexpressibly hideous in 
 their European uniform — more so than the very 
 convicts in their shapeless garments of crushed 
 strawberry or common blue. All were diligently 
 employed in useful labour — the service of the 
 women's prison, and making wadded clothes for 
 winter wear. There was not a good-looking one 
 among them, except one, a geisha, or singing girl, 
 in for ten years for killing a man. It appears that 
 an unwelcome suitor after many rejections threatened 
 to kill her, and she jeered at him and said that 
 pather she would kill him ; whereupon he scornfully 
 asked how, and she made as if to strike him with a 
 
Japan. 69 
 
 knife ; in which feigning by some mischance she 
 did actually strike him, so that he died. Assuming 
 this version to be true, ten years is a trifle stiff. 
 The buildings throughout the prison are all on the 
 ground ; there is no first floor. As already noticed, 
 the fence is nothing, merely a slight palisade of 
 bamboo. In one place is an ofiice where prisoners 
 are allowed to write letters to friends outside, or, it 
 they cannot write, to dictate their letter to a jail 
 clerk, who will write it for them. And when his 
 term is over, there is a sum of money for the prisoner 
 to receive. An account is kept of his work, and of 
 the sale of it, and when he goes he receives the 
 balance that is due to him on the account (I forget 
 whether the cost of his keep in jail is deducted or 
 not). Outdoor gangs are employed at hard labour 
 outside the jail ; I saw them both here, and in 
 Osaka, and at the Ashiwo Copper Mines. Again 
 it was noticeable how slight was the guard kept 
 over these convicts, leg-irons of the thinnest and 
 slightest, and to a gang of thirty men only three 
 police or warders, of whom only one armed ; and in 
 some such proportion in the case of each gang that 
 I saw. The gallows is erected in a corner of the 
 jail premises, and executions are strictly private ; 
 but they are very rare. 
 
 Another very successful European institution in 
 Japan is the Mint at Osaka. It is now managed 
 entirely by Japanese, and turns out " yens " (dollars) 
 that seem to be fast becoming the principal metal 
 currency in the Far East. (China started making 
 
70 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 coin — seventy-two candareens, I think, made a 
 dollar — but gave it up ; I suppose the Mandarins 
 found they could not make enough out of it ; for 
 official corruption is great in China, almost as great 
 as in the Spanish Indies or in Spain.) All the 
 fittings of the Osaka Mint are complete, and Japan 
 has made a success of what in Hongkong was a 
 failure. The gentle Jap takes kindly, too, to elec- 
 tric light ; it is in all the Japanese hotels and in tea- 
 houses that are rising into hotels, e.g., at Nagoya ; 
 Tokio and Osaka are full of it ; mines are lighted 
 with it, as at Ashiwo. Your Chinaman has a few 
 imperial telegraphs, but the post office he will have 
 nothing to do with ; in Japan the wires and the 
 pillar-boxes are all over the country, the latter 
 black, and each marked " Post." Japanese news- 
 papers are plentiful, and most of them illustrated 
 (who ever heard of a Chinese newspaper other than 
 the Pekin Gazette ?^, books plentiful, and education 
 State inspected and almost universal. There is much 
 in Japan that is redolent of China ; but what an 
 entire difference between the peoples ! Temples, art, 
 alphabet, language, religion — these all bear marks 
 of the Middle Kingdom ; but the globe-trotter thanks 
 the fates that have saved the people from being such 
 as the Celestials are in temperament, manners, cus- 
 toms, dress, and personal appearance. Where do 
 they come from, these Japanese .-' From what stock 
 have they sprung .-* Are they Malay, as some 
 assert ? (including, says Froude in his Oceana, Sir 
 George Grey). Verily, they are evolved into some- 
 
Japan. 7 1 
 
 thing most unlike Malay, such at least as the Malay 
 appears in the Straits and Java. They are probably, 
 like ourselves, a very mixed lot. " Saxon and Nor- 
 man and Dane are we," with a little Roman and 
 Kelt and Scandinavian thrown in, and we boast 
 ourselves to be the best all-round nation in the 
 West. So some strange untraceable fusion of 
 races has, no doubt, produced the modern Japanese, 
 who are by far and beyond question the most go- 
 ahead people in the East. 
 
72 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MIYANOSHrrA — NIKKCh— IKAO. 
 
 Now, after they arrived in Yokohama, the three 
 Bounders spent a night and a day in acquiring 
 experience of the town, and the Major took upon 
 himself to engage a guide. For the Major had large 
 plans of much travelling in the interior, and was full 
 of ardour to climb hills, and march marches, and see 
 out-of-the-way places and people. To this intent he 
 had become learned in guide-books, and in the 
 phrases that are taught to the guileless in the voca- 
 bularies, and had bought a dictionary and studied 
 laboriously therein. Yet was he not complete 
 without a guide — one who should be courier and 
 interpreter and cook, and should see the unwary 
 foreigner safely through strange places, and guard 
 his pocket from the unscrupulous curio-monger. 
 Wherefore he engaged a guide, and the name of the 
 guide was Matsuda. Now the Tapioca Bounder 
 did not greatly yearn after mountain-climbing, or 
 dote on footing it, or wandering around away from 
 the cities of men ; he allowed that he could walk 
 when he had to and was paid for it, and that that 
 
Start for the Interior. 73 
 
 was enough ; he wasn't going to waste his time on 
 unremunerative peripatetication ; his soul incHned 
 to fix itself in comfortable quarters, and there abide 
 in slothful ease. Howbeit they two — Alf and 
 Charlie — in solemn conclave, under the president- 
 ship of the guide, decided to see it through together ; 
 the Major curtailing, and the Huguenot extending, 
 his plans of travel. Unto them also joined himself 
 the Bank Bounder, for such period as the times and 
 seasons of his leave permitted. And with him came 
 yet a fourth, ycleped Jim, or, distinctively, the Bank 
 Manager, for that the fame of his coming, albeit he 
 was not the manager, sufficed to secure the best 
 rooms in advance, and that his possession of some 
 local knowledge and colloquial lingo made him the 
 guide, philosopher and friend of the three Bounders 
 who were strangers in the land. And for a time the 
 guide Matsuda took a back seat. 
 
 I wonder why the globe-trotter when in remote 
 corners of the earth goes to the theatre. What went 
 he out for to see ? Surely not very indifferent com- 
 panies playing plays that he can see infinitely better 
 mounted and played at home ? Yet to such a 
 sight did these Bounders go ; and next day betook 
 themselves to the railway which deposited them at 
 Kodzu. It has already been said that Japan is 
 now delectable and now detestable ; also that it has 
 weather, but no climate. It showed off, this day, 
 its weather in the detestable side of its character. 
 It rained steadily continuously, and not gently. 
 Some little time before it had been doing the same. 
 
74 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 yet more vigorously ; result — broken bridges, inun- 
 dations, breached railways. From Kodzu the tram 
 runs to Yumoto, single line, with loops at crossing- 
 stations. With exact Japanese foresight and care, 
 the tram-car proceeding from, and that returning to, 
 Kodzu passed the loop and met in the midst of the 
 single line. How the passengers sang songs of 
 praise as they changed from one car to the other in 
 the pouring rain ! The four Bounders and the 
 guide, having taken a car to themselves, looked on 
 in pity, and the pleasure derived from others' pain. 
 But then came they unto the broken bridge, and 
 had to get out. And behold ! the bridge that had 
 been broken was mended ; not wholly repaired, yet 
 so far sound that the baggage-bearing coolis 
 crossed thereby. Wherefore they also walked 
 thereon, even unto the farther end of the bridge 
 — almost. But ere they were yet well over, came 
 one with much gesticulation and many words in 
 unintelligible language of the country ; one in 
 authority (peradventure a P. W. D. Overseer), who 
 stayed them, and would by no means let them pass. 
 And they waxed wroth, saying, " Lo ! coolis have 
 crossed ; are not we better than many coolis .-' " 
 Yet that one in authority hardened his heart, and 
 would not let them go. And his heart, being hard- 
 ened, was glad, for that he had held sway over four 
 miserable Englishmen, so that they turned back 
 and crossed the river on a very wet and cranky 
 raft. And the Major wondered sadly at seeing this 
 thing ; to wit, himself obeying such a person as a 
 
Miyanoshita. 75 
 
 P. W. D. Overseer. And Alf and 'Arry and Jim 
 beset the guide and said, " What manner of country 
 is this wherein when the bridge is made whole, the 
 cooli may walk thereon and not we ? " And they 
 baited him exceedingly. So they went on until the 
 Japanese tram-car ran off the Japanese rails, and the 
 Japanese near pony bit the Japanese off pony, so 
 that they fought together ; and all four praised the 
 country and its bandobast, and all that was in it, 
 and grieved sorely the guide Matsuda. And thus 
 they came to a place, miles short of Yumoto, where 
 the road and the tram line were all washed away ; 
 and they got into rickshas and began the ascent 
 of the ghat. And all the while the rain fell, and the 
 wind blew, and the rickshas jolted through mud and 
 ruts and over stones and rocks ; and things were 
 gay all round. " I believe we are travelling for 
 pleasure," said the Major, as a temporary gleam of 
 sun let them out to walk. " That is what they call 
 it," Jim made answer, as they all fled back to the 
 rickshas to avoid the renewed downpour. In time 
 they reached Miyanoshita, and the Fujiya Hotel 
 received them hospitably, and they took their 
 rooms in the Japanese quarters. And all next day, 
 until long past noon, it rained and rained and 
 rained. Yet were they not cast down, but made 
 merry and disported themselves after their kind. 
 
 The Bank Manager had been there before ; he 
 knew his way about. The Major loafed around 
 radiant in a lungi of crimson Burmese silk, so that 
 the nesans admired him greatly ; and he studied 
 
76 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 earnestly the language of the Japanese. The Bank 
 Bounder stuck to English, but forgot that the walls 
 of Japanese rooms are of paper, and, as he dis- 
 coursed after the manner of youth, was recalled, by 
 a most significant cough from his unknown next- 
 door neighbour, to a sense of the fact that his con- 
 versation, whatever O Kuni San might think of it, was 
 hardly such as should be proclaimed from the house- 
 tops. But Tapioca, discontented with the baths pro- 
 vided in the quarters where he abode, made voyages 
 of discovery, and was found in remote places where 
 the Japanese bathe after the manner of their country, 
 and what that is has been set forth in many books. In 
 the late afternoon fair weather took them out of doors, 
 and they collected some of the curios of Japan. Here 
 are one or two of them. In Naraya Hotel garden : 
 "No tree and any flower is permitted to take off in 
 this garden. No fish is permitted to catch in this 
 ponds." On a notice board : — " To let, with picture — 
 sque view of Fuji in the up and the island Enoshima 
 in the down when the weather is most beautifully." 
 And in the evening, lo, the Dook 1 Escaped safely 
 from choleraic Osaka and the dangers of the rapids 
 near Kioto, he arrived ; and being in great form, he 
 first condemned the country and its weather utterly, 
 and relegated to the category of fools all who did 
 not flee from it instantly as he would do ; and then 
 instructed the bank men on the way bank business 
 should be conducted, clearly demonstrating to his 
 own satisfaction, and no one else's, that they were 
 mere pawnbrokers, and that no banks were of much 
 
Miyanoshita. 7 7 
 
 account outside Australia ; and the silver question 
 he deemed capable of instant solution on lines of his 
 own. And they all with one accord acclaimed him 
 Dook. 
 
 On the following morning weather fair but doubt- 
 ful ; yet, as after noon it still held up, they went out 
 to walk. Now, Jim could walk, and Charlie fancied 
 he could, and Alf and ' Arry allowed they would too. 
 Jim thought he knew the way of Doriosan ; howbeit 
 he led them into waste places where no way was, 
 and Alf and 'Arry followed him sadly back until they 
 struck the road (it wasn't the road's fault though, so 
 why should they strike it ?). But Charlie made a 
 way for himself through much grass and rock up the 
 steep hillside, and smiled on them serenely as they 
 came panting up the ridge. From the top the view 
 landwards was poor ; it consisted chiefly of clouds ; 
 but Miyanoshita and Kinga just under them, and on 
 the other side Odawara and the sea, were good to 
 look upon. And the clouds came up and caught 
 them as they descended, and Tapioca turned tender- 
 foot and 'Arry was very weary, so that they declared 
 with conviction that they preferred scenery admired 
 from below, and that views from mountain tops were 
 frauds. But Hamlet (for is not Hamlet the barman 
 and dispenser of drinks ?) ministered unto them, and 
 the girls waited on them, and their souls revived. - 
 Howbeit next day, after the usual morning rain, they 
 refused to walk to Hell, and were carried thither in 
 chairs. For the meaning of Ojingoku is Big Hell. 
 It is a place where the whole sloping mountain-side 
 
78 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 is broken up with jets of sulphur and full of 
 sulphurous water, and the air is heavy with the 
 vapour of sulphur. Less imposing and more ugly 
 than Tankoebanprahoe, it is not a delicious place ; 
 and you have to take heed where you walk, or you 
 will stick inextricably in burning mud. Charlie and 
 Jim had a fine walk back by another track, and 
 found a charming little waterfall perfectly embowered 
 in trees. Hamlet ever prophesied fine weather, 
 and next morning it seemed his prophecies were to 
 be realized. A splendid morning, " just the day for 
 a walk to the top of Otomitonge pass to have a view 
 of Fuji, which we haven't yet seen ; " and off we 
 went. Now Hamlet is a good sort of man, but he 
 doesn't know everything ; and it has long been laid 
 down as an axiom that you should not prophesy 
 unless you know. The weather was very fine at 
 starting — and hot ; off went coats, which were loaded 
 on to the luckless cooli ; off went the Major's puttis, 
 leaving his legs as bare as his arms, as though he 
 were back in the old jungles on a shikar daur ; 
 Matsuda, the guide, almost fainted by the way. 
 But clouds came rolling up behind them, and 
 travelled much faster than they, and covered the 
 top of the pass and the hills around, and filled up 
 the valleys, so that they went not up into the high 
 places, but walked steadily on through the downpour, 
 past dairy farms (Californian cattle and good milk), 
 through bridgeless nullas waist deep (the Japanese 
 are a fine race, and Matsuda is a fine Jap, but 
 fording rapid torrents on a stony bed is not his 
 
Miyanoshita. 79 
 
 forte), through tall wet grass and trickling rivulets 
 that should have been paths, until they came to the 
 little tea-house at the end of the lake of Hakone. 
 But it rained on, and as the boatmen waggled their 
 oars to take them to Hakone, they put up many 
 Japanese brollies against the wind and rain, and lay 
 out under blankets, and drank much whisky and 
 smoked endless tobacco. Just one break in the 
 clouds to show how pretty the lake could look if it 
 chose, and then rain on ; until at last the Mikado's 
 summer palace and the cryptomeria avenue on the 
 Tokaido and the Hafuya tea-house. Here were 
 three wrathful warriors, arrived first yet refused the 
 upper and best rooms reserved for the Bank 
 Manager ! And Jim and 'Arry and the rest took 
 them without a blush. 
 
 Have you ever been shaved by a Japanese barber 
 with a Japanese razor ? If not, don't ; it is not good 
 enough. The Major thought it due to his personal 
 appearance to take the scrub off his chin ; but he 
 shuddered when he saw that razor ! Yet he could 
 not back out with credit ; and after near a quarter 
 of an hour's agony, he emerged with face flayed and 
 all but as hairy as before. And the barber so exas- 
 peratingly polite that you couldn't swear at him ! 
 Pictures are extant of Fuji seen from Hakone Lake ; 
 it may be presumed, therefore, that such a thing 
 may occur as clear weather at Hakone. But the 
 Bounders fled next morning, and it did not clear 
 until they were well over the hill and into Ashinoyu 
 — a pretty walk and not severe ; Ashinoyu, a place 
 
8o Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 consisting of three or four hotels and sulphur-bathing- 
 houses, and nought else. Thence to Miyanoshita it 
 is one long steep descent ; and here the Major came 
 to grief. A slip on the slippery red mud, a fall, and 
 a hurt knee ; and lo ! the Major with his shikar 
 clothes and puttis brought in from Kowakidani 
 ignominiously in a chair ! But the nesans soon 
 stripped him and tubbed him, and tiffin re-established 
 him. "We have had enough of this," they all 
 agreed ; " we will go hence to Nikko," said they. 
 " For one day's rain here, you will get two at Nikko," 
 said Jim ; but he also prophesied without knowing, 
 and was all wrong. So the three strangers left him 
 and went to Yokohama. (This time they were 
 allowed to tram in peace across the broken bridge.) 
 Now there is in these days a railway to Nikko ; but 
 more yapanico the embankments have been built 
 here and there a foot or two below the flood level of 
 the Tonagawa and other big streams from the hills, 
 so that naturally a mile or two of bank and a bridge 
 or two, not to mention culverts, were carried away ; 
 and the breach was not yet mended. Thus the 
 problem was to get through to Nikko in the day with 
 the least possible amount of extra- matutinal rising 
 at the start and of delay on the road. And they 
 thought they had solved it. Leave Yokohama by 
 afternoon train and sleep in Tokio (the two railway 
 stations in Tokio are miles apart ; why don't they 
 run the lines into one central station ?) ; start by the 
 8.50 A. M., and so catch the 1.23 on the far side of 
 the breach, and that gets you in to Nikko that even- 
 
Utsunoviiya. 8 1 
 
 ing. It went very nicely at first ; the rain that 
 made Yokohama and Tokio so cheerful ceased ; 
 Kuki was safely reached, and the train there left for 
 ricksha ; the ride to Kurihashi was longish but 
 good going most of the way, and for the rest the 
 mud was not so very thick. But at Kurihashi the 
 plan broke down ; for lo ! there was no 1.23 train at 
 all, nor any train for four mortal hours, and that 
 would be too late to make the connection for Nikko ; 
 no chance of getting there to-night. " Can't we 
 ricksha it, or ride it ? " "No, impossible." " Well," 
 said the Bank Manager, " Cookey has curried our 
 hashey this time," and the Major turned green with 
 envy, for he considered the perpetration of bad puns 
 to be his own special private monopoly. Four hours 
 come to an end somehow, even at a little roadside 
 station on a hot autumn afternoon in Japan ; and 
 nightfall saw the three in Utsunomiya. Here, for 
 the first time, they experienced a tea-house ; that is, 
 a tea-house pure and simple. The Japanese quarters 
 at Miyanoshita are grades removed from tea-house 
 style : bedstead and furniture and fittings are 
 European, nor do you have to take off your shoes to 
 go in ; only the baths are of true Japanese heat — 
 but it is natural hot mineral water ; and the atten- 
 dants are bright, clean, pretty girls (would, O 
 Yamaguchi, that the girls in other your establish- 
 ments were as clean). At Hakone, you have bed- 
 steads and a few chairs and tables, but the Europe 
 kit is limited ; you must remove your shoes on 
 entering, and bring food with you if you would dine 
 
 G 
 
82 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 well. But at Utsunomiya, you sleep on quilts on 
 the floor, with vast mosquito curtains of dark colour 
 hung round you. You will not dine at all unless on 
 Japanese food (the Three had seen too much of 
 Eastern dishes to hanker much after that) ; of course 
 your boots must go at the outer door ; and your 
 rooms overlook the Jap bath-room — a busy place, 
 well patronized in the evening by naked men and 
 women. The Major insisted on having a bath, and 
 for long it seemed as if he could do it only by laying 
 aside, with his clothes, the European standard of 
 modesty, and adopting the Japanese ; but at last he 
 secured a little pantry of a room to himself. Then 
 food : being unprepared for more than tiffin away 
 from an hotel, and all the tiffin being eaten in those 
 four weary hours at Kurihashi, how were they to 
 feed ? But the great Matsuda found a " restaurant," 
 into which foreigners were admitted by the back 
 door, and at which might be had a regulation dinner 
 of several courses. So forth the three sallied with 
 a British manufacturer in like sad plight (only 
 worse, for he had no guide), and on the way to 
 dinner and at dinner experienced the only rudeness 
 that was shown them in Japan. For vulgar little 
 boys heaved pebbles at them in the street, and pelted 
 in more through the open windows until put to flight 
 by the maitre d'hdtel. And the dinner was by no 
 means bad, considering. Early to bed and early to 
 rise was the order, and off by the first train to 
 Nikko, where their wrath died down as they found 
 themselves arrived, and after all not so much behiijd 
 
Nikko. 8 
 
 J 
 
 time. Quite early enough, at any rate, to do the 
 temples and shrines that morning. 
 
 I am given to understand that the Japanese lay 
 down that no man is entitled to speak of beauty 
 as if he knew what the word meant until he 
 has seen Nikko. That is a bit of Japanese bluff. 
 The eyes that have seen many things out of 
 Japan remember many things more beautiful ; but 
 they will still recognize much that is marvellously 
 fine. First the splendid contrast between the tem- 
 ples and their surroundings. Enshrined in groves 
 of tall dark stately cryptomerias, through which, on 
 a bright sunny day, enters but a softened and 
 subdued light, and covered by dull-coloured copper 
 roofs of vast expanse, stand temples resplendent 
 with an excess of ornamentation in carved wood 
 and lacquer and painting and gilding and bronze 
 and gold. The cryptomerias are solemn and im- 
 pressive, and but for the ugliness of their inter- 
 minable copper roofs, the temples amongst them, 
 seen from a little distance, look well, extremely well. 
 But on entering almost any temple and examining 
 it round, the eye becomes wearied by the excess of 
 decoration. After walking through a dozen or so 
 of such temples, the weariness becomes almost a 
 nausea ; and whatever religious feeling may per- 
 chance have been inspired by those sacred groves 
 and shrines, on which untold treasure has been 
 lavished, shrinks away to infinitesimal proportions 
 when Matsuda relates how it is all for the glory of 
 " Mr. lyeyasu " and " Mr. lyemitsu " — as he persists 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 in calling the first and third Shoguns — and for the 
 crippling of the power of the Daimios, so that their 
 wealth might be expended on these holy works, and 
 not on strengthening themselves and becoming 
 dangerous rivals of the Shogun. So all this reli- 
 gous art, this gorgeous magnificence, is but the 
 tangible embodiment of a plant — a political dodge ! 
 Matsuda was in form this day, and discoursed 
 fluently on the temples and their builders. The 
 Major, fancying he took interest in the comparative 
 study of religions, tried to get enlightenment from 
 Matsuda on Japanese Buddhism and Shintoism 
 and pure Shintoism. But Matsuda was much too 
 emancipated to have any ideas on such subjects. 
 " I have been to France, and to England ; and in 
 France was Roman Catholic, and Protestant in 
 England." " And what are you now ? " " Oh, 
 now I am Buddhist." " Nothing to do with 
 Shinto ? " " Oh, yes, I follow Shinto too. But I 
 do not believe in any of these things. Do you, 
 sir .'' " The Major gave it up. He could not 
 understand why a Buddhist temple should have 
 been removed bodily from the enclosure where 
 Shinto temples stood. " That is to restore pure 
 Shinto," explained Matsuda. " Then why are not 
 all Buddhist symbols and images removed from the 
 Shinto temple ? '' And to this there seemed to be 
 no answer. It is almost exasperating, in going 
 through these temples, to find no rest from notice- 
 able bits of art. There is no relief, no respite ; the 
 whole place is crowded with elaborate or minute 
 
Nikko. 85 
 
 work, wrought of the richest materials with exqui- 
 site skill and labour, lasting over, it may be, many 
 years. Now and again the eye is startled by 
 something absolutely hideous : a horrible pattern 
 in green and blue and white and red painted on 
 wood, a pattern that would disgrace the wall-paper 
 of a common lodging-house ; or in the midst 
 of " the splendour and the blaze and symmetry," 
 some common piece of plain wood, unfinished, un- 
 varnished. These things jar on one, as do the 
 misshapen monsters that are meant for animals. 
 In bud and flower and foliage and decorative de- 
 signs, the Japanese artist of old time is as perfect 
 as a human workman can be ; but his humans are 
 usually grotesque, and his animals impossible. 
 That in the temples themselves there should be no 
 contrast, no cessation of superabundant display, 
 seems the more strange because of the perhaps 
 intentional contrast between the groves and the 
 temples in them, and the certainly designed 
 simplicity of the tomb of lyeyasu, which is led up 
 to by shrines and gateways of most rich and 
 elaborate ornamentation. After passing through all 
 this overdone decoration, it is extremely effective to 
 find the tomb of plain bronze, with plain well- 
 shaped figures of tortoise and crane, surrounded by 
 the dark-green cryptomerias. At one place there 
 is a much dented lantern — one of those innumerable 
 stone or metal posts, with four-windowed chamber 
 on the top to place lamps in— and Matsuda, the 
 sceptic, explained that here dared no man, or 
 
86 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 woman either, pass at night because of the "goods" 
 that appeared in the lantern. Many had vainly- 
 struck at them with swords and hit but the lantern, 
 and the dents and scratches are there to attest the 
 truth of the tale. " But what kind of goods ? " 
 asked 'Arry and Alf. " I don't know what you call 
 in English, bakemono," said Matsuda. "Ah, 
 ghosts," said that learned Japanese scholar the 
 Major. The Bounders refused to go up the pagoda 
 of many stories, or to have their names put up (in 
 Japanese) for future fame among the donators for 
 the up-keep of the temples, whose patronymics and 
 gifts are placarded on huge hoardings at the gate- 
 way of the holy ground. They paid their twenty 
 cents for an old lady in a shrine to perform a 
 religious dance — a slow and not ungraceful busi- 
 ness of fan-flirting and hand-flipping and woven 
 paces ; and went home agreeing (when they did 
 agree their unanimity was wonderful) that they 
 were glad to have seen the Temples of Nikko, but 
 did not want to see them again. They did not find 
 the garden of Dainichido particularly interesting, 
 nor the long line of Buddhas by the side of the 
 stream, which no man can count up accurately. 
 These Buddhas are in stone, and on an apparently 
 inaccessible rock overhanging the stream is a 
 rough scratching of the sacred figure. Nikko 
 being no longer interesting, ensued therefore a 
 long discussion as to the next move. " I don't 
 want to sit in this verandah all day looking at that 
 ugly old mountain," said the Major. " But that is 
 
Departure from Nikko. 87 
 
 a beautiful mountain," expostulated Matsuda. " All 
 gentlemen from Europe and America say it is beau- 
 tiful. You have not such fine mountains in your 
 country, sir." And Alf and 'Arry joined in and 
 helped to pull the leg of the patriotic Matsuda. 
 And after they had discussed fully, the Major gave 
 up his notion of going beyond Yumoto and up 
 Shirane San and round by remote routes to Ikao and 
 Kusatsu, and 'Arry and Alf consented to leave 
 hotels and take to tea-houses for a bit, and they 
 drank one another's healths and were happy. 
 Happy as schoolboys, larking about the corridors 
 "in a way that I grieve," and that must have 
 scandalized respectable stayers in that hotel. And 
 now, for a stretch of days Japan showed itself 
 delectable, for the weather thought fit to be perfect, 
 and they saw all the fine inland scenery (and it 
 was the finest of all they saw in Japan, excepting 
 only Fujisan) just as well as it could be seen. 
 There are three ways of getting to Chiusenji — 
 on foot, in chair or kango, on horseback ; for the 
 road is too steep for rickshas. The Three decided 
 on horses, and started a goodly cavalcade of five : 
 their three noble selves, the guide, and the baggage 
 pony. First they rode to the waterfall of Urami. 
 It was a day of waterfalls, and the Major shot 
 upon Matsuda the former witticism about wishing 
 to see, just as a change, water that fell up, not 
 down. " You may see that in heaven, sir ; not 
 here," said the guide. Under the Urami waterfall, 
 between the water and the rock, you may scramble, 
 
88 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 if you are sufficiently energetic — the name Urami 
 implies something of the kind. It lies off the road, 
 and the track thereto is decent enough, but that 
 therefrom is vile. To ride a Burmese pony along 
 the knife-edges of paddy-field bunds "when the 
 weather is most beautifully " wet, or through the 
 paddy-fields themselves when the mud is so thick 
 that you have to get off or get stuck altogether 
 ("we used to call it patent log rolling," said the 
 Major, "being dragged through hanging on by the 
 pony's tail as the patent log is towed by the ship ") ; 
 or to upset, pony and all, in the quicksands of a 
 Burmese chaung — these are pleasures of a kind ; but 
 they pall before the pleasure of that ride from 
 Urami to the road. The track is narrow and wind- 
 ing and steep, and the mud and the ruts would be 
 incredible if they were not solid — or rather half solid 
 half liquid — facts. But the Japanese pony, though 
 no beauty to look at, is no fool, and those four ponies 
 came through this slough without a mistake, step- 
 ping over each rut and into the mudholes between 
 the ruts, surefooted and safe. Once back on the 
 road, the going was good enough until they came to 
 a place where the road was washed away altogether. 
 Farther on the mountain-side looked as if a great 
 part of it had been washed away too. Altogether 
 there was rather too much washing. The ghat up 
 to Chiusenji is a very picturesque one. Matsuda 
 pointed out Hanya and Hoda waterfalls, but he 
 reserved the best for the top — the Kengon Fall is 
 really good. It is also a good example of Japanese 
 
Chiusenji. 89 
 
 bluff, for they call it 750 feet (and a Japanese foot 
 is fourteen inches), whereas it has been found by 
 measurement to be only 350 (English) feet. Tea- 
 house and tififin were welcome in Chiusenji, and 
 delicious the trout you see caught from the lake and 
 cooked in a trice. It is a very curious little village, 
 Chiusenji, all temples and tea-houses. The long 
 street is full of pilgrims' houses, now empty and shut 
 up ; only in a few tea-houses, whose verandahs 
 charmingly overhang the lake, are a few people to 
 be found. But at the due season the whole place is 
 crammed full of the pious pilgrim, so that no room 
 may be had. For Nantaisan, that rises to 8,250 
 feet right over Chiusenji, and half a score of mountain- 
 tops around, are to be visited by devout worshippers 
 of the gods, to the profit of the priests and hotel- 
 keepers. But tiffin over, on went the Three (and the 
 guide) on the untiring tats, past more waterfalls — the 
 Dragon's Head which are rapids rather than water- 
 falls, a turmoil of white water hurrying over black 
 and broken rocks ; and across the Senjogahara (moor 
 of the battle-field), a swamp surrounded by mighty 
 mountains. The Major was always quoting the 
 guide-book, much to Matsuda's discomfort. " That 
 book is old and not all true. The gentleman did not 
 see himself, and what they told him he wrote." So 
 when the Major and his book insisted that the place 
 was Akamunagahara, or " the moor of the red 
 swamp," Matsuda insisted that it was not, and named 
 the hills around in a way that completely upset the 
 Major's guide-book topography. Just before you 
 
go Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 get into Yumoto there is a very pretty waterfall — a 
 rush of water down a long incline, a sheet of broken 
 silver. They call it Yunotaki, "the hot waterfall," 
 because the water is not hot. But if the water of 
 this fall and of the lovely little Yumoto lake be not 
 hot, that of the Yumoto sulphur springs is hot as 
 Hades. The village consists only of the houses and 
 baths, and lives on its springs and in the steam and 
 smell of them. Of course the Three had to take a 
 sulphur bath, and found accommodation to perform 
 that feat more Europeano and not in public like the 
 many Japs, men and women, whom they saw bathing. 
 This public bathing is referred to by most book- 
 writers as terribly shocking to decency. Yet I do 
 not remember to have read in any book diatribes on 
 the immodesty of the men and women of India and 
 Burma, who bathe just as publicly and innocently at 
 the village well or the ghat on the river ; and I do 
 not understand, therefore, why holy hands of horror 
 should be raised and the head of reprobation should 
 be wagged at the Japanese for performing his 
 ablutions promiscuously coram publico. The ride 
 back to Yumoto found Alf and 'Arry rather sore. 
 The paces of a Japanese tat are not easy, the 
 saddles were old and misshapen ; and though there 
 may be nothing like leather, it is not pleasant to 
 wear it off. "Charlie, having appropriated the best 
 saddle, would not admit any rubbing ; and all were 
 glad when their thirty miles' journey was over ; 
 thirty miles according to Japanese reckoning — two 
 and a half miles to a " ri," but a " ri " is, like a kos 
 
Nantaisan. 9 1 
 
 or a daing, by no means a constant quantity. Any 
 way, not a bad day's work for the ponies, and a 
 thoroughly enjoyable one for the men. Now 
 Chiusenji is about 4,000 feet high, and Alf considered 
 that at last he had got what he had come for — some 
 real cold — and Charlie grumbled at the same ; and 
 they nearly asphyxiated themselves with a pan of 
 charcoal under the dinner-table within closed walls 
 (you can't say doors or windows, for there are none ; 
 you pull the sliding wall along its groove and it does 
 just as v/ell). Why, in a country where the cold is 
 pretty severe in winter, don't they have decent fire- 
 places in the rooms ? The Major insisted on going 
 to the top of Nantaisan— -a good two hours' pull up 
 4,000 and odd feet. Tapioca absolutely refused ; 
 the Bank Manager allowed that he would on the 
 whole prefer to see the Major do it to doing it him- 
 self Matsuda said, " Yes, sir, if you want me, I 
 must go, but I should like not to." He also said, 
 " You should start at two, so as to see the sunrise 
 from the top ; " but the Major said he had seen the 
 sun rise a good many times, and was likely to see it 
 a good many more, and didn't yearn to see it here. 
 So at the dark and chilly hour of four, up got the 
 Major, leaving the other two Bounders snoring, and 
 was led by a cooli-guide up Nantaisan. You pay 
 the priest 25 cents, and he gives you a written 
 receipt and two little cakes of rice and sugar. Now 
 the road up Nantaisan is fashioned in this manner : 
 take a steep hill-side rising in one continuous un- 
 broken gradient, with never a slacking off or an 
 
92 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 easy ; straight up this, with never a zig nor a zag, 
 cut steps two feet high (or more at discretion), and 
 face each step with a plain piece of jungle wood, 
 round and rough ; turn on a young typhoon with 
 rain ad libituin, so as to wash out most of the earth 
 from behind the wood, and knock as many as 
 possible of the wooden pieces themselves out of 
 position ; over all add a plentiful dew to make 
 everything nice and slippery ; and there you are. 
 The Major found it a pretty stiff pull and decidedly 
 warm work even in the cool of the morning. But 
 up and up through the twilight, now through forests 
 of those "green-robed senators of mighty woods, 
 tall oaks," and then through firs and conifers (" Not 
 that I saw any coneys," the Major explained to his 
 pals, describing his journey), past the three stations 
 where a little hut and grateful water awaits the 
 weary wayfarer, at the last of which, lo ! a States man 
 (which is being interpreted a man from the United 
 States) descending, and enthusing ecstatically to the 
 perspiring Major on the "glow and glory " of the 
 sunrise which he had just seen. And so in two 
 hours and ten minutes the summit, with ice thereon, 
 and a bleak and cutting wind from the cruel north ; 
 but a bright clear sky above and a brilliant atmo- 
 sphere and far-spreading landscape of hill and lake 
 and river and fertile plain. There is Nikko with 
 its groves and temples straight below you, with the 
 river winding by it and on until a larger stream 
 receives it, the Daiyagawa, and they flow united, by 
 fertile fields away Into that golden haze on the 
 
Nantaisan. 93 
 
 horizon where, beyond the peaks of Tsukuba San, 
 lies the invisible ocean. You stand on the rim of 
 an old old crater ; the side farthest from you is all 
 broken down and the hollow of the huge bowl is 
 filled with forest, whose foliage is many-tinted "with 
 autumn laying here and there a fiery finger on the 
 leaves." One side of the crater-edge hides from 
 you Yumoto and that moor of uncertain name that 
 you crossed yesterday ; but the blue lake of Chiusenji, 
 and beside it a tiny lakelet hiding cosily amongst 
 the embracing mountains, shine bright in the morn- 
 ing air. Beyond the lakes, among the hills that hide 
 the gorges of Ashiwo, the mist and smoke of many 
 charcoal-burning fires and of the busy copper-mines 
 hang heavy, yet slowly drift away ; and far away 
 past these and many another tumbled range — Akangi 
 San and the mountains of Koshiu — appears the 
 perfect cone of Fujisan. All round you, close at 
 hand they seem, are the volcanic verdure-clad peaks 
 of Omanago and Komanago and Niho San and 
 Taro San, and behind them the bare rocky tops of 
 great Shirane San. Truly a prospect worthy of 
 some labour to behold it. But the cooli, after he had 
 satisfied the Major's questioning curiosity, preferred 
 digging up the coppers and bronzes (sens and rins) 
 scattered by the pious on the holy ground on the 
 summit ; for all pilgrims to this place or to any other 
 holy place or temple throw there small coin, which 
 the priests usually fail not to gather. But here were 
 certainly many going to waste. By the time his 
 cooli had collected two handfuls the Major concluded 
 
94 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 to quit ; and returned to find 'Arry and Alf going out 
 on the lake. That afternoon their noble steeds bore 
 them back to Nikko — except that the Major would 
 walk much of the way and got the Bank Manager to 
 walk with him ; and they arrived weary but well- 
 pleased at the comfortable hostelry, and the nesans 
 came around the Major and waited on him. " You 
 see I speak the language ; that is why they flock 
 about me," he explained to the other two. But they 
 mocked him and his language. It was here that the 
 Three came upon another three of whom Alf and 
 Charlie saw much in their after travels, that is to 
 say the Nebraska Sportsman and the Merciful 
 Broker, and one who, since he was the eldest and 
 came from Philadelphia, may be called Old Phil. 
 And they talked much of Yokohama and counted 
 the days since they left there, and discoursed on the 
 beauties of Japan. 
 
 The copper-mines of Ashiwo are a day's journey 
 from Nikko. It is a long two hours up to the top 
 of the ghat ; along a road skilfully graded and zig- 
 zagged, and good enough going for the tats. Most 
 of the roads in Japan are well made ; there is not a 
 place on the ordinary tourists' round that has not a 
 fairly engineered road to it. There is no heavy 
 traffic on them ; for carts of ordinary type are non- 
 existent ; such fearful road-ruiners as the unre- 
 generated cart of India, or still worse of Burma, are 
 unknown ; and the roads have to bear nothing more 
 destructive to them than coolis and pack ponies 
 and rickshas and handbarrows, or, rarely, two- 
 
Ashiwo. 95 
 
 wheeled frames dragged by a bullock, or a pony, or 
 a man. But occasionally the heavy rain plays havoc 
 with them. The way up to the top of the ghat is 
 pleasant, for the hill-sides are forest-clad, and the 
 forests of Japan are not that excessive, impenetrable, 
 overpowering forest of Java and the Straits, but 
 good, clear, open woods of trees, and light, thin 
 undergrowth ; a happy medium between tropical 
 too-muchness and the bareness of Chinese hills. 
 And there is many a charming backward glimpse of 
 Nikko and Toyama, and the plains beyond. A halt 
 for tiffin at a rather mean little tea-house at the top 
 (and how neatly the Japanese do up your tiffin for 
 you : all ready carved is the succulent murgi, and 
 light sweet roti, and other good things, and packed 
 up in such tidy little white sweet boxes of wood), 
 and then down into a very different country. 
 Those copper-mines down there want fuel ; and the 
 forest is gone or going, leaving the hill-side bare 
 and ugly, while the charcoal-burners' fires fill the 
 air with smoke. The scenery is as ruined as 
 that of many a place is in what was once lovely 
 at home, and is now the Black Country. The 
 people too are changed. No cheerful smiles and 
 happy cries of " Ohayo " from the children in the 
 road-side cottages ; no pleasant greeting from coolis 
 passing on the road ; but a sullen silence, and grimy 
 faces, and unfriendly looks. The Major waxed 
 exceeding wroth with the drivers of those drays, 
 taking fuel and stores to the mines or copper there- 
 from, for that they did not make way for him and 
 
96 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 his fellow-voyagers ; " Lucky for them they are not 
 in my country, but their own ; else would I have 
 belaboured them soundly." 
 
 "Yes, of course," said Tapioca; "the bloated 
 official whacks whom he pleases, but if a poor 
 planter touches a cooli " 
 
 " Oh, shut up," said the Bank. 
 
 And they talked of other things and jogged 
 along (the tats probably thought they were trotting, 
 but the riders had different opinions on that head, 
 and something else on a portion of their physical 
 frames remote from the head) right away to the 
 copper-mines. Here the Three went over the whole 
 place, the which it booteth not to describe, for it 
 is not in any way different from an English mining 
 show, except that it is in Japan and run entirely by 
 Japanese. Note, however, that the natural water- 
 power available is being ably utilized and turned into 
 electric light, to light all the workings which run miles 
 into the mountain. There are over 20,000 people 
 employed here one way and another ; and there is 
 a jail with an outdoor gang of the usual very mild 
 and orderly Japanese ruffian. A small but comfort- 
 able, snug tea-house was full up when it had taken 
 in our Three ; and they watched others arrive and 
 ask for room in vain. There was no rowdyism in 
 the village, as certain travellers had led them to 
 expect there might be in a mining village. Nor 
 in this or in any other tea-house did they find sheet 
 or quilt populous with lively and voracious reasons 
 against sleep ; Keating's Powder was not in the 
 
Omama. 97 
 
 least in request. All next day's journey was down 
 the gorge of the same stream from Ashiwo right on 
 to Omama : a very pretty ride, without stupendous 
 or magnificent scenery, but always pleasing and 
 picturesque. Here is a road-side temple standing, 
 as usual, in a grove of cryptomerias, and as ever, with 
 a torii as gateway thereto. The torii is as indispen- 
 sable as the pair of chinthes (lions) that guard 
 the approach to a Burmese pagoda. Now we pass 
 through villages all mulberry-trees and silkworms, 
 with girls winding the silk from the cocoon in 
 every house-front. In places the valley widens out 
 in level hill-encircled plain ; elsewhere it narrows, 
 leaving the stream scarce room to force itself 
 through among rocks and boulders. One boulder 
 there is that is fabled to have come from far-off 
 Ise, though no fable seems required to account 
 for its being where it is. There is a rice-pounder 
 turned by a little stream falling into a wooden tray ; 
 the tray being full, round it goes, revolving a bar 
 which lifts and lets fall the pounder, while a second 
 tray comes into position to receive the water. The 
 people are agricultural and cheerful again. The 
 Major recovered his spirits and walked along, 
 setting the ponies a four-mil es-an-hour pace which 
 they could not keep up with ; and when he raised 
 it to five, the little Japanese syces with much 
 laughter found themselves also obliged to jog into 
 a gentle trot. And yet as they neared Omama a 
 ricksha man insulted the Major by shouting at him, 
 " Sha, sha ! " Omama is one long wide street. 
 
 IT 
 
9 8 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Many of these Japanese townlets are nothing but 
 a string of houses on either side of a wide, well-kept 
 street, with no side streets, reaching along for a 
 mile or two. And the width and the well-madeness 
 and cleanness of the streets — with what admiring 
 envy the Anglo-Indian eye beholds them ! If only 
 the mild Hindu would house himself as tidily, and 
 keep his gam as nicely ! Even the smallest villages 
 in Japan that our travellers passed through, here and 
 elsewhere, are clean and sweet-smelling ; the houses; 
 even where poor and mean, are not dirty ; and their 
 build is generally more picturesque than the mud- 
 built flat-roofed ghar, or the wattle-and-daub hut. 
 I think the paucity of cattle conduces greatly to this 
 cleanness, together with the absence in Japanese 
 cultivators of that prejudice against the use of 
 night-soil as manure, which is so strong in India. 
 You very rarely see cattle or ponies employed in 
 cultivation, and but rarely in transport ; no herds of 
 " bails " driving out in the morning to eat the hill- 
 sides bare, and coming back in the evening to 
 cover all the " basti " with dust and dirt. Man 
 supplies all that is required ; manual labour and 
 manure are what the fields get here. And so, of 
 course, each field is cut up into multitudinous little 
 patches, and cultivated to the highest degree of 
 which it is capable. I do not think the soil is 
 generally of very high fertility. Every scrap of 
 that rich manure is carefully collected and given to 
 it, and the laborious individual toil on each little 
 patch gives it the best possible chance ; yet the 
 
Omama. 99 
 
 crops are nothing remarkable. The Major had seen 
 in the valley of the Irrawaddy and elsewhere many 
 paddy-fields with heavier crops, and Tapioca 
 thought these Japanese paddy plants nought beside 
 those of the Straits. The cotton plant is small, the 
 vegetables good. There is not so much irrigation 
 nor so extensive terracing of the hill-sides as in 
 Java ; nor are the landscapes so near the perfec- 
 tion of scenic beauty as in that favoured isle. But 
 the Three, as they rode and strode into Omama, felt 
 well pleased with themselves and Japan, and filled 
 themselves with beer. Very good it is, the beer 
 they make in Japan, far better than the medicated 
 Pilsener and lager with which the East is flooded 
 now-a-days. The Ebisu brand is good, but Kirin 
 is better. The Major drained a bottle of this, and 
 subsided into pensiveness and bad puns. Matsuda 
 made himself agreeable to the buxom daughter of 
 mine host, whose kimono did, like words and nature, 
 " half-conceal and half-reveal " (rather more than 
 half the latter perhaps) what goes to make a 
 well-shaped bust. "You're a scorcher," the Bank 
 informed her; "Yu ra sa kaw cha," mimicked the 
 fair one. The tea-house at Omama was about the 
 least comfortable of all they had yet experienced. 
 The Bank had found the lot of them rather trying ; 
 but here the rooms were small and back-yarded ; 
 the bath-room was a terrible hot corner close to the 
 kitchen, and pretty nearly as public as a Japanese 
 washing-room ; and the attendants less attentive 
 than elsewhere. However, it was the last night 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 that the Three were together ; for next day the rail 
 (of course, being Japanese, the trains were running 
 at every hour except those mentioned in the official 
 time-tables) bore off the Bank to Tokio, while the 
 other two, leaving the rail at Mayebashi, betook 
 themselves to Ikao. Sad was the parting ; no more 
 would the Bank hear Tapioca sing his affecting 
 song,— 
 
 I can't forget my mother dear, 
 
 I'll tell you why, becos 
 She was so good and kind to me, 
 
 She was, she was, she wos, — 
 
 with which he had so often beguiled the hours ; no 
 more would he revel in the Major's puns ; for from 
 Tokio he would go straight to Kioto, while the 
 others went there through Ise ("we can Ise-ly 
 manage it," said the Major). One horse-tram runs 
 from Mayebashi to the Tonegawa, which river has 
 to be ferried across, and then rickshas carry you up 
 to Ikao. Another village of hot mineral springs ; 
 conduits carry the steaming element all through 
 the houses and streets. It is very picturesque, the 
 main street of Ikao ; so steep that the ground-floor 
 of one quaint house is level with the first-floor of the 
 next ; the street itself is staircased with stone, the 
 steam rising thickly from the channel in the midst 
 thereof. Crowds of those pleasant Japanese gather 
 in balconies and at shop-doors to gaze in a friendly 
 way at you as you loaf along from shop to shop. 
 And the view from the hotel verandah : what a 
 splendid expanse of hill and valley and far-off 
 
Ikao. loi 
 
 mountain ! The one thing wanting in it is a touch of 
 water, some rivulet or lakelet or stream ; but there 
 is none visible, Alf and Charlie, as they sat and 
 smoked in the delicious atmosphere, thought it about 
 the best Japanese hotel they had come to ; and 
 when drink was wanted, what was easier than to 
 comply with the inscription on the electric bell 
 knobs : — " When business request push this point 
 once." Late that night Old Phil and his friends 
 also arrived ; and next morning, in lovely weather, 
 all five set off across the hills to Haruna : a 
 splendid walk, with varied conversation — the 
 Englishman with phrases and pronunciations not 
 understood of the 'Mercans, and occasional Hob- 
 son-Jobsons from the India and Straits men, and 
 the Eastern and the Western States men each with 
 locutions peculiar to his own country not to be com- 
 prehended by others. And the Nebraska Sportsman 
 sang of how he gathered shells ; and the Major told 
 tiger stories, so that even Matsuda related his ex- 
 periences of tiger-shooting (it appeared he had once 
 been with a man in French Cochin China, and 
 gone out with him under protest and in a great funk 
 to kill a tiger) ; and the Merciful Broker studied 
 Japanese, and tried to teach English to the 
 Japanese boy that he had picked up, and is going to 
 take with him to England. So they went past 
 the Haruna Fuji, with a view of the grand 
 old real Fuji in the distance and the Haruna 
 Lake, a lovely mountain tarn, and down the steep 
 and rocky gorge, full of forest, to the Temple of 
 
I02 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Haruna. Here too may be seen pilgrims. See 
 those two, each wearing, slung round his neck so as 
 to be placed in the middle of his breast, a full- 
 coloured mask, with most elongated proboscis like 
 a tapir's, of the " tengui '' or mountain sprite, at 
 whose shrine they have been to worship. These 
 shall they keep with them for a season, and then 
 return to the shrine with other masks like unto 
 them. 
 
 It has been remarked that the old original 
 Buddhists in India loved to locate their temples 
 and monasteries in picturesque spots, lovely in them- 
 selves, but near some great route, as at Ellora, 
 Ajunta, and Karli. So too the modern Buddhist 
 in Japan has an eye to natural beauty of scenery 
 in selecting a site for his god. The wild 
 character of the narrow Haruna gorge, with its 
 broken rocks forming here a natural bridge, there a 
 pinnacle of many angles, its pretty woods, and its 
 mighty cryptomerias enshrining and solemnizing the 
 temple, form a first-rate example of this principle. 
 So it is at Miyongi San to which the two Bounders 
 and Old Phil betook themselves next day, while the 
 Nebraska Sportsman, and the Merciful Broker and 
 the Boy went off along the Nagasendo, there to 
 meet with much rain and hardgoing and torrents, 
 with their boat upsetting therein, until they should 
 arrive at Kioto. So they said au revoir to one 
 another at Idzuka ; and if ever you should go to 
 that place, do not drink of the beer sold there called 
 stota (a colourable imitation of " stock " or " stout ") : 
 
Isobe. 
 
 lO.- 
 
 it is what the schoolboy said "the dehghts of 
 our ancestors were — unmitigated fikh."* The 
 Japanese are a good deal like the Burmese, happy, 
 cheery, pleasant, but happy-go-lucky, unsteady, 
 wanting in balance, liable to lose their heads. One 
 man here at Idzuka lost his, and his life, poor 
 fellow. He was trespassing on the bridge as our 
 travellers' train ran on to it ; he could easily have 
 saved himself by jumping into one of the little 
 refuges on the piers of the bridge ; but no, he must 
 needs throw himself over on to the stones of the 
 dry river-bed below — and throw so badly the 
 twenty or twenty-five feet of drop as to break 
 his head. So he died. But our sportsmen reached 
 Isobe, and disembarked from the train, and while 
 waiting for rickshas experienced for the second time 
 that day a most poisonous drink. The stota was 
 bad ; but here was worse. At all tea-houses they 
 give you cuplets of tea, not particularly pleasant to 
 an unaccustomed palate, but capable of winning your 
 approval after much practice : Old Phil must have 
 drunk oceans of it in the course of his Japanese 
 tour, besides eating mountains of wafers and cake- 
 lets of rice and sugar, such as they often give you 
 with your tea. But here at Isobe a charming little 
 maid from school proffered a small glass of " sakura 
 no yu," pretty to look at, but abominable to taste. 
 Fancy taking cherry-blossoms, preserving them in 
 salt, and then making with them and hot water a 
 
 * Traditional construing of "Delicta niajorum immeritus 
 lue?." 
 
104 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 decoction to give to a thirsty Christian to drink. 
 The Christians there present tasted and spat, and 
 would have no more of it. 
 
 The paternal Japanese Government looks after 
 cholera epidemics as carefully as it does after other 
 things. That fell disease was in a village on the usual 
 route to Miyongi, and no one who lived in or entered 
 into that village might come out of it without purifi- 
 cation with carbolic and the like. So the Three 
 made to Miyongi by another road, and saw the 
 preventive stations on the way to that cholera 
 village, with their watchmen and their bottles ready 
 to waylay the suspected wayfarer. Miyongi San 
 is not a long ricksha ride. Here, by the way, it 
 may be remarked that it is certainly a curious thing 
 that the Japanese, who seem to copy readily almost 
 everything European, do not go in for tongas or 
 garis to get about in. Their roads are good 
 enough, both on the flat and up hill ; the former 
 good enough for any kind of vehicle, and the latter 
 for tongas, except that all would want widening 
 somewhat ; yet still they stick to the comparatively 
 slow and unaccommodating ricksha. It is true 
 there don't seem to be many ponies in the country ; 
 but a demand would soon bring out the supply. 
 It is true also that of all possible ricksha men the 
 Jap is the best ; fast, willing, cheery, untiring. 
 And a ricksha is by no means uncomfortable even 
 for a long journey. The Major rejoiced in them, 
 and even Tapioca, though he growled at first, grew 
 to like them. It is not, they say, a Japanese 
 
Miyongi. 105 
 
 vehicle by origin, but the invention of an American ; 
 the very name is only half Japanese, the other half 
 being Chinese. 
 
 From the tea-house at Miyongi the view is pas- 
 toral and pleasing ; homely rather than magnificent. 
 But behind the village towers a mighty mass of 
 rock covered with evergreen forest, and away behind 
 this, some couple of hours' walk distant, is a huge 
 jumble of broken hill and pinnacle and arch, what 
 the guide-book calls "nature in chaotic confusion." 
 After a long hour's walk up hill and down again and 
 up a long steep climb on a decidedly warm morning. 
 Old Phil said he had had enough chaos (pronouncing 
 the ch as in church) and would take the rest next time. 
 He seated himself to admire the prospect — one 
 worthy of all admiration — while Charlie and Alf 
 went on to see the First Natural Gateway and the 
 Beard-scraping Rock and the rest. Of course there 
 is a priest's house below the rock and a god on the 
 top thereof; the beard-scraping comes in but rarely, 
 for few Japs have any beard at all, and on those that 
 have one it is not a thing worth talking about. It is 
 a fanciful name enough, for there is, as a matter of 
 fact, quite room enough to scramble up between the 
 two rocks without rubbing your chin on either of 
 them ; it is your shins you have to look out for. At 
 the First Gateway — a great natural arch of rock — 
 behold Old Phil strolling on and defying them to 
 guess its height correctly. But he was far farthest 
 out himself, putting it at 200 feet, while it is in fact 
 not more than seventy or seventy-five. And so back 
 
;io6 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 to the only evil-smelling tea-house that they had the 
 misfortune to meet in Japan, where the Major 
 disported hinself with trying to play the guitar on a 
 samisen and learning from the nesan the correct way 
 to sit down respectfully in Japan. Get down on 
 your knees, turn your heels well out, your toes well 
 in, and sit right back into the cup formed by your 
 two feet so placed ; lay your hands, palms down- 
 wards, just in front of your knees, bend your head 
 till your forehead touches your hands, and there you 
 are. Tapioca went about crowing like a cock ; it is 
 supposed that he intended to convey to the nesan 
 that he wished for some chicken to eat. And then 
 ricksha and rail back to Tokio. 
 
lo; 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ISE. 
 
 Nangoya is some twelve hours by rail from Yoko- 
 hama and the route is full of beautiful scenery, when 
 you can see it ; but when it is all seen awry through 
 driving rain and heavy hanging clouds, the enjoy- 
 ment of it is reduced to a vanishing point. English 
 as the Japanese railways are in many respects, with 
 their name-boards and notice-boards and tickets all 
 printed and painted in that language, they have not 
 yet achieved the proud product of civilization known 
 as a railway refreshment bar. Consequently you 
 take your tiffin with you and eat it in the train. 
 When the carriage is full of a miscellaneous assort- 
 ment of people this is attended with some difficulty, 
 as Tapioca found when his bird fell into his whisky 
 and water, and tobacco-ash got mixed with the salt. 
 The Major looked forward with some misgiving to 
 a night at Nangoya ; he had read of the tea-house 
 there as typical of the extreme noise and discomfort 
 of a Japanese guest-house, and that in the book of a 
 traveller whose journey must have been no farther 
 back than 1886 or 1887. Incessant clatter of 
 arrivals, of bathers, of moving those sliding walls ; 
 the watchman tootling his trumpet in your room to 
 
io8 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 show he's all there — and so and so on. Evidently 
 things have very much changed since then. It is 
 not a tea-house at all ; it is the " Hotel du Progres " 
 — electric-lighted, furnished with beds and tables 
 and chairs, rooms for Europeans remote from the 
 Japanese side, decent food and liquor, quiet, com- 
 fortable, and not yet (thank goodness) improved to 
 the extent of banishing the girls from waiting on 
 you. " Kirei no musume," too, one of them is, as 
 the Major murmured softly. But we must be off 
 early in the morning, and ricksha to Miya and there 
 take steamer to cross over into Ise. A beautiful 
 morning ; the Two in good spirits and disposed to 
 make light of the scanty accommodation on the little 
 cockle-shell of a boat. But lo ! at the first port of 
 call (Yokkaichi) a clouding sky and a freshening 
 breeze ; and an hour or two after, a mighty wind and 
 thick rain — dirty weather that would be too much 
 for a much bigger and better found boat than this. 
 Nothing for it but to put back and anchor under a 
 lee shore. Tapioca toyed with his tiffin and passed ; 
 the Major ate his and made a mighty and successful 
 struggle to keep it ; Matsuda collapsed utterly and 
 would not be comforted. And into the little den of 
 a saloon, berthless, lavatoriless, bathless, behold they 
 thrust a small crowd of gentle Japs who were all 
 most obtrusively sick. Verily a cheery and blissful 
 way of spending an afternoon on a pleasure tour. 
 In the middle of the night — for they went to sleep 
 at dinner-time, there being no dinner — the Major 
 woke famishing, and, foraging round, found and 
 
Ise. 109 
 
 devoured the tiffin that should have been Matsuda's ; 
 so that when that disabled philosopher arose in the 
 morning in the calm weather and sought for some 
 breakfast — he found none. The morning was clear 
 and fine, and the travellers landed without further 
 adventure at Kamiyashiro ; but the misery of that 
 night in the Bay of Owari will remain a mournful 
 memory in their minds for many a year. The 
 ricksha run from the port to Furu-ichi is soon done, 
 and there they find the largest, best built and least 
 Europeanized of tea-houses that they had seen. Only 
 here did they observe the nesan sit respectfully down 
 to receive orders as is in accordance with Japanese 
 propriety ; and here were no electric lights, and very 
 little furniture, but many splendid costly silken quilts 
 for your bed. Charming waitresses too. What 
 would the Mamlatdar or old Daji Patil have thought, 
 or that old scoundrel the Wun, had they seen the 
 Sarkar, the Asoya Min, kneeling — clad in little but a 
 consciousness of his own virtue — to have his hair 
 combed by a laughing Japanese tea-house girl ? 
 Furu-ichi is in a way the most revered spot in Japan. 
 For here the gods descended to earth and gave to 
 the Land of the Rising Sun its birth as a kingdom 
 and a nation, and therewith its first Mikado. The 
 scenery is pleasing in a quiet way : nothing largely 
 picturesque, nothing grandiose ; homely, happy, 
 serene. The tomb of the First Mikado is here, and 
 shrines and temples stand about it, all, as ever, made 
 solemn and holy with groves of sad-hued stately 
 cryptomerias. And what a contrast between the 
 
I lo Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Shoguns' tombs and temples and these of the 
 Mikado. Those costly, elaborate, crowded with 
 excess of ornamentation exquisite in itself, but over- 
 powering, sickening, in its riotous superabundance ; 
 these plain, simple, absolutely undecorated save for 
 gilt or brass chrysanthemum at the end of the great 
 logs that lie crosswise on the top of the roof. The 
 immemorial custom of the place renders expensive 
 work and ornament impossible, for it is a rule, unal- 
 terable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, to pull 
 down everything each twenty-fifth year and rebuild 
 it with the beautiful white wood of the Japanese 
 cypress {Jiinoki) in exactly the same form as it was 
 before. The year of grace 1 890 happened to be the 
 twenty-fifth year ; and the Two, when they had 
 crossed the bridge over which no wheeled vehicle 
 but the Mikado's may go, and passed under the torii, 
 where even he must alight and walk, found every- 
 thing fresh from the carpenters' hands. The build- 
 ing and the palisades are strong and substantial, of 
 plain smooth wood ; the roofs are straight, not 
 curved and turned up at the ends as in the Sinico- 
 Japanese buildings at Nikko and elsewhere ; and at 
 right angles to the ridge of the roof are laid across 
 big logs projecting far over the roof on either 
 side — with what object it is impossible to say,- 
 unless it be to keep the roof on. (All over the 
 country, especially in the mountain gorges and 
 passes, you see the frail roofs of the chilets and 
 cottages loaded with stones, lest a typhoon bear 
 them bodily away.) 
 
Ise. 
 
 Ill 
 
 For a payment you may have performed for you 
 the religious service known as kangura. The 
 form of rehgion here is pure Shinto, and when 
 you have paid your dollars, you are admitted 
 into a matted room empty of all images and very 
 sparingly adorned. Fine chiks with red and purple 
 tassels to the cords of them hang round the walls ; 
 at the farthest end is an altar — a perfectly plain 
 wooden table, with nothing on it. (One globe-: 
 trotter describes in his book a large and appreciative 
 audience gathering to share in the show provided 
 by his dollars. There is nothing of the kind. The 
 curtain — a nearly plain blue cloth — which you 
 raised on entering, is let down behind you, and 
 none but those in your party enter with you.) 
 Enter first a simply dressed attendant, who, after 
 reverence to the altar, waves over you green 
 branches and twigs, brushing away, it may be 
 hoped, all worldly wickedness from you. Then 
 comes in the band — five men who take their seats, 
 three on one side, and two on the other, near 
 the altar, but below it. Then four young girls in 
 strange attire : long cream-coloured jacket, with red 
 and purple tassels hanging thereon as on the chik 
 cords, voluminous scarlet trousers, dragging a foot 
 or more behind them, so that it is a marvel how 
 they walk without tripping, and hair done in a fashion 
 of their own, adorned with multi-coloured gew-gaws 
 of sorts. These sit two on either side below the 
 musicians. Enter two more girls in like attire, 
 bearing plain wooden trays with offerings ; these 
 
112 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 they present kneeling to the two girls on the right 
 (or it may be left) side, who bear them with many 
 reverences to the altar, and lay the offerings there- 
 on. The trays are of the same white sweet wood 
 as the temples and tombs, and are shaped some- 
 thing like a caricature of the silk hat of civilization. 
 The operation is repeated, the girls on each side 
 bearing alternately the gifts to the altar, until 
 all are laid on it. Then the two who brought in 
 the offerings dance in front of the altar between 
 the musicians a strange figure, very curious and 
 picturesque in the half light and the old-world and 
 impossible costumes, the musicians all the while 
 playing melancholy but not wholly unmusical and 
 tuneless strains on their instruments, and one or 
 two of them singing in somewhat nasal and ear- 
 piercing accents. The dance over, the two girls 
 kneel below the other two girls on one side, and 
 the priest who shall read prayers comes in, and 
 (after reverence, of course,) kneels where the girls 
 have just been dancing. He wears quiet-coloured 
 robes, and the head-dress of ancient Japan. After 
 prostration and silence, he unfolds a large scroll, 
 and with an affected but sonorous twang gives forth 
 words which (Matsuda says) imply that strangers 
 have come from a far country, and paid their 
 offerings to the god, and that the priest humbly 
 prays his godship to do well for them in the future. 
 Then exit the priest ; the offerings — eatables of 
 sorts and sake — are removed with the same cere- 
 monial as was used in placing them, and given to 
 
Ise. 
 
 1 1 
 
 the stranger whose coin paid for them ; out go girls 
 and orchestra, and the service is over. Before the 
 show began, Matsuda begged his two charges not 
 to laugh at it ; but they felt no inclination to : there 
 was nothing ridiculous in it ; it was strange, 
 interesting, not unimpressive. A dance of a far 
 different nature awaited them in the evening. 
 Tapioca was not inclined to go to it ; after rickshaing 
 over muddy roads and along the bunds and kazins 
 of paddy-fields all the afternoon to Asamayama (not 
 the mighty mountain of fire beyond Ikao, but a 
 bit of a hill near the sea), and Futamingaura with its 
 sacred but not specially noteworthy rocks and rocky 
 islets, and getting not a little damp in the process, 
 for the afternoon turned to rain, he did not feel 
 inclined to leave comfortable quarters to march 
 through mud and slush to see any kind of an 
 Eastern dance. " They are all rot," he said ; " they 
 are not dances, only attitudinizing, and mortal slow 
 at that ; when you've seen one, you've seen all, and 
 I saw quite enough at Nagasaki." But Matsuda 
 kept urging that this dance was danced only in Ise, 
 and no gentleman should visit Ise and not see it — 
 else why come to Ise ? and it was very, very fine. 
 The Major, too, said that he was going to see all 
 there was to be seen, and forth he dragged the un- 
 willing one to a house not far off After a bit of a 
 wait, they are ushered into an oblong room, and 
 take their seats (or their lying-downs, for there are 
 no seats) in the centre of one long side. And the 
 
 I 
 
114 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 orchestra havingf come in and taken its seat in 
 the middle of the room, behold on the opposite 
 side and the two short sides the floor rises and 
 forms a stage, and the lamps float up behind the 
 red hangings, and a railing of carved wood rises 
 round the stage, and more lamps come out from 
 the sides. Alf began to cheer up ; all this stage 
 management must mean something good. Then 
 the dancing girls appear — a score or two dozen of 
 them, coming half from either corner right and left 
 of the spectators, and v/alking along the stage 
 that filled the three sides of the room until they 
 filled it. There, standing each in her place, each 
 performed a kind of flip-flap with her hands, and a 
 mild little kick with one foot. " You must note 
 them now," said Matsuda ; " you will not see them 
 again." The Two noted that they were all precious 
 ugly, but the costumes were unusual and effective. 
 After about five minutes they departed, each half set, 
 by the door opposite to that by which they had 
 entered ; and " that is all," said the guide. Alf most 
 magnanimously refrained from the " I told you so " 
 style of argument, and Charlie went silently and 
 savagely to bed. A dance ? Bosh. It is, let me 
 whisper in a male ear, merely a method of showing 
 off" the inmates of the house a little more effectively 
 than the usual style of sitting in rows behind the 
 bars of the houses in the Yoshiwara. 
 
 It was fortunate that Charlie took kindly, and Alf 
 was reconciled, to ricksha-riding, for they had a dose 
 
Ise. [ 1 5 
 
 of it next day. " There is a train at Tsunge at 5.15 
 P.M. by which Kioto is reached at 8 ; shall I telegraph 
 for dinner ? " asked Matsuda ; and he did, and the 
 21 ris (supposed to be 5 2| miles) had to be rick- 
 sha'd somehow by 5 p.m. A perfect day luckily; 
 not too bright, but clear ; and a charming rural 
 district to go through, fertile, prosperous, populous, 
 and pretty. Through Matsuzaka (6 ri) to Tsu 
 (5 ri more), a big town, where halt for tiffin and 
 change of ricksha men (the leader has to be changed 
 more frequently than the wheeler when you are 
 going tandem fashion), and Mukumoto (4 ri on), 
 where halt for a rest : 15 ri in six hours ; 4 hours 
 more to do the last 6 ri — surely ample time. But 
 the country changes. No longer roads level and 
 good-going, with villages and hamlets all along 
 them ; the children toddling merrily from or to school ; 
 here a gentle sportsman of Japan bicycling along, 
 there another with a marvellous fowling-piece of 
 remote antiquity going out for to shoot ; again, along 
 string of wrestlers marching to the next place where 
 they will give an exhibition of their art. To the next 
 stage, Seki (2 ri), the road is a good deal up and 
 down hill, and rather hard going, and beyond Seki 
 it is a regular ghat road, one a good deal knocked 
 out of shape too by the railway that is being made 
 through the hills on from Tsunge to Yokkaichi, where 
 the station is already built. A good bit of engineer- 
 ing is required, some longish tunnelling and big 
 bridging. Half way between Kitazaiki (2 ri), the 
 last stage, and Tsunge, the top of the ghat is 
 
 I 2 
 
it6 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 reached, and then what a splendid down-hill run 
 with home in sight ! Down we rattle and up to 
 Tsunge station at 4.45 — half-an-hour before the 
 train starts. Well done ; this is really good. 
 Imagine the dismay when it appeared that there 
 was no 5.15 train at all, and none till 7.30 ; imagine, 
 if you can, the choice blessings that Alf and Charlie 
 showered on Japanese railway bandobast, and the 
 miserable state to which they reduce Matsuda. All 
 that excellent going wasted because the railway 
 department would not publish correct time-tables ; 
 and no dinner to be had but the remains of the 
 tiffin. Crossing a river in the morning, the bridge 
 over which had been (as usual) washed away, 
 Matsuda had had a bad time, for Alf wanted to 
 know how it was that bridges and railways 
 so often got washed away in Japan. Mat- 
 suda said no bridge could be built to stand the 
 current of this river in flood. " Of course not, if it's 
 built on a wrong principle as this is," said Alf 
 Matsuda made out that the principle was all right, 
 but the material, namely wood, not strong enough. 
 " Then make one of iron, on a right principle ; " but 
 no, it is cheaper to make a cheap one of wood, 
 which is sure to be washed away periodically, and 
 to rebuild it of wood when required, than to make a 
 costly fabric which the floods are equally sure to 
 carry away. " But make it so that the floods can't 
 breach it." " It can't be done," said Matsuda. " Of 
 course not by Japanese ; but get the English on it." 
 "No man can do it," said the patriotic guide. In 
 
Ise. 1 1 7 
 
 that argument he had at least some show to 
 make ; but in this about the railway times he was 
 defenceless, and had to surrender his country 
 at discretion to the maledictions of the foreigners. 
 But all evils end sooner or later ; and weary 
 and sad, our travellers reached the Yaami Hotel 
 after midnight, too sleepy for supper or for any- 
 thing but bed. 
 
ii8 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 KIOTO THEATRES END OF FARTHEST EAST. 
 
 Kioto is as pleasant a place to stay In as there is in 
 Japan. The Yaami Hotel stands on a rising ground 
 overlooking the city, and it is a pretty outlook across 
 the town to the hills beyond. They do you well 
 enough in the Yaami. Just below it is a little 
 temple whence the girls look up laughingly at you 
 as they walk round and round it, dropping at each 
 circuit something into the box by the door. Kioto 
 is par excellence the place of the curio-monger, the 
 maker of lacquer, of cloisonne, of porcelain. Here 
 may be bought silks old and new and embroideries, 
 and cheap things and dear ; the long laborious 
 process of lacquering and cloisonn^ work and vase- 
 making may be watched and seen in their various 
 stages, and much amusement and interest may be 
 drawn therefrom. Here, too, is bronze work, some 
 good, some indifferent. The ways of curio-buyers are 
 various and their tastes diverse. Old Phil was 
 always fetched by bright colours — the brighter the 
 better, and the more of them with glaring juxta- 
 positions of the very brightest, the more enamoured 
 he became of the piece. Alf liked many and small 
 things of modest price, while Charlie must needs 
 
Kioto. 119 
 
 prefer a few things of high price. The Merciful 
 Broker was a perfect godsend to the seller; he 
 seemed greatly to enjoy paying all that was asked 
 for an article, or for choice even a little more, and 
 never bothered about bargaining or beating him 
 down. There is a lot of very poor work done now- 
 a-days, and there is also still a lot of very good 
 work, so that you have to know what you are about 
 if you would avoid being let in. It is doubtful 
 whether you had not better let it alone and buy at 
 Liberty's in London ; there you will be certain of 
 buying what you want and getting your money's 
 worth. For all that there is a certain fascination in 
 buying curios yourself on the spot, so as to be able 
 to say hereafter, " Oh yes, I picked up that little 
 thing at Ikeda's in Kioto;" and the Major was unable 
 to resist it, and got rather more than he wanted. 
 The porcelain is, much of it, made from clay brought 
 from Satsuma, in the southern island ; there are 
 various pieces of old Satsuma ware to be seen in the 
 shops. But it takes a connoisseur to know all about 
 these things, and none of the five who met in Kioto 
 pretended to be a chinamaniac, or a specially cultured 
 and aesthetic person. What is the good, anyhow, of 
 being an expert and buying things that are under- 
 stood and appreciated only by experts ? The persons 
 who really know all about it are x&ry few ; the great 
 mass of your friends and relations will not know a 
 decent copy from a rare original ; so why pay a 
 fancy price for the real thing, when you can get for 
 an " ornery" sort of price what will please yourself 
 
I20 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 and them just as much to look at ? So let us seek 
 out what pleases our eyes, and let us assure ourselves 
 as best we may that it is good quality of its kind, and 
 buy it and be therewith content. Do you like these 
 cups and small bowls — said to be Satsuma — each 
 with innumerable (the vendor says 3,000) butterflies 
 painted on its surface — each minute insect painted 
 fully, carefully, correctly ? No, I don't. It is 
 wonderful, laborious, most skilful, but I prefer some- 
 thing of which I can appreciate the beauty without 
 the aid of magnifying-glass and miscroscope. Try, 
 then, these tea sets, coffee sets, napkin rings, of 
 Western shape. Thanks ; but I prefer something 
 distinctively Japanese in style as well as in material 
 and make. Here are damoscene plates and salvers 
 — metal inlaid on metal, such as Indian art- workers 
 also turn out ; but of finer thread, finer pattern, 
 finer finish, (And mind not to pay double the price 
 for them as Alf and Charlie did, while Old Phil got 
 them at somewhere near the real cost.) For 
 cloisonne work you must pay for finish. You may 
 get it at any price ; but place a cheap bit beside a 
 carefully selected expensive piece, and note the 
 difference. So too with lacquer ; it is not all lacquer 
 that will lie at the bottom of the sea for eighteen 
 months and come up uninjured as did certain pieces 
 in the Uyeno Museum, or that will last for centuries 
 unimpaired as in the temples and shrines of Nikko. 
 Swords may be bought cheap and in any quantity, 
 for now that the old Two-sworded Class (Samurai) is 
 not allowed to wear a sword, all the brands and dirks 
 
Kioto. 121 
 
 in the country are useless and find their way to the 
 shops. Yet even now for a blade by Muramasa or 
 other famous maker a goodly store of dollars must 
 be laid down. 
 
 But there are other things to see and to do in 
 Kioto besides inspect curios, modern and antique. 
 First there is a big bell — not so big as the broken- 
 down old monster near the ruined, weed-grown 
 pagoda at INIingun, but having the advantage of 
 being duly slung and sound and full-sounding, with 
 its temple near it, extensive, ample, holy. The 
 Chion Temple is many-roomed, and the sliding 
 walls are much painted with valuable works of 
 famous artists. But at Hongwanji there are rooms 
 and paintings even more elaborate and renowned. 
 This temple was once a castle miles away from 
 Kioto, but was removed bodily and rebuilt in its 
 present site and dedicated to religious use long ago. 
 In the largest hall — looking low from its extreme 
 length and width, and filled with designs of dis- 
 tinctly Chinese type — Matsuda states that the young 
 Princes of Wales stayed when in Kioto ; though it 
 is not easy to guess why any one should wish to live 
 in a place so ill-lighted, so gloomy in its seclusion 
 and low-roofed amplitude. Here is a garden — the 
 usual cramped little space, with corkscrew paths 
 amidst contorted trees, and bamboo bridges mean- 
 dering erratically across stagnant and unwhole- 
 some-looking ponds. In front of the main building 
 is a very fine old " Icho " tree, fabled to spout forth 
 water and extinguish any fire that should dare to 
 
122 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 lay flame on the temple. The other Hongwanji is 
 rebuilding — a mighty big temple it will be too, 
 costing goodness knows how many millions of yen. 
 And in a corner you find a huge pile of ropes of 
 human hair offered by the devout as their contribu- 
 tion to aid the building ; and a little printed placard 
 (in English) informs you all about the number and 
 length and weight of these curious coils. L forget 
 what was the amount of the weight of these " awful 
 tresses that still keep the savour and shade " of their 
 human origin, but it was something very large. 
 English greets you again as you enter the Temple 
 of the Thousand (or is it i,ooi ?) Kwannon, and 
 begs you from a wooden board over the door " Don't 
 give a step with your shoes." But here the great 
 shoe question is got over by dragging linen bags 
 over your boots. (Elsewhere in Japanese house and 
 tea-house and temple, there is nothing for it but 
 to unboot ; and a very cleanly and commendable 
 custom it seems to me to be.) There is no beauty 
 in the i,ooo Kwannon — long rows of gilt wooden 
 figures, upright, each with some slight difference 
 from the others, but all alike to a mere general 
 glance ; many-handed, haloed, impossible ; 500 on 
 either side of a group of the monstrous frowning 
 gods familiar to us in China, hideous, vengeful, 
 grotesque. And many more temples are there if 
 you care to see them, and are not wearied to death 
 of pilgrimage to sacred shrineS. One really begins 
 to doubt whether religion was devised for any other 
 purpose than to provide at vast cost endless sights 
 
Kioto. 123 
 
 for the sight-seer. The Daibutsu is coarse, com- 
 mon, and ought to be burnt, as it has been more 
 than once. 
 
 Notwithstanding the English that greets you on 
 temples and in shop signs (such as Glog and Soap- 
 Seller ; Biscuits, Bread and Spongy Cakes, — uncon- 
 scious veracity in that adjective), Kioto is essentially 
 Japanese. The whole aspect of the place is un- 
 Europeanized, clean, quaint, and therefore pleasing. 
 And besides this and its art wares, it has dancing 
 and singing girls, better, it boasts, than all other 
 in the Mikado's dominions. The Major rather 
 hankered after seeing them ; but Tapioca, after his 
 experience of the Ise ones utterly refused ; and the 
 Major was too crushed by his defeat on that 
 occasion to insist on this. But other amusements 
 there are — streetsful of them : Aunt Sally sort of 
 arrangements, three shies a penny (5 for 2 sen, I 
 think it is) ; horse-riding, hire a horse and ride him 
 at a gentle jog round a little railed-in space, at 
 so many sen a round ; the sight of this amused 
 Tapioca greatly ; then fencing show^s, reciters, wild 
 beasts, shows of beasts supposed to be curious, but 
 extremely tame ; catchpenny menageries ; and last, 
 but not least, theatres. In the men's theatre — that 
 is the one in which the parts are taken all by men — - 
 the play was a farcical comedy, and the dialect was 
 (so Matsuda declared) so local, so bucolic, that not 
 even he could make out what it was all about. In 
 the women's theatre (all parts played by women : 
 no men admitted on any pretext), the play was a 
 
124 Farthest East, Sotitk and West. 
 
 romantic drama, and Matsuda proved a capable 
 interpreter. The acting was very far from bad, the 
 bodily action small, and somewhat conventional ; 
 but the facial expression varied, pointed, appropriate, 
 and not more exaggerated than stage requirements 
 called for. The plot was simple enough. An 
 Old Lady, widow of a Daimio, has a son — one- 
 eyed and mis-shaped, but a man of wealth and 
 influence. A neighbouring Daimio desires to get him 
 into his power, and annex his feudal domain. Enter to 
 Old Lady a retainer of neighbouring Daimio bearing 
 gifts of food, begging their acceptance. Old Lady 
 thinks she'd rather not ; retainer presses ; long and 
 animated discussion ; Old Lady justly suspecting 
 poison in the food (Timeo Danoas is an old tale 
 of world-wide truth), kicks the gifts ignominiously 
 over. Exit incensed retainer. Enter (after inter- 
 val) neighbouring Daimio, bringing other gifts ; at 
 first all politeness, then arguments, threats, brand- 
 ishing of swords ; Old Lady immovable. End of 
 act. Next act : Old Lady has been carried off 
 to neighbouring Daimio's house ; One-eyed Son 
 returns from journey, arrives seeking for her, 
 summoned by letter sent to him by a person in 
 the house ; retainers forbid him entrance, put him 
 off ; plot to shoot him ; man hides behind tree ; 
 One-Eyed Son smells rat, produces box which he 
 breaks open with sword, pistol within goes off, and 
 shoots man in tree ; alarms, excursions ; explana- 
 tions by sender of letter ; duel between One-eyed 
 Son and another ; Old Lady, rushing out to stop the 
 
Theatres. 1 2 5 
 
 fray, receives sword points in breast ; death of Old 
 Lady ; finale. The scenery was simple enough ; 
 but the girls were well made up ; and the scene- 
 shifting system is curious, the stage revolving, 
 until the scene set behind comes round to the front. 
 So is the long raised way up to the stage, by which 
 some characters (those coming from a journey or 
 from a distance) enter at the back of the pit, and 
 make their way right through the audience to the 
 stage, acting as they go. Extremely conventional, 
 some of the stage business. The superbly attired 
 Daimio and Lady must have attendants to arrange 
 their dresses ; and these appear in common every- 
 day cooli-dress and shrink about the stage — invisi- 
 ble in imagination, but only too visible in reality 
 — or bring in samisen or other property required in 
 the piece. When the One-eyed Son shot the man 
 behind the tree, there was a very distinct interval 
 between the blow which fired his shot and the re- 
 port thereof; and when the report did come it 
 came from behind the tree. And so when the man 
 fell dead, in came a cooli with a bit of red cloth, 
 which he extended while the defunct got up and 
 walked away under its cover. On the whole, it 
 was decidedly interesting ; the dresses handsome, 
 and in complete accordance with the fashion of old 
 Japan ; and the whole performance far in advance 
 of anything theatrical to be seen in India or Burma, 
 I mean of the indigenous theatre ; the English 
 theatre has, of course, been copied in India, so that 
 you may see a Bengali pantomime in Calcutta, 
 
126 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 or the Comedy of Errors in Marathi at Poona. 
 Acting thefe is in the Burmese Zatpwe, good act- 
 ing too, in its way, clever and racy of the soil ; but 
 the accessories and style are barbarous as compared 
 with Japan : satyric dances to the drama of So- 
 phocles. The Major being fond of things theatrical, 
 went to see a performance of the forty-seven Ronins 
 at a theatre in Yokohama. The general story of 
 these Ronins is well enough known to any one who 
 has read Mitford's Tales of Old Japan; and any 
 one caring about things Japanese who has not read 
 that excellent book, had better read it soon. But 
 the play introduced many incidents not detailed in 
 the story ; and here as in Kioto the acting had 
 very considerable merit, and the stage business was 
 as conventional as could be. One Ronin who has in- 
 tended to take part in the killing of the enemy is too 
 late, and, as in honour bound, kills himself, and com- 
 mits hara kiri on the stage ; but there is no attempt 
 to show any blood-letting, and his dying is not quite 
 so elaborate as Irving's. The fighting is even more 
 stagey than in a Shakespearian play, and the head 
 of the foe, when it is cut off (behind the scenes) and 
 exposed in front, is the woodenest head you ever saw. 
 So too you cannot imagine more palpable cloth than 
 the pond into which one combatant knocks another, 
 or a more obvious lift than the one by which the up- 
 set one — dry as an Indian April day — returns to the 
 upper air and combat of the stage. A good deal of 
 killing goes on in the course of the piece ; and the 
 musicians, at the side, not in front of the stage, 
 
End of Farthest East. 127 
 
 sing their comments and advice Greek-choruswise 
 during the progress of the action. The music, 
 though not charming to EngUsh ears, is at least not 
 ear-sphtting, outrageous ; rather shrill and apt to the 
 minor key. 
 
 There are many charming excursions to be made 
 from Kioto : to Nara, an old capital, to Osaka, to 
 Lake Biwa, to the Katsura rapids. For the latter 
 you ricksha out across the thickly cultivated plain 
 (what Matsuda says is indigo is certainly a very 
 different plant from the Indian ; but indigo there 
 certainly is, else where are all these innumerable 
 blue kimonos and jackets and breeches dyed ?) 
 until you come to the range of hills which seem to 
 enclose Kioto round on every side ; and then the 
 way lies up a little hill-pass, with the usual excellent 
 road. At a tea-house on the way, notice a pine 
 dwarfed and trained out laterally till its branches 
 extend for yards on either side the trunk, forming a 
 hedge ; and observe the bamboo growing in plan- 
 tations in single stems, not in clumps as you are 
 used to seeing them. The Japanese is as fond as 
 the Burman of young bamboo shoots as food. 
 Arrived at the head of the rapids, a capacious boat 
 of the lightest imaginable draught receives travel- 
 lers and 'shas and coolis and all, and the current 
 carries you rapidly along. If you haven't done 
 much of that sort of thing before, it is pleasantly 
 exciting ; for when the stretch of rapid is steep and 
 long continued, and a trifle mixed as to which is 
 practicable water and which rock, your boat gets an 
 
128 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 impetus that whirls it along, bumping on the waves 
 so that the thin bottom bulges and bends with the 
 beating of them, at such a pace that you admire 
 hugely the skill with which the four boatmen keep 
 it off the abrupt or rounded boulders safe into the 
 comparatively placid pool that lies between each 
 rapid. There is one bit of very picturesque 
 scenery, where a small stream forces its way 
 through a wall of rock into the main stream ; and as 
 you come quietly down the last stretch into Arashi, 
 the wooded hill-sides are lovely with the many- 
 changing tints of autumn. Here come in May 
 time crowds of Japanese to picnic opposite the 
 cherry-trees, and feast their eyes on the blossoms 
 hereof— the fruit they do not grow ; and here the 
 globe-trotter feeds more materially on delicious 
 fish from the stream, and is waited on by girls that 
 in the national style squat humbly on the floor, 
 watching you while you feed, until, in despair of 
 getting them to laugh or lark, you ungallantly ask 
 them to go. 
 
 The Major and his friend rejoiced at meeting in 
 Kioto again the Nebraska Sportsman and his party, 
 not forgetting Kinzu the boy ; and heard all about 
 their adventures on the Nagasendo ; and then de- 
 cided to return by easy stages by rail to Yokohama. 
 This gave them a day at Nangoya and time to 
 examine its castle— a very large one of the old 
 Japanese feudal times, strong withal, and spacious. 
 Here is quartered a large garrison, and you see many 
 a French-uniformed little Jap with his rifle and 
 
End of Farthest East. 129 
 
 bayonet doing sentry-go. I wonder what sort of 
 stuff they would make in action with European 
 troops. The Major was inclined to think they 
 would make but a poor show. The Jap is too like 
 the Burman ; individually capable of great personal 
 bravery, facing death courageously ; and collectively 
 utterly incapable of sustaining organized formation 
 under the tension of a protracted struggle or the 
 discouragement of a first reverse. The cavalry are, 
 beyond question, useless except as ornament, and 
 not much at that. The Jap, in this respect unlike 
 the Burman, can't ride worth a dam (the equivalent, 
 I believe, of one-tenth of a farthing), and the 3,000 or 
 so of cavalry that the army contains would be wiped 
 out in no time by a troop or two of — say the H.C.C. 
 A parade did not come off at any time that our 
 travellers could arrange to see it ; but if they had a 
 fair sample of the drill and set-up of the men in the 
 example they saw one day in Tokio, why, then the 
 infantry are worth no more than the cavalry. Seven 
 men with bugles came along — six buglers and a 
 bugle-major, it would appear ; they loafed along two 
 and two, slouchingly, all out of step, uniforms not 
 only shabby but ill put on — no smartness anywhere 
 about them ; and all the while they performed a sort 
 of independent firing on their bugles, each man 
 giving in his own time his own version of what 
 calls he pleased ; melancholy and grotesque caco- 
 phonies, caricatures of the stirring notes of reveille 
 and last post and the rest of them. " Thus with a 
 grating and uncertain sound " did " they bleat and 
 
 K 
 
130 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 bleat and bleat." The glory of the castle of Nangoya 
 is .the pair of golden dolphins— or fish of some 
 hitherto undiscovered species — that adorn the top- 
 most roof-ridge ; they are of great size, but at that 
 height look small, and are said to be worth 180,000 
 yen. Nangoya boasts too of its art-ware — cheap 
 porcelains and lacquered cloisonnds. And if you 
 should ever travel that way by rail, you will find, 
 after passing glimpses of Lake Biwa, and before you 
 reach Nangoya, a bit of mountain scenery which in 
 the glorious sunlight of an autumn afternoon (the 
 afternoon light is the best for all landscapes) will 
 give a feast for your eyes that you ought not to miss. 
 So, too, between Nangoya and Shidzuoka there are 
 some pleasing views ; while from Shidzuoka almost 
 to Kodzu you have — if only it be fine weather — ever- 
 changing and charming prospects of magnificent old 
 Fuji. And so the Two returned to Yokohama and 
 spent there many days idling and buying photos, and 
 growling horribly (at least as far as concerns the 
 Major) at the bitter biting north-east winds that swept 
 in from the sea ; making excursions now to Enoshima, 
 now around the environs (there are many tea-houses 
 with manners adapted, as they suppose, to please the 
 foreigner), again to Tokio to see the jail. Matsuda 
 was generally better dressed than the Major, who 
 rather affected shikar cloth and puttis, except in 
 towns, and then it was white drill or brown holland 
 or flannels and jharan ; but on the visit to the jail he 
 surpassed himself, and was certainly the biggest 
 swell of the party. I must say I do not know 
 
End of Farthest East. 131 
 
 where else three strangers could go up to a jail and 
 say, "We are So-and-so, and wish to see the jail," 
 and would thereupon be at once admitted and shown 
 all over it by an extremely polite, intelligent, and 
 information-giving official. Yet this can you do in 
 Tokio. Matsuda gave the Major several steps in 
 promotion so as to rank him with at least a Chief 
 Commissioner, and made the Huguenot out this 
 great officer's bosom friend and trusted counsellor. 
 With much bowing (it is a thing to see, else you 
 cannot believe it, the amount of bowing that a Jap 
 meeting friends puts in in the course of a single 
 interview), permission is given by the European- 
 clothed superintendent, and a European -uniformed 
 policeman or warder under his orders shows them 
 all over the whole establishment. At the end, the 
 superintendent again, with tea and cakes and polite 
 inquiries (through the interpreter). The Japanese 
 are almost too polite ; it is a little overpowering at 
 times. Yet sometimes they are impolite enough, 
 A fat old priest in a railway compartment was 
 occupying with his bundles and kit and portly 
 person room enough for two men and a boy ; enter 
 a crowd, enough to fill every seat, amongst them one 
 lady ; yet never an inch of his excessive share of 
 seat space did the old boy yield. Nevertheless, 
 when he got out he raised his hat and bowed to 
 every one in the compartment. 
 
 And so at last curios are packed and despatched, 
 and Matsuda paid and certificated and bidden fare- 
 well to ; and the Tokio Maru carries them to 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Kobe, there to wait until that most excellent ship the 
 Kobe Maru shall take them to Shanghai. A short 
 voyage, with far better views of the coast than from 
 the P. and O. boat, for the latter kept much farther 
 out to sea ; the Tokio Maru runs in close under the 
 land, and the coast scenery is worth seeing. And 
 much pleasant talk with an artistic fellow-traveller 
 on travelling and yachting and sketching, and the 
 atmosphere of Japan, which, it appears, is somewhat 
 hard and not tender, more like Italian than any 
 other atmosphere ; and about Balzac, and the Her- 
 rhetic Philosophy, and Sir Edwin Arnold, and the 
 truthless stories about him and his new book ; and 
 many other things in heaven and earth and else- 
 where. Kobe is a pleasant place in which to loiter 
 in the late autumn. Sheltered from the north-east 
 by the hills behind it, it is far milder than Yokohama ; 
 it is prettier, both in natural scenery and in its settle- 
 ment, which is managed by a municipality ; and the 
 residents are good fellows, friendly and hospitable. 
 Globe-trotters go to see the Waterfall, which 
 residents most carefully shun ; and they get 
 pestered outrageously by most civilized tea-house 
 girls. There are various excursions to be made — ^to 
 the Moon Temple, to Arami, to Mino Glen and 
 Waterfall, to the islands of the Inland Sea ; and 
 Osaka may be done from here. It is a big town, 
 full of canals and bridges and electric light and 
 missionaries. The citadel is famous for its size and 
 the enormous measurements and weight of the stones 
 of its walls. There is no castle left in it ; only 
 
End of Farthest East. 133 
 
 barrack-rooms and store-rooms and the commandant's 
 and officers' quarters. On the topmost platform 
 is an old gun, and over it a notice-board states that 
 "No person but those who are capacitated to 
 manage the cannon can touch it." Shop sign-boards 
 are erratic as usual: "Seller in foreign articles;" 
 " Book selling for all useful edition." And then 
 at daybreak away for Shanghai on the most comfort- 
 able of all boats, the Kobe Maru : deck cabins 
 larger and better fitted than any yet experienced, 
 large saloon and good table, and a skipper of the 
 right sort. The weather was kind this time, and all 
 revelled in perfect calm and clear bright air as they 
 passed through the beauties of the Inland Sea and 
 out through the Straits of Simonoseki. Much whist 
 with the captain in the chart-room, and much com- 
 paring of notes between departing parties of globe- 
 trotters. Was Japan overrated ? Yes, on the whole 
 it was ; more than that, thought the Australian 
 signer, it was wholly a fraud, and, once seen, never 
 to be seen again. But the general verdict was that 
 it was not so bad, but by no means the Elysium 
 that romantic and imaginative pendrivers have made 
 it out. And the Japanese, what of them ? Certainly 
 the most capable people in the East ; what other 
 tribe or family or nation could have adopted, and 
 made their own in a brief twenty years, all the 
 learning, the science, the practical energy of the 
 West ? And their morality ? 
 
 " We had better not discuss that," said the 
 skipper ; and proceeded to relate experiences extend- 
 
134 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 ing right down to the Loochoo Islands. AH that 
 can be fairiy said is that the standard of morality is 
 different ; for any deviation from that standard is just 
 as much (or as little) fatal to the transgressor as any 
 deviation from the European standard is to the 
 Western sinner. Some think it an awful thing that 
 the daughter of " poor but honest parents " should 
 sell herself for money down ; but, awful or not, is it 
 not just as common in the West as in the East, 
 with the sole difference that there is more hypocrisy 
 about it in the West ? There is just as much 
 morality in the one as in the other, and just as many 
 immoral or unmoral persons. The matter of decency 
 and modesty in the way of clothing is such a purely 
 conventional question that it is not worth discussing. 
 But it is certainly to be wished that when the high- 
 placed Jap learns English, and adopts European 
 clothes and fashion of feeding, he would not omit to 
 learn the Western conventionalities of good breeding. 
 The Kobe Maru belongs to the Nippon Yusen 
 Kaisha — a Japanese company with a State guaran- 
 tee — and of course Jap gentlemen travelling by her 
 have a fair claim to good seats at table. Yet it is 
 not pleasant to hear the admiral, seated on the 
 captain's right hand, afflicted with a bad cold and 
 clearing his nose and throat most noisily without the 
 aid of handkerchief or other extraneous assistance. 
 Nor is unrestrained and resonant eructation at 
 meals pleasing to the Western ear. However, they 
 all leave at Nagasaki, and we get in exchange a 
 detachment of Shanghai people who have run over 
 
End of Farthest East. 135 
 
 (as they often do) just for the change. Nagasaki is 
 thought by some travellers to be the prettiest 
 harbour in the world ; not the finest, but the most 
 charming in its natural scenery. Alf was content to 
 view its beauties from on board ; but the skipper 
 said the road out to Ava was a pretty one. " Ava," 
 thought the Major, " what is the name of that 
 ruined capital doing out here ? Ava, a place of 
 miles of crumbling walls waiting to be pulled down 
 and made into roadways, of scattered little hamlets, 
 ruined pagodas, great tamarind trees, sylvan and 
 park-like scenery where was once a famous city." 
 So he went to see what the Japanese Ava was, and 
 had a pleasant ricksha drive to the top of the pass, 
 with a fine view of Shimibarat and sea and inlet 
 and rocky promontory ; Ava a little fishing village 
 under the corner of the hill. It is pretty all about 
 Nagasaki ; and here through the town comes a bevy 
 of pretty young geisha girls, all dressed in their best, 
 with faces painted, and bearing each a wand of 
 artificial flowers. Ah, well, it is time to go ! The 
 anchor is weighed, and as we steam westwards down 
 the long entrance of the harbour the moon, past her 
 full, rises from behind the hills, and we bid farewell, 
 "with lips but half regretful," to Japan and all its 
 discomforts and its joys. Good-bye to all of you — 
 " O Mat San, O Hana San," and the rest, " Sayonara, 
 iroonna," farewell. Past the lighthouse, out of the 
 clear blue waters of Japan into the muddy green and 
 brown of China seas. On to Shanghai, where 
 behold Old Phil, tired of travelling and bent on 
 
136 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 returning to his own country ; with whom the Two 
 wandered about for several days, to the Bubbhng 
 Well, to the Garden Tea-house — how different from 
 a Japanese tea-house ! — admiring the Chinese ladies 
 of the whole world and the half with their tiny feet, 
 their long finger-nails cased in golden sheaths, their 
 garments of unimaginably crude blue and pink, 
 painted faces, gummed tea-potty hair ; to the smok- 
 ing and opium rooms — crowded, stuffy, unlovely to 
 the Western nose ; but orderly, quiet, respectable. 
 O ye Anti-opium Leaguers, when you have made 
 clean the inside of that vast City of London, and 
 made decent (for example) the gin palaces and the 
 Haymarket at midnight, then, and not before, will it 
 be seemly for you to set about making moral the 
 outside world. And not even then will you have 
 just cause to inveigh against all use of opium. Come 
 and live awhile in the East, and understand, if you 
 can, that the drug can be used, and is used, by vast 
 numbers moderately and rightly ; that only its over- 
 use is bad ; and that even its over-use is not more of 
 a calamity to the individual, and far less of a nuisance 
 to the community, than the over-use of alcohol. 
 Good-bye to Old Phil ; on by P. and O. to Hong- 
 kong. The P. and O. in the Far East is a fraud ; 
 it is not in it, for accommodation or comfort, with the 
 Japanese mail, or the French mail, or, for all I know, 
 with the German mail either. For meanness and 
 uncleanness of her cabins, for poverty of table and 
 for unnecessary liveliness in a choppy sea, it would 
 be hard to beat the English mail steamer which bore 
 
End of Farthest East. 137 
 
 Tapioca and the Major through the Lymoon Pass 
 into Hongkong again ; where they met once more 
 the Nebraska Sportsman and the Merciful Broker, 
 and at home in his own palace the Bank Bounder ; 
 and after a day or two of feast and song and dance 
 (and drink — in moderation), the Major said sadly 
 farewell to those good friends, and waited many 
 days for a ship wherein to sail across the sea to 
 Sydney. 
 
PART II. 
 
 FARTHEST SOUTH 
 
141 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HONGKONG TO SYDNEY. 
 
 The Eastern and Australian Steam Navigation 
 Company boasts of being the pioneer of steam navi- 
 gation between Farthest East and Farthest South, 
 and loves not the rival company, run by a firm 
 whom it calls The Jackals of the East. But if it 
 wishes to gain the sympathy of the travelling public, 
 it must get better boats. It is, I believe, doing so, 
 for the Tannadice is sold ; but the sister ship, the 
 Catterthun, may be safely recommended as not the 
 boat in which to make a more than three weeks' 
 voyage. The saloon will not seat more than 
 twelve, the cabins are very small, the rats are bold 
 and hungry. It is not pleasant to be chewed about 
 the nails and the quicks thereof while you sleep. 
 Nor is it pleasant to have a chief steward who is an 
 ass, and puts on the table, at least thrice, meat so 
 lofty as to shriek aloud. For all this, it was not 
 such a bad time, that twenty-four day spell from 
 Hongkong to Sydney. The north-east Monsoon 
 in China seas (I hate the China seas — they are 
 dirty, and so is the weather in them) was disastrous 
 to most of the passengers on board ; but that was 
 
142 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 past ill two days ; and then came a fortnight of 
 perfect weather as we passed down the lee of the 
 Philippines, land nearly always in sight, through the 
 Sulu Sea and on to Port Darwin. I love the 
 tropics. It is only near the Equator that an equable 
 temperature of a pleasant warmth is always to be 
 had ; there, to me, the air seems softer, the verdure 
 greener, the aspect of sea and land more lovely 
 than in colder climes. And I love seeing the 
 savages of tropic lands. There is not half the 
 interest and amusement to be got in going from 
 city to city of civilized men, as in "wandering far 
 away on from island unto island at the gateways of 
 the day " among strange peoples, brown, and yellow, 
 and black, lank-haired, frizzly-wigged, and shaved, 
 clothed or half-clothed, or unabashedly nude. With 
 what regret I see and land not, for want of time, 
 and pass by Luzon and Mindaro, Panay and Min- 
 danoa. We pass so close by Samboangan, the little 
 port and fort on Mindanoa, that almost one can 
 ' call to the men on the shore." A beautiful land^ 
 and curious peoples dwelling therein. Then after 
 the isles of Spain come the Further Indies of 
 the Dutch, below the Equator, which, for the 
 third time, I cross unsaluted. There is Amboyna, 
 ill-famed in history, but the loveliest garden in 
 the East, and Serhattan, and more ; and at last 
 Bathurst Island and the northern coast of Australia. 
 By no means lovely, these last : low-lying, level, 
 parched, and brown. These are not the tropics that 
 I love ; nor does my soul go forth affectionately to 
 
AUSTRALIAN BLACKS. 
 
Hongkong to Sydney. 143 
 
 the black man that I see here. He is indeed black, 
 and ugly withal. With which Dravidian race in 
 India is it that ethnologists have sought to link him ? 
 Was it the Gond ? I have certainly seen in India 
 hillmen as black and as unprepossessing. And 
 probably the black man of Australia would have 
 done as decently well as the wild man of Indian 
 woods had he been as decently dealt with. Indeed, 
 stories are extant, and I believe true, of their kindly 
 entreating the white men who first strayed among 
 them ; but the des^e of the white men for their land, 
 and their own objection to vacating, soon brought 
 that to an end. And now, except as regards the 
 few friendlies or tame blacks,, it seems to be a case 
 of shooting them at sight — if oral yarns of northern 
 whites may be taken without the proverbial grain. It 
 is only in the North that the wild black survives ; 
 and there he is few, relatively to the whole popula- 
 tion of the continent, but still not so very few 
 relatively to the white population of the northern 
 portions only. 
 
 Port Darwin is emphatically not picturesque. It 
 is a big land-encircled bay, with lots of room for 
 many ships ; but the land is monotonous, unrelieved 
 by any striking feature. And the way to it is 
 through ticklish passages, wherein course rapid 
 currents amongst deadly rocks. You cannot pass 
 the Vernons except in daylight. Palmerston is the 
 dreariest place, bar none, that I have ever seen. 
 Are not those mangrove swamps lining the shores 
 of the bay ? A little pier runs out from the end of 
 
144 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 the little railway on which there is a bi-weekly train 
 to and from Pine Creek (or some such name). Not 
 a ship in harbour except our own, and a couple of 
 Government launches ; no boats, no bustling to and 
 fro of busy men. On the cliff above, wide tracks 
 are cleared for streets, but the streets are not built 
 yet, only a few scattered shanties looking solitary and 
 sad in their isolation amid the waste and unoccu- 
 pied lots that surround them. Even China Street 
 has no activity, no life. The Post Office, a little 
 wood shanty. " Dear God, the very houses seem 
 asleep." And the wide deserted roads stretch away 
 into the heat-quivering distance ; a few blacks, all 
 but nude, loaf around or squat under stunted trees ; 
 a Japanese, or quasi-Japanese, girl or two, shows 
 at the door of her house of call. Yet there are 
 Europeans here and some business ; for lo ! an 
 enormous accession of passengers, more than the 
 limited Catterthun can accommodate. What with 
 strikes and breakdowns they have not had a ship 
 here for five weeks, and many are anxious to leave ; 
 and no wonder. Palmerston seems to me to have 
 no chance of becoming anything but an abomina- 
 tion of desolation, unless three things take place. 
 First, that foreign labour may be freely brought in, 
 as it may not at present ; one Chinaman for every 
 500 tons is all that is allowed, and a motion to 
 alter this to one in fifty was promptly thrown out by 
 the people's representatives. Probably the thing will 
 not be allowed by the wiseacres of Adelaide, and 
 the territory will only get what it requires when 
 
Hongkong to Sydney. 145 
 
 it is separated from South Australia. Second, that 
 the Transcontinental Railway be made from Port 
 Darwin to Adelaide, with branches to Melbourne 
 and Sydney. This would greatly shorten the 
 voyage home ; and would give Palmerston an enor- 
 mous lift, if it succeeded. But, thirdly, it must be 
 good enough to beat the competition of the new 
 route, all through British territory, and by British 
 steamers, from Sydney to Vancouver, and on by the 
 Canadian Pacific. Granted all these and Palmer- 
 ston may yet wake into life ; but now it is a weari- 
 ness that we are glad to bid farewell to. And so, 
 full up as we can hold, we go on to Thursday Island, 
 to Cooktown (where some land, but not I), and 
 Cairns (where none land), and Townsville (where all 
 go ashore). We are rather a motley collection. 
 There is the Australian Bank Manager returning 
 from his tour in Europe ; truly a bootyful boy, 
 whose mind has been much enlarged by his travels. 
 We were talking of Russia, and I asked him what 
 he thought of the Eikons in the churches. "You 
 mean the Iconoclasts ? " I explained that I meant 
 not destroyers of images, but the pictures of saints 
 in Greek churches, the Eikons. " Oh yes," he cried, 
 gladly ; " I know ; the Iconoclasts — they re called 
 Eikons for short." He was dubbed the Great 
 Unwashed ; a little joke of ours, the point of 
 which I had better leave you to guess. Then 
 there was the Adelaide lawyer, also returning 
 from a year's tour on the other side (the right 
 expression, I believe, in the Far South for anything 
 
 L 
 
146 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 north of the Equator, the south being this side), 
 really a good fellow. Then there was Little Nibs, 
 and Long or Lean Nibs (that's me), and Big Nibs, 
 and Bigmore Nibs, and the grass- widow and her cava- 
 lier servente, and several of the beauties of Palmer- 
 ston (oh, so beautiful !), and one lady, and a baby or 
 two (how we loved the squalling one !) and some 
 children. Then the officers : the skipper, an Old 
 Father Christmasy looking greybeard, but somewhat 
 " shirty " withal — nevermind his name, let us keep 
 it Darke — and a good old Salt for a chief ; and a third, 
 who, though a New man, was the right sort. The 
 Doctor was great at the piano, and our choruses 
 were fine. And the Doctor on board was always 
 called Turner, because that was not his name. And 
 others there were that made up a full complement 
 of passengers ; and it was pleasant dining out on 
 deck at sunset, and sleeping thereon at midnight. 
 
 Thursday Island is a pretty poor sort of a place. I 
 suppose it is even smaller than Palmerston ; but 
 then it makes no pretensions to being large, and so 
 does not strike one as being quite such an abortion 
 of a town as does the capital of the Northern Ter- 
 ritory. Still, it is mean enough : little shanties 
 scattered about higgledy-piggledy, unfenced and 
 untidy ; one short row of small shops. It is not a 
 town, but a shabby village of odds and ends. White 
 men and Malays and Japanese (did not Tommy 
 Jap, of Thursday Island, win the 20,000 dollar prize 
 in the lottery ?), Chinamen, blackmen of Australia, 
 curly-wigged blackmen — impossible for me to say 
 
Hongkong to Sydney. 147 
 
 whether African pure or American negro, or perhaps 
 dark Papuans, — all these are to be seen. Mauritius is 
 said to live on two canes : sugarcane and hurricane. 
 Thursday Island lives, I should imagine, on pearls 
 and peddling. The pearl fisheries are being carried 
 on at greater distances than formerly from the 
 island ; the peddling is for the pretty numerous 
 ships that call there. Hence on we are protected 
 by the Great Barrier Reef from all tempest and roll- 
 ing seas from the east, and we run pretty close to 
 the mainland on the west. The sea is full of sharp- 
 pointed rocks ; there is a sailing vessel run on to a 
 reef (maybe she was well insured) ; just over there 
 the Quetta was wrecked. It is pretty enough too, 
 in a modest way : the group of islands, of which 
 Thursday is one ; the narrow Albany Passage with 
 its little homestead on the mainland ; Whitsunday 
 Passage and various little bits along the coast. 
 Townsville (what a name !) is the first reasonable 
 attempt at a town that we have come to yet — unless 
 Cooktown be granted the compliment ; really a fine 
 street of good shops. And a jail — such a funny 
 little place, with such a funny old jailor (friendly 
 and sociable withal) — which some of us, led by Big 
 Nibs, himself a jailor, must needs go over. Quite 
 nice hotels, with bright, active, white waitresses — 
 most pleasing to the eye after a long course of 
 various black and brown and yellow boys. And a 
 terrible lot of " How d' ye do ? Glad to make your 
 acquaintance ; come and have a drink." 
 
 Moreton Bay, reached on a Sunday, and anchored 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 in without going up to Brisbane, rendered a visit to 
 the capital of Queensland impossible, except for 
 such as elected to leave the ship and land here ; and 
 a couple of days more (outside the Reef with 
 roughish weather that defeated the Bootyful Boy 
 and others once again) brings us to Sydney and 
 the end of our twenty-four days' voyage. On the 
 whole, with all its drawbacks, it has been a pleasant 
 time. I put away my Dilke and his Problems — 
 the greater part of which might have been written, 
 so far as I can see, without visiting the country at 
 all, and merely from an encyclopedic study of news- 
 papers and Blue-books, — away for the present with 
 Oceana, not without wonder as to what it is that 
 our sensitive cousins find offensive in the book ; 
 good-bye to our whist and cribbage and casino 
 parties, and the musical (and somewhat meta- 
 physical) Doctor, and our old Salt, and Newman, 
 and all the rest. But easy all ; do not be in too 
 great a hurry. The colony of New South Wales, 
 though not reckoned Protectionist in fiscal matters, 
 takes immense pains to protect itself from all sanitary 
 dangers from without ; as do all the colonies. At 
 every port, from Port Darwin on, we have been 
 boarded first and before all by the health officer. 
 It is quite insufficient for our Doctor to show a clean 
 bill of health for the ship ; at each port — not merely 
 the port first reached in each colony, but at each and 
 every port — crew first and then passengers must all 
 be passed before the local medicine man, that he may 
 assure himself by a momentary inspection of each 
 
Hongkong to Sydney. 149 
 
 person that the horrible infections of the East — 
 cholera, small-pox, or any other — have not been 
 brought down to imperil the healths of the local 
 residents. And here at Sydney, though we have 
 been passed all clear by seven successive health 
 officers, plus our own doctor, yet must we by regula- 
 tion go into Quarantine Bay for two hours, and lie 
 idle, and wonder at the wisdom of those who make 
 sanitary rules. It is lucky we are all free from 
 taint ; had any one been suspect, all would be 
 detained for three weeks ; and vastly improved as 
 the Quarantine quarters are since the old days when 
 they were such as Mr. Coffyn describes in Miss 
 Milne and /, still another three weeks seclusion — 
 and in sight of town — would have pleased us 
 exceedingly ill. H aving guarded themselves against 
 danger from without, I suppose the colonial cities 
 will in course of time proceed to guard against 
 danger from within. Unless they do, they will 
 become very fine beds for zymotic disease to home 
 and grow in. At present their sanitary arrange- 
 ments need improving. Up country, of course, 
 such matters have not passed beyond the early 
 rustic or barbarian method of treatment. 
 
150 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SYDNEY.' — MELBOURNE. 
 
 "And what do you think of our beautiful harbour?" 
 A " new chum " just arrived in Sydney ought to 
 carry about a placard hung conspicuously on his 
 person, inscribed with some set reply to this set 
 question which he is certain to be asked several 
 scores of times. Such an absurd question too; for 
 the questioner more than suggests the answer by 
 the fixed and invariable epithet contained in the 
 question, and feels mightily insulted if he receive 
 not the suggested answer. My placard should run 
 something like this : "In answer to numerous 
 inquiries, I beg to state that after a cursory inspec- 
 tion of your beautiful harbour, I can frankly say that 
 I have never seen anything like it." This is safe; 
 it ought to satisfy the questioner by its seeming 
 adoption of his immutable adjective, while at the 
 same time it does not give one away by an expres- 
 sion of unbounded admiration which one does not 
 really feel. For, to tell the honest truth, Sydney 
 Harbour is not wholly beautiful. It is no doubt 
 very fine and large ; lots of water and plenty of 
 room for big ships and many of them. But that is 
 not what I understand by beautiful. Surely, to be 
 
Sydney. 151 
 
 beautiful, a place must possess some special nobleness 
 or grace of form and colour, — some harmonious 
 arrangement of tone and contour that will render it 
 more pleasing to the eye and to the aesthetic sense 
 than the common work-a-day aspects of scenes that 
 are not called beautiful. I confess that I do not find 
 any such distinctive feature in Sydney Harbour as a 
 whole. After passing the Heads, which are beyond 
 question fine, bold, rocky headlands, a splendid 
 gateway into so safe and spacious an anchorage, I 
 see nothing but low, unpretentious, undistinguished 
 undulations, of no picturesque outline, covered with 
 poor thin scrub of no attractive colour, or with the 
 unlovely buildings of a modern town. There is no 
 point of vantage from which you can command the 
 whole — or anywhere near the whole — of the arms 
 and branches of the harbour, the winding and extent 
 of which constitute, I understand, one of its chief 
 claims to pre-eminence. " Beautiful harbour ? " For 
 a general view of a fine harbour, good to look upon 
 for scenic effect, there are half-a-dozen places that I 
 have seen that I prefer to Sydney, and doubtless 
 there are as many more that I have not seen which 
 are as beautiful and yet make no fuss about it. 
 Bombay, Hongkong, Hobart, Auckland, San 
 Francisco, and, on a smaller but most perfect scale, 
 Nagasaki — all these I deem " beautiful," each as a 
 whole, in a way that Sydney is not. Sydney should 
 drop the " beautiful " and substitute an adjective 
 more suggestive of utility. But it is not in the least 
 likely that she ever will ; or that her people will 
 
152 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 cease from questioning the new-comer as to his 
 opinion of her beauty. 
 
 The one sight in Sydney which her people have 
 elected to praise being thus found wanting, one 
 begins to fear that places which they praise not may 
 be even less pleasing to the much-enduring globe- 
 trotter. But in this he will be agreeably disappointed. 
 There can be no question that the Botanical Gardens 
 deserve most, or it may be even all, the encomiums 
 lavished on them by innumerable wanderers, small 
 and great. Farm Cove is, I think, the name of a 
 particularly charming corner on an arm of the 
 harbour that may safely claim the title of beautiful. 
 And I know that there are other bits in her numerous 
 parks and gardens and domains which may not less 
 deserve the coveted distinction ; but I can only say 
 that I did not see them. What I did notice in the 
 parks and gardens was the large number of loafers ; 
 men lying listlessly about on the grass all day, doing 
 nothing, or smoking, which is only a pleasanter way 
 of doing nothing. Working men, most of them, or 
 at least men able to work. Why are they here, idle ? 
 Is it that they are the wrecks and relics of the great 
 strikes ? or has the great question of the unemployed 
 reached already so large a growth in this the oldest 
 city of the South ? or is it only that this is holiday- 
 time, Christmas and the New Year, and these men 
 holiday-makers wiser than their fellows, in that they 
 take it easy instead of rushing from place to place ? 
 My belief (worth very little) is that a qualified 
 affirmative answer to the first and second of the 
 
Sydney. 153 
 
 above queries will give the true reason, and that the 
 matter of the third query has but little to do with the 
 subject. Anyway, there were the loafers, such as 
 I observed nowhere else in my wanderings in 
 Australasia. 
 
 On Sydney as a town there is nothing very much 
 to be said. It is, of course, the only town in New 
 South Wales, and, according to Sydney people, by far 
 the finest town in all the colonies. If you wish to 
 grieve the soul of a Sydneyite, to make him weep 
 tears of blood and wish to lie down and die, prove 
 to him how much finer a town than Sydney is 
 Melbourne. You can, I think, bring forward lots of 
 facts to support your thesis ; you will prove it as far 
 as any such futile sort of statement can be proved ; 
 but you will, of course, entirely fail to convince him ; 
 he will remain of his own opinion still. Odious as 
 comparisons are said to be, and futile as I have just 
 suggested that I think them, it is almost inevitable 
 to compare Sydney and Melbourne. The people 
 themselves force it on you. The intercolonial 
 jealousy on each side will not admit any superiority 
 on the other side ; yet it is always afraid that after 
 all it may lie over there ; and so each city, with true 
 colonial self-consciousness, is always seeking to 
 persuade herself and the stranger within her gates 
 (there are no gates, but that is a detail) that she is 
 the finest and best. The pre-eminence, if it be 
 worth deciding, lies between Sydney and Melbourne ; 
 for Adelaide (which I did not see, I am glad to say) 
 cannot be said to be in the running, and no other place 
 
154 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 rises above the size of a decent town. As already 
 hinted, I give the palrri to Melbourne. (I hope Mel- 
 bourne will feel duly grateful, and much good may it 
 do her.) Her streets are wider and better laid out. 
 This is natural enough, seeing that she was laid out 
 designedly on a fixed plan, while Sydney grew along 
 tracks aS they sprang up. Perhaps some people 
 will prefer the comparative sinuosity of Sydney to 
 the, as it were, machine-made regularity of Mel- 
 bourne with its chess-board parallels and right angles. 
 Sydney avers that wide streets are all very well in 
 fair weather, but narrower ones are better in the 
 days of hot winds and dust-storms ; and she is 
 welcome to make the most of the contention. Hot 
 winds and dust-storms are poison anywhere, and a 
 few feet of street-width won't make much odds to 
 them. Then as to paving : a loyal Sydney man 
 assured me that whatever else might be said, 
 Sydney was certainly the best paved city in the 
 world. A large order ! I should say bosh ; but 
 I hate arguing, even if the question be worth it, 
 and this wasn't. 
 
 Again ; in public buildings, a matter on which, in 
 my monumental ignorance of all rules of the 
 science, and all denominations of the styles, of 
 architecture, I am eminently qualified to give an 
 opinion, -I should suppose that Melbourne is not on 
 the wjiole behind her more northerly sister ; albeit I 
 must own to great admiration of the latter's Cen- 
 tennial Town Hall and its noble organ, and cannot 
 name any building in the former that I like so well. 
 
Sydney. 155 
 
 Finally, in street locomotion Melbourne romps in. 
 Her hansom cabs are as good and not so costly to 
 hire as the Sydney article (is. per quarter hour, 
 the Sydney rate, appears a trifle tall to one accus- 
 tomed to pay 10 annas for the first hour and 6 annas 
 for each subsequent hour), and the trams of the 
 Victorian capital come in an easy first. The system 
 is a very large one, and works with admirable 
 smoothness and regularity. I have not seen any- 
 thing like it, so far ; and honestly believe that it 
 cannot be better done. Cable tramways, worked 
 as they are in Melbourne, are certainly the thing. 
 Everybody uses them. The bustle and energy of 
 life are much more apparent in Melbourne than in 
 Sydney; there is more go, more strenuous activity. 
 In " beauty," perhaps, Melbourne may fear the com- 
 parison which folk will make, and which I am 
 getting a bit weary of discussing. Her Botanical 
 Gardens are really beautiful — as good as Sydney's, 
 except for Farm Cove ; but her harbour and her 
 seaside resorts (St. Kilda and the rest) are not ; 
 nor do I think any pretty bits are to be found about 
 them. (Mind, the opinion that Sj'-dney Harbour is 
 not beautiful as a whole is my own opinion only, 
 and not shared in by all others — I mean others 
 besides Sydney people. Some find pleasure in sail- 
 ing or steaming up the various arms and inlets, and 
 affirm that they are beautiful. I am not concerned 
 to deny it. I make no question that many little bits 
 are to be found, pretty in themselves and delightful 
 to picnic about in in fair weather and good company. 
 
156 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 But I firmly maintain that they do not make up the 
 harbour ; that go where you will, you cannot obtain 
 a general coup d'oeil of the whole harbour or of any 
 large part of it ; that besides the pretty little bits 
 there is a vast deal which is simply unpicturesque ; 
 and that therefore the harbour as a whole cannot be 
 called pre-eminently beautiful.) For a business life, 
 Melbourne is better than Sydney ; the air is full of 
 push and stir of active commercialism. Sydney is 
 better than Melbourne for a life of leisure ; there are 
 more of the amenities of existence, a tranquiller and 
 softer-mannered influence prevails. 
 
 With which final statement of opinion, let us pass 
 on, and give Sydney its due as a very pleasant 
 place to stay in. I found time pass so quickly there 
 that I had none to spare in which to make any of 
 the excursions recommended to the sight-seeing 
 globe-trotter ; up the Paramatta, up the Hawkes- 
 bury, to Botany Bay, &c. I did one afternoon find 
 my way across to Manly, past the Middle Head, 
 whence the big guns at practice boomed away over 
 our little steamer, at a movable target far out be- 
 tween North and South Heads ; and there I enjoyed 
 " a pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, along the briny 
 beach ;" and that, with a trip to the Blue Mountains, 
 was all that I saw of New South Wales outside 
 Sydney. In Sydney the days passed only too 
 quickly. Charming weather, fine and warm in the 
 day (not too hot, that came afterwards, as we read 
 in the papers), not too cold at night. Business to 
 attend to, batches of home letters to read and 
 
Sydney. 1 5 7 
 
 answer, friends, fellow-passengers from Hongkong, 
 to meet, smouch round with, say farewell to ; old 
 
 friends from home to hunt up. Here I find E , 
 
 whose services medical wisdom refused to India, 
 rubbing along in the same Bohemian sort of way as 
 in those old " coaching " days when we sat at the 
 unfrocked Professor's feet and learnt the lore that 
 should floor examiners, spiced with the full-flavoured 
 stories that the learned man loved to lighten his 
 lectures with. How the Professor would turn in 
 the grave to which, alas ! he is gone, if he found his 
 
 teachings so far forgotten as E has forgotten 
 
 them ; for E declares himself unblushingly an 
 
 out-and-out Protectionist. But he has gone down ; 
 certainly he has gone down ; for he desires to enter 
 the Legislative Assembly, or whatever New South 
 Wales calls its version of the House of Commons. 
 And I think no man could go much lower than that. 
 I suppose, though, that for ;^300 a year I too might 
 turn into a Protectionist if I had nothing better on. 
 
 Here too I find G , reminiscent of days even 
 
 farther back than those coaching times — of the little 
 midland village in the old country, with the 
 " beautiful " river (for I swear the Severn is beauti- 
 ful) running near it, where we boated and bathed 
 the holidays through, — of all the friends and 
 relatives still living there, and of some that are no 
 longer living. I should vastly have liked to stay 
 longer in Sydney ; her people are kindly and good 
 to meet, and life can be lived in her very enjoyably. 
 But it can't be done ; for there is so much to " do " 
 
158 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 in the time that can be spared before we get back 
 home. ■ 
 
 In my trip to the Blue Mountains I had Little 
 Nibs for a companion. American, young, travelling 
 on his father's dollars, to improve himself, I suppose ; 
 needed it, too. Arriving at Katoomba at night, and 
 starting forth for a drive next morning, we were not 
 at all favourably impressed with the scenery. The 
 gum-tree excludes all other trees, and here on the 
 top it grows scraggy and poor in the poor and gritty 
 soil. And the outlines of the ridges and ranges of 
 hills seen from above are monotonous and un- 
 interesting. It is only when you get to the edge and 
 look over that you find the picturesque, and only 
 when you go over down into the gully that you see 
 the beautiful. The name Blue Mountains is justly 
 given ; the hills look blue at all times, " in daylight, 
 moonlight, sunshine, rain" (as the Demon Detective 
 advertisement says, or something like it) ; the tone 
 varies, of course, but it always remains blue. The 
 principal views that you get to from Katoomba are 
 Govett's Leap, the Wentworth Falls, Leura Falls, 
 Katoomba Falls, Nellie's Glen. Their character- 
 istics are all much the same. As waterfalls they 
 make but a poor show, from the deficiency of water ; 
 but there is a beauty in delicate streams falling 
 from high ledges of barren rock into deep recesses 
 of blue-green forest. " Slow-dropping veils of 
 thinnest lawn," " wreaths of dangling water-smoke " 
 and all that, you know. Everywhere that you get 
 to the edge of the range and look down, you see, a 
 
Sydney. 159 
 
 thousand feet or so below you, the valley sloping up, 
 seamed through the middle with a hidden water- 
 course, and both hither and farther side all clothed 
 w^ith endless stretches of gum-tree, unbroken, un- 
 defiled with the clearings and burnings that we 
 shall see elsewhere making the bush hideous. The 
 vast blue forest comes steadily up until suddenly 
 there springs from it a great wall of bare rock, here 
 perpendicular, there overhanging ; again, worn into 
 deep clefts and chasms or into such strange peaks 
 as the Three Sisters or the Orphan Rock. This 
 natural battlement of Silurian rock runs all round 
 the crest of every range, and on the top is mostly a 
 comparatively flat land, here widening to a plateau, 
 there narrowing to a neck. From a place they call 
 the Narrow Neck you look down such a valley on 
 each side of you widening out into the distance. 
 I did not see Leura Falls. I meant to, and knowing 
 not the wiles of the land-boomer, I took off from 
 the made road where large notices in blue and 
 white announced " Leura Estate, carriage-road to 
 the Leura Falls." There was a roughish cart-road 
 for a bit, and a bridge over the railway ; and then 
 the "carriage- road," and the Leura Mall, and this 
 street and that street came into view. Each was 
 just a cutting through the bush, surrounded by bush 
 and ending in bush, leading nowhere. We wandered 
 along trying to find a way, until rain came on and 
 drove us home. The township of Leura has yet to 
 be born, for hundred-foot cuttings through the 
 jungle do not make a town ; and long may it go 
 
i6o Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 unborn and keep that boomer out of his hope of 
 profits, for I love not him and his flaring notices in 
 blue and white. We drove to Govett's Leap and 
 Wentworth Falls, and rode to Katoomba Falls and 
 Nellie's Glen, in the order given, and found each 
 better than the one before, so that the first feeling 
 of disappointment had clean vanished by the time 
 we had done. Govett's Leap (why so called I 
 have no notion) has nothing beyond the general 
 characteristics that I have already tried to indicate ; 
 at each of the others there is some special additional 
 feature. At Wentworth it is paths that wind along 
 the upper part of the battlements, now under over- 
 hanging cliffs that you stoop hatless to get past, 
 there running out on to a prominent projecting 
 point of rock. Here too is the Weeping Rock, 
 one worn so nearly level on its edge that the water 
 runs off it all round the rim almost as evenly and 
 regularly as from those artificial cisterns that we saw 
 in the temples in Japan. At Katoomba it is a fern 
 gully, a narrow cleft down which you scramble 
 amongst ferns, between massive walls of rock, to the 
 foot of the Upper Fall, and those Three Sisters and 
 Orphan Rock already mentioned. 
 
 Nellie's Glen is a grander and longer fern gully, 
 and down it runs the bridle track by which we rode 
 to Jenolan. For we rode that thirty miles or so, 
 and a splendid fine ride it is. Little Nibs is, I 
 reckon, more used to trading by sea in a sailing ship 
 and to the amusements of towns than to riding 
 Walers along bush tracks steep and rough. With 
 
' ' * ■-^i.« air- 
 
 u 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 z 
 
 Ul 
 
 
Sydney. 1 6 t 
 
 toes well out and knees inches from the saddle, back 
 rounded like a bow, trousers up to his knees, he 
 didn't look like a rider, and the larrikins called 
 after him, " Go it, young 'un ; hold on ! " He got 
 pretty sore at the end (not the top end, the other), 
 and. tired withal. We rode the distance in seven 
 hours, including half-an-hour for sandwiches and 
 pegs at Cox's river, which is not bad time con- 
 sidering the track. It is a long descent from 
 Nellie's Glen to Cox's — quite three hours ; past 
 grazing paddocks and through miles of gum-tree ; 
 the battlemented ridges seen from below look grand. 
 Then there is a range to cross up, and down again to 
 Little River, and then a long steep pull up Black 
 Range with Table Hill in view. A long piece of 
 level through everlasting gum-trees brings us on to 
 the coach road from Mount Victoria, and then there 
 is a final descent of some miles of corkscrew con- 
 vict-made road to Jenolan. The site of the caves 
 is very picturesque. A great bar of rock stretches 
 across the valley, completely blocking it. But water 
 has eaten its way through, and you ride under a 
 wide and lofty natural archway to the accommodation 
 house just beyond. Penned in by steep hill-sides 
 all round you, you seem quite cut off from the 
 world. That great barrier of rock is eaten out 
 into numberless hollows, the famed Fish River 
 Caves. (Fish River is miles away from them, and 
 now they are called Jenolan after a Mr. J. E. Nolan, 
 though what he had to do with them I can't say.) 
 It was such splendid weather out-of-doors that it 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 seemed a shame to spend the day burrowing under 
 ground ; but that was what we had come for, and 
 it had to be done. Enthusiasts may do the whole 
 of the explored caves if they will ; we thought that 
 three would be enough — the Right and Left Im- 
 perial and the Lucas. The former have electric 
 light laid on all through them, and the guide (a 
 very intelligent and good fellow) carries magnesium 
 wire to light up the show places with. Various 
 opinions of the caves are recorded in the Visitors' 
 Book at the inn. One unctuous idiot thanks God 
 that he has been privileged to be the first to hold 
 Divine Service in one of them, and spells image 
 with two ms. Another gentle sportsman, hot from 
 the newspaper office, bursts forth into pages of 
 fervent strophe and exuberant antistrophe, touched 
 with the true penny-a-line afflatus : " Carved by an 
 angel's hand," and so on. (I don't know what 
 authority he has for supposing that an angel's hand 
 can carve any better than an ordinary mortal's. If 
 it can, I wish we had had one with us at the race 
 luncheon at Randwick on Boxing-Day ; for there 
 was a tough old rooster there that three of us tried 
 to carve, and couldn't !) A phlegmatic Britisher 
 opines that the caves are not bad, but nothing to 
 rave about ; at whom patriotic walers hurl anathema 
 and M.L.A.'s and M.L.C.'s solemnly record their high 
 and mighty approval of what God has been pleased 
 to make here, and Mr. Wilson is so good as to show 
 them, Mr. Wilson is mine host of the inn, Govern- 
 ment guardian of the caves, one of their chief 
 
Sydney. 1 63 
 
 explorers, and principal guide (there are two 
 guides under him, Jack and Voss). He is as deaf 
 as a post, only more so ; say deaf as a poster. He 
 is also a man of humour, as humour is understood 
 in Australia. Ask him to tell you the story of 
 Elijah, or to explain in the caves how stalagmites 
 and stalactites are formed by drip, drip, dripping, 
 and you will find out what passes for humour here. 
 When he exercises his " wit " on you, you are at a 
 disadvantage, for he can't hear your withering 
 rejoinder. It drove Little Nibs nearly frantic. But 
 his inn is a comfortable enough one — we shall ex- 
 perience worse before we have done with Australia. 
 Any one not a teetotaler, though, must take his 
 liquor with him ; for he will get none here. 
 
 To see the caves parties are taken round at 
 fixed hours, morning and afternoon, clad in their 
 roughest kit, or in clothes hired on the spot for two 
 shillings a day. And beautiful, beyond question, 
 are the sights that they see. It is useless to give a 
 list of the names of the numberless grottos and 
 nooks full of strange shapes and varied colours ; 
 the names are fanciful, and for the most part mean- 
 ingless. It is almost equally useless to try to give 
 by description an idea of the beauty of those shapes 
 and colours. For ages and ages water has percolated 
 through the rock, and trickled slowly, or dropped yet 
 more slowly, from roof to floor, here falling direct, 
 there finding way down the rounded or sloping 
 cavern-roof or side. Everywhere it has carried with 
 it the colour of the formation it has come through 
 
 M 2 
 
164 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 and borne with it to deposit in stalactite and 
 stalagmite. So long has this gone on, that many 
 a time the two have joined and form one solid 
 column ; many a stalactite hangs long and tapering, 
 with but a puny answer to it on the floor below ; 
 many a one, as the water willed it, has been far- 
 distanced in growth by its aspiring stalagmite. 
 And snow-white, and cream-coloured, and orange, 
 and red, and pearly, are the hues of them ; some 
 dull and unresponsive to the bright magnesium 
 light, other sparkling as though sown with dia- 
 monds. In one cave mass upon mass of " natural 
 sculpture in cathedral cavern," awes you with its 
 majestic immensity ; in another, tiny, delicate forma- 
 tions of bright and glittering crystal charm you with 
 their exquisite loveliness. And then those " mys- 
 teries," as they call them, fantastic, unexplainable 
 threads and buds that, scorning gravity, run out at 
 all angles — upwards, crossways, aslant, and form 
 a wilful fairy work of infinite gracefulness. Here 
 are curtains of pure white, with a dull red border, 
 that looks as though blown by the wind, and trans- 
 lucent, yet as hard as rock ; here is a tall Lot's wife, 
 though not of salt ; a crystal city with walls and 
 battlements and bastioned forts and towers ; vast 
 organ-pipes and cathedral columns ; diamonds of 
 the Queen and gems of the West. Though all 
 the morning and all the afternoon you pass on 
 "from stately nave to nave, from vault to vault," 
 and find every minute some new combination of 
 form and colour to strike the imagination or delight 
 
Sydney. 165 
 
 the fancy ; each one you will declare the best you 
 have yet seen (it is the regular thing to do), and at 
 the end you will hardly remember which was which, 
 so as to name it correctly. Descend by a steep 
 and somewhat swinging ladder to the underground 
 river, and view the cold and silent streamlet that 
 has been nature's instrument in fashioning these 
 marvels. Do not descend by somebody's short cut 
 (I forget his name) from the upper caves to the 
 lower, or you will break your bones as he did. In 
 the Lucas cave you can do a bit of a scramble by 
 ways where no steps are cut, and no hand-rail set 
 up ; and you will find a formation that will give you 
 a better impression than anything in the Imperial of 
 the incalculable length of time that these caves and 
 their contents have taken in the making. For here 
 are wide caverns in which by that slow, persistent 
 drip, drip, drip of silica or lime-charged water — 
 five years of which makes no perceptible, no 
 measurable increase in the growth of stalactite or 
 stalagmite — by it were formed many a column, thick 
 as a man, and taller than any child of man (giants 
 excepted) ; and after they had formed and grown, 
 the floor, ceaselessly undermined by the streamlet 
 working beneath it, fell in and broke off these 
 pillars that joined floor and roof, and dragged down 
 curtains, and made a mighty mess of things gen- 
 erally. Yet, still the drip, drip, drip, went on, and 
 has gone on for again so long a time, that many a 
 pillar is reunited, and many a curtain joined again 
 to its supports. You can trace the fracture and the 
 
1 66 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 new growth easily with the eye. Yet not all have 
 been mended. The Broken Column, as they call 
 it, is left disjointed, standing in the midst of a 
 vast cavern amongst a wild jumble of monstrous 
 boulders. I don't suppose all this gives much idea 
 of what the caves are like ; but at least it may 
 indicate the impression they made on me. Photos 
 also fail to reproduce the effect of these splendid 
 forms as they stand out in the bright, white light 
 from " far within each aisle and deep recess." The 
 only way to understand them is to see them ; or 
 something like them, only I don't know where any- 
 thing like them is to be found. They are unique, 
 or "one of the most unique sights," as some 
 enthusiastic visitor put it with a bold, if uncon- 
 scious, disregard for the meaning of words. New 
 Zealand has something of the kind at Waitomo, in 
 the North Island ; but they are not very easy of 
 access, nor made convenient to go about in. Any- 
 way, at Jenolan I expected to see something 
 worthy of admiration ; and I was not disappointed. 
 And so after a well-spent couple of days, climbing 
 about the hill-sides in the evening, and watching 
 the rock-wallabies running about (they are many 
 and not over-shy, knowing well that they may not 
 be shot around the caves), we coach up the steep 
 zigzag of 1,500 feet rise, and on by a bush track 
 to Oberon. On again next morning to Tarana, and 
 so by rail back to Sydney to eat our Christmas 
 dinner at the Grosvenor Hotel. I do not particu- 
 larly recommend this route ; it is a good deal 
 
Sydney. 167 
 
 longer than that by Mount Victoria, and there is not 
 much of interest to see on the way. It is largely 
 bush, all gum-tree and nought else, and partly clear- 
 ing — pasturage for sheep. The " townships," as 
 they call them (not a township as understood in 
 Burma, by any means), are small ; a few scattered 
 plank shanties, dotted about in the wide, rolling 
 sheep-runs. Oberon consists of three churches, 
 two " hotels," a couple of "stores," and a dozen or 
 so of houses, plus a school and a bank. Of the 
 hotels one is a tolerable inn, the other appears in- 
 tolerable ; and besides the "houses " in the " town," 
 poky little wooden huts : I wonder people are con- 
 tent to live in such narrow quarters. There are, of 
 course, a good many out-stations. Katoomba is 
 like unto Oberon ; and if these be fair samples of 
 New South Wales up-country places to live in, I 
 am thankful that the state of life to which it has 
 pleased God to call me does not lie here. It is 
 curious to note, though, how every township, how- 
 ever small, has its school and its bank. Government 
 goes in for education, compulsory and free, and does 
 it thoroughly — gives the taxpayers their money's 
 worth. If the school be too thinly attended to em- 
 ploy a teacher all his (or her) time, two or more are 
 put under the same individual's charge, and the 
 teacher goes round and round them regularly. 
 Anywhere near mines, the bank is naturally required 
 for bullion business ; and away from mines it is 
 equally necessciry, because of the universal custom 
 of paying wages at regular periods, and even quite 
 
i68 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 small sums at any time, by cheques rather than in 
 cash. Tiny little places the Bank premises are ; and 
 the managers, I suppose, are such cheerful speci- 
 mens as our Bootyful Boy. This cheque system is, 
 I imagine, largely responsible for the process known 
 as "lambing down," which I understand to be 
 by no means overdrawn or over-coloured in the 
 accounts that one reads of it. Do you know what 
 the process is ? Briefly this. A shepherd or stock- 
 rider, or the like, receives his season's, or half-year's, 
 or year's wages in one cheque, and gets leave from 
 the station. He arrives at an " hotel," and, of 
 course, " shouts " for every one round ; " shouting " 
 goes on till he is gloriously drunk on stuff (it may 
 be) that would poison an ostrich ; cheque handed 
 over to mine host ; a little management of the 
 poison that he and his "shoutings " consume, aided 
 by bottles empty of liquor that they did not con- 
 sume, leads to the cheque being worked out in a 
 greater or less number of days, and our friend is 
 duly " lambed down," to return to work penniless, 
 to get over his " head" and earn another cheque. 
 
 From Jenolan to Oberon and Tarana there is 
 nothing of scenery except brook and sheep-run, and 
 now and again a pleasing view of the hills. From 
 Tarana by rail you pass Lithgow and Bowenfels, 
 where there is mining and the " townships " are 
 bigger, but the houses quite as small and mean 
 as before ; up the little zigzag (two reversing- 
 stations instead of one as on the Bhor and Thai 
 Ghats) ; on by Mount Victoria and Katoomba — hill- 
 
Melbourne. 1 69 
 
 stations for the Sydney folk ; down the great zigzag 
 (like the little, only larger) ; across the Emu 
 Plains, and through the suburbs of Sydney, popu- 
 lous, but narrowly-housed as usual, into Redfern 
 Terminus — a ramshackle sort of place that a city 
 like Sydney should be ashamed of. (Melbourne, 
 with its Spencer Street, is no better ; if anything, a 
 trifle worse. They needn't build a Victoria Ter- 
 minus — the Bombay, not the London one — but they 
 might have something better than paltry sheds.) I 
 asked Little Nibs if he would come with me to hear 
 the Messiah in the Town Hall on Christmas 
 night ; Madame Patey would be good to hear, if 
 nothing else were. He came ; and his first remark 
 was, " Why, it's sacred ! " The chorus was very fair, 
 but I cannot say that the colonial soloists greatly 
 charmed me. The tenor was tolerably good, but the 
 soprano and bass I did not care for at all. After 
 this. Little Nibs deserted me. I will give you a tip. 
 If you wish to part company with such as he, lend him 
 a little money ; you will see neither it nor him again. 
 Less than two days of somewhat boisterous 
 weather in the floating palace of the French mail, 
 and I am in Melbourne. It is a city of varying 
 climate ; one day delightful as in Sydney, the next 
 hot-winded and dusty as the Indian plains in April, 
 again chill with drizzling rain. Every man here is 
 as good as his neighbour, and a trifle better too ; 
 politeness and attentiveness are, by men in shops, 
 by men that work or wait, most carefully avoided 
 and eschewed. What crowds of busy men at 
 
170 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 the " Squatter's " Hotel, as Scott's is called, at 
 tiffin-time, and indeed everywhere else all day long! 
 The Dook of Melbourne and Sydney had grounds 
 for boasting himself a citizen of no mean city ; but 
 it is a mighty poor thing in climates that Melbourne 
 has to put up with. No lack of amusement for the 
 idle. A Wild West show on the Buffalo Bill lines, 
 with the addition of Dr. Carver's fancy-shooting ; 
 intercolonial cricket match, with Giffen piling up a 
 mighty score ; races, theatres, and what not. The 
 " cornstalks " are good at many things, but horse- 
 racing seems to be the favourite of all pastimes. 
 The number of meetings and the " added moneys " 
 and the entries leave our Indian turf far behind. 
 Good courses they are too, and good racing, both at 
 Randwick (Sydney) and Flemington (Melbourne). 
 The theatres are also many degrees removed from 
 what we endure in the shape of drama in India. 
 Not that I think the melodramatic stage is good. 
 At Sydney we sat it out, but laughed inevitably at 
 the most touching pathos or most stirring tirades ; 
 at Melbourne we could not even sit it out. But in 
 comedy and comic opera they do the thing well ; 
 quite as well as in any but an exceptionally good 
 London theatre. In both capitals the pieces I saw 
 were well mounted, well managed, well acted, and 
 (in case of light opera) well sung. The theatres 
 are commodious and comfortable, and the highest 
 price (bar private boxes) 5 s. 
 
 In Melbourne my time was even shorter than in 
 Sydney, and I made no attempt to see anything of 
 
Melbourne. 
 
 171 
 
 the country outside town except in a run to Ballarat, 
 not a long journey by rail. All lines in Victoria, 
 and almost all in all Australasia, are State railways : 
 a system that I have long been of opinion is the 
 best. But the opinion of some local men that I have 
 met by no means agrees with mine ; they were 
 inclined to growl at Government management almost 
 as much as those mighty organs of public opinion, 
 the Rangoon papers, objurgate the direction of the 
 Burma State Railway. They are certainly liberal 
 with their free passes in Victoria ; the courteous 
 Secretary for Railways made me a present of one, 
 and naval and military officers may claim them (I 
 understand) as of right. I wish they were not so 
 Sabbatarian, though, in their time-tables ; no trains 
 run on Sunday, except a few local suburban ones : a 
 fact that impedes you not a little when your time is 
 short and you wish to make the most of it. 
 
 Ballarat is quite a town — any number of gold- 
 mines round it ; lake and well-kept gardens, wide, 
 straight streets, some moderately fine public build- 
 ings — these are its adornments. Of course I went 
 down a gold-mine — the "Sir Henry Loch" — the 
 managing director most kindly and courteous, and 
 the manager on the spot only too intent on making 
 us understand all about it. He began at the very- 
 beginning — how a reef was formed, how the gold 
 got placed in it, how you scientifically found it out ; 
 then how you worked it and how you financed it. 
 Donning miners' kit, we descended to the lowest 
 working but one — some 1,180 feet, the lowest being 
 
172 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 1,290 ; and returning to the upper air were shown 
 over the stamping and crushing part of the operation, 
 with which I was already acquainted, as it was 
 identical with that obtaining where I saw gold- 
 mining in India. And then back with " The Norfolk 
 Regiment " (my companion on this trip) to Mel- 
 bourne ; and good-bye to him and to his brother, and 
 to the little Doctor, and to all friends made in this 
 the Second Act of my world-encircling globe-trot, to 
 make new friends and acquaintances in the Third — a 
 tour through New Zealand. 
 
^72, 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 NEW ZEALAND SOUTH OF CHRISTCHURCH. 
 
 New Zealand is fond of boasting herself as a 
 "Wonderland" {vide advertisements passim), and 
 she has a fair claim to be called beautiful. And 
 with grand variety of beauty too : Alpine snow- 
 scenes and glaciers, vast stretches of pathless forest, 
 Qords of majestic magnificence, harbours of quiet 
 and peaceful loveliness, terrible volcanoes and lakes 
 of boiling mud, geysers and wondrous terraces. 
 But the first aspect to one approaching from Mel- 
 bourne is not delightful. We have passed Hobart, 
 with its strange rocky headlands away at the mouth 
 of the bay (more fantastic but less imposing than 
 Sydney Heads), and its broad and beautiful harbour 
 backed by the massive bulk of big Mount Welling- 
 ton. It is a pretty place, Hobart; more English- 
 looking is the town than the Australian cities ; and 
 one regrets not seeing more of Tasmania, notwith- 
 standing the hot wind that is blowing the dust 
 about so boisterously (most unusual weather in 
 Hobart, of course all the local-knowledge people 
 say). We have, in our crowded ship, endured the 
 
174 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 cold wind that blows ever about the southern seas, 
 and arrived at the Bluff — a bleak and barren spot, 
 where the township (or whatever they call it in 
 New Zealand) consists of the same old mean wood 
 shanties, scattered fenceless and higgledy-piggledy- 
 all over the place. A brief railway run takes us to 
 Invercargill, as cold as the Bluff, though it is mid- 
 summer, with no beauty of situation, no adornment 
 of art. It has laid out its streets as wide as though 
 it meant to be a second Melbourne — far wider than 
 in most other New Zealand towns ; but the shops 
 and the traffic on those streets are as yet meagre, 
 and the tramway is a most modest one-horse affair. 
 But the journey to Queenstown on Lake Wakatipu 
 (usually pronounced Wawkatip) is a pleasant one. 
 By rail to Kingston ; at first across wide sheep- 
 grazing plains, past mutton-freezing factories, with 
 distant hills ringing in the horizon. We gradually 
 work up into a gorge through these hills, and slowly 
 ascend between the big bare sides of them — bare of 
 all trees and all but bare of herbage, bare even of 
 that on many of the winter-worn tops — until we 
 surmount the barrier that shuts in the lake, and 
 descend to the little quay at Kingston. Hence a 
 steamer takes us half way up the lake to Queens- 
 town, and much we admire the scenery as we go. 
 The hills rise very steep, clad in bracken or some 
 such fern, for 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 feet — nay more — 
 above the lake, their summits weather-worn into 
 countless ridges, serrated, dentated, peaked, bayo- 
 neted, hiding here and there in the chasms beds of 
 
New Zealand South of Christchurch. 175 
 
 shining snow, dropping from cliff and cleft the 
 streamlet that falls and falls till it reaches the lake. 
 The Remarkables, as the name-givers of this region 
 have in clumsy fashion thought fit to christen a great 
 double-coned mass of barren rock, reminded a friend 
 of mine strongly of what he had seen in the Engadine ; 
 and the view of Ben Lomond and Bowen Peak as you 
 approach Oueenstown struck both him and me as 
 superb. The usual tourist thing to do is to get to 
 the top of Ben Lomond, 5,747 feet above the sea, 
 4,677 above the lake ; so of course I made a start 
 for it next morning. Easy going, though pretty 
 warm, up to the saddle (one and three-quarter hours) ; 
 then thick cloud and heavy rain and an ignominious 
 retreat, wet through, to Eichardt's Hotel. The 
 tourist is also bound to go at least to the head of 
 the lake. If he has time, he should stay there some 
 days ; many a splendid walk to lake and mountain 
 and glacier is to be done from Glenorchy or Kinloch. 
 Years hence, when the track is made, or now, if he 
 likes camping-out, carrying his own kit, with certainty 
 of at least one day in two being wet, he may foot it 
 across hill and bush to Milford Sound ; let him not 
 stray by the way, lest he be lost and no more found, 
 as a certain Professor was, and others besides. The 
 steamer makes the trip to the head of the lake and 
 back in the day ; and a very beautiful trip it is. 
 We started with band playing and children cheering, 
 for we had on board a school treat which we 
 deposited at Bob's Cove — a pretty little nook near 
 the second bend of the lake. 
 
176 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 For Wawkatip (why should I not spell it i^ 
 
 phonetically if I prefer ?) is shaped much like ' ^ 
 
 this, where i, 2, 3 stand for Kingston, Queens- J 
 town, and Glenorchy respectively ; and it is not until 
 you get round the second corner that you come in 
 view of the snow-mountains and the virgin heights of 
 Earnshaw. Seen on a beautiful bright day, as I saw 
 it, the view is bad to beat. Earnshaw is 9,200 feet 
 high ; a second crest is 9, 1 60, and a splendid ar^te 
 connects the two. I say " virgin " heights ; but one 
 Harry Burley, a guide, asserts that he has reached 
 the top. Some believe him, some do not. If he 
 has, he is the only man that has. Earnshaw's snow 
 and glaciers fill the right background ; the centre 
 holds a number of peaks of varied shape, snow- 
 clad, known as the Cosmos Peaks, though each has 
 its own proper name, and Cosmos applies strictly to 
 only one ; the left is shut in by the Humboldt moun- 
 tains and the hills above Kinloch. All the fore- 
 ground is blue lake-water, with fern-clad hills, bare- 
 topped, to right and left. Mount Alfred in the 
 middle distance looks black with thick birch forest, 
 and all the left bank is covered with the same — but 
 here, alas ! black with the ruin of fire. There is 
 much more of lake scenery about in Southland and 
 Otago : Wanaka, with its curious island, in which is 
 a lake of higher level than the main lake ; Hawea,Te 
 Anau, Manapouri (curiously Indian this last name), 
 and others. But time failed to see any of these ; 
 I could only attack Ben Lomond again before I left 
 for other scenes. This time the weather behaved 
 
New Zealand South of Christchurch. 177 
 
 splendidly. It is not much short of three hours for 
 an " ornery " walker like me from hotel to summit ; 
 and you must carry what lunch you want with you. 
 But at the top the view is extremely fine. To the 
 south and west, right under you, you have Lake 
 Wawkatip with its mountain walls, it blue and 
 beautiful, they with even their grim greyness softened 
 into some touch of graciousness by the glorious sun- 
 light ; to the east the outlet towards Frankton, the 
 cultivated lands of Shotover, and far-off ranges 
 dying into the dim haze of the distance. But all the 
 north, from east to west, is filled with unbroken 
 ranges of snow-mountains ; there is far-off Mount 
 Aspiring trying to reach, and all but winning, a 
 height of 10,000 feet — a most regular cone of 
 unblemished snow ; and all across, glacier and snow- 
 peak and mountains of unknown names right up to 
 Earnslaw and Cosmos. Don't omit to stroll to the 
 Waterworks when you are at Queenstown ; it is a 
 charming little glen, and man's handiwork has 
 damaged it very little. Sunset at Queenstown was 
 not any great show, that I saw ; but the sun and 
 clouds favoured us with a beautiful effect on the 
 Remarkables as we steamed away, returning Bluff- 
 wards. Great masses of morning mist rolled up, 
 covering all the upper half of the hill ; they broke 
 and left an oval chasm in which the double cone was 
 perfectly enframed on a background of soft blue 
 sky ; on the cones and on the skyward side of the 
 cloud shone clear sunlight, making the edges of the 
 frame too burning bright, almost, to look on, while 
 
 N 
 
178 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 all the rest of cloud and mountain remained grey and 
 sunless. 
 
 The only means at present available for visiting 
 the West Coast Sounds is to join one of the three 
 excursions made thither by the Union Company's 
 s.s. Tarawera in the months of January and 
 February. The probabilities of your having fine 
 weather increase in direct ratio with the lateness of 
 the trip, but exigencies of time compelled me to go 
 by the first. The ship is given up wholly to this 
 excursion business, so long as it lasts ; and the 
 Company's advertisements assert that it assumes the 
 form of an extended picnic. Not a picnic at all in the 
 proper sense of the term ; but as to its extension 
 there is no doubt — the ten days devoted to it might 
 be cut down by half, or to a week at most. Of 
 course, among a troop of over one hundred excur- 
 sionists, parties form themselves, that hang together, 
 holding more or less aloof from the rest ; and equally 
 of course, among the rest there are sure to be a cer- 
 tain number that you would be likely to keep aloof 
 from in any place. The plan of the trip is to make 
 one of the Sounds and there remain all day, sending 
 off the excursionists in boats to fish or botanize, or 
 scramble about on shore and picnic amongst the 
 sandflies. We were a very pleasant party on No. 4 
 boat. There was Our Enthusiast, up early and late, 
 not to miss any possible "bit" of scenery, and 
 rapturizing over it all under the most adverse cir- 
 cumstances of weather and temperature ; and as a 
 counterpoise Our General, or opposite pole, who 
 
New Zealand South of Ckristchurch. 1 79 
 
 enthused not at all, and showered cynicisms, tem- 
 pered with much genial laughter, on the whole 
 arrangement. He was abetted therein by Our 
 Ceylon Benedict, one of the best of fellows, in 
 whose train came wife and sister and brother-in-law. 
 Then there was Our Warrior Bold, and his wife the 
 Authoress — (I have not read any of her books and 
 do not know whether they are Hentyresting) — dear 
 good people — he tottery of step, poor martyr to 
 gout ; and Our Humorist and his wife, let us say 
 Mrs. H. Lastly, a youth, a scion of a noble house, and 
 Our Stanley (so designated from his fondness for 
 forcing his way through pathless jungles), or Indian 
 Exotic (being particularly touchy to the cold). 
 Perhaps I need hardly say that I mention myself 
 last. Well, this was the boat that, after we had 
 reached Preservation Inlet and duly proceeded up 
 to the end of the fjord and returned to Cuttle Cove 
 and anchored there all night, proceeded to the shore 
 in spite of the half gale of wind that blew and the 
 squalls of rain that at times descended upon them. 
 The day's proceedings were very much the same at 
 each place of halt: to go ashore with lunch or afternoon 
 tea, or both, and spend the afternoon orthe day inram- 
 bling about in the forest or catching fish in the sea. 
 Here, then, is the journal. First and Second days 
 as already stated. Third day : To Dusky Sound and 
 Wet Jacket Arm by 1 1 a.m. Fourth day : Doubtful 
 and Smith Sounds, Hall's Arm, Thompson's Sound, 
 George Sound; anchored at 2 p.m. Fifth day: At 
 George Sound. Sixth day : Milford Sound by 8 a.m. 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Seventh day : At Milford. Eighth day : Left Milford 
 at 3 P.M. Remaining two days getting back via 
 Bluff to Dunedin. Now of all these days there 
 was only one wholly fine day — the third. Yet we 
 enjoyed ourselves for all the wet. There is no 
 denying that the scenery is fine ; and it is so kind 
 as to get better and better as you go on. Cuttle 
 Cove is pretty when you see it first, but, after you 
 have been through the rest up to the climax of 
 Milford Sound, it is quite a poor thing to look back 
 upon. All the little adventures that befall you — how 
 one boat catches a shark, another a thirty-eight 
 pound fish of ugly shape and uglier name, how one 
 gets bogged and another deprived by a carelessly 
 dropped match of the inexpensive gingham, what 
 splendours of ferns have been found here, the fine 
 waterfall or lovely lake successfully scrambled to 
 there, how the sandflies have lunched on you — ^all 
 these form the amusement of the day ; and at night 
 concert or dance or entertainment (for me the social 
 rubber) make the time pass as gaily as may be. 
 Our cynics declared the whole thing to be too much 
 of the " 'Arry hout for a 'oliday " style of thing. 
 And to my mind it would certainly be far pleasanter 
 if one could do the Sounds with a small nice party 
 of one's own friends rather than in the company of 
 a mixed crowd, to most of whom you are no more 
 interesting, I presume, than they, I am sure; are 
 to you. How can one delight in the society of the 
 Honourable ?— (the 'Orrible Our Humorist aptly 
 called him) — a life peer of some Australian colony. 
 
New Zealand South of Christchurch. i8i 
 
 and oh, so colonial ! To see him and Our Hereditary 
 Legislator play " bull " together was a sight " to 
 shake the midriff of despair with laughter." Then 
 the young man got up regardless of expense, 
 " Calico " he was named ; and the detachment of 
 undisguised cads, and of cads disguised (as far as 
 dress goes) as decent fellows — their room had been 
 better than their company. Therefore our " push " 
 (this I understand is Australian for a party of 
 people) left the ship, wet or fine, at each anchoring- 
 place ; preferring forest solitudes and a wetting to 
 the deck of the Tarawera. The bush is different 
 from anything I have ever seen. It is always 
 wet here ; for though its rainfall is not so heavy 
 as at (say) Akyab, I think the rain is more con- 
 stant; the intervals of pallid sunshine are so brief 
 that nothing has time to get dry. Then there are 
 no men nor any quadruped in these jungles ; " no 
 birds are flying overhead — there are no birds to 
 fly," or at least very few ; so that the Vegetable 
 Kingdom has it all to itself, and evidently has had 
 for many a long age past. Accordingly the soil 
 is hidden beneath mass upon mass of decaying 
 vegetation, clothed over with a wonderful wealth of 
 moss and fern. You tread on a mossy knoll, and 
 sink knee-deep into the rotting trunk of a fallen tree. 
 You simply cannot walk on the ground, you walk 
 or scramble on dead wood in all stages of decay, on 
 wide banks of moss of varied kinds, lovely to look 
 upon, through thickets of splendid ferns. The 
 Todea superba, most exquisitely frilled, shaped like 
 
t82 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 the Prince of Wales's feathers ; the Kidney fern, 
 most curious and delicate of tree-ferns (I mean 
 ferns that grow on trees) : here it is in seed — note 
 the spores sticking out round the edge like a line of 
 spikes ; fern-trees (I mean ferns that grow to the 
 size of a tree) many and large and handsome. There 
 are few flowers ; here the crimson blossom df the 
 rata, there the thick-clustering small white flowers 
 of the manuka. And never a thorn nor a briar ; 
 the " bush lawyer " is absent ; nor do creepers 
 annoy you, except here and there a " supple Jack," 
 a kind of cane. And the whole of this wild land is 
 covered with bush ; no break nor clearing. Except 
 only that one hermit lives in Dusky Sound, and that 
 there are two huts in Milford City, there is no 
 settlement, no station, no human soul in all the long 
 deep-indented coast-line. I have not seen the fjords 
 of Norway, with which, as I read, these challenge 
 comparison ; but in their utter solitude and silence — 
 undisturbed for who shall say how many ages ? — 
 I imagine these Sounds of the Farthest South 
 must offer strong contrast with their cousins of the 
 Remote North. 
 
 The scenery is, beyond all cavil, imposingly grand. 
 The constant rain that preceded our entry into Mil- 
 ford Sound had set all the mighty mountain walls 
 that flank it, on this side and on that, streaming with 
 water ; and the clouds still lowering and clinging to 
 the mountains as we came in the countless waterfalls 
 seemed to be pouring down straight out of heaven. 
 During the day these clouds lifted and fell again 
 
New Zealand South of Christchurch. 183 
 
 and drifted round, forming in the recess behind 
 Mitre Peak a chasm of awful blackness, breaking to 
 let the sunshine through on to the snows of the 
 Darran mountains, and curling waywardly across the 
 glaciers of Pembroke. Then before sunset it was 
 fine and cloudless, and we could see the magnificent 
 scene in undimmed glory. It is curious to find one- 
 self in an ocean lakelet, the narrow channel by 
 which we came in shut out of sight by a bend in 
 its course, and, around one, mountains that raise 
 their huge sides sheer out of the many-fathomed 
 water for literally thousands of feet, ere they slope 
 up to the name-giving cone of the Mitre, or the 
 rounded crest of the Lion, behind which gleam 
 the eternal snow and glaciers of Mount Pem- 
 broke. The air is so clear that (in guide-book 
 phrase) it annihilates distance ; those glaciers that 
 it would take hours of steady climbing to reach, 
 seemed to Our M.L.A. but a hundred yards 
 away. Close to our anchorage the Bowen Falls 
 pour a volume of water from a height of 540 feet ; 
 not sheer down, for, about fifty feet from the top 
 of the fall, the water strikes on a point of rock which 
 shoots it up and out in a splendidly graceful curve 
 of snow-white spray. The Sutherland Falls, about 
 half a day's arduous journey from Milford, are 
 claimed to be 1,904 feet in height ; but this not in 
 one unbroken leap, there are three successive falls 
 of some 600 odd feet each. The rain prevented 
 even the most enthusiastic tripper from getting any 
 farther on the way than Lake Ada — a beautiful 
 
184 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 piece of water shut in by the Devil's Armchair and 
 other big bulks of mountain. 
 
 Altogether the Sounds are worth seeing, if only 
 they could be seen in greater comfort. The Union 
 Company allege that they make every arrangement 
 for the convenience of the trippers, and they do 
 make some attempt to do the thing well for the 
 colonies. But the skipper is just about as bad a man 
 for such a business as they could possibly select ; 
 and colonial notions of doing a thing well do not 
 come up to European. The Captain ought to be 
 conversational, bright, cheery, obliging ; all of 
 which he is not. The Bluff might well have been 
 reached in time to catch the train for Dunedin ; but 
 the Captain most accurately timed his arrival to be 
 just one quarter of an hour too late for it. So we 
 all had to steam on to that Scotch capital of Otago ; 
 and there at last broke up the motley crowd of the 
 First Sounds Trip. Let us hope that the " Panto- 
 mime Fairy " came to no harm in her flirtations ; 
 that the Bear Leader without his Cub (" wise cub to 
 desert such a leader," said Our General) came to 
 grief (for we deemed him unendurable) in his overt 
 matrimonial approaches to the Unlovely Heiress ; 
 and that all the good fellows and nice women that 
 we saw no more had a good time of it ever after. 
 We had seen the Sounds not quite at their best ; 
 for Wet Jacket Arm in rain (and we saw it in fine 
 bright weather), George Sound in sunshine (and 
 for us it was all in cloud and drizzle), are said to be 
 perfection. But the beauty of the view up Hall's 
 
New Zealand South of Christchurch. 185 
 
 Arm, and the grandeur of Milford Sound are things 
 ever to be held in admiring remembrance. 
 
 Dunedin proclaims by its name its Scotch origin, 
 and maintains its Scotchness unimpaired. Indeed 
 all Otago and Southland are Scotch. I do not 
 think any one but a Scotchman could conveniently 
 live in the bleak cold that holds part of Southland 
 even in midsummer ; how much more then in mid- 
 winter ? But Dunedin, as I saw it, is not cold. It 
 is, however, said to be fickle. And it is very prettily 
 situated. I met a man who remembered it a 
 generation ago ; all the hills around bush-covered, 
 and not a building in the place but scanty plank 
 shanties. Now the hills are nearly all cleared, only 
 patches of bush remain, and country seats, such as 
 Larnac's Castle, crown the heights, while the town 
 boasts of the finest buildings in New Zealand. In 
 the bright clear air, it is a charming drive along the 
 Upper Road to Portobello, and back by the Beach 
 Road, or out to the Taieri Valley ; and the road to 
 Blueskin (if that be the right name, for I never can 
 remember whether it be not Bluerift, or Bluedrift, 
 or Blueshirt or skirt ; however, I think it is Blueskin, 
 after some fellow who was tattooed blue all over — as 
 blue as a " woad"-ed Ancient Briton): I say the road 
 to Blueskin takes you up over a pass of some 2,000 
 feet into sight of long ranges of hills (the only 
 way to Christchurch in the old days), that are 
 yet covered with unbroken bush. Looking down 
 on the harbour, one is reminded somewhat of 
 Nagasaki ; it is the same long narrow inlet, hill- 
 
1 86 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 surrounded, with the town at the extreme end of it. 
 But there are differences enow ; here are the hills less 
 steep, less varied in outline, softer, more rounded ; 
 here is no natural waterway, but a channel patiently 
 wrought and incessantly dredged ; here is a chain of 
 promontory and island (Quarantine Island) that 
 almost closes the inlet from Port Chalmers to 
 Portobello, to which Nagasaki affords no parallel. 
 It is pretty, as are all New Zealand ports that I 
 have seen, except the Bluff; but not beautiful as 
 Nagasaki. Taieri is a long and fertile valley between 
 fine grazing hills. There is much cultivation as 
 well as mutton and wool-growing about Dunedin. 
 Let us go into this Meat-freezing Factory. Sales of 
 beeves and sheep are busily going forward in the yard 
 close by ; here we may see the latter congealing, to re- 
 appear in London as best Welsh mutton. The first 
 chamber is at a temperature of 26" F. ; the carcases 
 have only just been put in, and are still tender to 
 the touch, and meaty to the smell. The second 
 chamber is at 18° F. ; and here a blow struck on 
 the stiffened body rings sharp and metallic. The 
 amount of cold put into the sheep depends on the 
 distance it has to go (by rail) to the refrigerating 
 chamber aboard ship. Beef cannot be frozen so 
 well as mutton, owing to the necessity of cutting up 
 the carcase, thereby losing much of its natural 
 juices, so that when unfrozen it eats much poorer 
 than the mutton which is frozen whole. 
 
 Some of our "push " decided on reaching Christ- 
 church by sea in the Rotomahana (Rotten Banana 
 
New Zealand South of Christchurch. 187 
 
 Our Humorist would call it) ; but Our Enthusiast 
 preferred the rail, and so did I. And it is, in truth, 
 a very pretty bit of road as far as Blueskin, and 
 some little way beyond. The line passes just above 
 Port Chalmers and round the promontory that ends 
 the range which we drove out over the other day, 
 and presents charming views of rock and sea, and 
 cove and bay, of hill and gully, fern- or forest- clad 
 or cleared for grazing. But do not let yourself be 
 drawn into riding on the platform of the carriage, 
 lest a tunnel (of which there are several, and one a 
 long one) come suddenly upon you unawares, and 
 you emerge therefrom as grimy as a coal-heaver, 
 or as Our Enthusiast did. Oamaru, where you 
 lunch, is a most striking town in one respect ; it is 
 all of stone, quite a curious sight after the long 
 succession of wooden erections so almost universal 
 hitherto and hereafter. It is the outlet of a most 
 fertile country. On by Timaru to Christchurch, 
 the scenery is much less interesting, not to say 
 monotonous. The Canterbury Plains are plain, 
 almost level, and, as I saw them, as brown and dry 
 as an Indian plain. Indeed, the scene reminded me 
 strongly of India ; the same hot weather haze 
 hanging about the low undistinguished hills in 
 the distance, the same interminable expanse of 
 parched-up lowland, with here and there a little 
 clump of trees, hiding in India the gaon, here a 
 tiny homestead, or shepherd's or labourer's hut. 
 About Christchurch itself, I am sorry that I can tell 
 you nothing but what you will find in the guide- 
 
1 88 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 book ; for I arrived at 9 p.m., and got no dinner — 
 only a supper ; and left next morning at 8 a.m. I 
 can only say that it is as English and churchy as 
 Dunedin is Scotch and kirky ; that Warner's is a 
 comfortable hotel, and the proprietor obliging and 
 scrupulously honest (he returned to me by post, 
 after I left, a modest two shillings which his clerk 
 had unwittingly overcharged me) ; that the streets 
 are ill-lighted, or unlighted, at night ; and that there 
 are hansom cabs, whose cabbies will show you the 
 way about if you don't know it yourself. I was 
 there only a short time ; and have no more to tell 
 you of Christchurch. 
 
i89 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE OTIRA THE BULLER NELSON. 
 
 Of the coach drive from Christchurch to the 
 West Coast, and thence to Nelson, I had heard con- 
 flicting accounts ; some averring that the Duller is 
 much finer than the Otira Gorge, others maintain- 
 ing the superiority of the latter ; one saying that 
 the general discomfort that had to be endured ren- 
 dered the trip unenjoyable, another that it was real 
 good business. It seemed to me that probably the 
 pleasure of it depended largely on two things 
 besides the scenery ; to wit, one's company and the 
 weather. Now the former I had of the best all 
 through, for Our Humorist and Mrs. H. were 
 my fellow-voyagers even to Wellington ; and the 
 latter was at starting altogether beyond reproach. 
 The first stage is by rail to Springfield, through 
 country no more interesting than that seen the day 
 before coming into Christchurch, except that those 
 distant hills are getting nearer, more defined, more 
 striking. At Springfield the railway ends, and one 
 gets a lunch of the kind one is becoming accustomed 
 to in the colonies : huge helpings of meat from the 
 joint (an adult New Zealander eats 200 to 250 lbs. 
 
I go Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 of meat a year to the Englishman's no, and 
 the " portion " served out to you is, therefore, of 
 course, enormous), pudding and tea ! Tea at all meals, 
 and at all possible hours outside meals, is a charac- 
 teristic of Australasian civilization. Concurrently, 
 as might be expected, there is far less " nipping " 
 and consumption of alcoholic drinks than in places 
 I wot of in the East and Far East. We got away 
 from Springfield about i p.m. : two coachloadsful. 
 Such lumbering-looking coaches, yet really not 
 heavy, with enormous leather springs. On one 
 coach went the Leader without a Cub, with the Un- 
 lovely Heiress, and all her female relations ; we called 
 them now the Raja and his harem. We Three took 
 the upper box-seat on the second coach, and the 
 great Cassidy himself was our driver. We went 
 steadily enough until we got to the end of the 
 plains, and into a gorge of the hills — such bare hills, 
 almost as absolutely bare as the Remarkables, and not 
 rock either, or rather volcanic rock all disintegrated 
 and crumbled, grey in colour. Then after a fine 
 drink of milk we walked up the long ascent of 
 Porter's Pass — and very hot it was to us dressed for 
 cold climates. 
 
 At the top, 3,000 feet high, the wind blows some- 
 times so strong as to upset the coach ; at least it has 
 been known to do so when the load was a light one. 
 Then a long descent past little Lake Lyndon, amidst 
 ever-changing views of bare mountains ; rattling 
 along, for Cassidy is a fine driver. He takes us 
 gently over the open watercourses that cross the 
 
The Otira. 191 
 
 road and all the rough bits ; yet every now and then 
 we on the box, at an extra heavy jolt, rise simul- 
 taneously from our seats, bow politely, and sit down 
 again. A change of horses at the end of fifteen 
 miles, and we speed along to Castle Hill, near which 
 are a number of curious-shaped "rocks stuck up in all 
 sorts of positions and groupings, and, at which are 
 good tea and excellent scones to be enjoyed. The 
 road crosses one or two snow- and ice-fed streams, 
 lying in stony beds ; one is very deep cut, with the 
 banks so naturally and levelly terraced that it seems 
 hardly possible that art has not come to the aid of 
 nature. Yet there is no doubt that here, as at Lake 
 Wawkatip, the terraced banks are merely the result 
 of the lowering of the water-level. Then through a 
 pass where the hills close in on us, and a splendid 
 down-grade to Craigieburn (twenty-eight miles). 
 Horses changed again, and we spin along past Lakes 
 Pearson and Grasmere, and through a big grazing 
 plain, some of it cultivated with oats. The road 
 runs straight for a couple of miles ; evening is 
 closing in ; cold blows the wind across the wold ; the 
 sunset flush fades from off the mountain-tops. It is 
 already dusk when we reach the Waimakariri — a 
 splendid scene. The river wanders over a wide bed 
 of shingle, shut in, as it seems, by great mountains, 
 black and silent, thick with birch forest, but bare- 
 headed or snow-capped. The road crawls along the 
 precipitous bank, now climbing 200 or 300 feet up, 
 now descending almost to the water's edge ; until at 
 last we get on to almost level ground and arrive at 
 
192 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Bealey at 9 p.m.' — forty-five miles. Dinner is a 
 repetition of lunch ; and the bedrooms, small as they 
 are, are double-bedded. But early to bed, sound 
 sleep, and an early rise see us cheerful enough in the 
 nipping and eager air at the 5 o'clock start. For 
 many a mile the track runs along, and mostly, in the 
 bed of the Waimakariri and then of the Bealey 
 River, and a fine jolting the rounded stones give us. 
 Cassidy is not with us ; but the silent Holmes is as 
 good a driver, if a far less communicative and atten- 
 tive cicerone. The sunrise is unluckily a cloudy 
 one ; the scenery looks all the more solemn for the 
 dull grey light. At last we get clear of the river 
 and begin the long ascent of Arthur's Pass. We 
 are glad to walk and get warm, and welcome the sun 
 as he breaks through the cloud veil. There on the 
 right is the Devil's Punch Bowl — a small stream of 
 water pouring into a rounded basin ; little water, but 
 a big drop. On the left Mount Rolleston, with a 
 splendid glacier, seems close to us ; mountains of 
 six, seven, eight thousand feet stand about us, until 
 at last we reach the top — the water-divide, the back- 
 bone of the Middle Island. The descent begins 
 almost at once, but, just after it has started, has to 
 cross a huge moraine : the greater part of the 
 mountain-side on the right seems to have fallen into 
 the gorge. Having surmounted this, we commence 
 in earnest the descent from our elevation of 3,040 or 
 3,050 feet ; and a very rapid descent it is. The 
 road zig-zags down the terribly abrupt side of the 
 moraine ; it is only just wide enough for the coach. 
 
The Otira. 193 
 
 and at each corner it looks as if we must go over 
 the edge. But horses and driver aUke know their 
 work, and only a foolishly nervous person need feel 
 anything but the keenest enjoyment as we swing 
 along at a real good pace. The gorge narrows and 
 closes in on us ; the road leaves the moraine and 
 cuts in along the face of the cliff, propped up here 
 and there with wooden stays where it actually over- 
 hangs the brawling torrent below. This torrent has 
 to be crossed once and again, by stout black wooden 
 bridges ; note the colour of the snow-water, melted 
 ice ; a blue green that I should call glaucous. It is 
 a tremendous fine bit of driving, this Otira Gorge, 
 and one not to be missed. Drive down it ; that is, 
 start from Christchurch, not up it (i.e. from Grey- 
 mouth), is my advice to any one who thinks of 
 going that way ; and don't fail to secure a box seat. 
 After such an early chhota haziri at Bealey, one is 
 quite ready for a good breakfast at the Otira Hotel, 
 with fifteen miles left behind us. Already, as we 
 came down the gorge, the character of the scenery 
 had begun to change. The absolute bareness of 
 nearly all yesterday's drive had yielded to black- 
 looking forests of birch, and this in turn now gave 
 place to the dense and varied jungle that clothes all 
 the waste lands of the west coast. For thirty-seven 
 miles the road is right through this bush ; and very 
 beautiful it is. Big pines (rima or red pine and 
 others), big fern-trees, a wealth of varied vegetation. 
 There is one twelve-mile avenue of unbroken bush. 
 We follow the Otira river until it joins the 
 
 o 
 
194 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Teremakau and then along the course of that to 
 Kumara. Here and there is a clearing — Jackson's, 
 Taipo ( = Shaitan ; why so called I do not know), 
 and others. The snow-capped Alexander is on our 
 right ; and the river brawls beneath it over a wide 
 shingly bed. Gradually the hills become lower and 
 lower ; all are now wooded to the peak ; here we 
 pass a flat of rich land, undrained swamp, but 
 capable of reclamation. Suddenly we find ourselves 
 in Dillman's Town and Kumara — the face of nature 
 seamed and made hideous in the search for gold. 
 The townships are high above the river, and all 
 around are vast water-flumes and masses of rubble 
 and refuse. No quartz-stamping here, but washing 
 for alluvial gold. A very bad lunch at Kumara, 
 and then on (leaving the coaches to pursue their road 
 to Hokitika) by such a funny little tramway : a 
 one-horse affair ; wooden rails of the smallest con- 
 ceivable gauge ; the tramcar a ramshackle box, a 
 cross between a 'bus and a Black Maria. The line 
 bores its narrow way through dense bush to the 
 river ; it is pretty, only we have had about enough 
 bush for the day. Then the river has to be crossed 
 in a cage which runs on a wire rope stretched from 
 bank to bank ; the fixed engine runs it smoothly 
 across, and drives a sawmill in the intervals. Over 
 the river the tram runs on to Greymouth, getting 
 out of the bush on to a very ugly sea-beach cut up 
 with diggings and washings for gold. We are not 
 sorry to reach Greymouth after thirteen hours of 
 travel ; nor to spend there a quiet day of rest before 
 
Greymouth. 195 
 
 resuming the road. It is a quiet little place ; 
 terminus of a railway that is to grow into a Midland, 
 reaching to Nelson on the one side and to Christ- 
 church on the other. We passed on the road 
 surveyors at work on the latter branch at and under 
 the Otira Gorge ; we shall see the construction of 
 the other branch actually in hand at both ends as we 
 go to Nelson. How the line is ever to have the 
 remotest chance of paying, it passes my wit to con- 
 ceive. The line must be costly, and most of the 
 country it passes through is unfit for agricultural and 
 for pastoral industry, nor have minerals been found 
 in it as yet. Where there are minerals — coal and 
 gold — the railway already reaches, or will do when 
 it gets to Reefton ; and that ought to be quite far 
 enough for it. But so long as British capital chooses 
 to let itself be available, so long, I suppose, will works 
 like this railway and the harbour at Greymouth (and 
 at many another place) be taken in hand by the 
 guileless New Zealander. Greymouth can, I should 
 say, never be a large port ; yet it has planned its 
 breakwater on a most extensive scale. Not unnatu- 
 rally it remains unfinished, and seems likely to remain 
 so. A nasty swell breaks in over the bar, and the 
 breakwater leaves off in mid-air, so to say, with 
 rails rusting, and the weather or sea- face uncoped, 
 undressed, unfinished. It affords, it is true, the one 
 promenade in Greymouth — when it is fine ; a rare 
 occurrence, but one that came off for our benefit. 
 There is a noble view from the end of it towards the 
 ranges we have crossed, and away to the south of 
 
 o 2 
 
196 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 them appears Mount Cook — the monarch of New 
 Zealand mountains. 
 
 The morning is dull as we start next day and rail 
 past Brunnerton and its coal-mines as far as the line 
 at present goes — Totara Flats ; and then coach on 
 to Reefton. A good deal of the scenery on the way is 
 very like what I have seen in the Malay Peninsula — 
 except.of course, as regards the kinds of trees that make 
 up the jungle. Much diversity of low hills, all forest- 
 clad except where artifically cleared ; interspersed 
 with level lowlands, mostly swamps undrained and 
 useless. Rice-fields, of course, are absent ; they are 
 replaced by grazing clearings on the drier flats. 
 Reefton is the centre of the gold- mining industry of 
 these parts. There are several mines at work, and I 
 suppose paying. The companies have the advan- 
 tage over the Ballarat people in having ample water 
 to drive their machinery for crushing quartz, and the 
 pumping and shaft-work of the mine ; it is a lot 
 more economical than steam. Hotel accommoda- 
 tion is hardly to be called magnificent at Reefton ; a 
 very pot-housey dining-room, awfully shut in and 
 stuffy. My English fellow-travellers, not less than 
 my Anglo-Indian self, marvelled greatly at the way 
 in which people in New Zealand keep their houses 
 shut up, even in weather that they deemed warm 
 and we found chilly. The first thing one had to do 
 generally was to open the windows ; the next was, 
 if possible, to get them to stay open — for many times 
 we found them not built to stay open of themselves 
 at all. The hotises are nearly all of the same minute 
 
Reef ton. 197 
 
 shanty kind that the up-country colonist seems to 
 prefer. It is the fashion to speak of Japanese 
 houses as " toy " ; but these New Zealand dwellings 
 have a better claim to that description. Look at 
 that butcher's shop ; it is exactly — ^joints and all — like 
 one in a child's play-box. And some of the dwell- 
 ings are so cramped, confined, and dirty, that no 
 decent Japanese would dream of dwelling therein. 
 The drive from Reefton to Longford is said to be 
 very beautiful. I do not feel in a position to ex- 
 press a decided opinion. When everything is hidden 
 in low, grey cloud, and the rain descends cease- 
 lessly and soakingly, beauty disappears, and you 
 who ought to be elevating your soul by the contem- 
 plation of it, are merely wet through, and dull, 
 and cross. There is plenty of bush, but the clear- 
 ing through it is not made pretty by fallen and yet 
 standing logs all charred and burnt (no removal of 
 them except by burning in situ appears to be ever 
 performed in these parts). There are plenty of 
 streams, of which most unbridged : thank goodness 
 they are not in flood, else should we have to turn 
 back to Reefton. There is really nothing to remark 
 except the postal delivery — paper or letter flung 
 down in the rain and mud by the driver as the gate 
 is passed by the unstopped coach, to wait there 
 until picked up by whom it may concern ; until we 
 reach the Inangahua, and cross it, coach and all, on 
 a flying bridge, a big raft attached by ropes and 
 blocks to a wheel that runs on a wire rope stretched 
 above us across the stream. The current is so 
 
igS Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 sluggish that we by no means fly : rather crawl in- 
 sensibly ; and not long after reach the junction 
 where the Duller receives the Inangahua. Here we 
 waste an hour and a half for no earthl)'^ perceptible 
 purpose, for lunch takes but half-an-hour ; and then 
 drive up the Duller Gorge, for nearly seven mortal 
 hours. It is impossible to say what the scenery 
 around is like ; the clouds have stooped from heaven 
 and taken the shape with fold to fold, and a good 
 many folds to spare, of mountain, and of everything 
 except what is in your immediate vicinity ; but the 
 gorge is really beautiful. The river, narrowing 
 gradually, as gradually we rise nearer to its sources, 
 has worn its way through rocks that seem harder 
 and firmer — less crumbly and disintegrating than 
 in the Otira — real solid rock ; the water colour is 
 a fine blue, the rocks often red. Here the river 
 rushes almost as tumultuously as in those rapids 
 near Kioto, and the hill-sides are thicker with dense 
 bush than those that rise above the Japanese 
 stream. Steep is the road, and narrow, with here 
 and there a sheer drop to the rocks and river below, 
 down which should we fall (as the Dishop and his 
 clerical companion nearly did in one place), coach 
 and passengers would speedly be converted into 
 matchwood and corpses. At the Lyell, — a straggling 
 street of houses, each perching out half of it over 
 the ravine, — a welcome cup of tea has to last us up 
 to Longford, not reached till half-past 8 p.m. Along 
 this drive there are, for the first time in our New 
 Zealand wanderings, many birds to be noticed : 
 
The Buller. 199 
 
 the parson-bird, with white choker and tie ; green 
 parrots (or parakeets), lots of them ; finches ; 
 sparrows ; Maori-hens — very perky and unafraid ; 
 large handsome pigeons ; rakas — regular foolbirds, 
 they say, of which if you shall shoot one, the rest will 
 flock round to investigate and mourn until you have 
 bagged every one, and there's none left to continue 
 the inquiry and lamentation. At Longford we pig 
 it much as we have done at the other " accommoda- 
 tion houses " on the road, yet are free from the 
 wicked ones which some had led us to fear here ; 
 and sleep the sleep of the just after our all but 
 twelve hours' coaching. From Longford we pass 
 the junction of the Mangles River, a "romantic bit" 
 (guide-book) ; near the Owen, " another fine vista " 
 (guide-book again) ; Granity Greek, " very interest- 
 ing " (as before), and the spot where the Rotoroa 
 joins the Buller, "one of the wildest gems of river 
 scenery that one could hope for" (really the last 
 guide-book quotation). The guide-book is quite 
 right ; but I wish it would not keep on raining so, 
 and that the driver would not take us along as if 
 we were following the hearse at a funeral. Rapid 
 motion through bright clear air, that is exhilarat- 
 ing, something to rejoice in ; but crawling wearily 
 through mist and rain ! Why can't we get along a 
 bit and have done with it ? By the time we reach 
 our sole change of horses in the whole day's drive, 
 with lunch still two hours ahead of us, even 
 Mrs. H., the ever bright and cheerful and pleasant, 
 is more than half cross (the only time I ever saw 
 
200 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 her so). We are tired of noticing the " shady 
 recesses that murmur at morn " of the Httle Hope 
 River, up which we turned away from the BuUer; 
 the isolated single shanties, miles apart, of miners 
 who prefer independence and bare subsistence in 
 the midst of solitude to working for wages with their 
 fellows on capitalized mines ; the little scratchings 
 and washings that they have made near their hovels 
 in their search for gold ; the else unbroken, unending 
 bush ; all we want is to get on. But still we crawl 
 along funereally ; it is exasperating. At length we 
 climb the saddle, the central ridge, made hideous — 
 as all clearings are — with charred logs and stumps 
 unremoved and partially burnt, among which roam 
 grimy sheep ; the bush gets thinner, more forests 
 of charred poles, then open country, cultivated or 
 pastoral, low, treeless green hills, and a level road. 
 But still we crawl ; and it is only after seven hours 
 of it that the landlady from the Orkneys (or the 
 Shetlands, I forget which) gives us what she can at 
 the Motupiko inn. We have still three hours more 
 to do, crossing Spooner's Range — very bare and 
 ugly, now being tackled by the railway, but with a 
 really pretty view from the top over the Waimea 
 Plains on to Nelson and the good old ocean beyond : 
 a view that is home-like and charming in its rustic 
 and fertile calm ; and finally an hour and a half by rail, 
 and we are in Nelson. About Nelson may be had, 
 in the season, shooting of pig (tame ones gone wild 
 for generations), deer (introduced from home), duck 
 (I saw a few here and there), quail (Californian, 
 
Nelson. 201 
 
 fine big birds with strong and numerous broods of 
 young did I see along the road), and (if you consider 
 them game as the gentle sportsman who sat next 
 me seemed to do), swamp-hens and rakas and par- 
 rots of sorts. A day of somnolence and placid 
 strolling about in and around the town and the 
 Botanical Hill succeeded our five days' coaching ; 
 not entirely a day of pure enjoyment, for we were 
 anxious to get on to Wellington — I en route to 
 Napier, and Our Humorist to catch a boat 
 for Auckland. But the Union Company, with 
 that careful forethought for the convenience of 
 travellers which so distinguishes it, had despatched 
 two boats to Wellington the day before, and had 
 none going to-day. " There'll be one to-morrow- 
 leaving at 5 A.M.," said the Agent ; and, when Our 
 Humorist, in his suavest manner, remarked on the 
 awkward distribution of their service, proceeded to 
 get excessively irate. " I've been here twenty 
 years," he raved, " and never heard such complaints 
 made ; " and his wrath exploded in inarticulate ejacu- 
 lations as Our Humorist remarked sweetly on the 
 pity of it that this long experience had not led to 
 better arrangements, and on the proof his state- 
 ment afforded of the long-suffering patience of the 
 travellers in New Zealand. The Union Steam- 
 ship Company of New Zealand has a practical, 
 indeed an absolute, monopoly of the inter-coastal 
 service of the colony, and, like other monopo- 
 lies that we wot of, is far too strong to be 
 lightly assailed. But elsewhere, say on the Irra- 
 
202 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 waddy, for instance, the Flotilla Company does 
 at least do you well on board : there are roomy 
 cabins, with decent appointments, and food and 
 service that need not be grumbled at. But this 
 colonial monopoly puts four berths into a cabin 
 barely big enough for two, and erects between 
 each pair of cabins one single washhand basin for 
 the use of the eight passengers ; or it turns its 
 saloon into one huge cabin with berths on and 
 above the seats where, in daylight, you sit at meat, 
 and the smoking-room as its deck-cabin to receive 
 all that cannot be jammed into the saloon. The 
 meals are of the plainest, and the attendance of the 
 offhand and inattentive kind which is not excep- 
 tional in the colonies. Its steamers rarely (never in 
 my experience) start in time ; and when it does 
 build a good-sized boat, she breaks down every trip 
 (that is what the Monowai did, all I have ever 
 heard of her). So we had two nights and a day in 
 Nelson — a quiet place, with no industries to speak 
 of ; hops are not grown half, nor nearly half, as they 
 used to be ; yet two breweries are going, and there 
 is fruit enough to feed two jam factories. It rejoices 
 in a cathedral (all wood) and a bishop of its own ; a 
 number of people living moderately on independent 
 means in charming wooden bungalows ; a harbour to 
 be entered only at high water, and then only, by 
 boats of light draft ; and a picturesque situation, 
 surrounded by rounded hills of varying height and 
 outline, green, though treeless, with a view of bolder 
 ranges in the distance. By 5 a.m. we were duly on 
 
Picton. 20 3 
 
 board the Rotten Rower (the Maori spelling is 
 Rotorua), and of course she did not start till 6. On 
 the way to the entrance to Picton Sound (that's not 
 the name of it, if it has a name, as probably it has ; 
 I mean the Sound, long and narrow and deep, at 
 the end of which lies Picton), you pass through a 
 strait that truly deserves the name ; a reef runs 
 out and leaves the most exiguous space to pass in, 
 through which the tide rushes at a best-on-record sort 
 of pace ; and then you enter the Sound — truly a very 
 pretty one, with its little town charmingly perched 
 away at the end, backed by pleasing hills. A little 
 place with a little railway to Blenheim (how martial 
 and patriotic our names are here, to be sure) ! it lies 
 dreaming of the greatness to come when its depth 
 of harbour, its coal and gold and antimony, its 
 mutton and wool and lumber, shall attract some- 
 thing more than the one sailing ship that lies by the 
 little wharf (and has lain for weeks, and will lie for 
 weeks to come), and the brief visits of the Union 
 steamers. And so good-bye to the South or Middle 
 Island, and across with afresh wind (rather too fresh 
 for some) to Wellington, the capital of the colony, 
 too late for anything but supper and bed. 
 
 You will have noticed, perhaps, that, so far, the 
 Maori has not received the honour of mention in 
 these pages. That is his fault. I cannot, as a 
 truthful pensman, write of what I have not seen ; 
 and I saw no Maori in the Middle Island. There 
 are a few, I am told ; but very few, and merged in 
 the general population, not dwelling apart with some 
 
204 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 show of independence as in the North Island. The 
 Chinaman I did see ; right away south in Southland 
 is the pig-tailed heathen present, but looking un- 
 natural and preternaturally ugly in his European 
 clothes. I do not envy a Cantonese living in the 
 climate of Queenstown. And many a sight that is 
 worth seeing have I also left out for want of having 
 seen it : the Lakes of Otago and Southland, ex- 
 cepting only Wawkatip ; Mount Cook (Aorangi, the 
 Cloud-piercer) with its enormous glaciers, Tasman 
 and Mueller and Murchison and more besides ; all 
 the east coast from Christchurch to Blenheim ; the 
 Duller from the Junction to Westport — the best 
 piece, so they say, finer than what I did see, so far 
 as rain permitted. People are fond of comparing 
 the Otira with the Buller. There is no true com- 
 parison to be made ; the styles are too different. 
 The Otira grandiose, bare or gloomy with black 
 birch, and big with mountain and glacier and im- 
 mense moraine ; the Buller graceful with the free 
 rush of blue water through forest-clad ravines, alive 
 with birds and varied and almost too profuse vege- 
 tation, beautiful but not imposing. The Otira 
 strikes the imagination, the Buller charms the fancy. 
 If I had to advise how best to see this part of New 
 Zealand, I should say do the Buller from Nelson to 
 Westport ; return by sea to Nelson ; get by land 
 from Nelson to Blenheim and on to Christchurch — 
 or by sea if that is too long a journey ; do the Otira 
 from Christchurch to Greymouth (or Hokitika) 
 and leave that by sea. This would give you a rather 
 
Picton. 205 
 
 large dose of Union Steamship discomfort ; but you 
 would see the BuUer and the Otira the best way 
 about, and would escape the uninteresting piece 
 from Greymouth to the Inangahua Junction — a day 
 and a halfs journey. 
 
2o6 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE REGION OF UNCEASING FIRE. 
 
 Wellington, I am sorry to say, I can tell you no 
 more about than I could about Christchurch. It 
 has a good harbour with a villanous reef of rocks 
 barring the entrance, and a pretty situation encircled 
 by hills. (You are perhaps getting tired of this 
 phrase, or something like it, applied to each New 
 Zealand port in turn. But it is true ; each of them 
 is pretty — except the Bluff.) Having delivered 
 myself into the hands of Cook, and being bound (as 
 I thought) to be in Auckland for a steamer on a 
 certain day, I had of necessity to proceed as per 
 programme — except when the Union Steamship Co. 
 upset it ; and it upset me out of the one day that I 
 had destined to Wellington. So after arriving at 9 at 
 night, off I went by rail at 6.30 next morning by 
 one of the two private {i.e. not Government) railways 
 in New Zealand. It is a pretty bit of country that 
 the line passes through as far as Otaki, first up and 
 through and down the encircling hills aforesaid, and 
 then along the rocky sea-coast with the old whaler's 
 island of Kapiti in sight. After that it is dull 
 enough — swampy with much flax (looking like a 
 
The Region of Unceasing Fire, 207 
 
 kind of aloe) and bush — cleared and charred (as 
 usual) in not a few places. Here and there a Maori 
 settlement — very unnative and unromantic, both as 
 to huts and as to garb of their occupants. A break- 
 fast car on the train is a bit of good bandobast not 
 before experienced. At Palmerston it was necessary 
 to leave the train for the coach, the line constructed 
 through the Manawatu Gorge being not yet open 
 for traffic. Here reappeared Our Enthusiast and 
 Scion of Noble House ; and we coached on to 
 Woodville. The gorge is said to have been fine 
 once ; it isn't now, the railway cutting has spoilt it. 
 Nor is the road remarkable except for its narrow- 
 ness. The only pretty bit is the entrance at the 
 Woodville end. Rail again from 3 to 9 brings 
 us to Napier — through country of bush at first, with 
 many ugly clearings, the bush ceasing suddenly as 
 we reach the eastern side, and giving place to wide 
 grazing doWns. The soil is of great fertility in this 
 district, and carries certainly six — some say eight or 
 even ten, but this is bluff — sheep to the acre. It 
 could support a large population if it were held by 
 many for themselves, instead of by a few who find 
 their profit in growing mutton and wool for a distant, 
 not a resident, population. For all that, Napier 
 must go in for its half-a-million or so to improve its 
 harbour, which certainly needs improvement ; it has 
 built itself a fine sea-face, and is aiding nature to 
 reclaim by silting up the watery flats that almost 
 surround it. The charming hillock on which its 
 residences stand was evidently once an island; 
 
2o8 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 streets and offices, &c., lie on the level at its feet. 
 The climate is noticeably warmer than in the South 
 Island. Only one day here, and then two days 
 coaching to Taupo. People have tried to count how 
 many times the coach crosses the stream up whose 
 course the road runs before it reaches the uplands ; 
 but as, in the case of the stone Buddhas on the river 
 bank at Nikko, no two computers arrive at the 
 same result. It is somewhere about fifty ; and as 
 the bed is rubbly, there is no lack of jolting. Fortu- 
 nately nothing worse, no floods to delay us, or — 
 more disastrous — to upset the coach. This did 
 happen once ; the driver thought the flood not too 
 high to cross, but, arrived at the farther bank, found 
 it cut away and too steep to mount. Trying to turn 
 the coach, over it went ; and, while he saved his 
 passengers, his horses were drowned. The chief 
 characteristic of the uplands is fern ; miles and miles 
 of hill, of outline bold and varied enough, covered 
 with bracken (rapa, I believe, the native name). A 
 bright fine day and pleasant fellow-voyagers in a 
 coach not too full, with wide extending views back 
 to Napier and the sea, make the morning pass away 
 pleasantly ; but tiffin on utterly tasteless and leathery 
 mutton is not so cheerful. Really this accommoda- 
 tion house at Pahui is the meanest in building and 
 in board that I have come across. A long climb 
 brings us to the top of the saddle, and then a fine 
 down-grade and another long ascent on the far side. 
 The latter part of the descent at Tikiakura is steep, 
 the road narrow, looking right down on the stream ; 
 
The Region of Unceasing Fire. 209 
 
 t 
 
 a wooden rail protects it. I cannot understand how 
 any one can feel nervous in rattling, as the ex- 
 perienced MacAuley rattles his coach, down such a 
 splendid bit of driving as this. Yet such men are. 
 One, it is related, at the steepest and narrowest part, 
 clutched at the reins, and, before the driver could 
 check him, turned the leaders right on to the rails. 
 Over they went ; the driver, poor fellow, was killed, 
 while the idiot passenger — of course — escaped. 
 There is a second down-grade towards the end of 
 the day — finer than the first. It is a glorious view 
 in the evening light (the best of all lights for scenery) 
 from the summit of Tauranga Kuma down into the 
 deep-cut valley, with terraced banks, bare to wind- 
 ward, forest-clad in the sheltered ravines ; we halt 
 a while to gaze on it, — "the finest view in New 
 Zealand," says the enthusiastic local man ; — and then 
 spin along, descending 1,500 feet in three miles and 
 in eighteen minutes. A modest but clean and 
 decent inn shelters us for the night in the hamlet of 
 Tarawera (not to be confounded with the ill-omened 
 mountain of that name), and off we go again at 7.30 
 next morning. The road at first is finely picturesque 
 as we wend our devious way about and across these 
 deep-cut terraced ravines ; but before we reach the 
 summit the bush ceases and yields to scrub or 
 rubbishing grass ; and at the top and on to Rangi- 
 taiki it is very desolate and drear : partly unwhole- 
 some-looking swamp ; partly bare volcanic soil ; 
 partly tufts of useless ugly grass or stunted puny 
 manuka. The solitary inn, where again we endure 
 
 p 
 
2IO Farthest East, Smith and West. 
 
 a starvation tiffin, is about the most utterly aban- 
 doned, God-forsaken-looking place you can imagine. 
 
 On to Taupo the country immediately around 
 one is not much better. Not a sign of human 
 habitation — none, indeed, since Tarawera, except 
 that dreary inn (with the landlady mortal sick, poor 
 soul ! ) and one, or it may have been two, Maori 
 settlements, and those empty. No sign of life, 
 except a derelict sheep from a mob, marching from 
 the droughty plains of Napier (for that fertile land 
 has its droughts, though as nothing to the Aus- 
 tralian version, or the Indian, of that terror to 
 beast and man) to the valley of the Waikato ; and 
 a few wild horses that stand and gaze at us afar off. 
 (All animals imported here seem to lose a few which 
 run and breed wild — horses, cattle, sheep, goats, 
 cats, dogs, pigs.) The only beauty is in the dis- 
 tance : the g^eat snowy shoulders and peak of 
 Ruapehu, the smoking cone and long flat ridge of 
 Tongariro, rise clear in the soft blue air ; and soon 
 we sight the blue waters of Taupo — greatest of New 
 Zealand lakes. And so we enter on the Region of 
 Unceasing Fire, generally called the Hot Lake 
 District. As the lakes are not hot, while the fire is 
 never resting, my name is not only better-sotmding 
 but also true. 
 
 At Taupo you command from the Terraces 
 Hotel a fine view of the lake and mountains just 
 mentioned, and close at hand are natural hot baths, 
 in the hollow under the hill. There, too, is a 
 natural black terrace, curious, but uncanny-looking, 
 
The Region of Unceasing Fire. 211 
 
 gruesome. Or, if you prefer it, you may go some 
 miles on to Joshua's Sanitarium, where you will have 
 no view, but find j'ourself right down in the hollow 
 in the midst of the hot springs. In any case, you 
 must not omit to see the geysers and hot springs 
 on the bank of the Waikato, just off the road to 
 Joshua's, The setting is picturesque, the strong 
 clear river winding in a deep-cut bed between rocky 
 banks ; and the steam and hot water break out in a 
 score of places for half a mile along, from the very 
 edge of the cold stream up to near the top of the 
 slope. The chiefest and best is the Crow's Nest. 
 The stuff deposited by the water has formed a sort 
 of cup — a hollow cone with the top cut off, and 
 from this, at intervals, shoots up a strong jet of boil- 
 ing w^ater to a height of say 80 feet — not straight 
 up, but slantin'dicularly. Then \\^airakei is to be 
 done ; a little valley cramfuU of splendid shows. 
 The Champagne Pool, where the water is in a 
 constant state of bubble and boil — a great cauldron 
 that seems ever effervescing but never bursts up into 
 a geyser ; the Pack-horse Mudhole, said to have 
 been made active by a pack-horse falling in (bad 
 for the horse), where the black mud rises and 
 seethes and spurts up in a miniature geyser of 
 molten rock ; the great \\'airakei geyser, playing 
 full and strong, but not very high, every six minutes, 
 and forming beneath a small yellow terrace — model 
 of the lost wonders, the pink and white Terraces 
 of Rotomahana ; the porridge pots, grey and cream- 
 coloured and white, in which the ever-heaving mud 
 
 r 2 
 
212 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 is ceaselessly burst through by little spits of energy 
 that form perfect-shaped smooth flower-petals, and 
 throw up from the crater little pellets of mud ; the 
 lake of exquisite, turquoise-blue ; geysers, the Twin, 
 the Prince of Wales's, the Terikiriki — all gaily 
 active; all these and more, and everywhere the 
 richest colouring of red and purple and orange and 
 yellow on the disintegrated rocks round blowhole 
 and pool and geyser. Here is steam at work with 
 the steady, regular, ceaseless sound of a donkey- 
 engine ; there is a mysterious pool where the 
 waters seem to be sucked down and thrown up 
 again from unknown depths. And all this in a 
 little bit of a ravine that you could easily throw a 
 stone across, from side to side, or, for the matter of 
 that, from end to end too. It is a wonderful spot : 
 an epitome in petto of the Region of Unceasing Fire. 
 Another fine thing to see, between W^airakei and 
 Taupo, is the Huka Falls of the Waikato. The 
 river narrows to a channel that seems artificial, so 
 clean is it cut through the rock, and down this it 
 rushes in broken rapids to throw itself over a fall of 
 some thirty feet only, into a wide pool. No great 
 height of a fall, truly ; but the hurry of the pent-up 
 water, the delicious cool greenness of its colour, its 
 volume and sound and spray as it falls — they are 
 good to see and to linger over for a while. Our 
 Enthusiast and I had heard that one might get in 
 under the fall, and diligently scrambled and searched 
 for a way, but found none. I am sure there is 
 none ; neither is the fall high enough, nor the river 
 
The Region of Unceasing Fire. 213 
 
 rapid or full enough, nor the rocks steep or over- 
 hanging enough, for the water to shoot clear and 
 leave room for man to pass. 
 
 From Taupo to Rotorua is some fifty-six miles, and 
 this is done with only one change of horses ; cruelly 
 long stages they are wont to make them on these 
 New Zealand coaching routes. A full coach, roads 
 unmacadamized and made only of soft mud, good 
 steady drenching rain all day long — no wonder we 
 laboured sorely and often seemed as if we should 
 stick fast or topple over in the mud ; until at last we 
 did stick, and all hands to the wheels alone set us 
 going again. \^"eary and sodden were we after ten 
 and a half hours of such a road in such weather. As 
 we passed Whakarewarewa the steam rising from its 
 many geysers, and the like, was immense. Heavy 
 rain and a high river always, it is said, make them 
 extra lively — and naturally enough. And such a 
 smell of sulphur in all the air as we drove on into 
 Rotorua. Our Scion gasped and groaned with dis- 
 gust. Next morning it was not so bad by a long 
 way ; we lounged around Rotorua, and went all 
 over Whakarewarewa. The Waiotapu valley we 
 declined to go to — the place is twenty miles off, the 
 Maoris there are extortionate, and with doing what 
 we had done plus Tikitere on the following day, we 
 thought we had seen enough of the infernal regions 
 for the time being. Rotorua or Ohinemutu and 
 Whakarewarewa are simply riddled with ventholes 
 from the volcanic forces below. At each is a 
 Maori settlement, and the occupants need not search 
 
214 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 for fuel. Scrape a bit of a hole in the ground and 
 your oven is ready ; drop your potatoes in that pool 
 and they are soon boiled. Take care where you 
 walk, or you may put your foot into a natural kettle 
 of scalding water. Some of the pools are of only 
 a pleasant warmth ; troops of naked brats dive in 
 them for coppers. I did not notice anywhere here 
 the splendid colouring of Wairakei ; the area is 
 far larger and the sights less varied here than there. 
 At Whakarewarewa there are two large geysers — 
 Pohutu and Waitiki, of which I did not see the 
 former play ; the latter is placed high on a terraced 
 platform of its own building, and throws a grand 
 body of steaming water at least thirty-five feet high. 
 Down by the river go off under-water explosions, 
 now like a pistol-shot, now like a sharp musketry- 
 fire, again (I was told) with the boom of cannon 
 (but this last I did not hear). Here are large baths, 
 knocked out of shape, some of them, by the Tara- 
 wera bust-up in '86 ; and near Rotorua is a regular 
 bathing establishment with medical officer, and 
 patients taking a regular course. The Priest's bath 
 is said to be the most potent ; Madame Rachel will 
 enamel your skin and make it beautiful for ever ; 
 the Blue Bath is blissful to swim in. These places 
 are all interesting, and if not all beautiful, at least 
 not hideous — although Our Authoress and Our 
 Scion turned back from Whakarewarewa, so sieve- 
 like was the earth with fuming blowholes. Never- 
 theless we brought them through Tikitere — a place 
 reached by launch across the lake of Rotorua and 
 
The Region of Unceasing Fire. 215 
 
 a half-hour's coach drive on. This scene is indeed 
 hideous. It is nothing but a collection of cauldrons, 
 big and little, of boiling mud, black, bituminous ; 
 not boiling gently, calmly, but furiously raging, 
 chafing to burst out and follow the clouds of steam 
 that rise high over the rugged lips of the bowl. 
 Elsewhere are sulphur beds which are known as 
 Sodom and Gomorrah — desolate and ugly in the 
 extreme, but furnishing excellent material for the 
 chemical works away in Auckland. 
 
 A very pleasant day may be spent in the steam 
 launch on Lake Rotorua, taking first the island of 
 Mokoia. Here was Hinemoa's bath (the story has 
 been told too often to bear repeating), a good deal 
 upset by the '86 eruption ; and the Skeleton in the 
 Tree — which I would not go to see : the natives 
 had a row over it a year or so before, re the profit 
 made by showing the thing to the much-fleeced globe- 
 trotter, and one party cut all the bones out of the 
 tree ; when peace was restored, the bones were fixed 
 up again, tant bien que mal, and are now shown as if 
 they had never been disturbed ! 1 1 is a quiet little place, 
 where a few lazy Maoris dwell at ease amidst their 
 patches of yams and potatoes, common and sweet, 
 and maize. Thence cross to Tengae for Tikitere, 
 and after doing that devil's delight, get away to 
 Hamarana, and lunch by the spring. Spring is 
 hardly the word ; in the midst of a thicket wells up 
 through a large crevice, quite six feet by four, a 
 regular river of the coldest and purest water — a 
 marvellous contrast to the heated waters, impreg- 
 
2i6 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 nated with countless malodorous elements, that rise 
 so freely such a little distance away. Hang over 
 the chasm where this stream issues steadily and 
 strongly up, and I think you will own that you have 
 never seen such a magnificent colour effect. I cer- 
 tainly have not myself received such an impression 
 of infinite unfathomable blueness as is given by the 
 rich intensity of the blue that predominates in the 
 iridescent and opalescent colouring of Hamarana. 
 
 You have, of course, to fee a Maori for gazing on 
 this sight. The Maori as you see him in these 
 regions is simply and inevitably detestable. They 
 are said to have been a handsome people ; if there 
 be any beauty left in man, woman, or child, of them, 
 it is hidden fast away out of sight of the passing 
 voyager. Their garb in the old days, national, 
 characteristic, was also sufficient, surely, for decency, 
 and not wanting in picturesqueness ; now it is — or 
 if it is not, most successfully and exactly imitates — 
 the broken-down, shabby, dirty Europe clothes of a 
 white navvy or of a half-caste " loafer " in India. 
 The women, rigged out in gowns of atrocious colour, 
 and wideawake battered straw hats, are coarse- 
 featured and coarse-voiced ; and men and women 
 alike having no work of any kind to do (the rents 
 paid for occupying their lands, and the fees they 
 extort for sight-seeing, amply keep them), are idlers 
 and drunkards of the most completely developed 
 description. In vain Sir George Grey gets them to 
 sign with him an agreement, a bond, to refrain from 
 liquor ; they laugh and drink on. The otherwise 
 
TJie Region of Unceasing Fire. 217 
 
 not uncomfortable Lakes Hotel is made hideous with 
 their howling in the bar — a spot just opposite the 
 dining-room door and in close proximity to the 
 passage and the smoking-rooms, where residents in 
 the hotel must needs pass. It is beastly, and a dis- 
 grace to the hotel and to the place. The 'Arry out 
 for a 'oliday sort of tourist, however, likes it and 
 encourages it ; stands 'em drinks and makes them 
 dance and sing. Often, too, he also makes an 
 exhibition of himself. Here is the story of a man 
 of whom some of us saw much more than we wished. 
 Dead drunk in saloon of P. and O. coming out, 
 fell asleep head on lady's shoulder; carried out most 
 neatly by two stewards. Twice, having placed all his 
 luggage on board, got drunk and missed his steamer. 
 Drunk and riotous in dining-room of Grand Hotel, 
 Dunedin ; had to be suppressed. Reappeared at 
 Whakarewarewa and appropriated our buggy ; when 
 our Authoress and our Scion (as before noted) 
 turned back and wished to occupy that vehicle, 
 refused to quit, or to listen to the driver; being 
 drunk, had to be forcibly ejected by three men. Found 
 drunk, coatless, collarless, in hotel passage by front 
 door at 8 A.ii. Got to Auckland somehow ; drunk 
 and disorderly in street, passed night in lock-up, fined 
 next morning, and then packed out of the colony by 
 Cook's agent as too utterly unendurable. Fine sort 
 of specimen of an Englishman to go travelling in 
 our colonies, don't you think ? He is at least a 
 startling exception, thank goodness ; whereas that 
 the Maori around Rotorua should be a more or less 
 
2i8 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 drunken loafer is the standing rule ; if there be 
 exceptions, they did not come under my notice. 
 Thus it was that when I heard that the departure of 
 the mail steamer had, without warning, some ten 
 days only before the fixed date, been postponed for 
 five days (surely a pretty tall order, isn't it ?) and 
 thus doubled the time I intended to spend in Auck- 
 land, I determined to go and see the Maori away 
 from the regular line of tourist travel : a week's 
 journey on horseback and in canoe, with only so 
 much kit as my horse could carry on the saddle in 
 front of me. But first I wished to see something of 
 the desolation wrought by the eruption of Tarawera 
 in 1886. The uncertainty of the weather, with the 
 want of a companion, (for Our Enthusiast couldn't 
 come,) prevented my going right away to Tarawera ; 
 but I rode with Macdonald, the guide, to Wairoa. 
 You may read what kind of place this was, and the 
 way on thence to the Terraces, and what they were, 
 in Froude's Oceana. Now — quantum mutatus ! — 
 the Lakes of Tikitapu and Rotokakahi that charmed 
 Froude with their colour are of a ghastly grey, thick 
 with pumice mud ; the road that runs by them is 
 broken with earthquake-riven rents, or buried in 
 mud ; so bad is it that here and there we have to 
 dismount and make a way to lead our horses over. 
 Wairoa was buried in twenty feet of mud ; and of all 
 the houses, huts, hotels, mission church, manse and 
 school, but one hut is standing — Sophia's, in which 
 crowded all that were saved that night. All that 
 smiling valley and lakelet behind Wairoa is a waste 
 
z 
 
 o 
 
 p 
 
 a. 
 
 
 tu 
 
 
 < 
 > 
 
The Region of Unceasing Fire. 219 
 
 of mud ; the waterfall is shattered by earthquake 
 shocks ; Lake Tarawera is of that same unlovely hue 
 as the upper lakes ; bush is devastated, ruined, or 
 buried in the all-enshrouding mud. Of course in 
 the five years and more that have passed since then 
 much of the mud has washed away into the lakes 
 (hence their colour), and here and there appear the 
 points of palings, the seats and tops of the wheels of 
 a buggy, the broken remnants of hut or house or 
 school. Sometimes other things come up. But a 
 few days before, Macdonald had followed up the end 
 of a blanket laid bare by the rain-wash ; it led to the 
 corpses of two children. Yet is this grey and 
 smothering mud most fertile. How the Cape thorn 
 has spread itself over the surface ; grass, too, good 
 grazing grass, has come up ; the mission orchard — 
 walnut and quince and damson — is bearing gaily ; 
 here are dog-roses in blossom ; the blue-gum is 
 beating even itself in rapidity of growth ; down 
 below fern-trees are enlarging their fronds. We see 
 Tarawera in the distance, utterly bare, sullen-look- 
 ing ; still so hot, they say, that you can thrust your 
 stick into the soft summit of him, and bring it up 
 charred and too hot to hold. Nine craters opened 
 up in that long flat ridge, and behind it broke open 
 a chasm of I forget how many miles in length, that 
 swallowed up Lake Rotomahana and its exquisite 
 terraces, and has left in place of them chaos and 
 ancient darkness, the abomination of desolation. It 
 is not my intention to tell you all about the eruption ; 
 I only want to tell about what I have seen. If you 
 
220 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 travel this way, you can hear all you want from those 
 who were through it all, if you ask McRae at the 
 Lakes Hotel, Rotorua, or Sophia, the guide (lame 
 now, poor woman), or one of the housemaids at the 
 Grand Hotel, Auckland (name unknown to me). 
 
221 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE WANGANUI — AUCKLAND. 
 
 I DO not think many tourists make their way 
 from Rotorua to Wanganui. Macdonald, the 
 licensed guide, had not taken more than three 
 parties through before me (one included a lady, who 
 rode cross-saddle) ; and one had come up from 
 Wanganui. It is rather an expensive trip, as you 
 have to pay for your guide and his horse and your 
 own horse, and, besides, find them not only while 
 with you, but also while returning to Rotorua. 
 For one travelling alone, it comes to ^^3 a day (or a 
 trifle more or less) for nine days. Then a special 
 canoe down the river — one day or a day and a half, 
 is £^, and your expenses from Wanganui, via New 
 Plymouth, to Auckland, will be nearly ;^5. In all, 
 some ^36 for a trip that took me just nine days ; i.e. 
 £/[. a day. And it is doubtful whether you get 
 quite your money's worth. I was at any rate dis- 
 appointed in my expectation of seeing the Maori 
 unwesternized ; indeed, for much of the way, I saw 
 no Maoris at all. I do not think you will see any 
 remnant of the old Maori, unless in the Urewera 
 country, which is not easy to enter. Even the 
 
222 Farthest East, South and West, 
 
 Governor does not go into it unless invited by the 
 Chiefs ; and their letter of invitation struck my 
 Anglo- Indian mind as a singularly free and equal- 
 to-equal sort of communication. Fancy an Indian 
 Raja — who is at least nominally independent, while 
 these Maori home-rulers are at least nominally 
 subject to the Queen and her representative — fancy 
 one of our Native States signifying to an Indian 
 Governor that he couldn't come to visit it just then, 
 because the chiefs were engaged on business ; but 
 that he might, if he pleased, come later on, when 
 their business was over. And this letter seemed to 
 be considered quite a delightfully acceptable one ; 
 begged from the Governor, and carefully stored in 
 the Public Library at Auckland. Or perhaps in the 
 King Country may be found some traces yet of the 
 Maori as he was. For here, in a colony of the 
 British Empire, is still a gentleman who calls him- 
 self King ; and has lands, and retainers, and a 
 country that is called by his name. But my route 
 lay far from the Urewera country and touched only 
 the edge of the King country. The first day's ride 
 was 30 miles, the second 26, then in order 37, 52, 
 2 7 (much of this last very bad road) ; passably good 
 going for the same two horses carrying our kit 
 as well as ourselves. To Atiomuri, my first stage, 
 the road is the coach road to Taupo ; this time fair 
 overhead and decently dry underfoot. Horohoro is 
 a big hill that we pass, connected with Hinemoa's 
 story ; a curious white rock in a green nook looks 
 exactly like a good old single-pole tent ready 
 
The Wanganui, 223 
 
 pitched : red rocks look down on it; and Atiomuri, 
 with the rocky-banked Waikato in front, has a 
 regular Deccan hill-fort kind of rock behind it. 
 And a fort the old Maoris made of it, as they did 
 of many another isolated summit, being {teste the 
 Pakeha Maori) extremely well up in the art of for- 
 tification. I wondered, as I looked on these " pas," 
 as they are called, how the garrison kept itself in 
 water. But when I read " Old New Zealand " I 
 understood that it did not require to provision it- 
 self for a siege. If supplies ran out, the beleagured 
 one would be re-victualled by his friend the 
 enemy, so that the fighting might go on. You see, 
 the principal business of man was to fight ; and as 
 it is evident that a man cannot fight if he has no 
 food or water, it is ridiculously clear that you must 
 — if you wish to fight him — supply him with them 
 when he has none. When you have killed him you 
 have your reward ; for then he furnishes you with 
 a meal — you eat him, and consume with his flesh 
 the virtus or valour that was in him, and which you 
 thereby annex and add to your own. (Of course, 
 if he kills you, he gets the victuals you gave him 
 and you and your valour too, and the sum does not 
 cancel out quite so smoothly. But it is your 
 business to prevent that ; else for what are you born 
 a man, and wield a spear ?). The modern Maori 
 is said to be rather ashamed of his ancestors' (or, in 
 the case of the older men, — his own) anthropophagic 
 taste. Yet I found the guide at Whakarewarewa 
 by no means bashful in pointing out the natural 
 
2^4 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 oven that was specially reserved for cooking chiefs' 
 brains in. It was quite like an altar of sacrifice ; 
 but cold now, its fire dead. At Atiomuri (sweet- 
 sounding name) was the Governor in camp. Not 
 quite the style of thing of an Indian Governor's 
 camp. But nothing in the colonies is in the same 
 plane for style, even for comfort, much less for 
 display, with our Indian way of life. My second 
 stage on from Atiomuri is still the coach road to 
 Taupo ; rather dull and uninteresting. Still it is 
 curious to notice a settlement of Mormon Maoris — 
 for even thus far has that singular superstition sent 
 its proselytizers (we shall find them on the 
 Hawaiian Islands too). Farther on we cross 
 Poison Creek — there is death in the draught to who- 
 so drinks of it, man or beast. There is a poison 
 bush, too, which starving or inexperienced cattle 
 eat unwittingly, and go as mad as march hares. 
 Taupo is an exceedingly small and quiet place. One 
 policeman looks after it and all the district round ; 
 one of the waifs of society, a 'Varsity man, a 
 gentleman, rusticated to a place where there is no 
 work to be done, and his demon will hurt no one 
 but himself. Work there used to be here, in the 
 old war days ; the Fort, a standing memento of 
 those times, is just exactly one of our outposts in 
 Upper Burma. 
 
 Fine brilliant weather for our next stage ; all 
 round one side of Lake Taupo to Tokaanu at the 
 farther end. New ground again, and a thoroughly 
 enjoyable ride. Through what a deserted country, 
 
The Wanganui. 225 
 
 though ! only two tiny native settlements in all 
 the thirty-six miles, and Tokaanu quite a small 
 place in the thirty-seventh. And though much 
 of it is poor land enough, much more is fair to good 
 — yet all alike waste, useless. The scenery is 
 pleasing, as the road winds now on the margin of 
 the lake, where a few wild duck paddle slowly out 
 from shore, now through a narrow gorge made up 
 of old extinct craters, again down a wider valley 
 with sheerdown walls of white, across level lands 
 and hillocks and swamp, Avith ever in front of us, 
 afar off, the snows of Ruapehu and the steam of 
 Tongariro. Then the Waikato has to be forded 
 near its entry into the lake — luckily not so full as 
 to be impassable, yet full enough to give some little 
 trouble. Close over us is Pihanga, an extinct 
 volcano ; and this is the legend concerning her. 
 Once she was a lovely maiden, and the giants 
 Tongariro and he that is now called Taranaki 
 fought for her. And Taranaki was defeated and 
 fled, and the track that he fled by is the 
 Wanganui River. [But he fled on to the sea- 
 shore and stayed there, and they called his name 
 Taranaki. And Tongariro won Pihanga for his 
 own. And ever on still clear days men may see the 
 smoke from the long sharp cone of Tongariro, that 
 is called Ngaruahoe, float over and fill the bowl- 
 shaped crater of Pihanga, and know that Ton- 
 gariro and Pihanga are wed. 
 
 There are more hot springs at Tokaanu, and a 
 country inn to put up in, and a waterfall fair to 
 
 Q 
 
2 26 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 see. Hence may be made excursions to Lake 
 Rotoaira, up Ngaruahoe (7,481 feet) and 
 Ruapehu (8,878 feet). But our way lies right 
 round the base of Pihanga and of these — a 
 splendid ride in splendid weather. The track runs 
 at first broad and good, ascending gradually, with 
 the bare mountains on the right, while the slopes 
 we cross are grass or fern-clad, and the Waikato 
 flows down in the hollow far on our left, beyond 
 which rises a fine forest-clad range of hills — I for- 
 get its name. As we get beyond the road surveyor's 
 work, the track diminishes to a mere bridle-path, 
 and soon we get to a region where it can hardly be 
 called a path at all. Down from the blasted and 
 riven ridge of Tongariro — one mass of extinct 
 craters — and its smooth, grey, smoking cone that 
 stands apart, and down from the snows and glaciers 
 of Ruapehu come deep-cut huge ravines and gullies, 
 in which you get a fine variety of rock, whole or 
 disintegrated, mud and stone, and a path that is un- 
 varying in its excessive badness. I suppose a man 
 might ride down them all ; but certainly not a man 
 with any consideration for his beast. We led ours 
 in and out of all the big ones — nine in number, I 
 think ; and the space that they covered, which Mac- 
 donald called seven miles, was the longest seven 
 miles I ever rode (except perhaps marching at night 
 through Burmese mud to surprise a dacoit camp). 
 By the time we are past them we are ready for 
 lunch, having taken five hours over twenty-five miles. 
 And oh for the neat little Jap lunch-boxes I We have 
 
The Wanganui. 227 
 
 to be content with clumsy sandwiches wrapped in 
 paper. An hour's rest and on we go, soon reaching 
 the Desert. Truly a desert — bare sand, volcanic 
 rock, and old igneous formations disintegrated by 
 years of snow and frost. No snow or frost now, 
 thank goodness, but good cantering ground on the 
 level up at the top of the water-divide — when down 
 goes a saddle-bag and in it our sole bottle of whisky. 
 Barely enough is saved with which to drink, in 
 Waikato water, perdition to the soul of him who 
 made those straps of perished leather ; for not a 
 drop of liquor shall I get now until Wanganui, three 
 days away ! The Waikato comes down from the 
 sides of Ruapehu, and we cross it as it flows eastward 
 to Lake Taupo ; and immediately after we strike the 
 \\^angae as it flows westward to the Wanganui. 
 Then many a mile of good going on gently de- 
 scending downs through the sheep-run of Karioi. 
 
 The nags go free on the springy turf, as if they 
 were beginning and not ending the day, and so we 
 finish our fifty-five miles by a quarter to five. Karioi 
 is a big run, over 15,000 acres, but it is poor soil, and 
 carries only some 46,000 sheep. The owner lives 
 away in the South ; but the manager is courteous, 
 and shows me over the washing and packing of the 
 wool (shearing is all done). And the lodging at 
 the accommodation house is passable, but the board 
 exceeding poor. And the morning and the evening 
 were the fourth day. 
 
 A very few miles on the fifth morning brought us 
 into the bush — that bush which is so thick on the 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 western, as it is so thin or absent on the eastern, 
 side of the water-divide. Out of sight go those 
 mountain masses that we have had in sight for days 
 past, and down we go through fine forest by quite 
 a good track for nine miles — to the Government 
 "whares " at Wai Merino. Now there had been heavy 
 rain in these parts — even the rain that fell on us all 
 that day coaching from Taupo to Rotorua, and more 
 besides, so that there were rumours of floods and 
 fears of swamps being impassable ; wherefore we 
 sought to inquire at the whares, wherein dwell two 
 men whose part it is to mend the road. But we 
 found them not, and we rode on past Akuni, a 
 native settlement, and ever the road got worse, so 
 that we rode heavily. Howbeit, when we had 
 paced on three hours and more, lo ! those two road- 
 men jogging homeward, smoking the pipe of con- 
 tentment. 
 
 " The road ? Oh, all right. You'll find a bit- 
 four or five chains — that you'll need to get off and 
 drive your horses through. The rest's all right, 
 we've just been out patching it up a bit. Going into 
 Karioi to-morrow." 
 
 Whereat we were well pleased and rode on hope- 
 fully. Nevertheless, I would that I were the 
 Executive Engineer of the district in which these 
 men dwell, or that they were the children of Israel 
 and I Rehoboam, or they Spanish Protestants and I 
 Inquisitor-in-chief. " Road all right except four or 
 five chains ! " It is not a disgrace to any country 
 to have a bush track knocked out of shape by heavy 
 
The Wanganui. 229 
 
 rain ; but it is a disgrace to a country that claims to 
 be civilized if the men employed by it neglect their 
 work, and no one supervises them or sees that they 
 do it. Here were these two men, drawing good fixed 
 wages, and a full week elapsed since the destructive 
 downpour — surely time enough to render the track 
 in some sort passable, and to ascertain if any 
 damage were done beyond their power to repair. 
 Yet for the swampy part, within easy reach of their 
 free quarters (comfortable and well furnished), the 
 repairing done amounted to just nothing ; and for the 
 ghat portion, some way off, they were in complete 
 ignorance that seven miles of it were rendered 
 utterly impassable by countless landslips ! and next 
 day they were going to take a holiday to Karioi ! 
 Verily, those who work for a free and enlightened 
 democracy have a far easier time than the servants 
 of a bureaucratic despotism ; and the free and 
 enlightened democracy aforesaid seems to be well 
 content to be swindled. We had the best part of 
 two hours driving our beasts through the swamp : 
 not clean wholesome mud, but a mass of water and 
 earth, and decaying vegetable stuff, and twisted and 
 contorted roots, most vile to pick a way through. 
 Tommy, the Rat (my nag) lost a shoe and sprained his 
 fetlock; and glad we were at noon to strike the camp 
 of a Government surveyor — one hospitably inclined, 
 who supplemented our poor sandwiches of sardine 
 and cheese with mutton chops and most super-excel- 
 lent spuds, and with endless libations of tea from the 
 billy. He, too, wondered vaguely why his brother, 
 
230 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 gone for stores days before to Piperiki (our point for 
 the night) had not yet returned ; but neither to him 
 nor to us did the truth suggest itself. So we rode 
 on, past the ItaHan's soHtary hut in the bush, until 
 we came to a deep nalla — bridge washed away — sides 
 cut perpendicular by the flood, rocky, impassable. 
 And we blessed those hard-working roadmen, and 
 off-saddled, tied up the horses, cached the gear, 
 shouldered the " swag "( = kit) and footed it. And 
 evermore, as we went, we praised those roadmen ; 
 for lo ! landslip after landslip had piled tons of mud 
 on the track, or carried whole sections of it away to 
 the bottom of the "kora." There were places 
 where men could hardly pass without footholds cut 
 for them (we met the surveyor's brother cutting 
 them), and these so slippery that McD. fell and hurt 
 his foot. So it went on right through to Piperiki, 
 where we arrived at 7 p.m., only to find that the 
 floods had swept away the Government store, and 
 smashed up the accommodation house ; so that there 
 was no one to put up with save a half-caste boat- 
 man, who should hire me a canoe next day. So he 
 turned out of his bed, and my g^ide and I shared it ; 
 and we had for dinner, tea and bread-and-scrape and 
 apples. In fine weather and with a decent track it 
 would be a very pleasant ride, this from Karioi to 
 Piperiki ; it is a splendid fertile soil much of it, and 
 a glorious forest ; there are views down the ghat 
 part of it that are really fine where the path runs 
 along the edge of a good 800 foot drop into the 
 gully below. But with that Kaikatea swamp and 
 
The Wanganui. 231 
 
 the poor feeding and boarding, it was perhaps more 
 varied than pleasing. The nine-mile walk at the end 
 I found very enjoyable after so much riding. At 
 Piperiki I said good-bye to McD., who went back 
 to pick up his horses and return to Rotorua in 
 time for the races (for even that exiguous township 
 has its autumn meeting), and started off in canoe 
 down the Wanganui. 
 
 The river is not so deserted as the road. All 
 those fifty-two miles from Tokaanu to Karioi there 
 is not a single vestige or sign of any human 
 habitation whatsoever : except only the temporary 
 huts of a Government surveyor — and these 
 empty. And for the thirty-six miles from Karioi 
 to Piperiki there is only one Maori settlement 
 (a small one) and the solitary hut of an Italian. 
 Karioi itself has nothing except the buildings 
 and inhabitants required for the sheep-run. But 
 along the river are a good many villages. I landed at 
 the first. All the huts, as at Piperiki, are of English 
 fashion ; the clothes are of English cut and cloth ; 
 every man I met spoke to me in English, and in- 
 sisted on shaking hands English way. Here, no 
 more than in the Region of Fire, is the native 
 unspoilt by the veneer of civilization. I asked the 
 name of the village ; " Jerusalem ! " and farther 
 down are Corinth (Koroniti) and London (Ranana) 
 and Athens (Atene), and a lot more idiocy of that 
 kind. The missionary is abroad in the land ; and 
 all these Maoris are Christians. I don't think 
 their religion makes the least difference to their 
 
232 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 lives. They gamble and drink, and live lewdly just 
 as much under a Christian profession as when they 
 were simple pagans, and change from one sect to 
 another — Roman Catholic, Protestant, Dissenter of 
 several species — as easily as they did from the dark- 
 ness to light (if the missionary's cant phrase may be 
 used). Quite a centre of life this new Jerusalem : 
 here I met the Roman Catholic padre ; — the Church 
 of Rome certainly sends out, as a rule, missionaries 
 much more suited to the work and much more ac- 
 ceptable to the general public than does any Pro- 
 testant sect ; here also, the Italian squatter, friendly 
 but unintelligible in a patois of English and Maori 
 and the tongue of Dante. I went on, and landed 
 at no more settlements that day. Some have good 
 native names, such as Tauwiti nui ; but all are un- 
 native in outward show. At one there is wailing 
 over a death, a man drowned in the flood a week 
 ago ; in another a big piece of red rag with a union 
 jack in the corner hung upside down half-pole high : 
 also for a death. The scenery is good enough in the 
 upper reaches of the river ; bold precipitous banks, 
 profuse bush, hurrying rapids ; but lower down the 
 banks are commonplace, the bush cleared away, 
 the river slow. 
 
 The weather turned wet, too, about 3 p.m. ; and 
 as at 8 P.M. we were still seven miles (quite two and 
 a half hours at our then rate of progress) from 
 Wanganui, I stopped at Upokongaro for the night. 
 Bedroom tiny, but clean ; food decidedly poor. But 
 what can you expect for four shillings and sixpence 
 
< 
 z 
 
 < 
 
The Wanganui. 233 
 
 per day ? It took me till nearly noon next day to 
 reach Wanganui, there being a strong head- wind 
 and squalls ; and wet and squally it continued all 
 day. I fled next day by rail to New Plymouth, 
 through a country of no remarkably interesting 
 feature until Mount Egmont comes in sight. But even 
 as the road had played me false with its swamps and 
 landslips, and the river had with head-winds and 
 rain taken one and a half day over a day's journey, 
 so the railway was determined to have its little joke 
 too. The train was a mixed one (I never saw one 
 that wasn't in New Zealand), and a bag of grass- 
 seed thought fit to drop out of a leading truck, get 
 under the wheels, and derail that truck and the two 
 that followed it. We were going at top speed ; but 
 that is only about twelve miles an hour, and the place 
 was on the flat — no cutting or embankment — so no 
 harm was done except a delay of three hours while 
 they got back those extravagant and erring trucks 
 on to the line. New Plymouth is hardly so pretty 
 as most New Zealand ports. It has, of course, 
 its costly breakwater and its railway — the former 
 causing a silting up, and the latter of consequence 
 only so long as there is no through line from Auck- 
 land to Wellington. The great feature of the place 
 is Taranaki, without which it would be nought. 
 Much, indeed, in the history of the Maori wars, for 
 here and hereabout was much fighting; but nought 
 scenically. Taranaki is neither so high nor so 
 beautiful as Fujisan, but, like that jewel of Japan, 
 it stands alone, the lesser hills bowing themselves 
 
234 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 lowly afar off ; on its Head' is a " morion, washed 
 with morning," of shining show ; about its feet, the 
 rocks are " enconipassed by the inviolate sea." In 
 New Plymouth is a member of a family with many 
 well-known representatives in the Western Presi- 
 dency ; and he is mine host of the White Hart 
 Hotel. Glad to replenish from his stock my exhausted 
 supply of trichis. The Union Steamship Company 
 run twice a week, on the arrival of the mail train 
 from Wellington, a steamer to Onehunga, whence it 
 is a short rail on to Auckland. This, therefore, is 
 the quickest route from the largest town in New 
 Zealand to the capital town, and through it to all the 
 South Island. Naturally, there are a good many 
 passengers. Equally, of course, the Company meets 
 the traffic with a boat of under 300 tons ; and you 
 find the saloon one vast dormitory, the smoking- 
 room full of beds, the meals a scramble. Luckily, 
 the weather is fine, and even the often boisterous 
 entrance over the Manukau bar is gentle to us. 
 And so Auckland at last, and comfort and good 
 quarters at the Northern Club. Here, for the first 
 time — since when ? I hardly remember, it is so 
 long ago — I have dinner : a meal served at a 
 reasonable hour, and of a sort and in a style that 
 deserve that too often misapplied, unmerited desig- 
 nation. There are many good points in Auckland, 
 of which the hospitality and excellence of this club 
 is not the least. It has, like every other colonial 
 town, however small, a Free Library and Reading 
 Room ; but it has them far better than most others. 
 
Auckland. 235 
 
 enriched by valuable gifts from Sir George Grey. 
 The Museum is not a very great show. But the 
 town is a pleasing one, and the view from Mount 
 Eden is charming. This extinct crater commands 
 a prospect extending from the Manukau bar over 
 all that bay, and the narrow isthmus on which 
 Onehunga stands, right across the fine harbour of 
 Auckland, and islands and extinct craters galore. 
 Certainly a finer view than anything which it was 
 my fortune to see at Sydney. The climate of 
 Auckland is delightful ; and the suburbs, with many 
 charming bungalows and compounds dotted about 
 them, are good to look upon. Altogether it seemed 
 that New Zealand had (in the matter of towns) 
 kept its best until last. It is sad to think that so 
 fair an exterior hides what is (I heard in more than 
 one quarter) financially unsound in every direction — 
 public, municipal, business, private. Anyhow, with 
 no less than nine of our No. 4 "push " met together 
 again, the time passed pleasantly and quickly away, 
 until seven of us embarked on the Mariposa; 
 and the Third Part of my tour and the eighth 
 month of my leave began together. 
 
236 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 AUSTRALASIA. 
 
 From the date that I touched at Port Darwin to 
 the date that I left Auckland is just three months. 
 Not a long time to spend in any country, if one 
 wishes to know all about its institutions and its 
 people. But I did not come with any such wish; 
 I came merely to amuse myself, and I brought no 
 letter of introduction that should open the doors of 
 "society" to me. I did not write my name at any 
 Government House; and I contented myself with just 
 such companions as my travels brought me into con- 
 tact with, such openings and introductions only as 
 their courtesy provided for me. And so I do not think 
 any very serious weight can be attached to my 
 opinions on men and matters in Australasia ; they 
 are about as solid as a butterfly's may be imagined 
 to be on the flowers that he flits among. Yet, as 
 it amused me to form them, it may amuse you who 
 have wandered thus far with me, to hear what they 
 are. If any Australasian reads me he will probably 
 feel a desire to kick me ; for there is nothing so 
 sensitive to criticism as your " Cornstalk." And I 
 would not wish to be kicked by him ; for he is 
 usually a man of robust physique, long limb, and 
 
Australasia. 237 
 
 strong muscle. Nevertheless, I will venture to say 
 that most of the criticism that Froude in his Oceana 
 hints rather than positively makes on Young Aus- 
 tralia is fully justified. There are, of course, great 
 differences, for the Australian community comprises 
 many distinct classes of men. I do not mean 
 classes as against masses ; I mean the three divi- 
 sions of — first, native-born Australians without 
 European training ; second, native-born Australians 
 with such English training as a visit to the old 
 country gains them ; and last English-born immi- 
 grants. Now the F"roudean criticisms — many made, 
 mind you, not by Froude himself, but to him by 
 men themselves belonging to the community criti- 
 cized, and merely reproduced by him — apply with 
 less and less accuracy as we advance from the first 
 to the third division. Speaking of the first division 
 only, and weakening the remarks down to nothing 
 as we get to the end of the third, I should say that 
 the Australian manner is the most self-conscious, 
 self-assertive, inconsiderate of others, unpolished, 
 that has yet been developed. Of the soundness of 
 the heart, the thoroughness of the sentiment that 
 may underlie that manner, it is not now question ; I 
 am speaking only of the outside shown to the passing 
 observer. It was a native-born Australian lady, trans- 
 planted by marriage to another part of the Empire, 
 who said to me that all those remarks in Oceana on 
 the Australian native were perfectly true. I met in 
 one city two brothers, English ; one in the army, 
 stationed in India, the other on a sheep-run up 
 
238 Farthest East, South ana West. 
 
 country in Australia. Now, the manner of the former 
 was that usually seen in a British officer ; that of the 
 latter was a great contrast — loud, boisterous. I do 
 not see how in the existing environment any good 
 manner is to be born in Australia. Up country the 
 hardest of lives and the least of society, in the 
 capital a society of plutocrats only, everywhere a 
 devotion to money-making and absence of leisure 
 that render superfluous, impossible, any style but 
 the self-assertive and the pushing. " Good dressing, 
 quiet ways, low tones of voice, lips that can wait, 
 and eyes that do not wander, shyness of personalities 
 ... to be light in hand in conversation." Is the Pro- 
 fessor at the Breakfast Table right in considering 
 these " a fair capital of manners to begin with " 1 
 " As a rule, vain, ignorant, underbred, without dignity, 
 without courtesy, and with a conceit that was un- 
 bounded." So Froude describes Young Australia; 
 I am told rightly ; from my own seeing, I should 
 say rightly. Good manners do not, as a rule, exist 
 except in those who have come out from England, 
 or who, being " natives," have been to England 
 long and often, the longer and the oftener the 
 better. One youth, hearing I was from India, 
 remarked that he did not think I was dark enough 
 in colour. Did he expect me to be black .'' or did 
 he mean to say he didn't believe me ? 
 
 In one respect I go farther than Froude. He 
 says the purity of the Australian pronunciation of 
 English is complete. I should say it is not. I do 
 not know that there is anything to be ashamed of in 
 
Australasia. 2 30 
 
 an Australian accent, any more than in a Scotch- 
 man's or Irishman's brogue. But it is there ; 
 and it is not, to my ears, a pleasing accent. A 
 cross between an ultra-Cockney and an American 
 twang. A few Americanisms in the language too — 
 "so long" for good-bye — and a good many native- 
 born colloquialisms : " a dead bird " for a dead 
 certainty; "swag" for kit; and "swagger" for a 
 man who walks carrying his kit ; " sundowner," 
 which it would take long to describe — you would 
 know all about him if you read Boldrewood's 
 Squatter's Dream ; — " push " for party, and more 
 besides. But many Americanisms are not there 
 yet, thank goodness ; so that one can still speak of 
 the railway station (and not the railroad deepo), of 
 "just behind " (and not "right back of"), and need 
 not interlard one's discourse with " I guess " and 
 " I tell you." Of course these remarks on accent 
 are subject to the same limitation as those on 
 manner ; they are less and less true as you proceed 
 to the third division of men. And both sets of 
 remarks are subject to the further limitation that 
 they hardly apply at all in New Zealand. A great 
 difference between each Australian colony and New 
 Zealand lies in this, that in the former there is a 
 distinct colonial type forming, and in New Zealand 
 there is not. There is in New Zealand no sole city 
 the head and centre of the colony ; everything is 
 provincial, and each province retains the type (the 
 general manner and accent) of the part of the old 
 country from which it is colonized. I cannot see 
 
240 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 anything distinctly colonial in Southland and Canter- 
 bury, only Scotch and English ; and any New 
 Zealander will — the chances are — have the accent 
 (midland or northern or what not) of his ancestral 
 county at home. It follows that any one emigrating 
 from England will in Australia (himself probably, 
 his children certainly) become Australian, in New 
 Zealand provincial. Neither fate appears to me 
 specially desirable ; in each, absence of culture and 
 high-bred manner is sure for the children. But the 
 provincialism of New Zealand jars less than the 
 colonialism of Australia. 
 
 The newspaper press of Australasia is enormous. 
 Every little bit of a township has a paper or two, 
 and the leading organs in the big cities are extremely 
 well got up and well managed. Their weeklies 
 beat any of our Indian weeklies ; their dailies are 
 more full of cablegrams (as they call them) than 
 the Pioneer (though I don't know that that is saying 
 very much : our leading paper is hardly the fullest 
 in its telegraphic news). And of all the papers, I 
 think the Sydney press has the best. I do not 
 forget the Melbourne Argus and Age; but the 
 Sydney Herald and Telegraph appear to me better 
 done on the whole ; and the Bulletin is far cleverer 
 than the Melbourne Punch. You will notice in the 
 columns devoted to domestic occurrences crowds of 
 entries under the heading " In Memoriam." This 
 will be new to you. It would appear that many 
 colonials, on the anniversary of a relation's death, 
 insert here a notice conceived in the following form, 
 
A ustralasia. 241 
 
 or in words to this effect : " In [sad, loving, or sad 
 and loving, or sad but loving] remembrance of my 
 dear [father, brother, &c.] [here insert name], who 
 died [here give place and time, and also any details 
 that may be of interest, and deceased's age at death]. 
 [Add a verse of Scripture, or several verses of 
 doggrel at discretion.] Inserted by his [daughter, 
 sister, &c.J [here give name in full]." Anything 
 more snobbish and detestable it does not seem to me 
 that one could easily devise. Many omit the verse 
 of Scripture and the doggrel — generally, indeed, 
 except in the Melbourne Age. Here there are often 
 columns of the feeblest verse. We were unfeeling 
 enough to hunt for these columns in search of a 
 laugh ; for who could help laughing at such rhythm, 
 such sentiment, such rhyme, such choice of words ? 
 I give you one specimen from memory : 
 
 From life she is forced to depart ; 
 
 Her troubles and sorrows are o'er ; 
 Her weary and grief-laden heart 
 
 Is heaved by affliction no more. 
 
 (This last line I am sure of.) Here is another, 
 copied verbatim : — 
 
 It is just two years ago to-day 
 Since my dear mother passed away ; 
 God loved her best ; it was her fate ! 
 
 Inserted by her daughter Kate. 
 
 Is it not pitiable ? Scarcely less objectionable are 
 the funeral notices, in which the undertakers are 
 permitted to advertise themselves with full names 
 
 R 
 
242 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 and addresses under pretext of publishing day and 
 hour at which the recently deceased will be interred. 
 In some of the smaller papers you will find whole 
 pages where larrikin idiots are allowed to disport 
 themselves. Under the name of each of a score of 
 parishes in turn will be found a dozen such items as 
 these: — "Where did Tom get these new collars 
 from ? " "I wonder what Ella would say if she saw 
 how Dick is carrying on with Etty ? " " Harry is 
 getting on well with his dancing, especially when he 
 sits out." Where is the wit in these things ? Of 
 what conceivable interest are they to the public ? 
 It appears to me to be just one more, and perhaps 
 the most ill-bred, exhibition of the colonial love of 
 self-advertisement which appears in all the journal- 
 istic vagaries that we have been speaking of ; and in 
 other ways besides. 
 
 The Australian does not, as a rule, it would seem, 
 care to make himself comfortable. I do not mean 
 that there is no comfort in well-found houses in all the 
 colonies. At their homes the well-to-do make them- 
 selves comfortable enough, I do not doubt. But out of 
 his own house he is content with rough and ready 
 accommodation. From the time I left Hongkong 
 until I reached the Northern Club in Auckland, I 
 never saw a finger-glass at table (if one asked for 
 one, there was none), and I was never in a bedroom 
 of decent size. Attics of the narrowest kind at the 
 Grosvenor, Sydney ; so at the Grand, Dunedin ; 
 and everywhere else the most modest space con 
 ceivable. The table at hotels in Melbourne and 
 
Australasia. 243 
 
 Sydney is good enough ; but elsewhere it is any- 
 thing from passable down to impossible. Generally 
 enormous portions of meat, and wedges of pudding, 
 with no variety, no cooking. I took a walking tour 
 once in the midlands at home, in all sorts of out- 
 of-the-way places ; we put up in any roadside pub. 
 that came in our way. On the colonial main 
 tourist routes we fed much the same as on those 
 remote rustic roads, and were penned at night in far 
 more crowded and less comfortable quarters. In 
 the public baths at Rotorua, even the most exiguous 
 bathing dress, the veriest figleaf, is dispensed with — 
 unless you like to be singular and bring your own. 
 (I speak only of what I know — the men's baths.) 
 Everywhere, however, they provide in the bedroom 
 a hairbrush and comb for you. I wonder they do 
 not add a toothbrush. One man I found complain- 
 ing because the steamer had not provided a hair- 
 brush and comb for the four-berthed cabin. Evidently 
 the colonial travels light in the matter of toilet. I 
 suppose this is the result of the style of life that 
 most men lead or have led. I have read with much 
 interest some, and with much tedium others, of Mr. 
 Rolf Boldrewood's works. I presume they describe 
 with accuracy Australian life as it was lived in the 
 fifties and thereabouts. Some allowance must, no 
 doubt, be made for the novelist's heightening of 
 colour and deepening of shade to emphasize his 
 contrasts. But that allowance made, it seems clear 
 enough that the usual colonial life is to slave 
 unceasingly, living like a pig the while, until you 
 
 R 2 
 
244 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 have made your pile. That is how the Miner lives 
 with his Right, the Squatter with his Dream, and 
 the Reformer as he gains colonial experience. The 
 pile made — what then ? The answer is a little 
 vague. But back to the old country, if not for good 
 and all, at least for long and frequent intervals, is 
 what it sounds to me. And a very good answer 
 too. Coming from a Colonial, as I believe the 
 author is, it is singularly confirmatory of my own 
 opinion that the colonies are a good place to live out 
 of. From what I have heard of up-country life in 
 small townships, or in back lots in Australia, from 
 what I have seen of remote locations in New 
 Zealand, I had much sooner let my enemies live 
 there than abide there myself. Indian stations, 
 where you find yourself the sole white man, or sole 
 but one, are bad enough ; but to my mind better than 
 colonial isolation. And much as its servants are 
 wont to growl at that fearful and wonderful organism, 
 the Government of India, still it is far better to live 
 under than the full-fledged democracy of the colonies. 
 The Government of India is at least one and con- 
 sistent ; it is — as governments go — fairly honest ; 
 well-intentioned, and with a very tolerable power to 
 carry out its intentions. Now I do not think any 
 one of these characteristics — which together make a 
 tolerably good government, and the absence of 
 which an extremely bad one — I do not think any 
 one of them can be found in any one colonial 
 Government. One ? By no means. There being 
 no natural parties, there are artificial ones, and 
 
Australasia. 245 
 
 ministries are formed — generally mighty short-lived 
 ones — in all manner of coalitions and shufflings of 
 the cards. And of course each ministry plays for 
 its own hand, and away goes consistency. As to 
 honesty : I only said that the Government of India 
 was fairly honest as governments go — for it has its 
 little jobs and little bits of backdoor management, 
 nepotism and the rest — but the colonial Governments 
 leave the modest and secret little peccadilloes of 
 India far behind. They job openly and unblushingly. 
 It is a one man one vote country, and every man 
 gives his vote for the best consideration that he can 
 get for it, and the elected candidate votes in the 
 House merely and solely to catch the votes of his 
 constituents for next election. If he catch them not, 
 away goes his ;^30o a year — or whatever else may 
 be the honorarium by law fixed for his remuneration. 
 These are opinions not my own, but expressed 
 by Sydney men in conversation in which I took 
 mostly a listening part. And in New South Wales 
 I am inclined to fancy the public jobbery is least, 
 as in New Zealand it is most. I was in Welling- 
 ton just about the time of a change of ministry. 
 The outgoing ministers grabbed a piece of patron- 
 age that it would appear simply indecent in them 
 to assume — the appointment of members of the 
 Upper House, while the incoming ministers (a 
 ministry of bootmakers and other artisans) held a 
 session of a week and voted (by their supporters) 
 for that protracted session the full remuneration for 
 a year ! The railways of New Zealand have cost 
 
246 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 millions, and they have not one decent thfough line 
 in the country ; nothing but a crowd of little broken 
 bits that lead nowhere ; all due to jobbery, for the 
 initial scheme of railway construction provided an 
 excellent system of through lines and feeders, 
 which little pettifogging local interests were by 
 jobbery allowed to break up. Certainly I never 
 heard corruption so freely assigned as a motive or 
 cause as I did in New Zealand. It shows a pretty 
 low estimate of the public probity when it is stated 
 ^-as in conversation I more than once heard it 
 stated — that the Maori War might have been con- 
 cluded far more speedily and more satisfactorily 
 than it was, had not the holders of good billets and 
 the contractors found it more to their profit that it 
 should not end. Altogether, the opinion which I 
 also heard expressed — that New Zealand had got 
 its constitution far too early and could have done 
 far better with a strong Crown colony government 
 — seemed to me a very sound and sensible one. 
 How any decent government can have left the 
 Maori question in the state in which it stands it 
 passes me to conceive. There is a whole tract of 
 country where the white man cannot enter, and vast 
 areas more where, though he can enter, he can do no 
 good, owing to the asinine and anserine manner in 
 which the native land question has been dealt with. 
 The Maori, with his very fluid ideas of property in 
 land, has been allowed to cavort round, land grabbers 
 have snicked in and swindled, and Government has 
 been too weak or too dishonest to deal with either ; 
 
Australasia. 247 
 
 so that even existing titles are all doubtful, and no 
 man dare touch a piece of native land to buy or 
 lease. And thus many miles of good land lie idle, 
 which the lazy native won't, and the desirous white 
 can't, touch, all for want of a little strong, honest, clear- 
 headed government. But the Government has been 
 so taken up in borrowing millions and spending 
 them, and quarrelling over the spending them, and 
 then in designing ways and means of meeting the 
 burden imposed thereby, that it has had no time to 
 attend to a matter of such vital importance as 
 the native land question. Some say that the 
 natives are dying out, some say not. It would be 
 better if they were, so the problem would solve 
 itself. They were a terrible lot of savages in the 
 old days, and most of the sentiment lavished on them 
 by some folk seems to me to be sheer waste ; while 
 as to what they are now, hear the Pakeha Maori — 
 one who knows the race well, and likes them in a 
 way : — " The present generation of Maoris are 
 a stunted, tobacco-smoking, grog-drinking, psalm- 
 singing, special-pleading, shilling-hunting set of 
 wretches." True, every word. They would, I 
 doubt not, be glad to drive out law and the pakeha, 
 although they are represented in Parliament, and 
 many are rich, and many have intermarried with 
 the white. Their old customs are mostly gone with 
 their old costume ; and a good thing too ; for 
 cannibalism and the "utu" and the " muru " and 
 the "tabu" are not lovely in themselves nor ad- 
 missible in good society. Nor was their tattooing 
 
248 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 beautiful. Not content with scoring the body from 
 waist to knee, the face also (of the men) was thickly- 
 lined with multitudinous tattooings, deep-cut, of a 
 dark dull green colour. You still see some of 
 the older men with this disfigurement fully de- 
 veloped on them : I saw one at Tokaanu, who was 
 further made beautiful with wounds received in 
 fighting against us, which dragged his mouth out of 
 shape, ruined one eye and dilapidated an ear. The 
 women were scarred on the lips and chin ; many 
 are so still. They look as if they had been chewing 
 something and the olive-coloured juice were all over 
 their lips and trickling down their chins. The men 
 are now rarely tattooed, at least on the face; I 
 suppose not lower down either. The old Maori 
 fashion has passed away, yielding place to new ; 
 except in the North Island the Maori himself 
 has passed away, and now he is but one in fifteen 
 (say 40,000 in 600,000) of the population. He 
 does not seem to be capable of decent civilization, 
 and the sooner he passes away the better, leaving 
 this most English of colonial lands for the white 
 man. For New Zealand is more English than 
 Australia, not only in its people (as before noticed) 
 but in much of its natural scenery, and in its 
 climate. The aspect of much agricultural country, 
 and of many a stream bordered with weeping 
 willows and osiers, seems to one looking thereon 
 merely a part of home, in a way that no Australian 
 landscape can ; and nowhere here is the monotony of 
 endless forest of a single kind of tree, though the 
 
Australasia. 249 
 
 blue-gum, once imported, grows as gaily here as on 
 the Blue Mountains of Sydney or of Madras. 
 
 But all this is somewhat of a digression, and I 
 want you to return for just a moment to our com- 
 parison of Indian and Colonial governments, and 
 dispose of the last of the points mentioned above — 
 intentions, and power to carry them out. It seems 
 to me that the intentions of colonial governments 
 are just such as are dictated by the apparent interest 
 of the class that happens at the time to be dominant 
 — that is, as a rule, the working class. They are 
 not intentions formed on a basis of careful inquiry 
 and consideration of facts, and aiming for the good 
 of all, but on a basis of self-interest and class- 
 jealousy. Parties in Australia, as they appear to 
 me, are merely a war of class against class. The 
 landless wish to get the land ; the labourer wishes 
 to monopolize the labour market and all the fruits of 
 labour ; jthe manufacturer wishes to be freed from 
 competition. And besides land and labour and 
 trade, I don't know what other questions there are — 
 save one great one. These three questions the 
 colonies have not solved yet. Land is — I should 
 judge — as burning a question yet out here as in any 
 old country ; labour had been having a fine old set-to 
 with capital just before my visit, and, while I was in 
 New Zealand, was proceeding in Queensland to rioting 
 that required suppression by military force ; trade is 
 still quasi-free in New South Wales, heavily pro- 
 tective elsewhere. And that one great question 
 that remains, what is it .■* What but Federation ? 
 
250 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 As I left, the colonial representatives were meeting 
 in Sydney to discuss it. There is some talk of 
 "loyalty" to the British connection. It seems to 
 me very foolish talk. What does it mean anyhow .■' 
 The colonies will gladly maintain the connection 
 so long as it is to their advantage, and if we can 
 arrange that it will always be to their advantage, it 
 will be maintained for ever. But if we cannot so 
 arrange, then it is hardly to be expected that some 
 vague sentiment which some choose to label 
 " loyalty " will avail to counterpoise the dead weight 
 of material disadvantage, and the connection will 
 go — unless we should enforce its maintenance ; 
 which is absurd. Therefore it is merely for us to 
 see how it can be arranged advantageously ; and 
 the immediate question is whether Imperial federa- 
 tion is aided or impeded by intercolonial federation 
 of the Australasian colonies. I cannot see myself 
 how it could be other than aided. Only I would 
 not include New Zealand in the new Australian 
 dominion. It is too separate, too different ; it 
 should continue to stand on its own basis. But a 
 federation of the continent of Australia with Tas- 
 mania is devoutly to be wished. And as to separa- 
 tion, the colonies will have to be much better fitted 
 to protect themselves than they are now, before they 
 dare separate. Why, China would annex in no 
 time a free Australia unprotected by Britain. She 
 feels the exclusion of her pig-tailed sons pretty 
 well as it is ; and, if she had a free hand, would 
 simply swamp the new independence with swarms 
 
A tistralasia. 251 
 
 of celestials. Separation is not a question of 
 practical politics at all, at present. And may it 
 never become so, notwithstanding the screeds of 
 certain papers, which serenely assume it to be 
 not merely practicable but desirable now and at 
 once. Australasia is a splendid reality, with a more 
 splendid future before it. Rich in minerals, rich in 
 huge areas of fertile soil and of soil fertilizable by 
 irrigation, what though it grows (as certain cynics 
 assert) fruits without flavour (or if with flavour yet 
 with less than in the old country), flowers without 
 scent, birds without song, a fair sex more dis- 
 tinguished by size than beauty ? Does it not grow 
 fruits bountiful in kinds and in quantity (cher- 
 ries, strawberries, pine-apples, peaches, apricots, 
 bananas, were all on the hotel table, daily, at 
 Sydney ; and grapes that make most potable wine, 
 the red much better than the white to my taste) ; 
 huge herds (I should say mobs) of cattle and 
 sheep ; horses of great shape, speed, stamina ; pigs, 
 goats, any blessed quadruped that you choose to 
 import ; almost any wealth-producing or beautifying 
 item of the vegetable kingdom that you choose to 
 import too ; and most of all, plenty of men of 
 muscle, full of energy and self-confidence, strong of 
 will ? The old motto, " Advance Australia," has 
 been acted up to ; now the new one, " One people, 
 one destiny," is to be worked out. One not merely 
 for the Australian colonies, but one for them and the 
 old country together. 
 
PART III. 
 
 FARTHEST WEST 
 
255 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HONOL ULU — HALEAKALA. 
 
 " The Paradise of the Pacific." That is what 
 
 the guide-book calls it. We call it the Sandwich 
 
 Islands. The people who live there call it the 
 
 Hawaiian Islands. As they ought to know best 
 
 what their own country's name is, I shall call it by 
 
 that name, notwithstanding its christening by the 
 
 great Captain Cook, who died and is buried there. 
 
 It is twelve days' steam from Auckland, even in the 
 
 Mariposa, which is about the fastest boat at present 
 
 on the line. The flag is American ; so are the 
 
 officers — most of them ; so is the style of feeding. 
 
 If this be a fair sample of American comfort in 
 
 travelling, why, the American is no better than the 
 
 Australasian. The deck-cabin has, it is true, only 
 
 two berths, but it has no sofa or anything to sit on 
 
 except the floor ; the wash-hand basin is so arranged 
 
 that you can't get your head into it, without 
 
 imminent risk of breaking the water-reservoir, or 
 
 more probably your skull ; the bath-rooms are dark 
 
 and hot, and only two in number, not fitted with 
 
 shower-baths, and half way through the voyage the 
 
 fresh water ran out. Steerage passengers have all the 
 
256 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 deck around the aft deck-cabins, and the food is 
 execrable. The bill of fare is very long, but the 
 same day after day, and when you have struck out 
 the dishes that are ill-cooked, or uncooked (" rare " 
 they call it, American for just not raw), or bad, 
 there is precious little left to eat ; and what there is, 
 is not nicely done, appetizing. The weather treated 
 us tolerably on the whole ; but there was generally 
 enough wind — at first N.W. then N.E. — to keep us 
 rolling a good deal, and there was none of that 
 lovely halcyon weather that I had associated thereto- 
 fore with proximity to the equator. We crossed the 
 1 80th meridian on a Sunday ; and not hankering 
 after two Sabbaths in succession, we doubled the 
 Monday, and had two March 2nd's ; and on the 
 7th I, for the fourth and last time, crossed the 
 equator. Notwithstanding discomforts, it was in 
 many respects a pleasanter voyage than any previous 
 one related in this journal. For we had no awful 
 " Young Australias " of the Frondean type on board, 
 nor yet any of the objectionable style of Yankee ; the 
 colonials and the American passengers were mostly 
 of a good sort, and some particularly nice. The 
 " bounders " were, I fear, mostly Britishers. The 
 daily lottery in the run went well, thanks to an 
 excellent auctioneer ; the committee for amusements 
 did all they could ( Our Enthusiast was indefatig- 
 able) ; and our " push " played shuffle-board (a kind 
 of bull, only better), to the vast admiration of the 
 Catholic Church in the person of a colonial bishop 
 on his way to Rome. Flirtation was not so obvious 
 
Honolulu. 257 
 
 as often it is on board a P. & O., only one pro- 
 nounced " mash " being observable. Howbeit, there 
 were two whom Our Humorist called " the Dream of 
 Fair Women " and others " The Seven-Footer " and 
 " Goggles." The vessels of this line call en passant 
 at Tutuila, one of the Samoan group, and pick up 
 and set down the Samoan mails. Usually a crowd 
 of canoes comes off, and natives — men and women — 
 sell fans, and curios, and dive for coin. We were 
 much disappointed at only two boats appearing, 
 with only two men in each, and a scanty supply of 
 fans, which was soon disposed of. The guileless 
 natives did not refrain, however, from accepting 
 silver, even when they had nothing to give in return 
 for it. A passenger came on board here, from 
 whom we learnt the cause of the small show of 
 natives. It appears that on the farther side of the 
 island there was a cricket match in progress, to 
 which all the population had flocked. Indeed, the 
 greater part of the population must have been 
 engaged in the game, for there were — he said — 105 
 men on one side, and 88 on the other. It must be 
 a great game to see, — a Samoan cricket match. The 
 bat is a cross between a club and a croquet mallet. 
 The bowler bowls from either end, wherever the 
 ball may happen to be ; as each ball is delivered, 
 there is immense shouting and clashing of Samoan 
 music ; the striker smites the ball (an india-rubber 
 contrivance with a wooden core), and the hundred 
 or so of fielders pursue it as it bumps and meanders 
 gaily among the cocoa-nut trees. As I understood, 
 
 s 
 
258 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 there were, when we passed, some go wickets down 
 and the score was over 500. The match promised 
 to last for quite ten days. The men whom we saw 
 were fine athletic-looking fellows, light brown in 
 colour, with hair cut short, brushed straight towards 
 the front, and coloured a sandy red. The chief 
 occupation of the people seems to be to play and 
 enjoy themselves, find wives (?) for the white men, 
 and — in the case of chiefs — do the white man's 
 washing ! Tutuila is a lovely islet, brilliant in 
 verdure and in colouring. How I wished to stay 
 and wander about these isles of the Southern Seas 
 for a month or two — or six. 
 
 But here we are at Honolulu. It is night, and we 
 are anxious for a good solid supper after twelve 
 jours maigres on the Mariposa. Hotels here, 
 however, do not consult the convenience of pas- 
 sengers to the extent of finding supper for them, 
 and we partake gaily but unsatisfyingly of coffee 
 and cakes and bread and butter at a restaurant. 
 Next day we devote to business, to taking stock of 
 our new position, and to seeing off our friends who 
 stay not here, but go on with the Mariposa to 
 'Frisco. And a good see-off they get, with plenty 
 of " leis," band playing, hearty good-byes, and pro- 
 mises to meet in England. Honolulu is a pleasant 
 enough place to stay in. I do not feel inclined to 
 enthuse about its tropical magnificence in the way 
 that that most globe-trotterous Miss Bird does in her 
 book, but it is beyond question a charming situa- 
 tion. The town is not much; streets of no great 
 
Honolulu. 259 
 
 width, and with no fine public buildings, if we except 
 the palace and the Government offices. The 
 former is a tolerably big and handsome mansion, 
 standing in grounds nicely laid out (the father of 
 the Heiress- Apparent has a pretty taste in garden- 
 ing), and the wall around them is low enough for 
 a man to hop over. Before the rebellion — yes, 
 rebellion : this mighty monarchy has had its rebel- 
 lion ; it is true that it lasted but a day, and was 
 suppressed with a minimum of bloodshed — before 
 the rebellion in 1887, the walls were high, exclusive 
 walls ; but as they interfered with the shooting in 
 that fierce insurrection, they were lowered to their 
 present diminutive stature. The gate-posts and 
 entrances were still draped with the black with 
 which they and all the town were hung when the 
 late king, Kalakaua, was buried — an event that took 
 place shortly before our arrival. The new Queen, 
 Liliuokalani (pronounce Lily o' Killarney — it is 
 quite near enough), seems to be a woman of will. 
 She made her Cabinet resign, whether they would 
 or no, and they no-ed until compelled, and then 
 she appointed whom she would, including the 
 Prince Consort, one Dominis. Our Humorist and 
 Mrs. H. were received by her in audience — a form 
 of amusement into which I did not chip in. They 
 tell me the Throne-room is not badly got up. The 
 fixings in it were, however, being squabbled over 
 (so I heard on good authority) by the queen 
 dowager, who claimed them as Kalakaua's private 
 goods and chattels, and the queen regnant claiming 
 
 s 2 
 
26o Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 them as State property. The Government offices 
 might all — Treasury and Parliament House and 
 Secretariat and Supreme Court and all — be put 
 away easily in the Sydney Post Office or the Bombay 
 Secretariat ; but they are big enough for a kingdom 
 of 90,000 souls with a revenue of four million dollars 
 (say ;^8oo,ooo). The statue of the Egbert of the 
 islands, who made the kingdom from many petty 
 chieftainships into a single united whole — Kame- 
 hameha I. — stands in front of the building, and is 
 goodly to look upon. Sentries guard the palace, 
 supplied by the army of sixty-three men. The 
 band is nearly as strong, and is a State band. 
 Moreover, the hotel is State property — built with 
 public money, and leased to a manager. I have 
 heard or read of it as the best of all conceivable 
 hotels. Bluff, my dear sir, bluff. The food is 
 served American fashion, and is not more than 
 average ; wines high in price, and nothing special 
 in quality. The place is a decent enough caravan- 
 serai, and the bachelor finds liberty in the cottage- 
 rooms or the basement ; but it is nothing magnifi- 
 cent to boast about. The noise in the dining-room 
 is awful until you get used to it, as all the knives and 
 forks and spoons are cleaned in it after each course, 
 and the boys (Chinese and Portuguese) wear 
 resounding boots. The guide-book details other 
 public buildings which may be things prized by the 
 Honoluluites : they are not worthy of notice in 
 themselves. But the private residences are, in many 
 instances, charming little bungalows — all wood, set 
 
Honolulu. 261 
 
 in compounds radiant with flowers and palms, and 
 grass of a greenness to make an Anglo-Indian gar- 
 dener die with desire. These are most numerous 
 on the Nuuanu Avenue, and on the road to, and at, 
 the seaside suburb of Waikiki. By the first you go 
 to the Pali (precipice) ; at the last you may bathe. 
 The Pali is the one point to which all go who pass by 
 Honolulu, even those who go on by the same steamer; 
 for it is only six miles out, and a good driving and 
 riding road. And the view is certainly very fine — when 
 the mist and cloud are good enough to let you see it. 
 In the gap that nature has left in the ridge of 
 mountain lying "betwixt windward and lee," the 
 trade wind, of course, plays freely, and he keeps his 
 gambols constantly hidden by drifting and driving 
 vapours. They are worse to look at than to go 
 through ; so don't turn back (as Mauritius and I 
 came near to doing), merely because the clouds in 
 the gap look threatening. After all, their presence 
 only adds one more change of colour to the 
 landscape, and variety and richness of colour 
 are the special characteristic of Hawaiian land- 
 scape and seascape. The brilliant orange and 
 purple, and red, and yellow, that we saw staining 
 the decomposing rocks near the active blowholes of 
 Wairakei, seem to be scattered and diffused all 
 among the disintegrating volcanic rocks and dead 
 lava of which the Hawaiian Islands are composed. 
 Grasses are on the hill-side in various stages of 
 greenness, yellowness, brownness ; in the ravines 
 trees supply many more tints and tones of green ; 
 
262 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 the sun catches the vapours drifting along the 
 ridge, and paints them with rainbow hues. Alto- 
 gether I have never looked on a view so splendid 
 in colouring as Honolulu seen from the sea on a 
 bright afternoon in March. (I think I have already 
 mentioned that the afternoon light is the best of all 
 lights to see scenery in.) At Waikiki the sea comes 
 rolling in over coral reefs, and within them is yellow 
 sand, and safety from sharks, so that one may bathe 
 here at one's ease. (I fetched the Japanese bathing- 
 woman completely by talking to her in her own 
 language. By the way, how terrible a Japanese 
 woman looks in a " holoku." Designed for the big 
 fleshy women of the Sandwich Islands, this night- 
 gown for day wear is outrageously unbecoming on 
 the petite female of Japan.) Further, at Waikiki are 
 royal residences and lanais, and a public park and 
 racecourse lying close under Diamond Head — the 
 great bare dead giant that shuts in the bay on the 
 East. A " lanai " is, according to the idea which I 
 have acquired from a visit to one, a large wooden 
 building of the size of a barn — and a big one at that 
 —filled with all the accessories of a Western draw- 
 ing-room. Its floor is level with the ground, and its 
 roof not raised any great height. The size of it 
 crowds other rooms into tiny little corners, or clean 
 out of the house into separate buildings. But for a 
 dance or an entertainment, nothing could be better. 
 The owner of quite a modest mansion built lanai- 
 wise would have a royal, or at least a gubernatorial, 
 ball-room. Within the same grounds that held this 
 
o 
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 Q 
 
 
Honolulu. 263 
 
 lanai, I saw also a grass hut of the old native 
 fashion. The walls were extremely well woven, 
 and the roof thickly thatched ; the Hawaiian seems 
 to have had a very fair idea of how to keep out 
 weather. But this hut, being royal property, was 
 better than the average. I saw some much poorer 
 things up-country. 
 
 And up-country it is time to betake ourselves- 
 
 Our Enthusiast's brother, the Reverend, has kindly 
 
 supplied us with letters, and the date of our sailing 
 
 has come. So we bid farewell to those good friends, 
 
 and the Claudine carries us away from the shores 
 
 of Oahu, past Molokai and Lanai, to Maui. (If 
 
 you wish to know, Oahu is the island of the group 
 
 on which Honolulu stands, Molokai lies next it 
 
 eastward, and is the island on which the leper 
 
 settlement is ; Lanai lies in the channel between 
 
 Molokai and Maui, the next island eastward ; and 
 
 Hawaii, the largest and eponymous island of the 
 
 kingdom, is to the south-east of Maui. Vide any 
 
 decent Geography.) The Claudine and the Kinau 
 
 are the best of the steamers that ply amongst the 
 
 islands. But they are small, and, as the wind blows 
 
 free through the passages between the islands, they 
 
 are gamesome and lively ; robur et oss triplex 
 
 may be defeated in these choppy seas. It was only 
 
 "after much debate internal" that I decided that 
 
 I could see it through ; and I did. Under the lee 
 
 of Molokai we had peace. The leper settlement is 
 
 on the north side of the island, " walled in with 
 
 rocks like an inland island." I did not go to see it. 
 
264 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Perhaps, in time, that mighty entity, the Government 
 of India, may take heart of grace and follow the 
 example of this twopenny-halfpenny kingdom. Every 
 leper is compulsorily segregated, and something like a 
 quarter ofa million dollars are spent yearly on stamp- 
 ing out the plague. No small sum when the revenue 
 is only four millions. There is some chance — nay, 
 good assurance — of leprosy ceasing to exist in 
 Hawaii. In India there is a good solid certainty 
 of its spreading with great regularity and no small 
 speed. I should like to take a Member of Council 
 or two round a few Burmese villages that I know, 
 and show him the extent that it has already reached. 
 Apparently it is worth while to raise religious riots 
 in the centre of Hinduism for the sake of a water 
 supply ; but it is not worth while to take any steps 
 to eradicate a general pest, until a Commission shall 
 have inquired and reported. It would have been 
 of some interest to see what the arrangements are 
 for dealing with the compulsorily segregated ones ; 
 but I preferred to let it slide. Enough and too 
 much has been written about Molokai ; and very 
 much sentiment has been wasted on it. The gush of 
 the Gutter Gazette over Sister Rose Gertrude's start 
 for the Islands was sickening ; and renders all the 
 more lamentably laughable the polite cold shoulder 
 that she got when she reached them. It is a fine 
 example of sentimental cant withered up by working 
 good sense. I saw this " Sister Rose Gertrude " 
 in the Hawaiian Hotel ; as I understood she is 
 doing nursery governess business. And a good 
 
Haleakala. 265 
 
 sensible business too ! Let her and others leave the 
 lepers to those whose business it is to manage them. 
 Kahalui is a port on the north or windward side 
 of Maui ; and at Kahalui we arrived at 6 a.m. on 
 the 1 7th. Maui does not reach the size of Gaul, 
 and is divided into two parts only, East and West. 
 Kahalui is on the isthmus uniting the two. Thence 
 we drove up, partly along the sands, partly by a 
 good made road, to Wailuku, on West Maui ; and 
 there were received at Mrs. Yarrick's Boarding 
 House. It is not a splendid hostelry. We are not 
 yet educated into appreciating our meals American- 
 wise ; and when they are so served, and moreover 
 immensely and incredibly bad, we become even as 
 men that starve. "Alas, poor Yorick!" thy "hash- 
 house" is, of "all places that the eye of heaven 
 visits," the one that I least wish to see again. 
 Now, after we had feigned to eat breakfast, Our 
 Humorist and I took a walk towards Waikapu. (I 
 protest that, by myself, I am not so insane as to go 
 taking walks in the sun for pleasure where the shade 
 thermometer is 87° in a moist climate.) And we 
 cast our eyes towards East Maui, where there was a 
 long long slope upwards from the sea on the north, 
 and again a long long slope from the sea on the 
 south ; and they went on up and up until the whole 
 island was filled with them. And I said, " Surely 
 this must be Haleakala (pronounce Hally Akalah), 
 the House of the Sun, whose height is ten thousand 
 feet." But Our Humorist doubted, and I wavered ; 
 yet, after much consideration, we concluded that 
 
266 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 this was even so. This much I will say, that for 
 so well-grown a mountain, he carries his height 
 remarkably well. It hardly looks over 6,000 or 
 7,000 feet ; until you realize what enormous sloping 
 sides those are, and how high they carry up until 
 they meet. The absence of any distinctly marked 
 summit-peak, or cone, or what not, assists in the 
 deception. Now Haleakala is the largest crater 
 in the world. It is extinct ; but that is no matter ; 
 it is a crater, and the largest in the world. And to 
 see it we had come to Maui. Wherefore, after pre- 
 senting to an Englishman a letter, and being kindly 
 entreated of him, we left the hash-house of " Alas 
 poor Yorick!" and rode forth to Haiku. In view of 
 the custom of the country as to the manner of ladies' 
 riding, and of her inability to conform thereto, Mrs. 
 H. had borrowed a side-saddle ; Our Humorist and 
 I got such colonial saddles as were to hand ; and 
 Joe, the guide, used a Mexican. With our kit for 
 several days, and our coats and waterproofs strapped 
 on to these, we started, making a gallant show. 
 And we passed by the railway that runs from 
 Wailuku by Kahalui and Spreckelsville (euphonious 
 name) to Pahia — even for six miles ; and on until 
 we came to Haiku. Now, the road at first is by 
 glowing yellow and golden and orange sands of an 
 intenser colour than any sand I have ever seen ; and 
 over a red red, road, and past miles of green and 
 yellowing sugarcane, in sight of the polyphloisbuoy- 
 ant one, green and blue and foam-flecked, on the 
 left ; and the huge hill of Haleakala on the right. 
 
Haleakala. 267 
 
 A feast of colour for the eye. That evil-sounding 
 name aforementioned belongs to perhaps the biggest 
 of all the sugar-mills and estates on all the islands ; 
 you may read all the figures in the guide-book, if 
 you feel like it. Past Pahia, the road is more up and 
 down ; we pass over cliffs where the green one is 
 more phloisbuoyant than ever, down into a gulch (by 
 which hideous name these poor people are wont to 
 speak of a ravine), and up again, and across uplands 
 where the all-prevailing sugarcane grows, until we 
 reach our host's house. Now for simple, unaffected, 
 unadulterated kindness and hospitality commend me 
 to Our Host at Haiku. Not content with our stay- 
 ing with them on our way up the hill, with doing all 
 they could for us as to how to get up, with obtain- 
 ing for us the use of a house — furnished and unoccu- 
 pied — at Olinda, the highest on this side of the hill, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Dickey pressed us to stay with them 
 on our way back, and did entertain us most friendlily 
 for so long as we were able to stay. And we saw 
 what life up-country in the islands is, as we could 
 not have seen in any other way. But of that 
 hereafter ; our present business is to get to the top 
 of Haleakala, and there see the sunrise. So 
 Mrs. H., politely accepting a carriage to drive in, 
 and secretly wishing she might ride, and Our 
 Humorist and I on our gallant steeds (awful game- 
 legged sluggard his was, to be sure), by the direct 
 route, and Joe by a way round to go and get the 
 keys of the house at Olinda, set forth provided with 
 bread and meat (in tins — I should say cans), and such 
 
268 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 necessaries as we could think of, and rendezvoused 
 at Mrs. Alexander's, the highest house in Makawao, 
 itself the highest township (colonial) or settlement 
 (American) or station (India) on the hill. Anything 
 up higher is only single house or station (colonial). 
 
 The road so far is a driving road, in good enough 
 order except in one portion, and with only one 
 " gulch " to cross, and that not a severe one. When 
 at last loaded up, on horseback, with all our kit, 
 saddle-bags, and holdalls, and parcels of bread, and 
 canteens, attired in clothes befitting the situation, we 
 presented an appearance that might have made even 
 a Bengali Babu laugh, if he were not unprovided 
 with the risible faculty ; such a crew of unprincipled 
 brigands returning from a raid did we seem to be. 
 From Makawao the road is a bridle track only across 
 the grazing run or ranch, constantly ascending, yet 
 nowhere severe, until at Olinda we are 6,000 feet 
 up. Olinda might be called the House of Rainbows. 
 It is just on that corner of the hill at which the 
 clouds that drive across from East to West Maui 
 break off from the former, and just at that elevation 
 where the sun catches the flying vapour at the proper 
 angle. We appeared to be continually riding into a 
 perfect arch that grew beyond the half-circle until it 
 seemed that it would become a whole one, yet never 
 quite did it ; so close to us and so complete down to 
 the ground that it was a marvel to see. And when- 
 ever we looked back at Olinda there was a rainbow 
 somewhere around. We reached the house at sun- 
 set, and, none of the keys seeming to fit, Our 
 
Haleakala. 269 
 
 Humorist effected a burglarious entrance. Charm- 
 ing little rooms, plenty of furniture ; but, horror ! no 
 lights, and we have brought none ! At last a few- 
 lamps, each with a little oil, are discovered, and 
 blank darkness shall not envelop us. So Joe hews 
 wood, and I draw water, and Our Humorist lights 
 the fire, and Mrs. H. combines the functions of 
 chef and maid-of-all-work ; and we peel potatoes and 
 open tins and cook food. Then to wash and brush 
 up for dinner. Alas, no towels ! Scraps of window- 
 curtain and spare handkerchiefs have to serve 
 instead. So we feast gaily, and discourse plaintively 
 about lights and towels with Mr. D. and our 
 actual though absent host Mr. Baldwin. They are 
 some way off", but that is no matter ; for is there not 
 a telephone ? (Honolulu and Maui are the most 
 telephonic places I ever came across. Mr. D. 
 is the pioneer of telephone enterprise in the Islands, 
 and has planted them all over the place. There 
 seems to be no spot in Maui to which you cannot 
 talk along the wires from any house that you may be 
 at. As for Honolulu, it is not content with one 
 company, but must have two. Their wires are all 
 over the town in huge quantities, and form one of 
 its most striking features. Here endeth the digres- 
 sion about telephones.) Huge razais formed our 
 bedding ; and up we got at 2 a.m. and started for the 
 top. A fine clear night, luckily, and a growing moon 
 that lighted us for nearly two hours. The path not 
 difficult, nor the air so very cold. Even the last 
 hour's climb in that darkest, and chilliest, hour 
 
270 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 before the dawn is not so bad ; the guide was 
 doubtful of the way at one spot only, and fell only 
 once into the ditch. We did the march in just three 
 hours, and at 5 a.m. already there was a premonitory 
 low red line in the east, and the morning star shone 
 with exceeding brightness. We could only guess 
 at the crater on whose edge we stood ; all was dark 
 down there ; we knew only that earth ended and 
 space began. So, wrapped in ulsters and rugs and 
 stamping up and down (for at 10,000 feet elevation 
 the morning breeze is chill even in the tropics), we 
 waited for the day to dawn, That narrow, low, red 
 line lengthens all across the East, " under the open- 
 ing eyelids of the morn," and the sombre blue softens 
 to pale grey : 
 
 Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals 
 From thy pure brows and from thy shoulders pure 
 And bosom beating with a heart renewed. 
 
 And while I repeat to myself that exquisite idyl, 
 the red light retreats farther and farther into the 
 northern and southern limits of the east and spreads 
 uncertainly up to the zenith. Full in the east the 
 sky becomes pure saffron, with a luminous intensity 
 in the midst of it foretelling the point where the sun 
 will appear. And from the mountain-side, a couple 
 of thousand feet below us, stretches upwards (as it 
 seems) to the immeasurably remote horizon an 
 illimitable ocean of clouds. Here they are piled in 
 cumulous masses, there teased into the shining 
 smoothness of a wind-swept snowdrift ; or blown 
 into gauze-like veils of exceeding tenuity, they hang 
 
Haleakala. 271 
 
 between us and far-reaching ranges of mountains 
 filled with gloomy chasms and serrated ridges and 
 black or snow-capped peaks. They seem to be 
 motionless ; one looms dark in front of that centre 
 of brightest light. Suddenly a touch of fire kindles 
 its topmost point, and runs out along the ridge in 
 red and gold and yellow of brilliance indescribable- 
 And then comes forth Hyperion from "his palace 
 bright bastioned with pyramids of glowing gold ; " 
 and day is born again. The huge masses of cloud 
 are seen to be in motion ; they seem to be pouring 
 down from the very threshold of the dawn against 
 the sides of Haleakala, and under the slant rays they 
 glitter with a brightness hardly to be borne. As they 
 strike the mountain they part, half winding round 
 the eastern and southern sides and half moving in 
 slow majesty along the northern coast, whence they 
 stream disorderly across the bay of Kahalui and re- 
 form their broken masses on the mountains of West 
 Maui. It is a scene of unsurpassed grandeur of 
 ever-changing form and density, that we stay all day 
 to gaze on. Glimpses of the blue sea and the green 
 cane-fields come to us on the west ; in the south-east 
 far above the clouds are Hawaii's still snow-capped 
 volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. They 
 slope up gradually and, as it seems, evenly to nearly 
 14,000 feet, with as rounded an outline as the back 
 of a porpoise when you see him gambolling along- 
 side the steamer. Only on Mauna Kea's summit 
 are some broken peaks and cones. In the afternoon 
 those cloud cohorts that encompassed the south of 
 
272 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Haleakala creep up the western side, but above 
 Olinda they are turned back by the column moving 
 along the north, and you see them piled southwards 
 in serried ranks, from which an upper current bears 
 them off north-eastwards, that they may be in their 
 places at His Majesty's portals when he rises next 
 morning. 
 
 We did not go down into the crater, it is too 
 much to attempt in one day — the getting down and 
 about and back again. The walls are from 2,000 
 to 2,700 feet high, perpendicular for hundreds of 
 feet — not smooth, but broken and jagged, and then 
 slope steeply down to the floor. Remember that 
 the crater is seven miles across, and that these 
 walls run in a kind of V shape for twenty miles. 
 All about the floor of this huge hole are lots of 
 small craters, each 600 or 700 feet high, but looking 
 like molehills. From their rims, red with cinders 
 and grey with ashes, run flows of black lava, and 
 there is no scrap of vegetation to be seen. At 
 either end of the arms of the V the walls of the 
 great crater have given way — have been swept 
 clean out, and huge gaps give exit to the lava flows. 
 At the point of the V is the highest top of Halea- 
 kala — three piles of cinder loose and weary to walk 
 on — and hither I scrambled along the edge of the 
 rugged walls, passing not a few tracks of wild goats 
 in the ashes, and finding ice in the crevices where 
 the vapours had left a little moisture. From the 
 summit a long steep slope affords the only practicable 
 descent to the bottom of the crater ; and from it 
 
Haleakala. 273 
 
 you get the finest view up each arm of the V. 
 Whether it was from tire and from sleeping in 
 the sun, or from mere mountain sickness, I know 
 not, but sick I certainly was that afternoon, and did 
 not feel fit again until we had ridden without further 
 adventure back to Olinda and had cooked and eaten 
 our camp dinner. Joe departed early next morning, 
 but we idled the forenoon deliciously away, and 
 passed votes of thanks to one another for our 
 domestic services, and especially to Mrs. H. for hers 
 as chef. I have never tasted such excellent sausages 
 and fried potatoes as we had for breakfast that 
 morning. And then we rode back well-pleased to 
 Haiku. 
 
274 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 KILAUEA. 
 
 " Suns that set and moons that wane 
 Rise and are restored again." 
 Are ye, molten lava lakes, 
 Gone for ever out of sight. 
 Passed " afay in die ewigkeit ? " 
 Or will ye, when Pele wakes. 
 In her fiery vast domain 
 Rise and be restored again ? 
 
 Visitors^ Book, Volcano House, Kilauea. 
 
 Before we left Honolulu there were rumours of 
 the bottom having fallen out of Kilauea. (That was 
 the expression used ; most inappropriately, as it 
 seems to me ; for the pit of Kilauea would rather 
 appear to be like that one mentioned in Scripture, 
 and which the flogged school-boy, being exhorted to 
 emulate the great Pitt, said that he wished he was 
 like — bottomless.) Kilauea, you must know, is the 
 largest active crater in the world ; it is, according to 
 the descriptions that one reads and the pictures that 
 one sees of it, full of lakes of fiery lava, in constant 
 turmoil and ebullition, a sight terrific and most 
 magnificent to behold. Now if, indeed, " the bottom 
 having fallen out," the crater was left empty and 
 silent and cold, we should miss one of the wonders 
 
Kilmiea. 275 
 
 of the world. And ever the rumours grew, until- 
 hardly room for hope was left. Yet I refused to 
 give up hope until I should reach the crater and' see 
 with my own eyes its blankness, its extinction ; and 
 Our Humorist and Mrs. H. were of the same 
 mind. So we tarried at Haiku but two nights and 
 a day, most joyfully, accepting hospitality so freely 
 ofifered^'and thereby escaping for a space the horrors 
 of the hash-house. And we played billiards with our 
 host-— that American form of the game : four big 
 balls oil a small table without pockets, where a 
 cannon counts one and a double cannon two, and 
 thirty-nine is game ; and suffered grievous defeat at 
 has'ihands. Also whist we played — we two against 
 ©br host and a dear old lady from New Zealand, 
 and must have earned the reputation of practised 
 card-sharpers ; for we fell upon them and routed 
 them, even though seven made game and honours 
 were not counted. Strange whist, where we could 
 not help winning, for the innocent eagerness with 
 which the adversaries played their best to help us. 
 But was it not all for love ? (Howbeit, I love not 
 whist where the game is seven and no honours !) 
 Then, in the morning, family prayers before break- 
 fast ! It seemed so strange, after — how many ? say 
 a score — of years since, in childhood and schooldays, 
 the rite was a daily experience. After breakfast, it 
 being Sunday, we must to church. Two children 
 of my host (I was staying with a relative and 
 next-door neighbour of our first host, with whom the 
 H.'s still were) drove — a he of seven (I think) 
 
 T 2 
 
276 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 and a she of less — in their own neat pony-carriage 
 with two smart ponies ; a perfectly charming picture. 
 And the rest of us in buggies and breaks. A buggy 
 is not a buggy of Bombay, but vastly more pretty 
 and comfortable ; and a break is not a break, but a 
 tum-tum or bamboo cart, neither pretty nor comfort- 
 able. A five-mile drive to church ; a fine day 
 luckily, for I am but a fair-weather Christian, and 
 do not yearn for church through five miles of rain. 
 The church a plain (or should I say handsome ? 
 for so the parishioners deem it) plank building, yet 
 adorned with organ and some stained glass windows. 
 And the service congregational — so they told me ; 
 it seemed to be rather a go-as-you-please sort of 
 arrangement. All the seats are ranged amphi- 
 theatrically ; the padre has a platform to himself and 
 no pulpit ; behind him the organ and choir. And it 
 is strange to hear Americanisms and the American 
 accent which one associates mostly with humour and 
 would-be witticisms — to hear them used seriously 
 and solemnly in Divine service. The preacher 
 proche on the woman healed of an infirmity who 
 "glorified God," or, as he expounded it, "glorified 
 God right there." In the afternoon many neigh- 
 bours called (including one who wore his pince-nez — 
 when not in use — on the top of his right ear), and 
 we sat in a vast circle in the drawing-room and 
 talked. After dinner more conversation, and then 
 an early bed. I am not sure, though, whether it was 
 dinner — I think not ; dinner came at midday on 
 Sunday. But each meal was so exactly like the 
 
Kilauea. 277 
 
 other two, that whether you call it dinner or tea 
 or supper makes not the smallest difference. No 
 liquor appeared at any meal, nor at any other time 
 either (neither, by the way, did our hosts smoke) ; 
 breakfast was distinguishable by starting on " mush," 
 anglice porridge, whether of "cracked wheat," or of 
 an unholy white stuff called "hominy," or the more 
 familiar oatmeal, and by continuing on hash or steak 
 or stew, while the dinner or lunch went in for joint 
 (or poultry in place thereof). But hash or joint, the 
 wonder was the quantity of wadding that went with 
 it in the shape of dumplings and corn (i.e. of course, 
 Indian corn) and peas and potatoes and biscuit {i.e. 
 scones) — terribly filling, and yet hardly satisfying. 
 Breakfast ended with hot cakes — sort of pancake 
 eaten with "surp" (I spell syrup as pronounced in 
 America) ; dinner and supper, or lunch and dinner, 
 with something equally indigestible. Water your 
 drink at each meal until quite the end, when you 
 were allowed one cup of coffee or tea, and no more. 
 A prolonged course of such diet would send me to 
 an early and dyspeptic grave. Next day we were 
 quite sorry to bid adieu to our hospitable enter- 
 tainers, and rode back to our hash-house. Thence 
 might we not escape for yet thirty-six hours. So 
 we called for horses from Joe, whereon to ride into 
 the valley of lao — a most picturesque spot in the 
 heart of the hills of West Maui. It is to be reached 
 only after fording a stream that once ran red with 
 blood and was choked with corpses, when the 
 conquering Kamehameha routed the kings of Maui 
 
278 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 We asked Joe if it were fordable after the rain that 
 had fallen. " You will see when you get there," said 
 Joe pleasantly. And so we did. Our Humorist's 
 game-legged sluggard all but went over with him, 
 and my war-horse, after ducking me almost to the 
 seat, came out where he went in and would by no 
 means go in again. We tried up stream and down 
 stream, but our nags knew better than that ; so we 
 remained in much the same position to lao as Moses 
 did to Canaan — t'other side of Jordan. Then we 
 rode back and out on the Waihi road, cantering 
 gaily across the bridge. As we walked back across 
 that bridge, Mrs. H. read to us a notice affixed 
 thereon : " The fine for crossing this bridge faster 
 than a walk is five dollars," or words to that effect. 
 I said we should be run in, sure. Prophet of ill ! 
 As we rode through the main street there came one 
 behind me who said, "You owe me fifteen dollars." 
 I asked "How?" ("How?" is American for 
 "what ? " but I only meant, " How do I owe you 
 fifteen dollars ? ") He said, " You three cantered 
 across the bridge ; fine five dollars a head ; three 
 times five, fifteen." I explained that I had not seen 
 die notice, nor had any of us until returning. And 
 suddenly off he went at score in French ! I was 
 content to listen, and left Mrs. H. to continue our side 
 of the conversation. He was, it seems, the road 
 overseer and a Frenchman ; a polite little man and 
 friendly withal, who accepted a composition of 
 apologies and nothing in the pound in full settle- 
 ment of his claim. 
 
Kilauea. 279 
 
 The Kinau, bound for Hilo, the port for Kilauea, 
 calls at Maalaea — seven miles across the isthmus 
 from Wailuku — any time between midnight and 
 dawn ; there is no telephone (marvellous to relate) 
 between Wailuku and Lahalna — the port of call next 
 preceding Maalaea (pronounce this as if you called 
 your mother a fabricator — Ma-a-liar) ; so there 
 was nothing for it but to drive there by midnight 
 and wait. It was just about full moon ; really a 
 beautiful drive in the tropical moonlight, close under 
 the West Maui mountains with huge Haleakala on 
 the left and the wide-mouthed bay in front. We 
 reached the Deceitful Parent by 10 ; a very stuffy, 
 ill-smelling shed to wait in. I rolled myself in ulster 
 and rug, and, with holdall for pillow, slept on the sand 
 until, at 2 A.M., the Kinati appeared and we made 
 ourselves comfortable on board. No sleeping on 
 deck cheek by jowl with the natives, a la Miss Bird, 
 but cosy bunks in roomy two-berthed cabins. By 
 noon next day we were at Mahukona — a dreary- 
 looking place, with a strong wind blowing dead off 
 shore. Here we remained twelve mortal hours, 
 uncomfortable, but too chastened to complain much,- 
 while the business of the owners of the ship and of 
 the little railway and the store — that is to saj', of all 
 Mahukona — ^got itself transacted. Next morning 
 we were rolling gaily on the windward side of the 
 island of Hawaii. How that ship can roll ! It was 
 impossible to do anything but fix oneself firmly in one's 
 cabin and read, and look out of window at the island 
 coast. It was worth looking at. I woke up opposite 
 
28o Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Waipio, a wide opening in the rocky cliff that all 
 along this windward side forms the edge of the land, 
 and (according to Miss Bird, the guide-book, and 
 other word-stringers), a valley of great beauty. 
 Thence all the way to Hilo — a distance of sixty miles 
 — there is, raised off the sea by the rock-barrier, one 
 or two or three hundred or more feet high, a ribbon 
 of green canefield, sloping gradually up towards 
 the mountain — the mighty Mauna Kea. The ribbon 
 varies from a mile to, say, three miles in width ; it 
 is cut pretty often by great gulches that come down 
 from the mountain to the sea. Higher up the 
 slope is forest, sad-coloured against the vivid green 
 of the cane ; and above all, the crater peaks of 
 Mauna Kea, cinder-red, ashy-grey, lava-black, or 
 dazzling white with snow. Some ravines (I can't 
 use that word gulch again, it is too ugly) cleave the 
 seaward barrier right down to the ocean's edge, 
 others turn their waters loose over the unbroken 
 crest of cliff, and delight the eye with waterfalls of 
 all kinds — solid and thunderous, gauzy and graceful, 
 cataract and cascade. Here, at every few miles, is a 
 sugar-mill, and flumes (water-conduits) run into the 
 mill from all parts of the plantation, bringing in the 
 cut cane. We halt at only too many places down 
 this coast ; for we have a lot of Japanese emigrants 
 — contract coolies — on board, and are distributing 
 them to their various employers. Yet, at length we 
 reach Hilo, famed for its beauty ; but to-day it is 
 all veiled in grey mist and drifting cloud-wrack. 
 It is really quite tropical ; I could almost fancy 
 
Kilaued. 281 
 
 myself back in some little town on the Tenasserim 
 Coast. We were very eager to see the " surf- 
 riding " of the Hiloan bathers — a most graceful and 
 skilful sport, they say ; but there was not surf 
 enough, and we could not. (Yet, how that ship did 
 roll ! What in thunder would she have done if 
 there had been a good sea on ?) So we merely 
 stroll around, and start next morning for Kilauea — 
 thirty miles away. Even yet we are uncertain whether 
 we are going to find an active or a sulky volcano. 
 There is a goddess who presides over volcanoes, 
 and her name is Pele (drawl both e's, like the 
 Burmese e in hie, a boat — not hie, a cart) ; she lives 
 in Kilauea. Once before, "in a respite of slumber, 
 in a lull of the fires of her life," the volcano went 
 out — five years ago to a day ; and before that in 
 legendary times she has let the fire run low. That 
 was when she went fooling down to the sea to 
 bathe (she'd want it after a year or two of active 
 stoking down below), and to try her hand at surf- 
 riding. And as she disported herself she heard 
 the sound of far music, and became anxious to see 
 what it was. Wherefore she left the human form 
 that she had donned, and followed the sweet strains 
 " on from island unto island," even to the uttermost 
 limit of the farthest island, the island of Kauai. 
 For the magic musician of the king had sent his 
 strains so far to find her. And behold the king 
 was holding a nautch — I mean a hula-hula ; and as 
 she looked on him she loved him. Thereupon she 
 appeared unto him as a most exquisitely lovely girl 
 
282 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 (rather fat, probably, and cocoanut-oily about the 
 hair), and King Lohiau, being no Joseph or bashful 
 Adonis, straightway fell in love with her. And she 
 stayed away so long (her servants down in Kilauea 
 not knowing where she was, and being afraid to 
 wake the human form which she left asleep on the 
 shore by the sea), that the fire at home got very low 
 indeed. There is a lot more of the story — how 
 Lohiau got into very hot water— hot lava, rather — 
 with his burning lady-love, and got out again ; but 
 you've probably had about enough of it; and, 
 indeed, I've forgotten exactly how it runs. Anyway, 
 the road runs from Hilo for thirteen miles in a 
 tolerably well-made track (cost 30,000 dollars, they 
 say) over lava of kinds — aa and pahoehoe, they call 
 them — and through bush of strange trees, bread- 
 fruit and ohia and lehua, until it ends abruptly in 
 mid-forest, and we have to take to horse and the 
 horse-trail [anglice bridle-path). A Burmo-Japanico- 
 Serbonian bog is this trail to begin with, and then 
 chunky and angular and slippery hard lava. Conse- 
 quently seventeen miles take five hours to accom- 
 plish ; and I am of opinion that a Mexican saddle 
 is an atrocious thing to ride in for five hours. My 
 Virginian (for there was also on this trip a youth 
 from West Virginia, whom I call My Virginian, inas- 
 much as we chummed somewhat together) thought 
 the same of an English saddle ; but then he was 
 riding a moke. (Not that he called the sagacious 
 beast a moke ; he did not know what the word 
 meant.) In a Mexican saddle you cannot get a seat 
 
Kilauea. 283 
 
 at all, can't sit down in the saddle ; you have to 
 stand in the stirrups (such clumsy stirrups too), and 
 ride on the fork. Luckily it did not rain, and we 
 skated over the humpy lava and plunged through 
 the puddles merrily enough. Then a nice track 
 gave us a mile or more's brisk canter up to the 
 Volcano House. There we learnt at last the full 
 measure of our misfortune. The bottom had indeed 
 fallen out, with no chance of its falling in again for 
 many a day to come. I saw no fire at Kilauea, other 
 than the cheery wood fire that burned at night 
 between the dogs on the great hearth in the Volcano 
 House. A comfortable hostelry, for up-country, 
 with good food and a kindly and communicative 
 host. Mr. (or Colonel) and Mrs. Maby have probably 
 left there by now, as the old order (and Company) 
 has changed, yielding place to new ; and, of 
 course, in things American, with every change of 
 administration, office - holders change too. May 
 future guests be as well looked after as were Colonel 
 Maby's. Now, I think that if we had seen Pele's 
 house in all its glory, I should still have refrained 
 from inflicting on you an attempt at description, 
 and should have referred you to Miss Bird, or to 
 the Visitors' Book, wherein is much verbiage even 
 stranger than Miss Bird's, or to your own imagina- 
 tion of the conventional hell. But as we saw the 
 goddess's abode when she was out of town, I can 
 only tell you what the place is like when the light is 
 out. On the slope of that 13,800 footer Mauna 
 Loa, at a height of 4,000 feet above the sea, is a big 
 
284 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 hole in the ground. I suppose the circumference is 
 some seven or eight miles, and the height of the 
 almost perpendicular sides about 1,500 feet. The 
 dimensions are respectable, are they not ? Some- 
 where about the centre of this enormous crater is 
 the House of Fire, the active crater which has had 
 the mishap to its bottom. From the foot of the 
 outer wall to the edge of this inner pit stretches a 
 slightly rising field of lava ; and it is about one mile 
 and a half from foot to edge. You walk over 
 solidified waves of what was molten rock, here 
 heaved into mis-shapen mounds, there rent by great 
 fissures, black, vitreous. Solidified ? well, hardly ; 
 the rock rings hollow ; it is solid-looking, but full of 
 big caverns and tiny air-bubbles shut up by the rock 
 that hardened as it cooled. Down in the crevasses 
 the sides are brick-red ; snow-white and yellow 
 stuffs are found in the caves. A hardy fern or two 
 tries to grow in the crannies near the edge of the 
 field. All else is black, bare lava ; yet, not all 
 black, for as we search we find blown threads and 
 fluffy-seeming ringlets of Pele's golden hair. When 
 the lakes of lava are lively, the wind catches the 
 spray and foam of fiery molten rock, and blows it 
 out into long thin thread-like spun glass, faintly 
 yellow, with black beadlets strewn in where less 
 fluid atoms of the vitreous matter have refused to be 
 extenuated : and these threads are carried and dis- 
 persed all about the surface of the lava. Are they 
 not the hair, the combings of the locks, of the goddess 
 Pele '^. Remote from the pit, we find them in little 
 
Kilatiea. 285 
 
 huddled patches in the crannies ; they look soft as 
 floss silk, but the threads are as brittle as a lover's 
 vows. But all about the edge the newer lava is 
 covered thick with the hair blown out in single 
 threads, so interlaced and so glittering that the 
 rocks shine like burnished gold. And the rocks as 
 you walk on them crackle crisply, and every now 
 and then cave in beneath your weight ; and a sweet- 
 smelling vapour of sulphur rises hotly from the 
 cracks, and from the surface all round you, and you 
 may (or you may not) see the sullen red glow of yet 
 uncooled lava a foot or so below the surface. And 
 so you come to the edge of the pit — a hole about a 
 mile round, and five hundred feet deep, with sides 
 sheer, but shattered and crumbling, for three hundred 
 feet, and then sloping steeply funnel-shaped down 
 to — well, down to the "house of unquenchable fire." 
 A mist of white steam covers the entrance. 
 
 The subsidence of the Kilauean lakes in March 
 t886 was followed, in June 1886, by the terrific 
 eruption of Tarawera. Post hoc or propter hoc ? 
 And \i propter, where will the vent take place from 
 the subsidence of March 1891 ? Who can tell.-* 
 
 There are plenty of sulphur blowholes on the top 
 of the outer wall of the big crater, along by the 
 hotel ; you can have a sulphur vapour-bath if you 
 wish. (I didn't find any other and more common 
 and desirable kind of bath to be had.) And not 
 far off — a pleasant ramble among the lehua and 
 ohelo, with its pretty clusters of red berries — is 
 the very dead crater of Kilauea Iki ; a bed of black 
 
286 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 lava at the bottom of a hole i,ooo feet deep. And 
 again we sat round the fire in the Volcano House 
 at night, and wrote our names in the Visitors' Book, 
 being the last visitors that should visit and write 
 under the old dispensation. And when My Virginian 
 saw that I broke into verse, even the verse that 
 stands at the head of this chapter, he marvelled, and 
 Our Humorist wondered, and none spotted that the 
 first two lines are a quotation, nor did I tell them. 
 And My Virginian queried what "die ewigkeit" 
 might be, and produced a verse of marvellous con- 
 struction, to which ( I own with shame) I gave him 
 the last line : — 
 
 The goddess Pele, a lady of high rank, 
 Was daughter of fire and a mud bank ; 
 The mud bank it busted, 
 And Pele she dusted, 
 And now she is 
 
 blank ! blank ! ! blank ! ! ! 
 
 Such are the results of a Harvard education. 
 
 My Virginian and I swapped saddles going back 
 (but I did not bone his moke), and we made a little 
 better time — some four hours for the seventeen miles. 
 Near Hilo there are many pretty points — Cocoa- 
 nut Island (very poor show of the " coco's drooping 
 crown of palms " : not in it with Penang and Malaya 
 and all the islands of the East), and the Rainbow 
 Falls, and the Boiling Pits. To the last two we 
 walked. My Virginian and I, through much mud. 
 There was no rainbow at the Falls, nor any pit or 
 hot water at the Boiling Pits. Nevertheless, I will 
 not deny that they were pretty sights ; the Boiling 
 
Kilaiiea. 287 
 
 Pits are really fine : water that " dashed downward 
 in a cataract " into a pool whence, finding no superter- 
 ranean outlet, it bubbled and gurgled up underground 
 into a lower pool, and again in like subterfiigacious 
 manner into yet a lower pool, all hemmed in in 
 narrow space by lava ' ' rock and crag, with many a 
 jag." In the way of lava it is a cheerful country. 
 The hill-side opens out now and again, quietly, 
 with no unnecessary fuss, and pours out a good 
 strong stream of real hot lava. The outer surface 
 cooling and hardening, the stuff makes itself a tun- 
 nel as it proceeds (like a column of white ants does) 
 and the liquid rock goes a long waj' scorching hot. 
 The stream, awhile ago, made straight for Hilo, 
 and got so near to it that it seemed little would be 
 left of it "in the coming by-and-bye." But the 
 Governoress of those dajs, being of the Royal 
 Family, rose to the occasion. She put her 
 Christianity in her pocket (a very small pocket 
 ■would hold it all, or, indeed, all the Christianitj' of 
 all the Hawaiians), and went forth with pomp and 
 ceremony to meet the advancing lava-flow. And 
 she prayed to Pele and the gods, the old gods of 
 Hawaii, and offered sacrifice of pig, the sacred pork, 
 and I know not what else ; and even when and as 
 she prayed, the stream stayed, and Hilo was saved. 
 This is no legend, it is fact ; and the black lava 
 stream stopping dead half a mile short of Hilo is 
 there to this day to prove it. Near the B.P. 
 (Boiling Pits, not British Public ; there is no pub. 
 nearer than the Hilo Hotel), we ran — or rather 
 
288 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 stumbled through mud and rock — into an unso- 
 phisticated Hawaiian hamlet. Quite Irish in the 
 domesticity of its pigs, dirtier and more tumble- 
 down in its grass and palm-leaf cabins than even a 
 Burmese dacoit-village in the rains. An old man 
 whom we found to show us our way ought to have 
 been interned in that sequestered nook on Molokai. 
 The uncivilized Hawaiian of old time may have 
 been a fine fellow ; at present he is most un- 
 romantically unclean and unsavoury. 
 
289 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOM. 
 
 The N.E. trade is all but permanent nine months 
 in the year in Hawaii, and keeps the windward 
 side wet and green while the leeward is dry and 
 brown. Now and again comes a southerly wind — 
 a " kona " — which is very muggy and relaxing — 
 takes all the starch out of everyone. At all other 
 times the climate is perfection on the leeward side. 
 A shade thermometer that in Honolulu never 
 reaches 90° and never (or hardly ever) falls below 
 55", and has an annual mean of 75° ; sheltered from 
 the too great force of the perpetual trade wind, yet 
 irrigated (artificiall)) by waters brought down from 
 the windward side or up through artesian wells ; with 
 the bracing air and bright cold of mountain altitudes 
 easily accessible on INIaui and Hawaii islands, that 
 are made up, mostly, of \'olcanoes whose heights run 
 up into five figures, and of their enormous ejects of 
 la^"a ; a rainfall of usually some thirty-five to forty 
 inches, excessively hea\y at no season of the j'ear : 
 what more would you wish for when you are still a 
 couple of degrees within the tropics .'' The Hawaiiem 
 Islands, it may be necessary to remind some who 
 
 u 
 
29c Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 forget their geography, are not South Sea Islands, 
 but extend from under 19° to over 22° north of 
 the Equator. Yet, tropical as they are, one can — 
 owing to the natural causes just sketched — enjoy 
 quite a temperate climate, and go about all day in 
 the sun, in a small hat, as no one who was not 
 a lunatic, or desirous of speedily becoming one, 
 would think of doing in the same latitude in India. 
 What wonder if the natives are happy, soft-natured 
 folk, easily led, thoughtless of all but the present, 
 sensual, slothful. And what a wonder would it not 
 be if such a people, brought into sudden contact 
 with Western civilization — and that in an active 
 American and missionary form — did not die out? 
 it is a pity, but inevitable. I say it is a pity, for 
 the people are a very different lot from their cousins 
 the Maoris, whose speedy extinction, I said some 
 way back, would be a good thing. These Hawaiians, 
 though their islands be not in the South Seas, yet 
 are South Sea Islanders. There seems no doubt 
 that they came from the Samoan or Society Islands 
 in the sixth and eleventh centuries a.d., and there 
 does not seem to be any reason to believe that they 
 found any indigenous people on the islands when 
 they first landed. Thus their language is not 
 mixed, aS Maori seems to be, with unoriginal 
 elements, and it has only twelve letters in the whole 
 alphabet. Nor have the Hawaiians ever contracted, 
 as the Maoris of New Zealand did, the taste for 
 human flesh. Human sacrifices there were, but not 
 cannibalism. The victim was placed on the altar,- 
 
The Hawaiian Kingdo7n. 291. 
 
 and left to natural causes to dispose of. How, after 
 grand sacrifices such as the great Kamehameha 
 offered when rebuilding the heiau (temple) of Puu- 
 kohola at Kawaihae, the high altar must have 
 stunk ! It is curious how ideas vary as to what is 
 an indignity and what is not. The bones of chiefs 
 were most carefully concealed — after being stripped 
 of the flesh — in order that they might not be made 
 into spear-heads, fish-hooks, or the like, which would 
 have been a terrible disgrace. Yet once, when 
 a faithful friend entrusted with the bones of the 
 alii-nui (chief) Kualii, to find a safe place for them 
 to rest in, could find none, he ground them into 
 powder and mixed this royal bone-dust with the 
 pudding (poi) which the funeral guests were given 
 to eat. Thus, as he elegantly explained, his master's 
 bones were buried in the bellies of his mourning 
 friends. So it is an indignity to have your bones 
 converted into something useful, but none to have 
 the flesh hacked off them, and themselves ground 
 up for kitchen use. In the matter of tabti. (or kapu, 
 as it would more properly be written here, there 
 beinsf no true t ox b va. Hawaiian), the Hawaiian 
 custom was, as I read, much the same as the Maori ; 
 but I have not read of anything corresponding to 
 the New Zealand " utu " and " muru." On the other 
 hand, the making of "kapa" (fibre-cloth) and 
 "awa " (liquor), while common in Hawaii, was un- 
 known in INIaoriland. About matrimonial arrange- 
 ments there was, of course, a charming simplicity, 
 and that monopoly of one another by a woman and 
 
 u 2 
 
292 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 a man, which is so fixed in our ideas of marriage, 
 was conspicuously, absent. Not only might a man 
 have several wives, but a wife might have several 
 husbands ; polyandry as well as polygamy. And a 
 man handed over his wife to another easily enough, 
 if such stories are to be believed as that of Kaikilani, 
 who, being the loved wife of Kaualoa, was by him 
 handed over to Lono, merely because she liked him 
 better ; or as that of Kelea, whom her husband with 
 equal facility let go to Kalamakua. These " meles " 
 or legends of the chiefs show further that, except 
 mother and son (query : and father and daughter), 
 any two might intermarry ; the offspring of brother 
 and sister took the highest rank (alii niaupio). Yet, 
 it does not appear that the women were in any par- 
 ticularly evil plight. They were debarred from 
 many things by the kapu ; but they had no small 
 influence, and were not forbidden even to take part 
 in men's proper business of fighting. (So in Burma, 
 the king regularly married his half-sister, and 
 matrimony is a far from indissoluble bond ; yet are 
 the women free and independent enough.) From 
 the old " meles " it would seem, too, that for all the 
 laxness, devotion to one sole partner was neither 
 unknown nor unadmired ; for Kaaialii is sung of, 
 who followed Kaala into the sea-cave whither her 
 cross-grained father, Oponui, had dragged her, and 
 refusing to leave her, even though his king the 
 mighty Kamehameha commanded, dashed out his 
 brains with a stone, and so died by her corpse ; and 
 Mauono, who died on her husband Kekuaokalani's 
 
The Hawaiian Kingdom. 293 
 
 body, fighting for the kapu and the old gods of 
 Hawaii ; and the Hves and death of Makakehau and 
 Puupehe. That aboHtion of the old religion and 
 dethronement — nay, destruction — of the old gods 
 is a strange story. It followed, it is true, in- 
 tercourse with the white men, but preceded any, 
 the feeblest, attempt at missionarizing ; and was 
 brought about by wine and woman (nothing strange 
 in their upsetting a man's religion), and (what is 
 strange) by the high priest of the falling creed. For 
 King Liholiho would not have ventured so far as 
 to utterly efface the old faith, but for his wife and 
 the high priest Hewahewa, and for his being well- 
 primed with export gin. Soon after, in came the 
 missionaries and gave them a religion in place of the 
 vanished worship. And now all the natives are 
 Christians — "nominally, I suppose," I remarked to 
 The Reverend, and he answered with a half-amused 
 sadness, " Very nominally." Certainly, as one sees 
 the Hawaiian of to-day, it is impossible to imagine 
 him taking anything seriously. I mean taking any- 
 thing to heart, so as to feel deeply about it. He is 
 light-hearted, one might almost say light-headed, his 
 feelings ephemeral, his stability ml. Fond of flowers 
 — and most pretty is their custom of decorating them- 
 selves and their friends with leis (garlands of flower 
 and leaf) ; fond of feathers (worn bandwise on the 
 hat), fond of music (the white man's guitar is now 
 the universal instrument), and of dancing (of course, 
 much of it is indecently suggestive), and of plea- 
 sure (notwithstanding prohibition laws, and the 
 
294 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Seventh Commandment), and of feasting (a luau — or 
 picnic — is delightful, if you like raw fish and poi), 
 the Hawaiian seems incapable of fixed feeling, seated 
 sentiment, thoroughness of thought. Religion, 
 love, friendship, gratitude,— such things they have 
 the outward show of; but behind it all is an ab- 
 solute absence of reality. Reality in such matters 
 is impossible without some recollection of the past, 
 some forethought of the future ; and the Hawaiian 
 lives in the present only. It is as well, perhaps ; 
 for there is practically no future for him. The 
 Hawaiians have dwindled to well under 40,000 ; 
 and how many of these, I wonder, have no inter- 
 mixture of foreign blood! Very few, I warrant. 
 Their royal family is full of it ; and the heiress- 
 apparent — Her Royal Highness Princess Victoria 
 Kawekui Kaiolani Lunalilo Kalaninuiahilapalapa — 
 (I take some credit for remembering that name) — 
 might more simply be called Her Royal Highness 
 Miss Cleghorn, and will doubtless marry a white 
 man, as her half-sister has done. (She is being 
 educated at school in England ; chance for any 
 bachelor wishing to become a Prince Consort.) The 
 Hawaiians have always received foreigners kindly. 
 You can hardly call it through unselfishness : it is 
 merely easy-going flabbiness. Japanese were, it is 
 legended, wrecked here centuries ago, and later on 
 Spaniards ; and this flotsam married into the 
 highest families. That Cook was killed at 
 Kealekeakua Bay was merely the accident of a 
 trumpery quarrel. Davis and Young (adventurers 
 
The Hawaiian Kingdom. 295 
 
 of sorts), who came soon after, became progenitors 
 of royalty, and the missionaries were received open- 
 armed. And didn't they make a good thing of it ! 
 Trust the missionary — more especially the Ameri- 
 can missionary — for that ! Houses and lands, wealth 
 and position, these are the portion of the descend- 
 ants of the missionaries of the early years of the 
 century. The people they came to convert are, it 
 is true, rapidly dying out. Ah, well, there is the 
 more space for the padres and their offspring ! 
 The mixture of races in Hawaii is curious. Of 
 capitalists and employers of labour, the American 
 first, the English a bad second, and the rest nowhere. 
 Of labourers, Portuguese from the Azores, Chinese, 
 and of later years Japanese in thousands. The 
 foreign population outnumbers the native (half- 
 whites thrown in). Now, some would like a few 
 coolies from Madras, Bengal, Bombay, as cheaper 
 than the rest ; and cheapness in labour is much 
 desired by the capitalist now that his sugar has to 
 compete in the States equally with all other sugars, 
 instead of being, as of old, free while they were taxed. 
 But Indian coolies in a foreign state are much 
 trouble to the British representative in that state ; 
 and the British representative does not like to be 
 troubled. I fancy the planters will have to do with- 
 out Indian labour for a while. The sugar industry 
 is the only one on the islands worth speaking of ; 
 the capital in it is some twenty-three millions of 
 dollars American, about five millions British, and a 
 few odd thousands others. In mills and machinery 
 
296 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 they are a good way ahead of Mauritius ; so a 
 planter from there told me after seeing some of the 
 estates here. This disintegrating lava, once it has 
 water, seems most fertile ; and water they spare no 
 pains to supply it with where natural supply is 
 wanting. Most of the flower and foliage that make 
 Honolulu beautiful is fed by water artificially 
 obtained ; for the leeward side of the islands is by 
 nature very bare and singularly poor in vegetation. 
 Even on the windward side the jungle — all that I 
 have seen — is nothing like so all-pervading and so 
 dense as in Java and the Straits. But with water 
 splendid flowers are produced in abundance ; John 
 Chinaman plants his paddy-fields, and the natives 
 their taro (as it is usually written ; kalo as it should 
 rather be). It is an insipid but filling sort of food, 
 this kalo, taken natural ; but it is capable of being 
 made up into tasty biscuit, or by the natives into their 
 staff of life, yclept foi. This is a dirty pink stuff 
 something of the consistency of arrowroot — that is 
 to say, very thick or thin, as you choose to make it ; 
 flavour subacid, slightly fermented, not particularly 
 pleasing to a white palate, but not atrocious, abomin- 
 able, like ngapi or dorian. Fish the islands have of 
 many kinds, but only the mullet pleases Western 
 taste, and the natives prefer their fish raw. Pig was 
 all the flesh they had before the white man came. 
 Now there are ranches with cattle and horses, and 
 an island or two filled with sheep. The diet they 
 eat seems, anyway, to have raised a fine big race. 
 Their legends speak of men of six-and-a-half feet 
 
HAWAIIAN WOMEN. 
 
The Hawaiian Kingdom. 297 
 
 as quite common ; and there seems no doubt that 
 the old Hawaiian was a splendid animal. The race 
 has degenerated somewhat, no doubt, in bulk as in 
 numbers ; but even now they run to a great size. 
 Catchweights over 300 pounds would be about the 
 correctest figure to give for ladies of the royal 
 family ; and the women-folk generally are big-faced 
 and big-bodied, though not especially large-limbed. 
 Many of the men are of quite " ornery " size. I 
 should not call any of the men handsome or the 
 women beautiful : large dark eyes are the only 
 redeeming features in broad heavy faces. The 
 costume of the women — the " holoku " — does not 
 set off any figure they may have ; it is a long night- 
 gowny sort of arrangement of ample dimensions 
 unconfined at the waist. Men wear coat and 
 trousers and shirt a I'Europ^enne, or rather a 
 I'Americaine. Both sexes favour wide straw hats 
 adorned with lei of flowers or feathers — ^peacocks' 
 and pheasants' feathers for choice. As to voice, they 
 are not to be despised. The language having but 
 seven consonants (k, p, three liquids, an aspirate, and 
 w), of which no two ever come together or ever end 
 a syllable, the words are nearly all vowels, and the 
 people seem to have a natural aptitude for music. 
 I have listened to the " vowelled undersong " of a 
 girl singing to her guitar alone, and thought it 
 charming; I have heard the Quintet Club play 
 together banjo, guitar, mandoline, and a flute-like 
 thing, and sing in parts their Hawaiian songs, and I 
 have joined heartily in the applause; and I have heard 
 
298 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 the Royal Band play both wind and string (the 
 latter poor), and fully endorsed the high reputation 
 that it has (as a brass band). The band-master is 
 quite a personage, for to him (a German) all its 
 excellence is due ; and when the phonograph was 
 displayed in the Royal Opera House (really a 
 decent little theatre), the band played into it the 
 Liliuokalani March, and it was delicious to see on 
 the happy maestro's face the smile of rapt beatitude 
 that sat there fixed while the machine rendered his 
 strains clearly and well, and he knew that his music 
 was recorded for ever to be played in places which 
 his band could not reach. It was not my chance to 
 see any dancing. At entertainments got up at 
 private houses even, " hula " dances are given, and 
 are (as I have been told) apt to be embarrassing 
 from their too realistic pantomimic representation 
 of things not done in the open ; even as a Burmese 
 pwe sometimes is, for instance the one given at the 
 palace at Mandalay one evening in the Christmas 
 week of '87. If you want to get up a " hula " for your- 
 self, it is a matter of secret arrangement by night, and 
 a trip to an island in the harbour, and plentiful gin to 
 the flower-clad (else mostly nude) danseuses. The 
 thing is not allowed by law, but that does not make 
 much odds ; laws exist in Hawaii chiefly for the 
 purpose of being broken. Dances of that kind are 
 not worth seeing when degraded as the: hula here 
 and the hakain New Zealand are ; I do not care for 
 such things unless they are performed naturally, 
 spontaneously, by a people not yet ruined by the 
 
The Hawaiian Kingdom. 299 
 
 veneer of civilization. The Hawaiians are great 
 riders, many in Mexican saddles — which seems to me 
 absurd, where there is no lassoing or rounding in of 
 half-wild cattle to be done; many in colonial or 
 English. And the ladies have long ago decided the 
 cross-saddle question ; all ride en cavalier. Even 
 the white ladies on the islands have — many or most 
 of them — adopted the same fashion ; and riding in 
 ample well-adjusted skirt (no folly of coats and 
 tunics, breeches and boots displayed, but just in good 
 long skirts properly arranged) they look extremely 
 well. It seemed to me elegant, becoming, sensible. 
 And my friend Mrs. H. thought so too. 
 
 The white population is so much American that it 
 seems to be all so. Even the English in Hawaii 
 speak with that dulcet twang and use the strange 
 provincialisms of the American language. But the 
 Government is of English fashion, and the royal 
 family, with English blood in it, has decidedly Eng- 
 lish leanings and preferences. It may be that the 
 islands came, once, very near to being incorporated 
 with the country of the star-spangled banner (the 
 most beautiful flag on earth, an American tells me ; 
 creditable to his patriotism but not to his artistic 
 taste). And I don't, for my own part, see that it 
 would hurt any one in particular if that should be 
 the ultimate fate of the kingdom. The U.S.A. have 
 secured a naval station in Pearl Harbour (near 
 Honolulu) already; and what further benefit they 
 would get, or harm we should suffer, by the kingdom 
 becoming a state of the Union it does not occur to 
 
300 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 me to apprehend. But I don't think it is likely to 
 happen. 
 
 Ah, well, it is a pleasant place to linger in, this 
 cluster of volcanic islets separated by thousands of 
 miles of sea from all other land (2,100 from San 
 Francisco, 2,300 from Samoa, 3,400 from Japan), 
 and the people are cheerful and bright — what matter 
 if they be shallow and insincere ? — and they speak 
 a sweet-sounding language, and take life easily — 
 both this one and their thoughts of the next. 
 Aloha oe. Aloha nui, Hawaii nei. 
 
30I 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE PACIFIC SLOPE. 
 
 The steamer service between Honolulu and the 
 Coast (I never heard San Francisco and the Pacific 
 slope spoken of by any other name in Hawaii) is 
 not well arranged. Instead of a regular weekly 
 service, which they might easily fix up, you have 
 an interval of twelve days between one boat and 
 the next, and then a space of only two days before 
 a third follows. And the boats might go much 
 quicker than they do ; the Australia had to slow 
 down for the last two days of the run, for no other 
 purpose than just to consume the regulation seven 
 days allotted to her to make the passage in. 
 We had a tremendous see-off — " leis " galore, band 
 playing, big crowd — the usual thing on the de- 
 parture of the steamer from Oahu ; a very pretty 
 and lively sight. I cannot say that I enjoyed this 
 voyage. We rolled a good deal in the bounding 
 billows, and " bounders " on board were far too 
 numerous for comfort. There was no fun in the 
 lottery, it became a put-up job ; seven-point whist 
 without honours is deadly ; (piquet is a fine game 
 though) ; flirtation " gross as a mountain, open, 
 palpable," is not even amusing to watch when it is 
 
302 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 rather more than less rowdy. The smoking-room 
 was cramped and creaky, groaning with package 
 on package of plaintains loaded on the roof ; and as 
 the tobacco-chewers (that is to say, nearly every 
 American man on board) invariably shot wide of 
 the spittoon (pardon ; I mean cuspidor), the floor 
 was a terror to see and to walk on. From a careful 
 observation of the common or garden American 
 that one meets travelling, I should say that he 
 washes his clothes rarely, and himself never. The 
 bathman on the Australia, when I descended for 
 the matutinal tub, was evidently much surprised at 
 seeing any one in search of a bath, and his astonish- 
 ment was unbounded when I said " Yes " to his 
 wondering query, " Do you wish a bath every morn- 
 ing "i " Evidently it was a most unusual thing, 
 almost unprecedented in his experience. I ob- 
 served liter on in "sleepers " ("sleeping-cars on the 
 railways) that the shirts of my fellow-passengers 
 were usually excessively grimy, only the cuffs and 
 dickeys and collars being (for outward show) com- 
 paratively clean. We certainly did have a mixed 
 crowd on board. Hawaiians of various shades of 
 snuff-and- butter colour ; Hawaiian Americans, coast 
 Americans, opera singers and managers, downy 
 ones of singularly ill-veiled downiness, and I really 
 don't think one gentleman in the whole blessed 
 crowd. (Of course, I reckon Our Humorist and 
 Me and My Virginian as not of the crowd — merely 
 onlookers.) The Ancient Downy, owner of thou- 
 sands and thousands of acres (fifty^six was it .-* or 
 
The Pacific Slope. 303 
 
 fifty-seven thousand ?) in Killarney, or Blarney (or 
 Cockaigne, or Limbo, or where ?) wandering round 
 searching island-rocks for guano for a living ; the 
 Younger Downy One simply found — cheating is an 
 ugly word ; let us say — taking undue secret advan- 
 tage at cards, yet, after brief expulsion, taken back 
 to the bosoms of the players ; the moneyed man 
 with enormous diamond stud in frilled shirt-front, 
 tie carefully drawn on one side, and tucked into 
 the front above the stud, that the latter might 
 shine resplendent — the types of character on board 
 might be enumerated at length, but none would be 
 found charming. Wherefore, I was well pleased 
 when at length we came in sight of the Californian 
 coast, and neared, and reached, and entered in 
 through the Golden Gate. This name is pretty- 
 sounding, but its exact appropriateness I do not 
 grasp. Nevertheless, it is a good name ; the sweet 
 sound of it in the ear recalls a scene that is certainly 
 delightful to look upon. The morning was fine, 
 and the green hills on the south side of the entrance, 
 the sand and rock on the north, the vast expanse of 
 bay and island, and wide-extending shore, dotted 
 with cities and backed by hills, that lie within the 
 Gate, were bright and cheerful in the clear spring 
 sunshine. It is splendid in size, and beautiful in 
 form and colour, this harbour of San Francisco. 
 Not very powerfully guarded ; an antique Spanish 
 Presidio is the only defence visible, and there are 
 no more. Navy ? — ^good, what there is of it, per- 
 haps ; but how shall such an exiguous fleet suffice: 
 
304 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 to protect the seaboard of so vast a dominion as the 
 United States of America ? But bother politics, 
 especially in the States ; we are not come here to 
 touch pitch, or to be defiled therewith, but to enjoy 
 the pleasure of life, and see fine scenery, and make 
 good friends. There is Nob's Hill — Snob's Hill— 
 which is it ? and here is the wharf and Market 
 Street, and the bustle and push of life more 
 " bruyant," more energetic than we have seen since 
 — well, since (ages ago) we were in the good old 
 City of London. San Francisco is very new, and 
 hasn't learnt to pave its streets yet. Its sidewalks 
 are hardly so vile as those of New York, but its 
 streetways are worse. The moral of this is that you 
 should walk or else ride in a cable-car, and avoid 
 all hacks and 'buses. I don't see that the cable-cars 
 (most excellent invention) have the call over the 
 Melbourne system ; they're as good, and go up hill 
 and down grades as steep as Hongkong's Funicular, 
 and in and out and round about the city in every 
 direction ; but I don't know in what way they're 
 better. Perhaps more striking as a sight, from the 
 comparative flatness of Melbourne and the great 
 variety of steep hillocks and sand-dunes to be sur- 
 mounted in San Francisco. But our independent 
 cousins' City of the West leaves our colonial 
 cousins' City of the South a bad second in one 
 respect. For the number of pretty female faces 
 that you will see in an afternoon's promenade, send 
 me back to 'Frisco. No other city that I have seen 
 in my wanderings is in it with her : Kearny Street 
 
The Pacific Slope. 305 
 
 is a joy to walk down, and Market Street in its best 
 portions, and is it Sutton Street too ? But that is 
 enough. 
 
 I was told that at the Palace Hotel you were a 
 mere item lost in a crowd of items, indistinguishable, 
 ill-served, ill-waited on. So I did not go there. 
 But I was told wrong ; for Our Humorist found it 
 good in all respects. However, at the Baldwin I 
 was as well off ; I growled only at the extreme casual- 
 ness and dilatoriness of the negro, mulatto, almost 
 (but not quite) white, table servants. Around the 
 walls of the dining and lunch rooms at " Lucky 
 Baldwin's" Hotel are plaques painted with head 
 and bust of types of female beauty ; and My Vir- 
 ginian pointed out to me, with admiring pride, that 
 the necklace that each lovely one wore was not 
 painted, but actual glittering stones — real diamonds 
 he averred them to be. I forbore from stating my 
 opinion that it was hideous taste, whether the 
 stones were real or paste ; worthy of a half-barbarian 
 Burmese artist who sews bits of tinsel on to his 
 painted pictures. But let me not grumble ; for cer- 
 tainly here was hotel comfort, throwing into the 
 remote shade the " accommodations " (as Americans 
 call them) of Australian hostelries. 
 
 San Francisco is a pleasant place to wander 
 about in except for the wind, which is gustatious 
 and (in April) chilly. Fog also is said to be around 
 at times ; but I came on none. So that when I 
 went out to see the Presidio, and the Seal Rocks 
 and the Golden Gate Park, I saw them and not fog., 
 
3o6 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 And the Seal Rocks are neither particularly curious 
 nor at all lovely ; just a few disjunct rocks on which 
 crawl and roar many sea-lions and a few seals. 
 They look like a mass of— well, what they most 
 look like, seen from the distance from which alone 
 you can see them, is (the simile is Shakespearian) 
 " life in excrement "; just a crawling lot of dirty 
 worms. But the view of the Golden Gate and back 
 over the Bay is good, from the hill above the Seal 
 Rock House (or whatever the little pub. calls 
 itself) ; and the Pacific Ocean stretches before you 
 for I forget how many thousand miles— ^a good deal 
 farther than you can see, anyway. The Golden 
 Gate Park is not of great beauty ; but it is worthy 
 of admiration as a triumph of somewhat formal 
 art over an extremely formless nature. A vast 
 waste of wind-swept sand-dunes is not a promising 
 place for arboriculture, horticulture, or any other 
 culture (unless it be that of a great thirst). Yet, on 
 such a site has 'Friscan capital created half a park ; 
 and the only interest is that which townsmen and 
 strangers take in it. Grassy lawns have been laid 
 down, wide drives and walks completed, spacious 
 arenas, and casinos, and conservatory, and what not 
 else provided, groves planted, lakes and streams 
 laid on. And in the other half, as yet mostly unre- 
 claimed, is plenty of room for this new western 
 energy to go on laying out and planting and 
 adorning. 
 
 For the rest, San Francisco has no special show- 
 places, unless you reckon China Town as one. The 
 
o 
 u 
 
 'X' 
 
 u 
 
 •< 
 
 CO 
 
 O 
 
 >< 
 ■< 
 
 n 
 w 
 
 H 
 
The Pacific Slope. 307 
 
 city proper has big buildings, of brick and stone, 
 where were modest cabins and plank shanties ; and 
 it is a child of vigorous growth since the days of 
 '49. And its suburbs — Oakland and Sau Salito, 
 and the rest — are pretty and pleasant to live in ; and 
 life is lived rapidly (I will not call the city a fast 
 one — but it doesn't go slow). For theatres it does 
 itself very fairl)' well. I tried comic opera, which 
 wasn't much (but one had the comfort of smoking, 
 and — its usual accompaniment, as at a music hall) ; 
 and American comedy — extremely good ; and adapted 
 French — quite good enough. The real French 
 arrived about this time, even the great Sarah ; and 
 from the opening of the ticket office for days on end 
 the side-walk at Baldwin's was blocked with queues 
 of patient Westerners waiting their turn. But I 
 thought it was about time that I went to some of 
 the visitable places in California ; and off we set, 
 My Virginian and I, for the Yosemite. There are 
 plenty of places nearer, if you wish to see them ; 
 Stanford's Stud Farm at San Paolo, the Naval Yard, 
 the Lick Observatory. I did China Town and saw 
 nothing that I had not seen in China, except that I 
 had not there gone to a theatrical show. It was not 
 so noisy as I had expected, and I did not find any- 
 thing particularly noticeable. The chief marvel of 
 the place is how men who live in such crowded, 
 dirty dens, can turn out so clean and respectable as 
 John usually does. To Monterey, most charming 
 and delightful of seaside resorts (Mrs. H. quite ecs- 
 tacized over it), I had not leisure to go. 
 
 X 2 
 
o 
 
 08 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 The American " sleeper " (what we call sleepers 
 they call ties, and with them "sleeper" denotes sleep- 
 ing-car, even as "smoker" denotes smoking-car, 
 though "diner" is not used for dining-car, as logi- 
 cally it should be) is good in many respects, and un- 
 satisfactory in others. I do not like being shut up 
 behind curtains in berth or section, as one needs 
 must be when men and women have the same car to 
 sleep in and not distinct compartments as in our pre- 
 ferable Indian fashion ; the cars are overheated by 
 the steam-pipes by day and very draughty at night, 
 whereby I acquired a villainous cold ; and when 
 there is no dining-car attached and meals are merely 
 served to you in your " sleeper," the dinner you get 
 is a very scratch affair. Sometimes the negro porter 
 is civil, sometimes he isn't. It takes from 4 p.m. 
 (first half-hour by ferry across the harbour to Oak- 
 land) until 6 A.M. to get from 'Frisco to Raymond, 
 which is absurd ; the distance, 200 miles, could 
 easily be covered by that time if one left 'Frisco 
 after dinner — say 10 or 11 p.m. At Raymond you 
 get breakfast and then a coach, or rather a stage ; for 
 " stage " is the vehicle you travel in, not the distance 
 it travels between two stations or changes of horses. 
 And precious slow these stages go. From Raymond 
 to Wawona, thirty-six miles, took us ten hours 
 actual going, plus an hour's halt for lunch. True 
 there is a pass of some 5,000 feet to get over, and 
 the road was sloppy and rutty with winter and bad 
 weather. So from Wawona to Stoneman House in 
 the valley, twenty-seven miles, took six and a half 
 
The Pacific Slope. 3c 9 
 
 hours ; down the long descent from above Inspira- 
 tion Point to the Foot of the Bridal Veil we just 
 crawled ; none of that dash and go with which we 
 came down the Otira Gorge. Coming out it was 
 even worse. Some one had complained of the jolting 
 on the road — and it was pretty bad ; My Virginian 
 kept trying to punch holes in the roof by leaping up 
 and striking his head against it ; and because of 
 these complaints the drivers got orders to go slow. 
 That is why it took seven and three-quarter hours 
 to Wawona ; and on a drying road and a down-grade 
 nine hours to Raymond. April is a little early to 
 go into the valley. The first tourists got in this 
 year on March 50th, but after that they had a good 
 deal more snow, so that even on April 20th there 
 was plenty of it lying on the top of the passes on the 
 way in, and so much of it on the mountains around 
 the valley that the track to Nevada Falls was cut 
 through a five-foot drift, and. Glacier Point and 
 Eagle Peak were inaccessible. Around the Mari- 
 posa Grove of Big Trees it lay thick and even, even 
 the coach road being deeply encumbered with it. 
 About the middle of May would, I should think, be 
 the best time ; all the tracks would then be clear 
 and in repair, while patches of snow would still be 
 lingering in ravine and sheltered nook or on lofty 
 crest, and the waterfalls would be at their grandest 
 and best, full-fed with water from melting snow-fields. 
 And if you intend to stay for a few days, put up at 
 Barnard's — it is cosy and half homelike, whereas at 
 the Stoneman there is no great comfort, and the table 
 is bad. 
 
3IO Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 And what shall be said of the Valley ? Well, I 
 don't think I will say anything descriptive. I sup- 
 pose a good deal of word-spinning has been done 
 about it, though, to say the truth, I haven't read any ; 
 and I don't see any need for my adding to the mass. 
 Besides, 1 fancy I've made a good many shots 
 already in that line in this journal, and you've 
 probably had about enough of it. Moreover, and 
 finally, I don't feel equal to the occasion. The theme 
 is a bit too big for my pen ; even as it -is too big for 
 any camera to do justice to. What good is there in 
 talking about walls of cold grey granite that stand in 
 huge bulk 3,000 feet sheer from the floor of the 
 Valley as they do in El Capitan ? Can you realize 
 what they look like ? Or if you hear how the Great 
 Yosemite Fall pours a stream thirty-four feet wide 
 straight down over the edge of a perpendicular 
 precipice 1,500 feet high, the base of the fall half 
 hidden in a cone of ice, and thence goes rushing in 
 broken cascades down a fall of 626 feet to drop into 
 the Valley by another sheer descent of 400 feet — if 
 you hear all this, can you form a picture of it before 
 your mind's eye ? I don't believe it. Nor could I 
 by any description convey to you a true idea of the 
 serene yet wild beauty of the, valley below the 
 Nevada Falls with the vast Cap of Liberty and 
 Mount Brodrick and the rounded southern side of 
 the South Dome ; nor of the great yet graceful 
 Vernal Falls, nor of the charm of the changing views 
 of Cloud's Rest and Star King (are they not pretty 
 names ?) and many another mountain giant, that you 
 
The Pacific Slope. 311 
 
 get as you wander about the narrow valley shut In 
 all round by these Titanic masses of granite. There 
 are plenty of waterfalls (without at least one, of 
 course, no show scene is complete), but I do not 
 greatly care for any but the Yosemite and the 
 Nevada and Vernal. The Bridal Veil is all very 
 well, but I own it did not particularly fetch me ; the 
 Widow's Tears soon dry up (hence the appropriate 
 name) ; you can't get to the Illillouette without a lot 
 of trouble. Mirror Lake is a biggish puddle of 
 dirty water. It does its duty as a mirror very well, 
 and there is a good deal worthy of reflection within 
 its reach ; North Dome and Mount Watkin and 
 Cloud's Rest, and the precipitous north side of the 
 Half or South Dome. It is strange to watch the 
 sun creep up over the edge of the latter, and to note 
 in the water a perfect rainbow round his coming, 
 while in the sky there is visible only a blinding blaze 
 of bright white light. And the Cathedral Spires — 
 really most cathedral-like — and Sentinel Peak and 
 Sentinel Dome, and the Royal Arches and Three 
 Brothers, of whom the highest is Eagle Peak — if you 
 want to see just the shape and position of them, look 
 at photos ; but if you want to know what they are 
 like, to see a scene of most marvellous magnitude 
 and magnificence — one that will not disappoint even 
 an eye that is becoming a little weary of sight-seeing 
 — why, do as I did, and go and see the Yosemite in 
 cloudless fine weather, at the time of full'moon, before 
 the snow is all gone, and before the valley gets too 
 hot to be comfortable. 
 
312 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 The Big Trees in the Mariposa Grove are taken 
 on the usual tourist round after your return to 
 Wawona. This entails, at the funereal pace that 
 obtains here, a very long day's staging ; 6 a.m. to 
 8 P.M., with only about half-an-hour halt for lunch. 
 But don't miss them ; they are worth some trouble 
 to see. When you hear of thirty-three feet in 
 diameter, lOo in circumference, all but 300 feet high, 
 you feel rather inclined to be sceptical ; or if 
 credulous, to think that such bulk will be curious 
 only for its size — ungainly, unlovely. Not a bit of 
 it. The measurements have been made and are 
 true ; and the trees are extremely handsome. 
 Perhaps the Grizzly Giant must be excepted from 
 the last epithet — he is too battered ; and many of 
 them are marred in part by the scorching and burn, 
 ing of fire. Nevertheless, their stateliness and 
 cleanness of growth, the rich red brown of their 
 thick bark, their symmetry as well as their size, 
 render them beautiful as well as grand. And I 
 think the deep smooth carpet of unstained snow that 
 lay all around them on that April day when I saw 
 them rendered them in their stillness and silence 
 more impressive and sublime than they would have 
 seemed in garish midsummer. And so we drove 
 through one of them (as per advertisement) and 
 round and about many more ; and did not feel tired 
 as at last we rattled home on the down-grade under 
 the frosty moonlight to Wawona. (Frosty is only 
 an exaggeration of a degree or two ; it was very near 
 32° at night.) 
 
The Pacific Slope. 313 
 
 My Virginian deserted me, and I went on to Los 
 Angeles alone. It is not a pleasant journey. You 
 have nearly four hours to wait at the junction at 
 Berenda up to nearly midnight, with no decent place 
 to wait in ; and next day the ride is through a very 
 dusty and uninteresting country. (I say ride, for in 
 America you ride not only on horseback, but in a 
 carriage, on a car, in a boat. One day in Honolulu 
 I proposed to My Virginian that we should ride, and 
 he went and ordered a buggy, or, as he called it, a 
 hack. When I explained that wasn't quite what I 
 intended, he said, " Oh, you mean horseback riding.") 
 Once through the desert of Mojave (pronounce /as h 
 down here, please) the country improves, and around 
 Los Angeles there is great fertility. I stayed here 
 only too short a time, for the kindness and good- 
 fellowship of the men, and the pleasantness and 
 hospitality of the Club, would have made one happy 
 for much more than a couple of days. I spent one 
 in going around and about Pasadena. I don't quite 
 know what fruit is not grown here — except cherries ; 
 these, I was told, do not do well. But for the 
 excellence of their oranges and olives I can answer ; 
 and the quantity ! An orchard of orange-trees in 
 full bearing is a splendid sight. Apples and peaches 
 and apricots innumerable were only just coming into 
 blossom ; in miles of vineyard the vines were pruned 
 down close. Some three or four years previous this 
 part of the world underwent the usual malady of 
 growing young cities — a land boom. Great blocks 
 were laid out for building, avenues and streets 
 
314 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 named and signboards put up, and prices were 
 exceedingly lofty. Of course the re-action came, 
 and now the price of land is back to its old level, and 
 though the names of streets and avenues remain on 
 the signboards, the ways themselves are mere 
 occupation-roads, and the blocks are converted into 
 orchards and vineyards. I drove round by Sierra 
 Madre and Baldwin's Ranche and San Gabriel. 
 The Sierra Madre was once a hotel ; now it is 
 private, but that did not seem to be any bar to my 
 wandering around where I would. At Baldwin's 
 there is quite a pretty country box, and at San 
 Gabriel an excellent hotel. Here also there is an 
 old Mission Church, with adobe huts about it, old 
 (for America), quaint, not lovely. 
 
 The best view of the valley is from the Ray- 
 mond Hotel — an enormous structure, set, on a hill. 
 It is a pretty scene — a line of abrupt hills covered 
 with thin scrub jungle runs all along the left ; the 
 snowy top of old " Baldy " — more respectfully San 
 Antonio — looks over the far end of them, with the 
 more distant snow of San Bernardino in the middle 
 background, and farther yet San Jacinto gleams 
 white through the haze. The haze of heat is thick 
 enough on the right, too, to hide the sea, and the 
 island of Santa Catalina looms but faintly visible. 
 But all the centre is full of sunshine and fertile 
 valley, with the wide shallow river-bed running 
 through it, and dry nalas cutting down to it from the 
 hills. The Raymond is open only in the winter 
 months ; in summer, manager and the whole estab- 
 
< 
 
 ■z 
 
 H 
 
 a 
 1'. 
 
 < 
 
 a. 
 
 < 
 u 
 Z 
 
The Pacific Slope. 315 
 
 lishment move off to the White Mountains in New- 
 Hampshire" — the other side of the Continent— to 
 open the house there that remains closed all the 
 winter. And on Sunday my friends took me down 
 to Santa Monica (a little place by the sea, with a 
 big hotel), and we bathed, and ate fish, and drank 
 bock beer, and lay on the sands in the delicious 
 warm sunlight, and had a thoroughly idle and 
 happy day. Twenty-two hours of rail, with fine 
 dust that penetrated everywhere, notwithstanding 
 double windows closed and ventilators shut, and a 
 terrible stuffiness in the car in consequence ; and 
 with no dinner (verily, their arrangements are not 
 perfect even in America), and we are in 'Frisco 
 again. 
 
 There are many ways from 'Frisco to the East ; 
 and Mr. Mackay, the agent for the Burlington 
 Route, will do anything for you by any route. (I 
 don't recommend Cook's ; they are n.g. in America, 
 and I speak from experience.) I chose the road 
 north, past Mount Shasta, over the Siskiyon Range, 
 by Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle to Victoria, B.C. 
 It is fine scenery — I think the best. Certainly, 
 the railroad all up to Sissons, at the foot of 
 Mount Shasta, is very pretty, ever rising up through 
 the narrow canon of the Sacramento River and 
 winding through " the savour and shade of old- 
 world pine-forests," with occasional glimpses of the 
 big mountain that we have to circumvent, to get 
 round ; until at last at Sissons we are about at the 
 summit of the pass, and the great snow-clad sides 
 
3i6 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 and peaks of Shasta are full in front of us. It is 
 distinctive of the ranges, north from 'Frisco, that 
 they run at only moderate elevations all along 
 parallel with the coast, with here and there an 
 immense solitary peak, snow-clad, standing as it 
 were as sentinels along the line, Mount Shasta, 
 Mount Scott, Mount Hood, Mount Adams, Mount 
 Tacoma, Mount Baker. From the side of Shasta 
 we run down again to the foot of the Siskiyon, 
 and then have to climb a pass some 4,000 feet high. 
 It is a good piece of engineering, and fine scenery. 
 From the summit we say a last good-bye to 
 Mount Shasta, now afar off, and plunge down, by 
 a series of wonderful curves and tunnels and tressel 
 bridges, into the valley of the Rogue River, and are 
 in Oregon. Night comes down, and in the morning 
 we are in Portland. Here you may spend the day, 
 and rail by night to Tacoma ; or, if you prefer, rail 
 on to Tacoma, and stay the night there. I chose 
 the former, ai)d considered myself repaid by the 
 view from the height above the town. I wandered 
 to the top of Fairmount and overlooked this go- 
 ahead and growing town of 100,000 souls, and 
 across the Williamette River saw the Cascade 
 Range with its two far apart "pinnacles of silent 
 snow," Mount Hood and Mount Adams, and the 
 Columbia River winding broadly on, now near the 
 sea. Tacoma appeard to me dirty and mean — but 
 then it was a pouring wet morning, and I was cross 
 after a very jolty night-journey (the only one I 
 experienced, and I rode by rail many nights), and a 
 
The Pacific Slope. 317 
 
 late train (also an exceptional experience ; common 
 enough — even the rule — though, on the Northern 
 Pacific, so they say) ; so that perhaps Tacoma is a 
 very nice place really. Thence steamer carried me 
 down Puget Sound, past Seattle and Port Towns- 
 end, and out of American territory and waters to 
 good old British soil in Victoria, B.C. 
 
 California and Oregon and Washington and 
 the States on the Pacific slope are go-ahead. My 
 Virginian would not allow me to speak of them as 
 American, at least not without qualification. He 
 said they were as much American as Sydney and 
 Melbourne are British ; as much so, and no more. 
 My Boston-taught Southerner professed to find them 
 as colonial as our "cornstalks" appeared to me. 
 I can't say that I can see so much difference my- 
 self. But then, I am not a New Englander, nor 
 educated at Harvard. He even, with withering 
 sarcasm, expressed a wish that these Westerners 
 would speak English. Of course, I know that we 
 unfortunate people in England cannot speak 
 English so purely and sweetly as the cultured 
 inhabitants of " the hub " ; and that, I suppose, 
 is why I could not for the life of me make out 
 any great difference in accent, or twang, or in 
 general phraseology between the Eastern and the 
 Western. (There are idioms peculiar to each, I 
 know; as I mentioned when I wrote about Old 
 Phil and the Nebraska Sportsman.) And in manners ? 
 Well, I don't know much about it. When you 
 travel abroad, you meet men with good manners. 
 
3i8 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 and you meet men with bad ; and when you travel 
 at home in England, do you meet .only men with 
 good manners ? I trow not. Anyway, I can't say 
 ditto to that clever and well-known Anglo- Indian 
 who has made public his criticisms on things 
 American. That " wide-eyed young Ithuriel " (so 
 an American writer — feminine, of course — styles 
 him ; fancy Mr. R. K. as an archangel ; gods ! it 
 would be enough to make one join the rebel hosts 
 and take the consequences) — he, of course, had a 
 reputation for smart writing to sustain. I haven't, 
 and so I can afford to be truthful. Smart or not, 
 and unveracious or not, I'm sorry that an Anglo- 
 Indian who is certain to be widely read should have 
 descended into bad form, as (to my taste) that 
 youthful angel of light with the well-skinned eyes 
 has permitted himself to do. The Bohemian Club 
 is a pleasant one, and when you are entertained at 
 it, is it good form to guy your hosts and their 
 guests ? Of course, there are some things American 
 that please not us. I suppose there are things 
 English that please not them. We do not prefer a 
 salt-cellar to which there is no salt-spoon, and in 
 which the eater as he eats dips his fork (mind, the 
 fork with which he is eating) at each mouthful ; and 
 not all Americans do this, but many do. We pre- 
 fer to have each course separately ; but it is not 
 grievous if the gentle American prefers to have all 
 together in a score or two dozen little platters 
 around him at once, taking here a little and there a 
 little from each and all indiscriminately. We do 
 
The Pacific Slope. 319 
 
 not care for tobacco-chewing, and for making bad 
 shots at the spittoon ; and not all Americans do, 
 but many do. Where was it that the notice was 
 stuck up " Gentlemen will, and others must, make 
 use of the cuspidor ? " The free and public use of a 
 wooden toothpick does not, even if it be a woman 
 who uses it, appear to strike American hotel-goers 
 as inelegant, any more than gum-chewing strikes us 
 as elegant. It is rather a jump, no doubt, from the 
 deferential and humble service of the East to the 
 freer independent manner of those who serve for 
 hire in the West. But if your stomach is not too 
 proud to swallow the difference in manner, you will 
 get plenty of service, and in many cases obliging 
 attentiveness, and in some cases none. (Tip before 
 service is the American plan ; and don't forget it : 
 it makes a difference.) I can only say this : that 
 all in, I found the Western preferable to our colonial 
 cousin down South. There are many English in 
 California, and much English capital ; and there are 
 many of all the nations of Europe and Palestine (or 
 Jewdom) ; and what they are going to amalgamate 
 into, it is much too early to say yet. They believe 
 in their country, anyway. The President came 
 round on progress, and they feted him lustily. 
 There was a padre on the train going north ; he 
 was a man with a great and varied knowledge of 
 the world, and recounted anecdotes thereof with 
 much verve and gusto. Of course, being a padre, 
 he cannot have ever wavered a hair's-breadth from 
 the truth. Yet will I refrain from stating his ver- 
 
320 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 sion of the outturn of wheat and fruit per acre in 
 Washington State. He said this : " Immigrants 
 come in, sir, at 1,000 a day into my State." "That 
 didn't last long, I suppose?" queried some one. 
 " Continuously for two years. Yes, sir, for two 
 years. The resources of that State are inex- 
 haustible. Why, sir, I tell you, if the Pilgrim 
 Fathers had landed at the mouth of the Columbia 
 River instead of at Plymouth Rock, the Eastern 
 States would have been uninhabited to this day." 
 It is evidently a fine country, and grows very big 
 products. This padre was one of them. 
 
321 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE C.P.R. AND U.S.A. 
 
 The weather cleared as we came into the wide 
 sea-lake from which branch out Puget Sound and 
 the Straits of San Juan de Fuca and the Gulf of 
 Georgia, and I thought the prospect a splendid one. 
 The chief feature is the great snow-clad Olympian 
 range on the left. Victoria is so hidden away behind 
 the crest of the hill on the right, as you steam up to 
 the Island of Vancouver, that j'ou do not see it at 
 all until you round the corner and enter the little 
 harbour. There is neither width nor depth enough 
 for big ships ; these are to be found at Esquimalt 
 (pronounce Eskwimalt) four or five miles farther up, 
 where H.M.'s ships of war lie at anchor, and there 
 are docks dry and wet. Victoria can hardly be 
 called a big place yet. I suppose 25,000 is a liberal 
 figure to give for the number of its inhabitants. An 
 American in some book that I read called it a 
 "quaint old English town." The first two adjec- 
 tives are hardly appropriate, but there is no question 
 about its Englishness. There is quite a different 
 style, a different atmosphere, from that of American 
 
 Y 
 
322 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 towns, far more English than anything I have ever 
 seen in any other even of our own colonies. And 
 Victoria is growing fast. I wandered out and about 
 in all directions, and in every direction found new 
 houses going up just as fast as they could be built. 
 Mostly wood ; the stone and brick age has not yet 
 come except for some of the stores in town and for 
 one particularly ugly residence on the top of the hill 
 and another set in pretty grounds low down. The 
 four days that I spent in the capital of our only 
 Pacific province were very pleasant to me. It was 
 perfectly delightful to find rest from hotels and from 
 sightseeing in the comfortable home of an old-country 
 friend and relative, settled out here, getting on well 
 in his business, and (lucky man) married to a charm- 
 ing Columbian lady. We drove around over the 
 hill (there is a splendid view across the Gulf of 
 Georgia to the Cascade Mountains, with their big 
 snow-sentinel Mount Baker) and back by the 
 Gorge — a charming inlet, where the sea runs in far 
 back from the harbour until it passes beyond Esqui- 
 malt Harbour, with but a narrow portage to separate 
 them ; and by motor-car to Esquimalt. I do not 
 greatly like motor-cars — electric tramways. The 
 car lurches along, pitching like a ship in a headwind, 
 and the noise it makes is awful — like a sawmill 
 screaming in agony. The driver is called a " motor- 
 neer," a word to make a purist shiver. Esquimalt 
 is pretty — a landlocked harbour with a narrow 
 entrance : defences there are none that I know of. 
 There were only two ships there, and one of them in 
 
The Canadian Pacific Railway. 323 
 
 dry-dock. And I went shopping with the lady of 
 the house and rummaged all over a shopful of Red 
 Indian curios ; and lived a domestic and peaceful 
 existence until it was time to set forth again with face 
 set eastwards and homewards. The clay was vile — 
 cloud and drizzle and rain and bitter cold, and I saw 
 but little of the Straits up which we steamed to 
 Vancouver. And at Vancouver it was no better. I 
 walked hard for an hour-and-a-half about the Stanley 
 Park — a large reservation that is still for the most 
 part pine-forest with drives and walks cut through 
 it. I suppose it may be beautiful in fine weather. 
 Some of the trees are very old ; some one said about 
 these (or it may have been about the Big Trees of 
 Mariposa) that they were here before Christ. I 
 said I hadn't heard of Christ having been here at all ; 
 all I got for reply was " Never said he had." Van- 
 couver had two houses standing some five years ago 
 — burnt out. It has now about 10,000 inhabitants; 
 but it is a very new place yet. Houses lie scattered 
 about as if shaken out of a big pepper-pot, and great 
 gaps yawn on the straight main streets and side 
 streets that cross at right angles. But it will be a 
 big place some time. Why ? Because close by the 
 wharf is the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
 way, and at the wharf is lying the Empress of India, 
 a fine vessel of (nisifallor) 6,000 tons. She can do 
 from Yokohama to Vancouver in twelve days, and 
 the Canadian Pacific Railway can (and did — ^just to 
 show it can) rail you on to Montreal (3,000 miles) in 
 ninety hours. Just add a good line of steamers from 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Montreal or Halifax to the old country, or make the 
 Allan wake up a bit, and you have a real fast high- 
 road to the East — all British. You do not see much 
 of the prosperous agricultural part of the country as 
 you go through by rail. There must be a good deal, 
 for hardware stores sell a good many agricultural 
 implements and machines ; but little comes in view 
 except forest and river, which supply lumber and 
 fish — the main supports of Vancouver. And the 
 river — the Fraser — I saw very little of How can 
 you see when it rains incessantly with clouds low 
 down, hiding everything ? I had to take the Fraser 
 Canon for granted. Next day was more like April — 
 shine and shower ; but still clouds hung about so 
 heavily that I was done out of large portions of the 
 scenery I had come to see. And much of beauty is 
 passed at night. Undoubtedly the best way to see 
 the grandeur of the Canadian Pacific Railway is to 
 get fine weather in the first place, and then to go 
 from Vancouver to Banff, stay there a bit, and then 
 return to Vancouver, stopping off at Glacier if you 
 like. Beyond Banff there is little to see ; and by 
 the plan suggested you would see all you want. 
 From Revelstoke, reached at 10 a.m., there was in 
 the transient sunshine something of a view ; the 
 Albert Canon, which the train halts for you to get 
 out and look at, is rugged enough ; and then there 
 is the mighty climb up to Glacier. Glimpses of 
 scenery, gleams of sun, rendered this part interesting 
 and aggravating — superb what one could see, ex- 
 asperating not to see all. Glacier and Selkirk 
 
o 
 
 X 
 u 
 z 
 < 
 
 u 
 u 
 
 o 
 
The Canadian Pacific Railway, 325 
 
 summit were up in the clouds. Going down Bear 
 Creek Gorge to Donald there was more sun, and a 
 fine view there and up the Palliser Canon, and a 
 splendid view of the Chancellor some way on. Up 
 the steep ascent to Field and Stephen the great 
 glaciers and snow-peaks gleamed ghostly, and the 
 dark forests loomed weird through the gathering dusk 
 and the drifting masses of vapour. Ever since 
 leaving San Francisco, the scenery has struck me 
 as cold. I look for and find not that warmth of 
 atmosphere which I love in more southern scenery. 
 Even in bright sunlight, such as I had on May-day 
 in Victoria, the landscape does not seem to waken 
 and smile back to the clear blue heaven ; it remains 
 cold, austere, impassive. And these Selkirks and 
 Rockies of the Canadian Pacific Railway — they are 
 immense. Pine forest cannot look gay ; it is always 
 solemn. And the vast peaks of ice and snow — they 
 are not savage. No, their grandeur is not of the 
 wild or terrible type ; they are overwhelming in 
 sublimity, silent, seemingly immutable, everlasting. 
 I found their lofty austerity impressive ; yes, but so 
 utterly unresponsive to light, so sad in colour, as to 
 be not exhilarating but depressing. I admired and 
 shivered, and felt better when I was through. And 
 then came a whole day across the prairies — vast 
 stretches of undulating upland, bare of everything 
 but thin poor grass, void of man and beast. A 
 small station at Medicine Hat; a cheery police 
 commandant carrying a bottle of whisky in his 
 pocket in this strictly prohibition country; some 
 
326 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Indians selling buffalo horns (poor specimens — not 
 in it with a good Satpuda bison's) ; a terrible prosy- 
 old general, who did make one feel tired; a few 
 local men getting in and out — good, even splendid, 
 specimens of robust health and physique. Such 
 were the incidents of the third day. I haven't much 
 to say about the Indians. I saw one or two in the 
 Yosemite. Those in Victoria were all in European 
 clothes, and not in any way noticeable. At Medi- 
 cine Hat they had something of their old style of 
 dress ; seemed very lazy — the most unpushing 
 salesmen imaginable. The men big-featured ; the 
 old squaws ugly ; the girls not unpleasant-looking ; 
 all dirty. And the fourth day took us through the 
 wide wheat-lands of Manitoba, leaving behind the 
 haunt of the buffalo. All the buffaloes are dead 
 now, killed off so that not one is left alive, which 
 happy consummation the far-seeing Government 
 has met by making it a criminal offence to kill one ! 
 In early May, Manitoba is under the plough, and 
 the scenery is not cheerful enough to make one 
 sorry to reach Winnipeg, and get a night's rest in 
 a bed after three in a sleeper-berth. Not that there 
 is anything to complain of on the Canadian Pacific 
 Railway. The berths are wide and lofty and com- 
 fortable — 'better than on such American lines as I 
 chanced on ; there is even a bath on the car, but 
 so little used that it is stuffed up with rubbish of 
 sorts, and you cannot get the use of it. The feeding 
 is good and moderate in price ; the track laid well 
 enough for the train to run with most satisfactory 
 
The Canadian Pacific Railway. 327 
 
 smoothness ; and the number of roadmen constantly 
 looking after the safety of it render an accident from 
 land-slide or fallen bridge almost impossible. (Not 
 quite, though, for one occurred just about this time : 
 forest fire, trestle bridge damaged, roadman inatten- 
 tive ; enter train, collapse of bridge — smash up, 
 death.) Winnipeg had in 1871 one hundred in- 
 habitants, now it has 30,000. I do not know what 
 there is in it besides one wide street, and a town- 
 hall and memorial monument. It is a flat, unlovely 
 country, and bleak enough in early May. Hence I 
 turned south, and crossing the line (the International 
 Boundary) passed through more prohibition States 
 (Dakota) to St. Paul. Very rich-looking black-soil 
 country all along the road. On to Chicago there is 
 choice of routes. I went by one that clings to the 
 Mississippi all day long. It is quite pretty in many 
 places, with a placid rural prettiness in the English 
 style, with now and again reaches and bays of more 
 ambitious character. Down the stream go huge 
 rafts of lumber, not content to float placidly down 
 as on the Irrawaddy, but shoved behind by pushing 
 little stern-wheelers. By the time we leave it, the 
 river has grown into something wider and bigger 
 than any English river. And at last, at night, 
 Chicago. 
 
 That Anglo-Indian to whom allusion has before 
 been made pours forth vials of contempt and con- 
 demnation on Chicago. To me it is a wonderful 
 place. A low flat mud swamp on the shore of 
 Michigan converted into a city of over a million 
 
328 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 people, with trade and wealth enormous. What if 
 the pursuit of the dollar be here keen, persistent, 
 supreme ? Is Chicago the only place in the world 
 where men make haste to get wealth ? or spend 
 it freely on wine and weeds and women ? And 
 Chicago has done what she can to make some bits 
 of beauty on a most unlovely location. Are her 
 parks and tree-bordered boulevard to count for 
 nothing to her credit ? And those large fourteen, 
 fifteen, sixteen, twenty-storied buildings — are not 
 many of them not merely triumphs of architectural 
 skill, but worthy of admiration for the finish of their 
 fittings and fixings ? To me there was something 
 fascinating in the rush and activity of life in this 
 newest oi fin-de-siecle cities. It is more rapid than 
 in any other place I have seen anywhere. East or 
 West. The elevators run you up and down the 
 floors far faster than in New York. In the Board 
 of Trade (Corn Exchange I should rather have 
 called it) what a babel broke loose as business 
 opened ; what an endless traffic of cable-cars and 
 trains and steamers ; what hurrying to-and-fro of 
 pedestrians ! I say Chicago is splendid, for all the 
 smoke and grime that makes her look old and dirty, 
 even as London looks. And jolly good fellows are 
 the men you meet there ; busy chasing the cheerful 
 dollar, yes ; but none the less with time to take 
 their pleasure with the same gay dash and go that 
 they give to their business. With only a day and a 
 half for Chicago, I had no idle minute, and not one 
 dull or uninteresting. About to offices and shops 
 
The Canadian Pacific Railway. 329 
 
 and calling, out to park and boulevard and the site 
 of the World's Fair — a scene of apparent chaos and 
 immense activity of engine and man and beast ; to 
 the theatre, and after that — well, up again next 
 morning all the same, and off to the Board of Trade 
 and the old Chamber of Commerce, and by rail to 
 the stockyards to see butchery wholesale. I wish 
 I had timed one pig right through from the moment 
 he is strung up by the hind-legs until he leaves the 
 room duly cut up. The bristle-scraping machine is 
 just perfect. Then the sheep : a somewhat less 
 speedy business, each beast having to get its neck 
 broken as well as its throat cut, and the skin having 
 to be taken off by hand. It is a tremendous busi- 
 ness — sickening to any one who cannot stand the 
 sight and smell of plenty of blood, but interesting 
 to whoso is callous and admires ingenuity and skill. 
 Then a merry lunch in an underground restaurant, 
 and hurried packing up of baggage and off by rail 
 to Niagara. 
 
 I think I ought to stop here ; when you are east 
 of Chicago you have done with Farthest West, and 
 are amongst places too well known to bear writing 
 about again. Still, just a few notes by way of 
 epilogue, as it were. First, don't come too early 
 into this part of the world. The Clifton House 
 (hotel on Canadian side at Niagara) is not open till 
 June, nor is the Cave of the Winds accessible, nor 
 are steamers running down the Thousand Islands 
 of the St. Lawrence, nor on Lakes Champlain and 
 George, nor by daylight down the Hudson from 
 
33° Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 Albany to New York. All these I had to leave 
 out, albeit Cook's in 'Frisco had issued me tickets 
 for them, knowing that I was booked from New 
 York on the 2 7th, and not knowing, as they should 
 have done, that the steamers did not run until after 
 that date. Early May is also a little too soon for 
 Vancouver and the Canadian Pacific Railway. As 
 for Niagara, don't you believe any one who says the 
 falls are disappointing at first sight. They are not ; 
 they are magnificent at first and every sight. Only, 
 how hideous that Cataract House is, which obtrudes 
 itself hatefully on the sight just above the American 
 falls viewed from the Canadian side ; how atrocious 
 those factories — flour and paper-mills — ^just below 
 the falls ; how annoying the photographers (foto- 
 grafers they often spell it in America) and curio- 
 sellers ! If only the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls 
 Park and Prospect Park had been extended far 
 down and back from the river. As far as I can 
 make out. Captain Webb was last seen alive in 
 some six different places down the rapids. I 
 loitered and strolled and smoked a whole afternoon, 
 doing nothing but look at the rainbow and the 
 evening light on the splendid cataract. 
 
 Toronto is quiet and staid, as all Canadian towns 
 are compared with American ; yet not wanting in 
 handsome buildings and fine streets. Lacrosse is 
 evidently more popular than cricket and football : a 
 crowd watched the former, cheering lustily ; no 
 on-lookers gathered about the latter. Still, Toronto 
 appears to be English. Montreal does not ; it is 
 
The Canadian Pacific Railway. 331 
 
 more than half French. As a town, it cannot boast 
 of fine streets ; all are narrow and many mean. 
 Dominion Square is the only decent one in the 
 town ; the big cathedral thereon is huge but hideous ; 
 Notre Dame is meretriciously gaudy. There are 
 some fine public buildings, but not well shown off — 
 cramped in too small space — and a fine tubular 
 bridge across the river. But the glory of Montreal 
 is its Mount Royal Park, on a hill behind the town. 
 It is charming itself, and gives charming views over 
 city and river and smiling champaign. Quebec is 
 far Frencher than Montreal ; the English language 
 makes some sort of show in the former, but caves 
 in in the latter. If used at all on public notice or 
 signboard, it comes second, French first. I wan- 
 dered about the Citadel and the Walls — a most 
 wide and pleasing prospect therefrom — and to the 
 spot where Wolfe fell, and the Governor's house, 
 and all about the town — most quaint, un-English, 
 provincial French, or rather Breton. 
 
 Here I have one growl — the only one — against 
 the Canadian Pacific Railway. It books you through 
 from Quebec to Boston, and carries you through, 
 but leaves you dinnerless. This is unpardonable. 
 There we were three — English, Scoto-Indian, 
 Anglo-Indian — deprived of food : save late at night 
 some bread and buns, bought at a stall and 
 devoured in the train. And no drink either ! 
 Boston is disappointing for a "hub." I imagined 
 a centre of sweetness and light, made lovely with 
 the effulgence of culture. I found a busy manu- 
 
332 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 facturing seaport, crowded in its narrow streets, fuL 
 of smoke and noise and jostle, True, there is a 
 beautiful avenue — Commonwealth Avenue — and a 
 spacious common and public garden. But the asso- 
 ciations of Bunker's Hill, with its very "ornery" 
 column, are not so grateful to the patriotic Britisher 
 as those of the Heights of Abraham. Harvard is 
 a big place, and its memorial hall is fine. From 
 Boston to New York the greatest comfort is by the 
 Fall River line — rail and steamer. And in New 
 York I had a good time for six days, refusing to be 
 dragged off to Washington for a day, and doing all 
 the sights in a thorough globe-trotting fashion. 
 Here turned up My Virginian, arrived via Panama ; 
 and here also Our Humorist and Mrs. H. And 
 the Germanic bore us off for England and home. 
 
 I don't know that I particularly wish to visit 
 America again. If ever I do, it shall be at a later 
 season of the year. And I think it would be highly 
 advisable to bring letters of introduction with one, 
 especially if one intended to stay "quite a little" 
 time (i.e., a good long time). I had very few, and 
 went through with a rush ; so that I had the best 
 opportunities imaginable for forming hasty super- 
 ficial opinions on American life and manners. They 
 are good fellows — many of them— that you meet on 
 your travels ; and many of them are awful bounders. 
 But in ordinary travel it is easy enough to avoid the 
 latter class. Even amongst the former there are 
 habits and customs that do not please the insular 
 British taste (some of them I noted in my last 
 
The United States. 333 
 
 chapter), and curious prejudices will be found fast- 
 rooted in the American mind. One of these is 
 against the use of a single eye-glass, or " monocle." 
 Our Enthusiast carried one, and frequently brought 
 it into play to assist his vision ; but in America he 
 had to lay it aside, to such remarks did his employ- 
 ment of it give rise. The skipper of the Mariposa 
 was a courteous man enough. (When he first met 
 Mrs. H. he mistook her for a former acquaintance, 
 and addressed her accordingly. On discovering his 
 error he apologized, saying, " I feared you might 
 think I had been a little previous.") Yet he did 
 not think it an unbecoming jest, when seated at 
 dinner in the saloon, to stick a dollar in his eye in 
 mimicry of friend B., who wore a " monocle." And 
 K. — a most decent and intelligent Easterner — 
 stated, as a matter of fact well known to everybody 
 and indisputable, that the "monocle " was only plain 
 glass, of not the slightest use, and that the wearing 
 of it was mere foppery and snobbishness. It was 
 evident that he sincerely believed what he said. I 
 did not experience (thank goodness) any excessive 
 spread-eagleism in my American travel-companions ; 
 and to suppose that they call all English "Brit- 
 ishers " is just as incorrect as to call all Americans 
 "Yankees." The Canadians are just English 
 (using "just" in the American sense : English and 
 nothing else), except, of course, the French-Cana- 
 dians ; and these latter are certainly not American. 
 I should suppose that there is no stronger desire in 
 Canada for absorption in the United States of 
 
334 Farthest East,, South and West. 
 
 America than there is in the States for absorbing 
 her ; and that is very little, for all that certain papers 
 may say. Nevertheless it is a result that mayi in 
 time, very well come about by the mere force of the 
 attraction of a large body juxtaposed to a small one, 
 unless the Canadians and England can make it to 
 the advantage of both (and especially of the former) 
 to maintain and strengthen the present connection. 
 Talking of newspapers, I can't say that I see very 
 much cause for magnifying ours at the expense of 
 the American. The comic papers are distinctly 
 better-r-cleverer, more comic — with them than 
 with us. I think Life is unsurpassed as a comic 
 paper., Their illustrateds are not so well done as 
 ours ; nor are their daily and weekly newspapers so 
 well printed or on such good paper. But they. are 
 cram- full of matter ; not so much European news — 
 why should they be ? but any amount of American, 
 and not more stuffed with criminal and other un- 
 savoury reports than ours are now-a-days. Occasion- 
 ally they indulge in blood-curdling head-lines whiqh 
 mean little. " Made Rome Howl " prefaced the in- 
 formation that a magazine had blown up and-,done 
 some damage in Rome. "X. Y. Z. (I forget the 
 real name) on the Warpath — His Scalping Knife 
 Drips with Gore and Yearns for More " (or words 
 to that effect), merely indicated that Secretary 
 X. Y. Z. had caused one corrupt subordinate to 
 resign, and was likely to cause another to follow suit 
 Certainly if officialdom and the judicial bench are any-- 
 thing like as — well, let us say, amenable to extraneous 
 
The United States. 335 
 
 influences, as their own papers make out, I would 
 as soon be tried by a bench of honorary magistrates 
 in Rangoon as by an American court — and that is 
 saying a good deal. Yet at times the latter deals 
 out speedy justice. From their hotel in San Fran- 
 cisco a thief purloined jewels and coins of my 
 friends. Within a week the thief was caught, all 
 the property except one sovereign recovered from 
 half-a-dozen different places, and a swingeing sen- 
 tence passed on the luckless lifter. But the powers 
 of Judge Lynch are yet freely exercised : witness 
 the famous New Orleans case. Witness, too, a case 
 in which soldiers of the line broke into jail, took out 
 and hanged a man. Some fuss was made about 
 this, and the President ordered searching inquiry. 
 But I don't know what came of it. The use of the 
 pistol, too, in settlement of private differences is by 
 no means in its decadence. While I was with My 
 Virginian he heard of two friends of his in the chief 
 town of West Virginia falling out, and the one filling 
 the other full of lead in the public street ; both 
 doctors — men of education and position. And you 
 read in the papers of a good deal of miscellaneous 
 shooting. There are things in which the Americans 
 have the call over us, but this is hardly one of them. 
 And it is, I think, mostly in things material that 
 they score. We have no city bridge to match with 
 Brooklyn Bridge ; their elevated railway is a means 
 of locomotion far preferable to the underground (nor 
 do I consider the air-lines ugly) ; their Central Park 
 is, I think, finer and better laid out than Hyde Park 
 
336 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 or Regent's Park (though the Zoo in it cannot com- 
 pare with ours). But if you notice the carriages 
 and riders in the Central Park at the fashionable 
 hour, you will perceive a very great falling off in 
 style from what you are accustomed to see in the 
 Row. The people are not so well dressed, not by 
 a long way ; the turn-outs not so finished, so neat, 
 or notable for elegance, as a whole. So at the 
 theatres the audience is far inferior, from a dress 
 point of view, to that in any West End theatre in 
 London. (The prices, also, it may be remarked, 
 are more democratic.) The boxes in most theatres 
 that I saw are characteristic of America. They are 
 not withdrawn, curtained, closed in, affording 
 privacy, as with us ; but thrown forward, low-railed, 
 conspicuous, so that the occupants may be well 
 en dvidence. It is the same love of publicity that 
 removes high walls from around gardens, and leaves 
 them fenceless or surrounded by a meaningless 
 little curb, so that all men may see the show you 
 are able to make of your house and garden. " Know 
 thyself" is not an American motto; "advertise 
 thyself" seems to be the guiding maxim. They do 
 not care for private life. Such a city as London, 
 with its interminable rows and streets of small 
 houses and cottages, each the residence of one 
 family, is an impossibility in America. Hotels and 
 flats and boarding-houses, where many families live 
 under one roof, suits the American temperament 
 better than the little compact domestic home of the 
 Englishman. As for the American girl, it is better 
 
The United States. 337 
 
 to say nothing. Should you venture to say any- 
 thing that does not brim over with enthusiastic and 
 delighted adoration, and should what you venture 
 to say chance to be read by a male American eye, 
 such a torrent of scornful and withering contempt 
 and derision will be poured forth on your opinion 
 and on yourself that you will be sorry you ever 
 spoke. Let us take her at the American valuation, 
 as inimitable, unsurpassable, perfect. (Yet of all 
 places where that nasal twang sounds ill, it sounds 
 worst from " red lips fed with all things sweet," as 
 Hafiz has it. He must have foreseen the days of 
 tutti-frutti gum -chewing.) 
 
 Where the New Yorker is miles behind the 
 Londoner is in street management. I don't mean 
 in street building ; I like the rectangular blocks and 
 the numbered streets and avenues : they are so easy 
 to find your way about in. I mean in the regula- 
 tion of traffic in the streets. After the Broadway, 
 the streets of London are delightful to walk in ; for 
 there there is no attempt to direct the traffic by the 
 blue-coated Bobby — it just takes its own way. 
 What the New York streets would become if cabs 
 and hansoms plied plentifully in them as in London 
 it is impossible to imagine. I have seen twenty 
 tram-cars in a line stuck still in a jam on Broadway, 
 and as many more stuck on the down-line. There 
 is a street in New York yclept the Bowery. My 
 Virginian told me (after I had done it) that he would 
 not care to walk down it alone at night. Well, I 
 did so one night, after the theatre ; and I can't say 
 
 z 
 
338 Farthest East, South and West. 
 
 that I saw anything to disturb one. Penny gaffs, 
 cheap theatres, admission-free music-halls, crowds 
 low-class, but certainly not disorderly : not so 
 drunken and rowdy as any corresponding street that 
 you may select in London would be at the same 
 hour. I just strolled through as far as Printing- 
 House Square, where I thought I saw as fine a bit 
 of city picturesqueness as I have ever seen. A full 
 moon hidden by the lofty buildings of the Press 
 {Tribune, I think), the lower floors all dark in 
 shadow, the upper ones (some twelve stories high) 
 bright with busy light, the moonlit sky crossed by 
 clouds of light white steam from the vent on the 
 topmost roof It struck me more than anything 
 else I saw in New York. For I do not overmuch 
 admire the Statue of Liberty, and my recollection 
 of the general view of the city from Brooklyn 
 Bridge is . sicklied o'er with the pale-yellow of 
 " Castoria," advertised on every blank wall and 
 hoarding and roof. 
 
 And so, with a nine days' passage through head- 
 winds and fog and drizzle, my ten months' tour 
 came to an end. If any one who may read this 
 should make the same journey, or any part of it, the 
 kindest thing I can wish him is that he may enjoy 
 himself as much as I did, and get as much amuse- 
 ment in off-hours as I have done, in jotting down 
 notes of his doings in Farthest East, and South and 
 West. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 A FEW NOTES ON HOTELS, DISTANCES, COST, &c. 
 
 Penang. — Oriental Hotel on the beach. Peak Hotel on the 
 hill. 
 
 Singapore. — Raffles' Hotel is the best. Ocean Steamship Co.'s 
 boats run every four days to Bangkok, every three days for Deli 
 (Sumatra), weekly for North Borneo ports, fortnightly to Saigon, 
 and fortnightly to Manila and Iloilo. Dutch mail boats fort- 
 nightly to Batavia and Javan ports and elsewhere ; French mail 
 alternate weeks to Batavia only. Apcar and Holt lines to 
 Penang and Hongkong. Holt and others to Bangkok frequently ; 
 B. & S. N. to Australia monthly ; to Madras and to Rangoon 
 weekly. 
 
 Batavia. — Grand Hotel de Java, or Hotel Niederland. Dutch 
 coinage. Five gulden a day. 
 
 BuiTENZORG. — Hotel de Chemin de Fer ; most obliging 
 manager. Hotel Belle Vue better situated. Five gulden a day. 
 
 Bandong. — Hotel Homann. Six gulden a day. 
 
 Lembang. — Rest-house at foot of Tankoebanprahoe ; no food 
 or drink except tea. One horse and syce up hill, four gulden. 
 
 TjANDjoER. — Refreshment room at station. 
 
 Sindanglaija. — Hotel Leroux. Six gulden a day. 
 
 Expenses in Java— all in — easily covered by 20 gulden a day. 
 
 Hongkong. — In town : Hongkong Hotel ; Victoria Hotel. 
 On Peak : Peak Hotel and others. $4 a day. 
 
 Canton. — Shameen Hotel (very poor). 
 
 Macao. — Boa Vista Hotel is a new finely situated hotel; 
 there is an older one, where the feeding is said to be better, in 
 the town. 
 
 From Hongkong : Many steamers to Chinese treaty ports, to 
 
340 Appendix. 
 
 Haiphong, Manila, Japan. Two lines to Australia (no fixed 
 dates). Also to England, to San Francisco, and Vancouver. 
 
 Kobe. — Oriental Hotel ; and two others. 
 
 Yokohama. — Grand Hotel. 
 
 MiYANOSHiTA. — Fujiya Hotel. Bachelors will find the Japanese 
 quarters the best. 
 
 Kioto. — Yaami Hotel. 
 
 Shanghai. -Central (English); Astor House (American) ; des 
 Colonies (French). In order of merit. 
 
 Sydney. Grosvenor Hotel is the best. The Royal (in the 
 town) is commercial. Avoid the Mdtropole: temperance and 
 uncomfortable. 
 
 Katoomba. The Carrington : good. 
 
 Jenolan Caves. Cave House. Take your liquor with you : 
 none to be had there. 
 
 Melbourne. Scott's is the Squatters' Hotel; it is rather 
 rough. Menzies seems better. 
 
 Ballarat. Craig's Hotel. 
 
 Invercargill. Albion Hotel, rather commercial; or Southland 
 Club. 
 
 Queenstown. Eichardt's. 
 
 Dunedin. The Grand ; or Wain's. 
 
 Christchurch. Coker's (if you are staying some time) ; 
 Warner's (if you're passing through). 
 
 Greymouth. Gilmer Hotel. 
 
 Nelson. Masonic. 
 
 Wellington. Occidental or Empire, 
 
 Napier. Criterion (or Masonic). 
 
 Wanganui. Rutland. 
 
 New Plymouth. White Hart (by Le Grand Jacob). 
 
 Auckland. Stay at the Northern Club if you can ; it is good, 
 and none of the hotels are. 
 
 Honolulu. Hawaiian Hotel. 
 
 On Mani, Mrs. Yarrow's Boarding House is at Wailuku. 
 
 On Hawaii, the Hilo Hotel at Hilo is sufficiently comfortable. 
 
 San Francisco. — Palace ; or Baldwin's, 
 
 Los Angeles. — Westminster. 
 
 Chicago. — Auditorium ; or Richelieu. 
 
 Montreal. — Windsor : very good. 
 
 New York.— I found the Fifth Avenue very good. 
 
Appendix. 341 
 
 GUIDE-BOOKS. 
 
 For Singapore and the Straits, and for Java, I don't know of 
 any. 
 
 For Hongkong, Canton, Macao, small local guide-books can 
 be obtained' in Hongkong ; these are quite suiHcient. 
 
 For Japan. The official Railway Guide, published yearly, and 
 the last edition of Keeling's " Guide to Japan," are sufficient. 
 Both may be got in Hongkong. 
 
 For Australia. I don't know of any general guide-book. 
 Cook's Tourist Maps (American folder form) are useful. 
 
 For New Zealand. Brett's Handy Guide, to be got in Auck- 
 land, and at 147, Queen Victoria Street, E.C. Cook's folders 
 are useful. 
 
 For Sandwich Islands. "The Paradise of the Pacific" is 
 obtainable in Honolulu, and is good. 
 
 For San Francisco and California. Small books and folders 
 to be got locally. 
 
 For Yosemite. The " Yosemite : Where to Go and What to 
 Do " is good (532, Clay Street, San Francisco). 
 
 For Canadian Pacific Railway. Folder A and Annotated 
 Time-Table. 
 
 For all other places in Canada and the United States of 
 America guide-books and folders got locally are sufficient. 
 
 Stanford's Compendium of Travel, " Australasia," gives much 
 information on all countries visited in this tour, except China, 
 Japan, and America. 
 
i34'2 Appendix. 
 
 TABLE OF SEA DISTANCES. 
 
 ■'• -• From- 
 
 To 
 
 Miles. 
 
 Passage. 
 
 By 
 
 Singapore 
 
 Batavia 
 
 SSo 
 
 42 hours 
 
 Messageries Maritimes. 
 
 Singapore 
 
 Saigon 
 
 637 
 
 37 >, 
 
 a t> 
 
 Saigon 
 
 Hongkong ... 
 
 96S 
 
 63 „ 
 
 j> »» 
 
 Hongkong ... 
 
 Yokohama ... 
 
 1,802 
 
 loj days 
 
 P. and 0. 
 
 Yokohama ... 
 
 Shanghai 
 
 1,085 
 
 SI „ 
 
 Nippon Yusen Kaisha. 
 
 Shanghai 
 
 Hongkong ... 
 
 870 
 
 3 » 
 
 P. and 0. 
 
 JHongkgng ... 
 
 Port Darwin... 
 
 >2,3S2 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 Port Darwin ... 
 
 Thursdaylsland 
 
 655 
 
 -23* .. 
 
 Eastern and Australian 
 
 
 
 approx 
 
 S. N. Co. 
 
 Thursday Island 
 
 Sydney 
 
 1-723 
 
 , 
 
 
 Sydney 
 
 Melbourne ... 
 
 576 
 
 il >, 
 
 Messageries Maritimes. 
 
 Melbourne ... 
 
 Hobart 
 
 452 
 
 44 hours 
 
 Union S.S. Co. 
 
 Hojbart 
 
 The BlufiF ... 
 
 933 
 
 89 >, 
 
 
 The Bluff ... 
 
 Port'Chalmers 
 
 132 
 
 12 „ 
 
 
 Nelson 
 
 Picton 
 
 85 
 
 ■144,. 
 
 
 Picton 
 
 Wellington'... 
 
 S3 
 
 
 New Plymouth 
 
 Onehunga ... 
 
 135 
 
 13 .. 
 
 
 Auckland 
 
 Honolulu .. 
 
 3.836 
 
 12 days 
 
 
 Honolulu 
 
 San Francisco 
 
 2,100 
 
 7 ., 
 
 
 New York ... 
 
 Liverpool ... 
 
 3,100 
 
 9 ,. 
 
 White Star. 
 
 Distances by land, where useful, are given in the various guide-books. 
 
 COST. 
 
 Rupee at is. 6d. .; Mexican dollar at 3s. 4d. ; American dollar, 
 at 4s. 
 
 Through-ticket from Indian port to Singa- 
 pore, Hongkong, Yokohama, Hong- 
 kong, Sydney, San Francisco, New 
 York, Liverpool, London, Rs. 1732 . 
 
 Expenses to and at Singapore (11 days), 
 34 dols. 50 c 
 
 Return fare to Batavia, 60 dols. 
 
 Expenses in Java (8 days), 59 dols. 07 c. . 
 
 „ „ Singapore (i| day), 12 dols. 
 
 58 c 
 
 Expenses in Saigon, Hongkong, Canton, 
 Macao (15 days), 91 dols. . 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 129 18 o 
 
 10 o o 
 9 16 It 
 
 3 I II 
 
 IS 3 4 
 
Appendix. 
 
 343 
 
 Expenses in Japan (60 days), 487 dols. 36 c. 
 „ „ Shanghai, Hongkong (19 
 days), 129 dols. 79 c. . 
 Expenses in Australia (36 days) 
 „ „ New Zealand (54 days) 
 „ „ Hawaiian Islands (33 days) 
 
 167 dols 
 
 Expenses in America (43 days), 490 dols, 
 
 70 c 
 
 Expenses of voyage home (10 days). 
 
 Total . 
 
 £. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 81 
 
 4 
 
 6i 
 
 21 
 
 12 
 
 7 
 
 45 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 14 
 
 7 
 
 33 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 98 
 
 2 
 
 9* 
 
 3 
 
 19 
 
 4 
 
 578 3 o 
 
 This list of expenses includes all charges on account of fares 
 by land and sea, hotel and steamer bills for food, tips, liquor 
 and tobacco, doing oneself comfortably but not extravagantly 
 throughout. It does not include any expenditure on photos, 
 curios, or fancy articles of any kind. It will be seen, therefore, 
 that even allowing a margin of ;^2i 17s., the trip can be done 
 well for ;^6oo. But it certainly adds greatly to the enjoyment 
 of one's tour if one can allow a further margin for extravagances, 
 not necessities. A couple of hundred pounds would cover a 
 reasonable expenditure under this head ; say, ;£^8oo in all. 
 
 Woodfall & Kinder, Printers, 70 to 76, Lpng Acre, I,ondon, W.C.