Kitabı oxu: «Newfoundland to Cochin China»

CHAPTER I.
OUR PREMIER COLONY

Land in sight when I awake at 5 a.m., a grey streak across the oval of the port. With what intense satisfaction we gaze on the line of barren rock, which has a suspicion of green horizon on the summit of the grey cliffs, only those can picture who have been at sea for some time.

Presently we glide past Cape Race, with its neat signal station on the cliffs, and know that in a few minutes the arrival of our ship, the Nova Scotian, will be signalled at St. John's. We see a few fish-curing sheds on the tiny bays of yellow sand, and some white specks that represent cottages. They are dreary little settlements, and near them the fishing-boats pass us, returning home after their rough night's work, for this is the inhospitable coast of Newfoundland, the Premier Colony of England.

As the morning wears on and the sun rises, it is a pretty scene. The great blue restless ocean, with its mighty Atlantic swell, lashing itself in spray and foam, with a long white line breaking and disappearing, re-appearing and dying against the bleak rock-bound coast. Sometimes the cliffs are formed of strata of grey lava or limestone, at others they are of rich red sandstone, colours that are intensified with the peculiar clearness of the atmosphere. Above all, there is a pure blue sky, with white clouds chasing each other and casting shadows along the coast. Now and again we pass large fishing luggers sailing swiftly by in the brisk breeze. Some have tawny orange or deep brown sails, others pure white ones, looking like wings spread in the sunlight, gliding swiftly and silently past. It is a rich bit of colouring to eyes tired and sad with the monotony of an impenetrable, all-surrounding line of sky and ocean.

The approach to St. John's is romantic. The barrier of cliffs still rises to larboard, without an apparent break or indentation, whilst they say that we shall be anchored at the wharf in ten minutes. Another scanning of the coast reveals at length two rocks rising higher than the others, with a slight fall between them. The ship ploughs along broadside, and until exactly opposite this opening. With a few final plungings, and last rollings and tossings, she is brought sharply round, and we face the harbour of St. John's. The great brown rocks, sparsely sprinkled with green, rise up forbidding our entrance, and inside these is another amphitheatre of granite against which the town of St. John's is built. The line of wharves forms a black foundation. The haven where we would be lies peaceful and blue in the midst. The first sight of St. John's and the last, always include the twin red towers of the Roman Catholic Cathedral standing out on a platform above the town.

Now we are passing immediately under the cliffs, with which we make very near acquaintance as we go through the Narrows. To add to the difficulties of this passage, there is a rock at the narrowest part called the Great Chain Rock, where in olden times a chain was fastened across the harbour to guard the entrance. Another and greater danger, a sunken rock, lies hidden under the smooth water. A gun is fired from the lofty signal station, to tell anxious hearts of the incoming mail, and with a large part of the population of St. John's on the wharf (for they always gather to greet and speed the fortnightly steamer) we land in Newfoundland.

On the kind invitation of Lady O'Brien and the Governor, we are driven by Mr. Cecil Fane, his Excellency's aide-de-camp and able secretary, to Government House. This is a handsome stone building, looking more so amongst its surroundings of wooden houses, standing above the town in its own grounds. The view from the house into the open country is charming. In the far distance a range of purple mountains. Then patches of dark pine forests, alternating with green, park-like spaces. The Roman Catholic cemetery with its wooden crosses lying on a hillside. Beneath it in a basin, the little blue lake of Quidi Vidi, which plays such an important part in the social life of St. John's. Here they yacht and boat, fish and bathe in summer. In winter they use it to sleigh, skate, and toboggan on, but above all they hold their annual regatta here. It is fixed for next week, and may be called the Epsom of Newfoundland. The population from all parts of the Island gathers to see it. In olden days each merchant chief had his yacht and crew of employés, and partisanship ran high, but now the races belong to the clubs in town, such as the Temperance, Athenæum, etc.

In the afternoon the Hon. Augustus Harvey took us for a beautiful drive of twenty-eight miles across the Island. Who, seeing that bare rocky coast in the morning, would have believed that the interior of the Island could be so lovely! We drove along a good macadamized road, passing the pretty white wooden houses with red roofs and neat palings, the country residences of the merchants. Here is the one belonging to Mr. Baird of lobster fame. Each house has a flagstaff and floating flag; indeed, St. John's is called the city of flags, for everyone who is anybody possesses one, and flies it proudly when in residence. There are great clumps of purple iris growing wild by the roadside. We pass through many plantations of fir trees, junipers and larches. The great feature of Newfoundland scenery is water. It is everywhere. Flowing in rivulets, covered with reeds by the roadside, enclosed in hollows in the hills as lakes, hurrying from the mountains as a gushing torrent, protesting angrily in rapids and foam against the rocks in its course. It is the great feature and the great charm, and one-third of the Island is said to be water. In one drive you may count as many as two dozen lakes.

At times, as you look round, the country reminds you of Scotland, with the purple blue mountains in the distance and the dark patches of fir trees. At others there is a marshy and barren bit of bog land, with cabins recalling the wilds of Connemara. Then some scene in the Tyrol is brought before you; high mountains and deep valleys filled with dense pine forests, a lake hidden in their midst. Frequently a chain of mountains has a similar chain of lakes winding at its base. These lakes are divided by a narrow isthmus of land, or connected by flowing streams. They are full of fish of all descriptions. If England is the paradise for horses, this is the paradise for fishermen. Other sport can be obtained by the partridge-shooting in August and September. The partridges resemble Scandinavian ptarmigan. There are also wild deer to be had by stalking the mountains forty miles in the interior.

We always think of Newfoundland as the land of fog, lobster, and cod, and know it best in connection with the breed of Newfoundland dogs. This race is degenerating and threatened with extinction, and there are scarcely any good specimens of these beautiful and intelligent dogs left in the island. But I think few have any idea what extremely beautiful scenery there is, and when there is no fog, the atmosphere is remarkable for extreme dryness and clearness, giving the most vivid colouring and the sharpest delineations to the mountains.

This was the case to-day; and as we drove to the Twenty Mile Lakes, so called because they are twenty miles round, I thought I had rarely seen brighter, prettier, or more varied landscape. The water of St. John's comes from these lakes, and they claim to have the purest supply of any town in the world. Instead of being bare and desolate, the country is green and smiling. There are a few widely scattered farm-houses, but as a whole not much cultivation is attempted.

After a long ascent, we gain a glimpse of the sea. We have been driving across a narrow mainland, from the ocean to the ocean, and before us, gleaming softly in the evening sunlight, is the beautiful Bay of Conception. The surrounding cliffs are quite purple, the ocean is a golden sea broken up by green islands. Far below us is a cluster of houses, a fishing settlement, with a lobster factory and some flakes run out over the rocks. There are boats idly rocking at the quay, whilst others are catching bait for a fishing schooner, lying at anchor in the bay. They told us of one of the governors who was brought here within sight of this bay to die. He thought it so beautiful. So did we. Then we drove home quickly in the dusk, late for dinner, but charmed with the island. We found Sir Terence and Lady O'Brien just arrived from a few days' cruise by the "Out-ports" on the coast. They give us wonderful descriptions of the grandeur of the scenery. The government steam yacht, in which they journeyed, will start with the judges on circuit in a few days.

Thursday, Aug. 6th.—We awoke to a lovely spring morning, with the breeze whispering amongst the trees, and the Union Jack flapping gently against the flagstaff in Government House garden. Spring has just come. Asparagus and peas are coming up in the garden, strawberries are ripening and the hay is ready to cut. We have gone back three months in our season. The climate of Newfoundland is abominable. The winter is interminably long and severe, lasting from the beginning of October to May. There are incessant fogs, which envelop everything in a cold damp pall.

Nor is the island exempt from these fogs even during its short summer. The climate is also subject to extreme and rapid changes, from heat to cold, in a few hours. The summer has been unusually delayed this year, and had we come three weeks earlier, we should have seen an iceberg in the middle of the harbour.

Newfoundland is about the size of Ireland, or one-third more. Its population is some 200,000, but of this number 28,000 live at St. John's, which is therefore the centre of all life, commercial, political and social. The remainder of the population is chiefly settled on the coast, in fishing villages called the "Out-ports", whilst the interior of the island is sparsely settled, and in some parts unexplored. The population is dwindling, and there is no immigration, of which they are jealous, as reducing the means already deficient of living, but there is emigration to Canada and the United States.

The people are of English, Scotch and Irish descent, but those from England are chiefly from the west coast and Devonshire. The Premier, Sir William Whiteway, is a Devonian. And a curious little fact exemplifies this. If you ask for cream, it is always Devonshire clotted cream that is brought.

Newfoundland was the first of England's colonial possessions. Sebastian Cabot discovered the island in 1497, and claimed it for Henry VII. With the discovery of America, all nations came forward to claim a share, but it was England and France who chiefly engaged in the fisheries, which were then a source of great wealth. Sir Gilbert Humphrey and Sir Walter Raleigh annexed the island for Queen Elizabeth. Even at that time 100,000l. worth of fish were annually exported. The ships left England in March, and returned in September, and these voyages formed a nursery for English seamen. In 1635 the French obtained permission from England to dry fish on the shores of Newfoundland. This may be said to have laid the beginning of the troubles which are now so active. The island was kept in a deserted condition by the merchant adventurers up to 1729. They persuaded the authorities at home that it was uninhabitable, in order that they might retain the fishing rights in their own hands. Masters of vessels were obliged to bring back to England each soul they embarked, under penalty of 100l. When at length this tyranny gave way, a governor sent from England, and the island colonized, the fishermen were still so poor as to be in complete subjection to the merchants under the "supplying system." This baneful "truck" practice begun so long ago, continues in use unto this day, with equally evil results. The only support of the fishermen (who form the bulk of the population) is fish. Upon the result of the fishing season the year's comfort and prosperity depend. But this, to be done on a profitable scale, requires a considerable plant. There are only three classes in Newfoundland: the merchants, the planters, and the fishermen. The last class are in durance to the first, through the medium of the planter. The planter obtains from the merchant the necessary outfit for the fishermen in clothes and goods, and this is sold on credit. On his return from the fisheries (the chief of which are off the Great Bank), he seizes the catch and repays himself, and the merchant, who disposes of the fish. Thus the fishermen are kept in a hopelessly poor and dependent position.

Of course, since our arrival, we have heard every side of this much-vexed Fishery Question. But at least we can now fully understand the "life-and-death" importance of the question to the island, of the curtailment of their fishery grounds by the French shore dispute. The life of the codfish and lobster is the life of the Newfoundlanders, and to lessen their catch of fish is to lower proportionately their already low standard of living. The question of the French obtaining bait and erecting lobster factories is discussed at every dinner table. Mr. Baird, by defying Sir Baldwin Walker, is called the village Hampden. They feel deeply the apparent want of sympathy of the Home Government, and indeed it cannot be easy for Her Majesty's Ministers to understand the vital interests involved in this dispute to the islanders without a personal visit to St. John's.

We should like to have visited the disputed fishing shore off the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, but it lies 135 miles down the coast, and the only means of communication is by a fishing schooner.

We went sight-seeing in St. John's in the morning. Our first visit was to the adjacent square stone building, the House of Assembly. It is a miniature House of Commons, contained in a lofty room, with long windows. There is the Speaker's chair, the table, the ministerial and opposition benches, though the latter are only occupied by the eight members in opposition, whilst the ministerial benches boast a cohort of twenty-six, of whom all but two are said to be in receipt of an official salary. There is also a Legislative Council, or Upper House; and an Executive Council, or Cabinet, which meets weekly at Government House.

Sir William Whiteway, the Premier, returns by the next steamer from the Delegation to England, but his colleagues are here, and we meet them all.

The Roman Catholic cathedral is the next most prominent building at St. John's. Its situation on a plateau high above the town, and facing the harbour, tells in its favour. Inside the railed-off square there are four beautiful marble statues. The Cathedral is finely proportioned inside, and over the high altar there is a fine bas-relief representation of the Dying Christ. The more you travel, the more struck you are with the activity of the Church of Rome in all parts of the world, and particularly in the Colonies. We found it so in Australia and New Zealand. In Eastern and Central Canada the finest buildings in the cities are the Roman Catholic cathedrals. So it is at Ottawa, at Montreal (where they are building one with a dome after the model of St. Peter's), and at Halifax. Here it is the same. One wonders whence the money comes, and whether it is true that the Roman Catholics, with no State endowment, are more generous in the support of their religion than us Protestants. We visited Bishop Power, for we hold a circular autograph letter from Cardinal Manning (my husband's godfather, now gone to his rest), written in Latin, and addressed to all the Archbishops, Bishops and Clergy of the Roman hierarchy in all parts of the globe. It ensures us a welcome from them everywhere.

We then went to the English cathedral, which lies lower down in the city, and is a fine Gothic structure designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, but it presents a sorry contrast to the other, as there is a blank where the tower should be, and, save for a few stained glass windows, it is bare and undecorated. There is a heavy debt of 20,000l. on the cathedral, to meet which several public-spirited gentlemen have banded together and insured their lives in its favour. They feel that they have made sufficient sacrifices, and that having built the fabric, it must be left to their sons to decorate it.

Then we descended to Water Street. It is the principal street, lying parallel with the harbour, and a somewhat untidy and unsavoury avenue. It is a real descent to reach it, for the other streets climb up from it at right angles, and each one is a mountain to ascend. There is one cab-stand here for the whole town. The vehicles on it are of antiquated date, the seat for the driver dovetailing into a back seat for a passenger. There are frequent stand pipes ready for the fire brigade, who have stations with the horses standing ready under suspended collars, and all the new improvements. The pressure of water is so good that, with hoses attached, the jets will pass over the cathedral. Thrice already destroyed by fire, St. John's now takes all human precautions. There are several banks, a fine hotel, from without at least, but which is said to defeat its exterior promise inside, a general hospital, penitentiary, orphanages, sailors' homes, and a technical and high school. The education of the island is in a far advanced state, with compulsory and free education. The museum in the post office contains specimens of the marble, coal and gypsum found in the island. Newfoundland is rich in mineral wealth, and only requires capital for its development.

We had a heavenly afternoon for a tea picnic to Logy's Bay. Indeed the beautiful drives and expeditions seem endless, and Logy's Bay is only one of the many lovely coves and bays that indent the coast. We dip over the hill and look down on an exquisite little picture, with a blue bay surrounded by headlands of red and green cliffs, and the sea shimmering beyond. Far away on the horizon there is a gleaming white pillar. It is a floating iceberg. We wish, oh! so much, as we eat strawberries under the cliffs, that it was nearer to us.

Before we descended into Logy's Bay, we knew that it contained a fishing settlement, by the pungent odours of highly flavoured fish that ascended to us, and over the bay there are many extended flakes. These flakes are formed by rough supports made of fir poles covered with branches of fir-trees. Each codfish is split, salted and laid open on these flakes. It takes six weeks of exposure to cure the fish, and there is a good deal of labour involved. Each morning the cod must be laid out on the flake. Each evening it must be gathered in, stacked and covered with bark, to which stones are attached to keep it down. This fish is then exported to Roman Catholic countries like Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Austria and Italy, where it forms the staple of food for the poorer population on fast days. It is worth about 2d. per lb. The small boats that we see outside the bay, are busy collecting bait. The bait they obtain to catch the cod are caplin, herring and squid, according to the season. We have just missed seeing a lobster factory, as they closed by law on August 5th. The factory, it appears, only consists of an open shed and a stove. As the lobsters are only worth here about three shillings per hundred, it seems that a large profit, by exporting them fresh, might be made in England.

In returning, we drove round Lake Quidi-Vidi and on reaching the top of a hill looked down on a typical fishing settlement. The granite rocks of the coast shut it into a narrow cove, through which courses a stream that finds a narrow outlet to the ocean. The wooden houses are huddled together, finding foundations on and against the rocks, whilst the flakes are run out in all directions over the stream, and men and women are hard at work splitting, salting and drying the last arrived boat-load of fish.

There was a dinner party at Government House in the evening, where we met Lady Walker, wife of Sir Baldwin Walker, Mr. Bond, Mr. Harvey, and other members of the Government, as well as Mr. Morine, the leader of the opposition. The next day was Sunday, and we experienced a sudden and disagreeable change of climate. It was bitterly cold, and we were glad of fires. But we have not yet had a real Newfoundland fog.

We are in great difficulty as to how to leave the island, and find ourselves steamer-bound. That tardy line, the Allan, has a fortnightly service via Halifax to St. John's, but we shall be obliged to take a cargo boat.

Monday, August 10th.—A mid night embarkation on the Black Diamond Line s.s. Coban, from the deserted wharves of St. John's. The donkey engine is at work all night, and in the cold grey of early dawn we slipped out of the harbour. There ensued two days and nights of abject misery, only relieved by the sight of land at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening. We enter Glace Bay on the peninsula of Cape Breton. The channel entrance is so narrow that we executed some wonderful nautical manœuvres before anchoring at the wharf. We are landing on a barren shore, the chief object of interest being a coal shoot with some trucks of coal on it. We are near the great Sydney coal mines, and the country is as bleak and desolate as our Black Country. The sun is sinking, but the air is warm and moist.

We land at this uninviting place, and after some searchings amongst a half-dazed population, who seem to show surprise, mingled with resentment at our intrusion, we find a ramshackle country buggy, in which to drive fourteen miles to Sydney. We are told the track is rough. The light is fast failing. There is only one narrow seat for the somewhat bulky driver and ourselves. For a moment I cannot see where I am to sit. But every second it is growing darker, and with no alternative I scrambled up, and fortunately being small, I was wedged in securely, and during the very rough drive was perhaps the less shaken. The four-year-old pony sorely tried my nerves at starting by shying, and turning sharp round—a fatal thing in these lockless buggies. Our good driver—the local constable—negotiated the worst places, the holes and rocks and frail wooden bridges, with great care, and saved us all he could. Still, we suffered severely.

We passed the two great coal mines of Sydney which supply all the coal to Newfoundland, and much to Canada. It is soft and dirty fuel. We saw the lights of the miners' cottages, and passed some of them returning with an electric lamp in their caps. On and on we drove. The twilight failed, and a pale crescent moon rose, but its dim light only added half-seen terrors to the road, as we drove through dusky pine forests and heard the rush of unseen waters, whilst the lamp of the luggage cart in advance looked like a will-o'-the-wisp dancing up and down. On and on for what seemed like hours. No dwelling-places in sight, no human being seen, no sound heard, as we crossed in the darkness that isthmus of land between Glace Bay and Sydney.

After a weary while we at last saw the welcome lights of Sydney, and drove into a sleeping village, only to be told that every room in the place was full. At length a priest and a commercial traveller, fellow-passengers from the steamer, found a room, which they gave up to me. It was in a little public-house, but the bed-room was lighted by electricity!

We were up at 5 a.m., and in a torrent of rain drove to the station. The Intercolonial Railway only opened this new line from Sydney across Cape Breton eight months ago. It communicates with the magnificent harbour of Sydney and the exceedingly beautiful Bras d'Or Lakes. We travelled by the shores of several "guts," or inlets from the harbour. Then opens out the broad expanse of the lake itself, surrounded by mountains, along the foot of which we are creeping. The name Bras d'Or has such a pretty origin. When the French, in exploring Cape Breton, first saw the lake, it was autumn, and the shores were all golden in their autumnal glory; hence they called it the Golden Arm. For miles we are passing along its shores, which the waters are gently lapping under a leaden sky, and the great mountains covered with fir forests, rise gloomy and forbidding on the further shore, bathed in clouds and mists. It is a beautiful, though depressing scene. The lake closes in, and its banks nearly meet at the Narrows, which the train crosses on an iron trestle bridge from one shore to the other. There is excellent fishing in this lake, and now that the railway has opened it up, it is sure to become known and largely visited.

At the Straits of Canso, the contents of the train, including passengers, are embarked on a ferry, and cross the narrow strip of sea that divides Cape Breton from the mainland of Canada. We disembark in Nova Scotia.

CHAPTER II.
THE MARITIME PROVINCES, AND THROUGH LAKE AND FOREST TO THE QUEEN CITY

A long railway journey. The light streaming into the berth of a sleeper of the Intercolonial Railway awakes me, and a few minutes afterwards I emerge from between the curtains, to see the morning sun on the dancing waters of Bedford Basin, the land-locked harbour of Halifax. For about ten miles we are skirting this harbour before running into the town.

Most people would agree in thinking Halifax a charming place. There is nothing in the primitive city, with its straight, narrow streets of wooden houses, most of which require a new coat of paint, to make it so. There are few public buildings worthy of notice. But the charm lies in its position on the peninsula of land, with the deep bend in the North-west Arm on one side, and Chebuctoo Bay on the other, leading into Bedford Basin. Thus there is water on every side.

Halifax has a large official society, and takes some pride in being thought very English in its habits and ways. It owes this to being the one military station left in Canada where there are British troops, and also to its harbouring a naval station, with a resident Admiral and three war-ships at anchor in the bay. The Lieut.-Governor also resides here, and so Halifax¹ is full of official residences. Each province in Canada has a lieut.-governor, who receives the appointment for five years at the hands of the Governor-General, with a moderate salary and an official residence. He is generally some prominent and popular local man, who is thus rewarded for political services by the Premier of the day, who advises the representative of the Crown, and practically confers the post. Each province also has its local parliament, or legislature, which is independent of the Dominion Parliament, and forms its own laws of internal economy, constituting a body like our County Councils. Thus, in Canadian capitals, their public buildings always include the Parliament House, a Government House, and Ministerial offices.

In the afternoon Mr. Francklyn came and took us for a drive in the beautiful park at Point Pleasant. We skirt along the blue bay, dotted with white sails, for there is a regatta in progress, until we reach the well-named Point Pleasant. This promontory is covered with a magnificent pine forest, through which wind miles of splendid roads, made by companies of the Royal Engineers when stationed here.

On one side the park is bounded by a deep inlet of the sea, running a long way inland, and which is called the North-west Arm. At a certain point there is a sunlit vista looking up this narrow bay, which is very beautiful. There are pleasant country-houses out here, in one of which Mr. Francklyn resides. It is a perfect afternoon, with warm sunshine, and a pleasant breeze whispering and sighing in the fir-trees.

Sunday, August 2nd.—In the morning I went to church at St. Paul's. This is a very old wooden building with a spire. There are the same timbers as were used for its construction in 1794, when the Hon. E. Cornwallis landed in Chebuctoo Bay with 2000 settlers. He planned this site for the church, and built it on the design sent out by the Imperial Government, which was on the model of St. Peter's, Vere Street. In 1787, when the first Bishop was appointed, he took it for his cathedral. It has taken part in all the great functions connected with the history of Halifax; and the walls are covered with mural tablets to the memory of the generals and admirals who have died on the station.

We were told to go and see the public garden, which is very well laid out with carpet beds and a miniature river. The gardener is a resident of Halifax, and was sent home to England a short time ago, to model it on our London parks. In the evening we attended the Presbyterian Church to hear Principal Grant preach. He is the able, sympathetic and popular Principal of the Kingston University. The Presbyterians have a strong following, and fine churches throughout Canada, probably owing to the large number of original Scotch settlers.

From Halifax we should have gone to St. John, New Brunswick, by Annapolis, through the beautiful country celebrated by Longfellow, and called the Land of Evangeline, and across the Bay of Fundi, but there was doubt as to the hour of arrival of the steamer to be in time for a meeting of the United Empire Trade League. I must here digress a minute to explain that it was no part of our original Canadian tour to practically be "stumping" the country from Halifax to Vancouver on the subject of Imperial Preferential Trade. The meetings were thrust upon my husband, and, once begun, each city claimed its meeting in due course. Albeit, I must confess that he fell in gladly with the arrangement. I may fairly say that for over six weeks in Canada, I was the victim of the United Empire Trade League.

In our schoolroom days we learnt that St. John is the capital of New Brunswick, and Halifax the capital of Nova Scotia. In the weariness of a hot study and the drowsiness of a summer afternoon, we may vaguely wonder of what use this, and much else that we learn, will ever be to us. It is pleasant now to have knowledge triumphantly vindicated, and geography by personal visits made easy.

Lying on several peninsulas formed by the river of St. John, the harbour, and the Bay of Fundi, the city is surrounded by water. You cannot be many minutes in the town without hearing of the fire of 1877, that great epoch in local history. Beginning in a blacksmith's shop, it destroyed nine miles of streets and an entire portion of the town. We were shown the one building that was left untouched in the midst of the conflagration, and for what reason no one has ever been able to ascertain. The town was rebuilt with red sandstone, granite and brick. It looks so handsome and substantial when compared to the wooden cities of Halifax and other Canadian towns.

The Mayor (Mr. Peters), the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Robertson), met us at the station and drove us about the town, and pointed out to us such public buildings as the Custom House, the hospital, the asylum for the insane, etc. My experience goes to tell that they are the same in all cities of the world. We passed rapidly from the summit of one peninsula on to the next, looking down streets that always seem to lead to water. There are pretty views from these heights of the large city, containing 40,000 inhabitants, spread out over these successions of hills, with the harbour dotted with sails below. Far away into the country, the river is seen winding amongst grey, overhanging cliffs and pine-clad mountains. They claim for it scenery as fine as the Hudson.

But the prettiest view of all is from the Cantilever Bridge. Here the wide mouth of the St. John river flows through the harbour to the sea, interrupted by rocky islands, clothed in green. They have a great curiosity here in the shape of a reversible waterfall. The tide at the mouth of the river rises and falls as much as forty feet. As the river flows seawards it is forced by the volume of water coming down the river over a ridge of rock, and forms a waterfall into the harbour at low tide. When the tide turns, the salt water is forced backwards up the river, and forms a waterfall the reverse way.

St. John was founded by the United Loyalists. The other day there was a touching incident of a brave boy who went out in a storm here and saved the life of a child, perishing in the attempt. Subscriptions poured in for the erection of a public monument. They proposed to erect it on a spot we were shown, but in excavating they came upon the well-preserved coffins of twenty of these United Loyalists.

The city is the centre of a great lumber trade; 30,000 yards of timber are cut on the banks of the river annually and floated down to St. John's. They have free and undenominational education. The streets are paved with blocks of cedar. Electric light is in general and domestic use. Altogether, St. John is a most enlightened and advanced city.

We got into the "cars" at night for a long journey of two days and two nights to Toronto.

Through the State of Maine we sped at night; one of the two American total Prohibitionist States. Though saving 200 miles by this route, it seems a pity that the C. P. R. could not keep their line in Canadian territory, as, in the event of war with America, or one in which she was a neutral ally, her connections could be severed.

During this long journey of 1500 miles from Cape Breton, through the Maritime Provinces, to the more cultivated and open country of Ontario, the scenery has been beautiful but monotonous.

There are two features which repeat themselves over and over again to the eye, the ear and the senses: they are that Canada is a land of many forests, and that Canada is a land of many waters.

For many hundreds of miles we passed through the midst of these enduring spruce forests, the narrow track whose path has been roughly cleared by burning, extending with its thin thread of iron through their densest growth, lost through their trackless depths. On either side of the clearing though these, mighty forests, there is a belt of blackened stumps of grey, armless stems, where the fire has passed over them. Sometimes even there will be one green living tree left standing among the dead. And these dull grey mutilated trees look quite pathetic in their pale nakedness, leaning hither and thither, and finding support across one another, as if falling in their last agony, or lying dead and uprooted on the ground. They exercise quite a fascination as they continue for mile after mile in their dying contortions, whilst in the background there are their living brethren, so green, hardy and dense in their growth. The ground beneath is strewn with blackened snags that are partly covered with green moss and ferns, their fresh growth mingling with these dark reminiscences of man's ruthless hands. In sedgy places there are beds of waving bulrushes, and sometimes a few wild flowers, such as the fox-glove, the mimosa, and the golden-rod.

Hundreds of acres of these lumber forests are on every side, and indeed, a large proportion of the Dominion is covered with these mighty stretches of pine and spruce. There are other varieties such as maple, birch and poplar, but the spruce fir is the chief growth, as it covers all the land that is not cleared or occupied by water. We see piles of ready-cut timber, stacked for transport, or cars laden with it at every station. The rivers and lakes are full of floating timber, and abandoned rafts. Frequently the whole surface of the river will be blocked with lumber, which, carried by the current, arranges itself transversely in floating down. This generally happens near a town or village. For miles away up these deep valleys, there are men busy lumbering all the summer. They cut down and strip the trees of bark and then float the lumber down to the nearest place for export. We constantly pass sawing mills where water power is used for the machinery. The bark is only useful for "kindling" or firewood. Some of the wood is crushed to pulp and used for the manufacture of paper.

Occasionally in the middle of these forests the engine will startle us with an unearthly whistle. It is a sign that we are approaching a human habitation, and in a rough clearing we pass two or three wooden huts, with a potato patch mingling with the black stumps, and women and children at the door. One pities their solitary life, shut in by the impenetrable forest, and wonders how they obtain supplies. Sometimes there is a larger clearing with more attempts at farming, but where the fields, though divided off, are still a mass of charred stumps.

This work of clearing by the Eastern settler must be terribly disheartening. There is, first of all, a dense undergrowth to be hewn through and piled up ready for burning. This when dry kindles the conflagration which is to help so materially in the task. After a spell of dry weather and with the wind in the direction he wishes to clear, it must be joy to the settler to see the flames leaping up and hungrily devouring the trees. The fiercer and longer the fire lasts and the cleaner it burns, the more pleased he is, and when it dies down he must look sadly around at the trees still standing, knowing that now each one must be cut down by his own labour. Then each blackened stump and snag must be grubbed up singly. This is work done by the sweat of the brow. It is tedious, laborious and apparently endless. Occasionally you come across a beautifully cleaned piece of ground, which is pleasant to look upon, but generally the land is roughly cleared, in fact you wonder how the few cows and sheep find sufficient green sustenance among such a black outlook of burnt stumps. The enormous waste of valuable timber by this rough-and-ready method of clearing seems to us reckless prodigality, but the settler surrounded by miles of similar forests cannot see it in this light.

The variety of rough wooden fences, with their ingenious inventions to save labour and time, become a source of interest. The roughest kind are formed of the roots of trees, turned on their sides, the roots forming a thorny fence. It is picturesque, untidy, but practical for its purpose, and is called a "snag" fence. Others are formed of timber stakes of every description, some with barbed wire. This, however, is too expensive to be largely used. But the prettiest of all are the snake fences. Very easy of construction, they run along in graceful zig-zags.

The land cleared, and the ground fenced off, the building of the house comes next. This is a land of lumber, and of course the house is made of wood. They are simple and easy of construction, being of one story with a door in the centre and a window on either side. The door must be covered with wire netting, for the flies in the forest amount to a pest. They are lined with planked wood inside and out, and the roof is covered with shingles or flat strips of wood nailed on like tiles. Between the outside and inside there is a lining of paper tarred thickly over. This makes the house air-tight. In Canada a large proportion of the dwelling-houses are built of wood. Montreal and Toronto have streets of handsome stone houses, and in all Canadian towns the public buildings and offices in the city are of stone or brick. Still, wooden houses largely predominate throughout the Dominion. It seems curious, but arctic as the winters are, these wooden houses are more suited than stone to the climate. In the latter the mortar absorbs and gives off damp in a thaw, whilst the wooden houses are dry, air-tight and extremely comfortable. Most of the houses have furnaces in the basement, which heats the warm air in the pipes of each room, or at all events a stove in the hall. This and double windows are a necessity in the winter.

During this long journey, we are again impressed with the volume and extent of the lakes and rivers. The country is absolutely fretted with these fresh-water lakes, which are full of salmon and trout. Some are very large, like Lake Megantic, which we pass, and which is twelve miles long; or Moosehead, which is forty miles long and from one to fifteen miles broad. Others are only like large ponds. Then there are broad rivers, deep and strong; wide rivers, shallow and rapid, and mountain torrents, brown and babbling. But it is always water everywhere, still or running, silent or noisy, blue or green according to its depth. If you read for a little while, or your attention is turned away from the car window, on looking up again there is sure to be more water in sight.

We now re-visited Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto in the interests of, and for meetings of, the United Empire Trade League, after a lapse of six years. At the capital kindly, enthusiastic, and hospitable was the official and parliamentary welcome to my husband, but we heard much of the "scandals," and of the loss to the country of Sir John Macdonald. Of the former subject we weary, as of the extravagant language which fills the papers, the following being a specimen of the daily head-lines:—

"Boodle and Bungle." "The Slime of the Serpent is over Them All." "A Story of Greed, Incompetence, Extravagance and Muddle." "Another Public Works Scandal," etc.

Montreal, with its natural attractions of the St. Lawrence and the Mountain, is little changed. But Toronto has grown enormously, and is now approached through some miles of suburbs. The Torontonians claim that their "Queen City" has increased in the last few years more than any other on this Continent, not excepting any in the United States. They may well be proud of it.

On Saturday, August 22nd, we left Toronto, and five hours in the cars brought us to Owen Sound. This part of the line was laid by an English engineer, who they say had never laid a railway before; it was taken over by the C.P.R. and was incorporated into their great line. It is not difficult to believe that this was the case, for the car narrowly escapes derailment by the roughness of the road.

Owen Sound is the point of departure for the C.P.R. steamers across the lakes of Huron and Superior. I think it is a preferable route to the railway, as it saves two days and two nights in the cars. The steamers are very comfortable and well arranged. They are constructed to carry a large cargo. On this voyage the cargo consists of agricultural machinery going out west for the harvest, and soon it will be the grain of the north-west which they will be carrying to the east. They have a capacity for 40,000 bushels of grain, and they are constructed in such a way that the grain can be shipped direct to and from the steamer by the grain elevator.

For several hours we steam through the Georgian Bay or southern extremity of Lake Huron. It is a pretty inlet with forested banks, and a great expanse of smooth blue water. It is difficult to realize the vast area of space covered by these Canadian lakes. Lake Huron, which we have been crossing all night, covers 28,000 square miles; Lake Superior, which we are about to enter, has 30,000 square miles. Lakes Erie, Winnipeg, Michigan, and Ontario, must be added to these miniature oceans. And we are not surprised to find, that Canada claims to have one quarter of the whole of the fresh water of the globe on her surface.

The next morning the banks of Lake Huron are drawing closer together, leaving us a narrow channel staked out in the centre. We are passing a regular procession of barges. There are as many as three being towed in line, and as the passage is narrow and devious, we could shake hands in passing. Also, as we salute each one, and are saluted, with a threefold whistle, the noise is continuous and wearing. These barges are laden chiefly with lumber, but some have coal, grain, and ore.

We enter the narrow mouth of the Sault Ste. Marie River, commonly called by the Americans the "Soo." This river is the outlet between the waters of Lake Huron and Lake Superior. There is a fall of forty-two feet. It is a broad and muddy river, and on the right hand we have American soil, and on the left Canadian. Perched on the bridge in the crisp morning air, the views are very pretty. The mountains, as always, are covered with the dark blue-green of the familiar pines. The banks are clothed in brilliant green, just mellowing into yellow under autumn's golden hand. We are shown a quarry of valuable variegated marble in the mountain side, which is proving inexhaustible. Then we pass the wreck of the Pontiac. She was run down by her sister ship four weeks ago, and lies helplessly across the course, her bows stove in, and the bridge and hurricane deck only above water. They are pumping her out, gallons of water pouring from her rent side.

Ten miles of this ascent of the river, and bending round a corner, we come in sight of Sault Ste. Marie. Like so many other places, the town has been created by the developing energy of the C.P.R., whose cantilever railway bridge we see crossing the river, but it is typical of the energy and "go" of the Americans, that on their side of the river there is a town, whilst on the Canadian it is only a village. At Sault Ste. Marie there are some pretty rapids which you can shoot in a canoe. Communication between the two great waterways of Lakes Superior and Huron is by a lock, where the water rises and falls sixteen feet. The lock is on the American side, but the Canadians are making a deeper one of twenty-two feet. This Soo Canal is of the greatest commercial importance. Sixty vessels, in the summer season, pass through it daily, or more, they allege, than through the Suez Canal.

There was a long procession of steamers and barges waiting on either side for their turn. It is so shallow that little way can be allowed to the ships in passing in and out, and for two hours and a half we sat and were quite amused watching the skill which packed three large steam barges into this narrow canal. It must not be thought that these steam barges are like our dirty barges on the Thames or on English canals. They have a tonnage of 1500 or 2000 tons, and are as smart as white paint and polished brass can make them, being lighted, too, by electricity.

These great lakes have a complete through connection to the ocean by means of rivers, locks, and canals. Recently the whale-back boat was taken from Chicago by this route to the Atlantic and across to London. But as the commerce from the West increases, the canals will require widening and deepening. This through waterway will have an important bearing on the commercial development of Canada. Its drawback is that from November until April the lakes are frozen. We, who travel through Canada in the summer, forget what a different aspect the country assumes, when for six months of the year it is frost and snow bound.

A few hours after passing the Soo Canal, we had left the flat banks behind us, and passed out on to the ocean-like waters of Lake Superior, across which we steamed for ten hours.

At eight o'clock there is the great purple promontory of Cape Thunder in sight. It is a bold outline against the pale morning sky, clear, with a keen north wind. It shelters inside the circular bay of Thunder, with Port Arthur at its head. We pass Silver Island, where thousands of dollars' worth of silver have been raised and sunk again.

After the mine had been opened, the sea broke in, and a crib had to be constructed. The silver is there, but the difficulties in raising it seem insuperable. The whole of Cape Thunder is formed of mineral deposits.

We land at Port Arthur. It is a sad place. The C.P.R. has ruined the rising town by choosing Fort William, five miles further up the river, for its lake port. The once thriving place is deserted, the shops closing, the large hotel empty. Such is the power of a great monopoly; it creates and destroys by a stroke of the pen.

Before leaving the Alberta at Fort William, the time is put back an hour. It recedes as we travel westward, and advances for east-bound travellers. The time of the Dominion is taken from Montreal, and is numbered, for convenience and business purposes, consecutively, that is to say, they have no a.m. or p.m. to confuse their train-service, and their watches have the double numbers, and one p.m. becomes thirteen, and two p.m. fourteen, and so on. A proposition has just been made in the Dominion Parliament to equalize the time, but it will not pass, at all events, this session.

Fort William was one of the advanced posts of the Hudson Bay Company. It is now a swamp laid out in streets at right angles, with wooden houses, overshadowed by some enormous grain elevators. Doubtless it has a great future before it. We wait here five long hours for the west-bound train.

CHAPTER III.
BY THE GOLDEN WAVE TO THE FAR WEST

Our journey to the Far West, through golden wheat, began at Fort William; from there the Canadian Pacific takes us across to the ocean.

The C.P.R., with its 2990 miles of railway, is the iron girdle that binds Canada together from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. She gives cohesion to this conglomerate whole, with its varieties of climate and production. Every mile of the line is worth a mile of gold to the country, for at every place where she lays down a station, that place becomes a town, a centre of population, civilization, and wealth to the surrounding district. This railway has been the great explorer, the great colonizer, the great wealth producer of Canada. It is the artery of the body of the Dominion.

One has constantly to remember that six or seven years ago all this country through which we are passing was an unexplored wilderness. A little band of plate-layers, headed by a surveyor, true pioneers, must have forced their way through, hewing trees, blasting rock, and making the silent woods resound with the voice of civilization, occasionally coming across the track of some Indian encampment or the marks of a bear. It must have required great forethought and organization from headquarters to have the plant and stores ready to push on day by day, whilst the railway in rear acted as the pioneers' single communication with the outside world, as they plunged deeper and deeper into the forests. The average speed of construction was about five miles a day, and the greatest length laid in one day was twelve and a half miles. The portion of line between Port Arthur and Fort William was the most difficult to devise. Indeed, several times the engineers despaired. The railway is divided into divisional sections, with a superintendent at each. These again are divided into sections, with a surveyor in charge; and we frequently pass their lonely section houses. Every portion of the line is inspected once a day, the workmen using a trolly, which can be lifted on and off the track. It is a single line, and there is only one passenger train daily east and west.

The trains are very long and heavy, often consisting of eight or nine cars some eighty feet in length, weighing as much as fifty tons each. They would jump the track if lighter. Our train to-day was of this length, and carried a human freight of 286 persons, exclusive of the numerous officials. The sleepers or sleeping-cars are most elegant, with their polished pine wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and their pale sea-green brocade hangings.

The colonist cars on these trains are excellent, and always, we noticed, well filled. They have berths like the sleeper, only with no upholstery, but the colonist can buy a mattress and pillow at Montreal for a dollar or two. They have a stove where they can cook their own provisions, and on landing from the ocean steamers they get into this car, live in it, and come as far west as they want to without change or stoppage.

From Fort William we passed through a wild, rocky country, following the line of the Kaministiquia, a shallow river scrambling over a rocky course. There are a few of these soft liquid Indian names, embodying some symbolical or romantic ideal, still left; but they are fast dying out, and the practical settler is changing them to a more prosaic but pronounceable nomenclature.

It was through this lonely district, then, unexplored by white man, that for ninety-five days Wolseley, in 1870, led his troops against the Indians. They marched 1000 miles from Fort William to Fort Garry, utilizing the waterway of the lakes and rivers where possible. At Savanne we see two of his flat-bottomed boats, lying rotting in the stream near an Indian village.

We have dinner in the private car of Mr. Howland and Mr. Wilkie, the chairman and general manager of the Imperial Bank of Toronto. Seated at the end of the train, we watch the twin lines of railway uncoiling themselves in a straight line for mile after mile. An occasional section-house, a station, which is often only a wooden shed on a platform, a board with the number of the section on it, and, at long intervals, a huge red tank for watering the engine, is all we see. Night closes in on this lonely country, and we sleep in our berths, while the engine steams and pants along into the darkness, hour after hour through the long, long night.

In the cold early morning we reach Rat Portage, passing from the state of Ontario into Manitoba. Rat Portage is a wooden village of 1400 inhabitants (this is considered quite a goodly population for this sparsely-peopled country); and has the largest flour mill in Canada. It lies at the outlet of the beautiful Lake of the Woods, which is forty miles long and studded with islands.

A brake has broken and the train is divided, the first half taking on the dining-car. Hungry and impatient, the passengers wait for another to be attached, and stand on the carriage platform ready to rush on board. But, as it passes, a howl of disappointed hunger goes up, for some knowing ones have jumped off the cars, and filled it before it leaves the siding.

We are still travelling through the same rock-bound country, ungainly masses of rock protruding through a scrub growth of dwarf trees. We continually pass beautiful lakes, placid sheets of water hidden away in hollows. This is succeeded by a run through some "muskeg" or black peaty bog land, where flourish rank grasses against a background of bushy poplar trees.

Thirty or forty miles from Winnipeg the country opens out and gradually assumes a prairie character. The land is quite flat now, covered with coarse yellow grasses, and sprinkled with wild flowers. It is a rich feast of colours. There are great patches of gorgeous wild sunflowers, masses of purple and white michaelmas daisies, growing more plenteously here on the open prairie, than when cultivated in our cottage gardens at home; there are bluebells and lupins, blue, pink, and white, marsh mallows, cyclamen, and acres of that weed-like growth, the golden rod. Isolated houses, becoming more frequent, tell us we are nearing Winnipeg. We cross the Red river and are in the station.

Winnipeg is the old Fort Garry settlement of the Hudson Bay Company. Twenty years ago, or in 1871, population was 100, now, in 1891, it is 30,000.

The town is set down in the midst of the prairie. Main street follows the winding of the old Indian trail which takes in the deep bend of the Red river. The City Hall in this street, or "on" as the Canadians would say, is a very handsome new-looking structure. It front of it stands the column erected to the memory of the soldiers who fell in the North-West rebellion of 1870. It is surmounted by a volunteer on guard, wrapped in his fur coat, and with his fur cap on his head. The streets are paved with blocks of wood, but the foot pavements are still boarded; indeed Winnipeg is a strange mixture, with Eastern civilization meeting in this border city, the Western or rough-and-ready methods of the settler. It is only interesting on this account.

In the streets there are bullock carts bringing in cradles of hay from the prairie; sulkies, which are constructed of two wheels and a tiny board for a driver's seat; and buckboards, used for purposes of all kinds. Nor must I forget the little carts with their tandems of dogs. These are a mongrel breed, and are much used, especially in winter, when they are driven four, six, or a dozen in hand in sleighs. As we get further west, the breed of horses improves. There are country yokels with burnt faces, coarse straw hat, and flannel shirt, gazing open-mouthed at the store windows, for Winnipeg is to them what London is to our country lads. Here is a family party of Indians emerging from a shop with numerous parcels, to the evident joy of the squaw. But what strikes you so much is, that you may pass from this handsome street of fine stores, straight out on to the broad expanse of prairie.

On the block of Government land stands the fine group of stone buildings of the Parliament House, together with the Ministerial offices for the Province of Manitoba, the Governor's residence, and the wooden barracks enclosed in a square. We stayed at the Clarendon Hotel, whose days are I fear numbered, as the Northern Pacific Company are just completing a magnificent red sandstone hostelry. It is shown as one of the sights of Winnipeg.

Mrs. Adams, wife of an old Royal Welsh brother-officer of my husband's, kindly took me for a drive in the afternoon. On the outskirts of the town the Assiniboine river takes a deep bend, in which there is some woodland. Trees are scarce on the prairie, and what there are—poplar, oak and maple—are all stunted in their growth from exposure to the north-west blast, which sweeps in winter across the great waste, a piercing, biting wind blowing from over acres and acres of snow. In this green belt there are many handsome houses, built in an ambitious style of architecture, with towers and porticoes and balustrades. They were chiefly constructed during the great "boom" of nine years ago, a disastrous event that has left its mark. The town still suffers from the troubles which quickly followed. Families are yet living under the cloud of the financial bankruptcy which then overtook them.

In 1872, Winnipeg, with a sudden awakening, realized the immense future before her as the capital of the Far West. Land was quickly bought up. Large prices given and realized. Houses were built on a magnificent scale. Crowds flocked in from all parts of Canada to share in the coming prosperity, A complete collapse followed. The bubble had burst.

The meaning of a "boom" may be thus simply exemplified. A buys a piece of land from B, and pays half the price down as a first instalment. He sells to C at an increased price, who, in his turn, does ditto to D. At length B, the original seller, calls for payment. C and D are unable to meet the call, and are ruined in endeavouring to do so, and the land is thrown back on A, who is in the same position, and B has it thrown on his hands, and never having in the first place received full payment, is also ruined, for he has speculated with the money. All classes had taken part in this "wild land speculation," and all were involved in the collapse. Houses were closed (for they could not be sold, as there were no purchasers) or are only, as we now see them, partially lived in. Winnipeg is slowly recovering from this "boom," and with the youth and energy of a young city will renew her prosperity.

Passing the ruined gateway of the old Fort Garry, we appropriately come to the Hudson Bay Store. It is contained in a large block of buildings, and is a new departure in the trade once absorbed by that great and powerful fur-trading company. They first explored the country, owned it, and kept up friendly relations with the Indians. It was one of those great trading monopolies, owned by merchants, and which have done so much for the wealth and commerce of England. The Hudson Bay Company has accomplished in a minor degree for Canada, what the East India Company did for India. This shop may truly be called the Army and Navy stores of the West, for it contains everything from brocades and Paris mantles (which are bought by the squaws) furs, carpets, groceries, to Indian blankets, pipes and bead work. In this bead work the blending of colours is exquisite. At the last Louis Riel rebellion, the wholesale department outfitted and provisioned at twenty-four hours' notice, 600 soldiers for thirty days.

We then visited the tennis club. I am impressed with the immense utility of this popular game, which, if useful in England, performs a large social duty in all Canadian towns. It forms a mild daily excitement, and a meeting place for all, and is especially useful in a country where, with the impossibility of obtaining servants, entertaining is a difficult matter.

Canon O'Meara took us one morning to the outskirts of the city to see the cathedral. Lying out in the country and built of wood, it resembles a simple village church. The surrounding cemetery is full of handsome monuments, and here lie many victims of the boom. The most interesting monument is the granite sarcophagus, engraved with seven names, surrounded by laurel wreaths of the victims of the last rebellion. Their remains were brought back here to be buried, with an impressive public funeral.

We visited the Bishop of Rupert's Land in his adjoining house. He is Metropolitan of eight bishoprics, and has an enormous diocese reaching into the unexplored regions of the Mackenzie River. He has organized a college on the model of an English University, and which confers degrees.

Studying the working of the Church in Canada, one recognizes some arguments in favour of Disestablishment. In Canada there is no State endowment, and the clergy are supported by voluntary contributions. This money comes partly from pew rents, and is greatly assisted by the envelope system. By this method the parishioner covenants to give a certain sum a year for the maintenance of his church, by fixed weekly Sunday instalments. He is furnished with fifty-two envelopes, on which his name is printed, and these contributions are entered in a book. There appears to be no difficulty in raising funds by these means, particularly if the clergyman is popular. If he is unpopular, or his doctrines unacceptable or extreme, he suffers by the falling off of his income. This system, moreover, has the advantage of giving every man an interest in his church. A clergyman observed that several members of his congregation appeared at church for the first time on the establishment of this envelope system. "Oh, yes," they said, in response to his remark, "we have got some stock in this concern now."

It works particularly smoothly where the bishop, adapting himself to the needs of a new country, admits the principle that those who pay must choose. They require, however, a Clergy Discipline Act as much as we do.

Mr. Robinson took us in the afternoon for a drive across the prairie to Sir Donald Smith's model farm at Silver Heights, where there are three splendid specimens of the now extinct buffalo, some of the few left of those vast herds that used to roam the prairie. The farm takes its name from the adjoining wood of silver poplar trees.

C. visited the venerable French Archbishop Taché. He told him that he came out forty-six years ago, and that it took him then sixty-two days to travel from Montreal, what he can now perform in sixty-two hours. He showed the inkstand from which his uncle, the Premier of Quebec, Sir Etienne Taché, signed the Confederation Act of Canada.

Thursday, August 27th.—Before leaving Winnipeg Major Heward gave us an early inspection at the barracks of the Mounted Infantry. They are smart and well-mounted on brancho horses, reared in the west. We also inspected the chief of the three fire stations. They have a chemical steamer. In this the water is mixed with carbolic acid gas. Fire being supported by oxygen, the carbolic gas, when thrown on it, extinguishes the supply of oxygen, and with it the fire. The fire bell, in sounding, throws open the stable door and the horses trot out by themselves and place their necks under the suspended collar, which descends and is fastened by a patent bolt.

The west-bound trains all stop at Winnipeg for five hours to allow time for the colonists to visit the Railway and Dominion Land Offices, and to obtain information respecting selections of lands. The land in the North-West Provinces has now been surveyed and allotted thus for twenty-four miles each side of the line. In a township of thirty-six sections of 640 acres, or one square mile to each section, the Dominion retains roughly one half, whilst the C.P.R. retains the other. There are two sections reserved for school purposes, that the value of the land may make the schools free and self-supporting, two sections for the Hudson Bay Company, and the Canada North-West Land Company have bought others. The diagram on page 53 will show the division of sections.

The station was crowded with large parties of emigrants, as many settlers leave their families here, whilst choosing their sections further west. There are bundles of bedding, tin cooking utensils, with bird cages and babies in promiscuous heaps.

As we pass out of the station we see the enormous plant and rolling stock of the C.P.R., which has here its half-way depot between Montreal and Vancouver. They have twenty miles of sidings, which are now full of plant waiting to be pressed forward, to bring down the harvest to the coast.

TOWNSHIP DIAGRAM.

The above diagram shows the manner in which the country is surveyed. It represents a township—that is, a tract of land six miles square, containing 36 sections of one mile square each. These sections are subdivided into quarter sections of 160 acres each.

We are out on the prairie at once, on that great billowy sea of brown and yellow grass; monotonous it is, and yet pleasing in its quiet, rich, monotones of colour. The virgin soil is of rich black loam. The belt of unsettled land round Winnipeg is caused by the land being held by speculators, but after that we pass many pleasant farms, clustering more thickly around Portage le Prairie, a rising town. We pass a freight train entirely composed of refrigerator cars, containing that bright pink salmon from British Columbia, which is a luxury in the east and a drug in the west. The engine bears a trophy of a sheaf of corn, to show that the harvest in the west has already begun.

Out of the whole year we could not have chosen a more favourable moment for visiting the North-West, as the harvest is in full swing. We are at this moment passing through a sea of golden grain, acre after acre extending in an unbroken line to the horizon. Indeed we are told that these wheat fields form a continuous belt some forty miles deep on either side of the railway.

It would be difficult for anyone living even in the east of Canada, to realize the enormous interest shown in the crops and weather out here. For months and weeks beforehand it forms a general topic of conversation, but, as August closes in, it becomes the one and all absorbing concern. The newspapers are scanned for the daily weather reports. Warnings are telegraphed broadcast through the land. As Professor Goldwin Smith says, in his book "Canada and the Canadian Question," "Just before the harvest the weather is no commonplace topic, and a deep anxiety broods over the land."

The interests at stake are enormous, involving as they do the question to many of prosperity or ruin. One cold night, or one touch of frost may destroy the labour of a year. This year the promise is exceptional, and the prospect was bright until a week ago. Then there were ominous whispers of frost. These early and late frosts are the scourge of the farmer, and the lateness of the harvest, owing to an exceptionally cold summer, increases the anxiety. Day by day, hour by hour, the temperature is discussed with earnestness, increasing with intensity as evening approaches. The other night there were people in Winnipeg going up and down Main Street all night and striking matches to look at the thermometer placed there. The interest to all was so vital that they could not rest. There are warnings published in bulletins to farmers, to light smudge fires to keep the frost from the wheat. These fires of stubble, lighted to the north or north-west of the fields, by raising the temperature two or three degrees, keep off the frost, and the dread of smutted wheat. We see these smudge fires smouldering as we pass along.

The virgin soil will yield as much as forty to fifty bushels of wheat an acre, and from fifty to sixty of oats. Manures are unknown and unwanted by these western farmers. The land has only to be "scratched with a plough," and the field will often yield a rich harvest of 500 acres of wheat. The hum of the harvest is heard in all the land, and we see for miles the golden grain waiting to be gathered, and the "reapers and binders" hard at work. This machine is an ingenious American invention, which cuts and binds at the same time. There is a string inside which is given a twist, a knife comes down and cuts the strings and throws out the sheaf. It is pretty to watch the rhythmical precision with which sheaf after sheaf, thus cut and tied, is thrown out on the track of the machine. The sheaves are then piled into generous stacks and left for a fortnight to dry. Labour is at a premium throughout Canada, and machinery, chiefly of American manufacture, is more largely used than in England. Sometimes two chums will farm 200 acres alone. Nearly all this grain we see is the far-famed Manitoba No. 1 hard. It is the finest wheat in the world.

We are now approaching Brandon, which is a great wheat centre. This town has the largest grain market in Manitoba, as is shown by five elevators. "It is the distributing centre for an extensive and well settled country." We should have stayed here, but were deterred by accounts of the hotel accommodation. Then came the pleasure of an orange sunset, gilding the grain into more golden glory. We passed the celebrated Bell Farm at night where the furrows are usually four miles long, and the work is done by military organization, "ploughing by brigades, and reaping by divisions."

At five o'clock we are left cold and shivering in the just broken dawn on the prairie side at Regina. We look wistfully after the disappearing train, with the warm berths inside the car. Deceived by the high-sounding designation of Capital of the North-West Provinces, we had broken our journey at Regina. There is a frontage to the line of some wooden houses and stores, which extends but a little way back, for the population of Regina is only as yet 2000. The prairie extends to the sky line on every side. It is a dreary prospect, and we are mutually depressed.

There being nothing else to do, I retire to bed for some hours—the Sheffield-born landlady giving us a true Sheffield welcome.

At one o'clock matters seem brighter, for Colonel Herchmer, commanding the Mounted Police of the North-West Territory, has kindly sent a team for us to drive two miles out across the prairie to the barracks. From the distance, the dark red buildings look quite a town, surmounted by the tower of the riding school. This force is organized on military lines, and consists of 1000 men, who maintain order over the Indian Reservations, and an area of 800 miles. Their uniform of scarlet patrol-jacket and black forage cap, with long riding-boots is extremely smart. You meet them in all parts of the North-West Provinces.

After lunching with Mrs. Herchmer, we inspected the officers' and men's mess rooms, the canteen, store room, kitchens and forge, the reading-room, bowling alley and theatre, and the guard room, where we were shown the cell in which Louis Riel was kept after his capture. The force is under strict military discipline. They have a football and cricket team, and a musical ride equal to that of the Life Guards.

The horses are all "bronchos," or prairie horses, bred chiefly from Indian ponies. They cost 100 dols. to 120 dols. each, and are short and wiry. They need to be strong, for the men must be five feet eight inches in height, and measure thirty-five inches round the chest, while the Californian saddles they use are very heavy. These saddles are after the model of the Spanish South American ones, with a high pommel in front and a triangular wooden stirrup. The horses are guaranteed to go forty miles a day. There are many gentlemen in the ranks of the force, some of whom have failed in ranching and other walks of life. The wild roving life on the out-stations may be pleasant, but there is no promotion from the ranks.

A drive of two miles further out on to the prairie brought us to one of the Dominion Schools, kept for the children of the Indian Reservations. Mr. Hayter Reed, the Government Inspector, who showed us over the school, told us that they do not force the parents to give up the children, but persuade them. It is uphill work at first, civilizing and teaching English to the little brown, bright-eyed children, with lank black hair, whom we saw in the schoolrooms. The bath and the wearing of boots is a severe trial to these gipsy children at first.

The Government acknowledges in the building of these schools its responsibility towards the natives. They made treaties with the Indians, giving them rations, and setting apart certain lands or Reservations for them, such as the Black Foot and the Sarcee. The Americans did the same with their Indians, but did not keep their treaties as we have done. However, like all other "indigenes," they are dying out with the advance of the white man's civilization. We drove home past Government House, and in the evening M. Royat, the Lieut.-Governor, presided over an enthusiastic meeting of the United Empire Trade League.

Since very early morning, and all through this interminably long hot day, we have been crossing the great desert prairie. Hour after hour has dragged wearily on, and still we look out from the car on to the symmetrical lines of the rolling plains.

For over 400 miles, from Regina to Medicine Hat, this vast steppe extends. There is no green thing on it—not a tree, or bush, or shrub—but it is covered with coarse grass, burnt to a sere yellow. The prairie is trackless as a desert; lonely as the ocean; vast and colourless as a summer sky. And yet the prairie pleases, its loneliness fascinates, its very monotony charms, the deep stillness soothes, the tints are so pale and quiet. There is the faded yellow of the grass, and the faint blue of the sky meeting on the horizon in that never-ending undulating line, unbroken and uninterrupted. The atmosphere is so clear that the blades of grass stand out alone, and a distant sage bush is intensely blue. Occasionally the haze makes the mirage of an ocean on the sky line. The only variety to this unvarying scene are the great saline lakes we frequently pass. A blue haze hangs over them, caused by the active evaporation, and now and again we see a shining patch of pure white crystal, which is the crust of salt left from an exhausted lake. At other times these dry basins are carpeted with a rich red and purple weed, that forms an oasis in the wilderness of burnt-out hues.

We see many buffalo trails, for though these animals have been extinct for some years, their prancings beat the trail so hard, that they are still in existence. As many as 160,000 were killed yearly, and with them disappeared the chief sustenance of the Indians. The prairie is strewn with their bleached skulls and carcasses. By the side of the stations there are stacks of their gigantic bones, artistically built up with the skulls facing outwards. Gophers start up and skurry away at the noise of the train. They correspond to the prairie dog of America, but are smaller and about the size of a rabbit.

We are impressed with the comparative fertility of the Canadian prairie, when contrasted with the similar belt of saline desert in America, for barren as this looks, parts of it are good for cattle ranching. We do, later in the day, occasionally pass a few settlers' dwellings, and presently the first of the Canadian Agricultural Company's farms. There are ten of these farms, consisting of 10,000 acres each, and situated at intervals of thirty miles between this and Calgary. We see on them frequent "fire breaks," or a ploughed acre left bare to prevent a fire from spreading in the crops. There are men, too, stationed along the line firing the grass, so that a spark dropped from the engine should not, by blazing this grass, spread to the ripening corn.

We inquire what is the use of the mounds by the tracks, and are told these are snow brakes. In this flat country the smallest rise is sufficient to make a drift, against which the snow piles to a great height.

We pass Moosejaw. The name is an abridgment of the Indian one, which literally means, "The-creek-where-the-white-man-mended-the-cart with-a-moose-jaw-bone." At Maple Creek there are large stock yards, where the cattle are brought down from far distant ranches, and even from over the American border at Montana, and put on the train to Montreal and exported to England.

The car had been up to 95°, but the intense heat was beginning to subside. With the refreshing coolness and the sun declining, we are also gladdened by the sight of a gradually rising slope on the dead level of the plain. It is the beginning of the Cypress range. Then we see a bush, some trees, some prairie flowers, and soon we are dropping down into the comparatively fruitful valley of the South Saskatchawan, and, crossing its broad river, we reach Medicine Hat.

It is delightful after the stifling atmosphere of the cars to get out and stroll in the station garden, which is full of old-fashioned English flowers, stocks, geraniums, verbenas, floxes, and mignonette. There are a picturesque party of Indians with their squaws and papooses on the platform. We have seen some at all the stations selling polished buffalo horns, mocassins and bead work; but try and "kodak" them as we often did—and the instant they saw the small black box, the men turned away and the women put their shawls over their heads.

On leaving Medicine Hat, we ascended the valley above the river and passed on to a more fertile prairie. There was just here a great meeting-place for the buffaloes, and the ground is full of their "wallows" or hollows made by the weight of their unwieldly bodies. Alas, that the law against their slaughter came four years after they had all been wantonly killed!

We reach Calgary at the atrocious hour of two a.m., and turn out of a warm berth into a cold bed at the hotel.

Sunday, August 30th.—We attended morning service at the pretty little wooden church, the Bishop of Saskatchawan officiating.

Calgary is the capital of Alberta and is in the centre of a great ranche country. Like all these towns out west it is an unfinished conglomeration of houses, laid out in imaginary streets at right angles, in which there are few houses and more gaps. The whole is held together by a principal street, in which there are two or three pretentious new stone buildings. From here the houses straggle away into the country, the unoccupied lots being joined to them by a boarded foot-path. These towns have no depth, they are all surface and length. Laid down on the prairie there are no trees near them and they have a bare unfinished ugliness, peculiar to their new growth.

You are reminded at every turn of the reason for Calgary's existence, for its shops indicate the ranchers' wants. There are many saddlers, displaying Californian saddles, stock whips and lassoos; others have camp bedding and furniture; canned goods, that stand-by of the rancher, are evidently in great demand. The dry-goods stores are full of flannel shirts, slouching broad-brimmed hats and "chaps," or the cowboy's leather leggings reaching to the thigh. Nearly everyone you meet is English, there are few born Canadians.

The streets are full of cowboys riding their long-tailed, half-groomed bronchos at a hand gallop, or of sulkies with the unmistakable rancher, with shirt open at the throat, slouch hat, and tanned face. The chief subject of conversation is the dimensions of the ranches, the number of head of cattle and horses on each.

In the afternoon a Police team came with Mrs. McIllree, to drive us out to see one of these ranches. Out here anything from a single horse to a four-in-hand is called a "team," but this was one in our sense of the term.

We galloped across a trail on the prairie, and then wound through a "coolie," as they call the little valleys lying in between the rolling hills, and which are so frequent in this country. There are hundreds of gophers popping out of their holes, and as we see them close, sitting up with their long bodies, they look like tiny kangaroos. We espy coveys of prairie chickens, which are like our grouse.

As we reach the open ground there is a splendid country spread out before us. Far as the eye can reach, extending into the foot-hills at the base of the Rockies, there are miles and miles of rolling upland pastures, that resemble our Wiltshire downs. The whole of this vast area has been "taken up," and is a succession of ranches. We can see the little wooden houses with their outbuildings, scattered at long intervals. Those innumerable specks on the downs are the cattle and horses, literally "feeding on a thousand hills." We are following the sweeping bends of the Elbow river, which lies below us in a cool green ravine, full of trees, in pleasant contrast to the brown hills around.

The ranche we are going to belongs to Mr. Robinson, and used to be called the Elbow Ranche, but has lately changed its name to the Chippenham, in accordance with the idea of calling the ranches hereabouts after the great English hunts. Messrs. Martin, Jameson, and Gordon-Cumming (the latter of whom we met at the hotel with his pet black bear), have called their ranche the Quorn. One ranche differs not from the other, except in degrees of comfort. They are all built of wood, generally with verandahs, and after the simplest model of a square house, with a door in the centre and windows on each side. There are no trees or shrubs, or creepers scarcely even an attempt at a garden; a rough paling alone divides them from the prairie. Dogs walk in and out and are part of the family. The plains are bare. Yet what a world of romance lingers round the expression, "out ranching in the West." We dream of sunrise and sunset on the open prairie, of wild gallops in the early morning with the dew on the grass, of camping out under the starlight. But I trow the reality is far removed from the ideal, and that it ends with a bunk in the cowboy's hut wrapped up in a blanket, with tough prairie beef and doughy bread for their fare. I am sure if some fond mother could see her darling boy in his cowboy's dress, and his quarters in the log hut, she would never be happy until she had him by her side again. It is clearly a case of "where ignorance is bliss," etc. But still, for a strong constitution there is nothing to fear, and sobriety and industry may lead to fortune.

We look at the "corral" or wooden pen, subdivided into partitions, where, after the animals have been driven in, the one required is gradually separated by being shut off in pen after pen, until a narrow passage is reached. Here wooden barriers are let down and he is thus confined in a cage. They can then brand him with an iron stamped with the mark of the ranche. If it is a colt to be broken, they saddle, bridle and mount him before leaving the pen. Then comes the struggle, in which the rough rider requires great skill, tact, and experience, for a horse will do anything to unseat his rider the first time. Unmercifully sharp bits are used, but the horse is guided more by the rein on the neck. The boys ride loosely when galloping over the prairie, leaving the horse to look out for the holes, and he rarely makes a mistake.

The horses on this ranche are bronchos, but they have not sufficient blood for the English market, and, added to this, the branding detracts from their value. They are worth about 120 dols. each. This firing is said to be a necessity, as the ranches are often 500 acres in extent. The animals roam at will, with perhaps a couple of men, living in a log hut twenty miles away from the ranche, told off to look after them. Twice a year they "round up;" that is, the owners meet and appoint a place, where the cattle are driven in and claimed by their owners, who know them by their brands, and colts and calves are then marked. This rounding up is done in the spring and the fall of every year, and is beginning now. The brands are some of them very ingenious in device. Settlers advertise in the newspapers for lost animals, giving their brands, which are well known to all the country round.

Does ranching pay? They tell us it can and does, but, as in every other walk of life, hard work, capital and experience are required. Those who are wise, before beginning ranching on their own account, go through a cowboy apprenticeship on some ranche. Our driver in Calgary confided to us "that them young men didn't do no good to themselves out here, but they did good to the country, for they freely spent the remittances from home."

We came home by the Indian Sarcee Reserve. On an open space over the river we saw some poles placed together with a suspended hook. It is the place where the Indians "make their braves." In this terrible ordeal their young men have this hook twisted into the muscles of their chests and are drawn up by it. They must utter no cry of pain. Indian encampments are met with all over the prairie. You know their "topee" tents, by the poles sticking up in the centre, in distinction to the ordinary tents of the half-breeds. They have numerous horses and cattle, which are rounded up with others. They are kept by an inspector within their reserves, and there is a large fine for anyone selling them intoxicating drink. They appear innocent and harmless, and only given to paltry thieving.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CANADIAN ROCKIES AND THE SELKIRKS

Since our arrival at Calgary we have been manœuvring to see by what means we could escape the start at 2 o'clock in the morning. As the C.P.R. has only one train westward each day, you must continue your journey at the same time as you previously arrived. Now we have received permission to travel by a freight train, and Mr. Niblock, the Superintendent of the division, has kindly lent us his private car.

The freight train was due between six and seven o'clock, and it was somewhat annoying, as we had risen at 5 o'clock, to have to wait about the platform at the station until nine. Early as it was, the town was astir with sportsmen in their buggies with their guns and dogs, off for a day's shooting on the prairie. For this bright morning is the 1st of September, their 12th of August, and there will be massacre amongst the prairie chickens ere nightfall. The shooting is open to all, and you may roam over anybody's land.

We can see the "Rockies" for the first time this morning. Since we have been at Calgary the mountains have sulked in clouds and mist, and Calgary does not, as some people would have you believe, lie under the Rockies, but fifty miles away. In the clear morning air, they appear nearer to us than they really are.

We are soon well into the foot-hills, those grassy rounded slopes, which are the first rising ground from off the prairie, and which lead up to and end in the Rocky Mountains. The blue Bow river flows merrily in the valley; there are hundreds of horses and cattle feeding on these river terraces, for there are ranches lying up to and under the foot of the Rockies.

The great amphitheatre of mountains, which has been coming nearer by leaps and bounds, is beginning to impress us with its barren purple scars, and just as we are entering among them our guard stops the train, and takes us out to see the Kananaskis Falls in the Bow river. We hear their dull and distant thunder before we see the clear mountain torrent, sliding down over ledges of rock, forming a long white-flecked rapid, before taking a final leap over a precipice. The conductor then invites us to climb up into the caboose, and scrambling up, we are perched inside the turret of the van, where there are windows that command the view on all sides. We share this elevated position with the brakesman, who is ready to run along the platform on the top of the waggons, and turn on the brakes, for each waggon has a separate one, connected with a wheel at the top. We subsequently discussed whether to give this amiable conductor a tip, but came to the conclusion that it was superfluous, on learning from the car attendant that his salary, calculated at three cents a mile, gave him an income of 500l. a year.

We are now breaking through the outer barrier of the Rockies, and penetrating deeper into the mountains by a valley. The railway is challenging the monarchs, for they rise up on every side and could so easily crush us, as we wander through the green valley by the side of the Bow river, our travelling comrade for many days to come. Its waters are pale emerald green now, but later on will be milk-blue with the melting snow and ground-up moraine, brought down by its mountain tributaries.

We shoot "the gap," described as "two vertical walls of dizzy height." It would be truer to say that the line turns sharply round a projection of rock, whilst a mountain approaches from the other side. It is a fraud! At Canmore we rest an hour. As we get out of the cars, the intense stillness of the valley strikes us. We look up to, and are covered by the shadows of the three well-defined slanting peaks of the Three Sisters and the Wind mountain. When we start again the mountains continue to increase in grandeur, though I think that Baroness Macdonald's rhapsodies quoted in the Annotated Time Table, exaggerate the beauty of this part of the Rockies. It is curious to notice the remarkable difference between the two ranges we are passing through. Those to the left are fantastically broken into varied shapes and forms penetrated by crevasses, full of deep blue and purple-red shadows. Whilst the range to the right is formed of grey and white hoary-headed peaks, and look brilliantly cold and white, in the strong sunlight.

We approach the Cascade Mountain. "This enormous mass seems to advance towards us and meet us." It entirely blocks our further progress, and the train seems to be going to travel up it. We appear to touch it, but in reality it is many miles away. This Cascade Mountain gives you more idea than anything else of the colossal proportion of the mountains, which you lose by proximity, and by their uniformly large scale. It also shows you the deception caused by the clearness of the atmosphere. For the silver cascade which we see falling down its side is ten feet across, and yet it looks like a thread of cotton. The mountain we could well-nigh touch is five miles or more away. It is a striking sensation.

Another half-hour and we reach Banff. As a whole, I think this part of the scenery disappointing, but people talk so much about it, because it is their first experience of the mountains, coming as it does too after a thousand miles of prairie.

We are hot and tired after our journey, and have long to wait for "the rig," which is repeatedly telephoned for. When it does appear it is drawn by a vicious roan, fresh from a ranche, which shies and bolts in a terrifying way. There are two miles of a badish road, which we do not see for the clouds of dust that accompany us. This dust is the drawback to Banff. The mountains have not come up to our expectations. Will it be so also with Banff? To-morrow will show.

Wednesday, September 2nd.—A day to be remembered. A day of complete satisfaction.

Cradled in the stillness of the mountains, closed in by them in solemnity and darkness, the babble of the Bow River joining its waters with the Spray, we fell asleep. This morning, the sun of a most perfect day awakes us, and the sound of the rushing waters is the first to greet our ears. My windows form two sides of the room, and I dress with the sun streaming in at the one and the breeze at the other, and a panorama of mountains seen from them both. The air is exhilarating to intoxication; the atmosphere intensely clear. We do nothing all day, we live in the companionship of the mountains.

We have been with them in the early morning, when the pale-rose tints, the opalescent blue, the delicate pearl-grey, lay lightly on their rugged summits, and made them seem so near and tender. We have seen them in the heat of noon, looking strong and hard, with black shadows in the crevasses and their great stony veins and muscles standing out in relief in the sunshine. They seem full of manhood, defiant, and self-sufficient. We have watched these same mountains in the glamour of declining days, soften again as the shadows steal up the pine woods, leaving patches of sunlight. One side of the valley is in gloom, whilst the other is bathed in golden light. Their grey peaks stand out as if cut with a sharp-edged knife against the even paleness of the sky. A few fir trees at their summit look like green needle-points, and the trail of pines climbing up the mountain, like soldiers marching in single file trying to scale the fortress heights.

In the centre of the valley, there are two great mountains, and as I write they are becoming wrapped in purple-blue gloom, with sable shadows in their granite sides, and whilst the valley is in darkness, the peaks are still bright with the last gleams of fading daylight. Behind this mountain again, there are three acute peaks, which stand from behind its dark shoulder, and they are rosy-red with an Alpine after-glow.

As we sit out after dinner in the gloaming, the mountains are still dimly visible. They have lost their individuality, and their soft full outlines are limned against the luminous sky. Stars rise from behind them; there is one of intense brightness, and several shooting ones make a bright pathway across the mountains.

There are mountains of every description at Banff. It is this variety that gives such charm to the place. Some are entirely clothed with pines, others partly so, with barren summits. Others again are nothing but rock and granite from base to summit, from earth almost to heaven, and down their sides there are marked deep slides, where the rock and limestone has crumbled into an avalanche of stone and dust. The changes on their unchanging surfaces are the most beautiful. Like human nature, hard on the surface, they have hidden soft and susceptible moods. The pine-clad mountains are sunnier and more pleasing, but it is those of adamantine rock that fascinate you.

They say that no view is perfect without water. The Bow River here gives the poetry of motion, and makes music to echo against the hills. It has the most perfect miniature falls I ever saw. They are pretty, yet not tame; they are noisy, yet not thundering; they murmur and quarrel without producing soul-agonizing sounds. They charm, but do not exercise the dangerous fascination of Niagara. Their water is creamy blue in the sunlight, and cerulean in the shadow of the ravine, down which in bars and trails of foam it rushes, until it throws itself over the fall, in a snow-white cloud, flecking the rocks on the banks with froth.

All the mountains have names—such as the Twin Brothers, the Sentinel, the Devil's head; but these names are meaningless. You know and grow to love each by its own individual characteristic. The hotel in their midst scarcely mars the scene, for it is a picturesque structure perched on a natural platform, built of yellow wood, and with a roof of warm red shingles, and green trellises to cover the foundations. Its situation is so perfect that you scarcely improve your view, or want to drive about the valleys. You may, perhaps, come a little nearer to the mountains, or see their reverse sides. There is one, however, the Twin Brethren, which gains by coming near to it, because you can stand absolutely under a mammoth rampart of granite, shot straight into mid air, horizontally upward. It strikes fear into you as you gaze up to it, and as with these mountains comparison is the only thing which gives you even the remotest idea of their superb size, a great rock, as big as a small hill in itself, broke off some years ago and lies on the ground, amid smaller stones, as we ought to call them, but which are really large rocks. We can trace the exact place where it cracked away from the symmetry of rock, leaving an unseemly cavity and a long moraine of débris. The air is so dry that everything is like tinder. Forest fires are frequent, and we mark their track up the mountain sides and see the smoke of one or two. A few mutilated trees are all that are left of the magnificent primeval forest, and the pines we see are a second and third growth.

Though the mountains stand around so silent and stately, there is a great unrest beneath them. A volcano burns below, which may break forth at any time, for Banff has several hot mineral pools and springs, sure indication that the earth here is only an upper crust, with hell-fire beneath.

The temperature of these springs is 127 degrees Fahrenheit, and there are baths for the outer man, and taps of water for the inner.

Thursday, September 3rd.—A day of blankest disappointment. A cruel change from yesterday. From early morning the mountains have been blurred and blotted out by an impenetrable haze of smoke. The sun, though ready to give us all it did yesterday, has not shone, and has been only a fiery ball suspended in the air. It is caused by a forest fire raging destruction, it may be, many miles from here, but the smoke, from the smouldering, spreads and hangs like a curtain, lasting often for many days. We canoed up the Bow River to the pretty Vermilion Lakes.

Friday, September 4th.—I could not resist a peep out of my window at four o'clock. The outlook was more promising I thought, and went back to bed cheered. We left the hotel at six. Cold despair settled on us all, for the mountains loomed gloomily through a colourless haze. Exceedingly cold and depressed, we huddled into the sheltered corner of the Observation Car, a car for the view, open on all sides. I had heard so much of the magnificent scenery that I had looked forward keenly to this crossing of the Rockies, and it seemed I was to be disappointed. After all, it is only like the disappointments you meet with in life, as, nine times out of ten, the thing most wished for, is a disillusionment when it comes.

Range after range of mountains is unfolding before us. They approach: we pass immediately under them, and they recede, only to give place to others as grand and massive. All are of solid rock, colossal masonry piled up to magnificent proportions, their zeniths crowned with pinnacles and spires, with square and round and pointed towers. In one place you distinctly see the steps leading up to a broken column. The most impressive one is Castle Mountain, though the isolated helmet-shaped peak of Lefroy, 11,200 feet, is the loftiest. This mountain stands in solitary majesty by itself in the valley. There is no ascending or descending range near it. You can see the battlements, with their loop-holes regularly jagged out at the summit of the bastions, and a tower at either end. They are faintly yet clearly discernible. It is truly a Giant's Keep, and I think the finest mountain in the range, though they are all so sublime and grand in this wonderful valley that it is scarcely fair to discriminate. Running concurrently with the track is our dear old friend, the Bow. We have lived continuously with it for three days, and feel quite friendly towards it.

Soon we see the beginning of the glacier range, and feel the awe inspired by those eternal ice-bound regions where winter reigns for ever, and none can live, and where even nature cannot vegetate. The glaciers lie frozen on to their surface, finding foothold in a crevasse or basin, hollowed out probably by their own action. Under one of these glaciers lie the Trinity of Lakes, called the Lonely Lakes of the Rocky Mountains, one beneath the other, with Lake Agnes touched by the glacier. At Laggan we have a heavier engine attached, and extra bolts and brakes screwed on.

We begin the ascent of the Rockies; the crossing of the Great Divide. It is gradual and not nearly such a dramatic incident as the crossing of the Great Divide of the Americans. In fact, the gradients are so gently engineered that, though the engine makes a great noise about it, you scarcely believe you have reached the top, and are looking for something more exciting when you see the wooden arch at the summit, on which is inscribed "The Great Divide." In this case it alludes mockingly to the tiny stream which here divides and flows towards the Atlantic on one side, and the Pacific on the other. There is here a deep green lake, called Summit Lake.

We begin the descent by a succession of perfectly equal curves that incline first to the right and then to the left, bearing us downwards all the time. And now comes what is by far the most memorable scene in the Rockies. It is deeply impressive, and is only too swiftly passed. It is called the Kicking Horse Pass. We must turn for a moment from the sublime to the ridiculous for the origin of this name. When the party of surveyors reached the summit of the pass a white pony kicked off its pack. This gave it the name, which will now always cling to it. We cross the Wapta river on to its left side, and plunge wildly, recklessly, into a deep gorge. Deeper and deeper we rush down into the canyon, darker and more impressive the situation becomes as we cling to the mountain side, whilst the river tears down yet deeper than us, until it appears a caldron of foaming silver in the gloom at the bottom of the gorge. And, look, up on one side is a perpendicular mountain of which, so far down are we, we cannot see the summit; on the other, there are those supremely graceful spires of Cathedral Mount, pointing with silent finger to the sky. If you look down into that immensity of depth, and then up as far as the eye can reach, this is what you see. First, the silver river gleaming in its black channel; on a level and opposite to you a bank of bright green moss and ferns and tangled growth; then tiers and tiers of pine trees wending skywards, until they reach the base of the rock, whence spring those airy towers. The great Duomo head of Mount Stephen beyond forms a superb dome to these sentinel spires that are so light and gracefully poised in such close proximity to heaven. Straight, in front, and shutting in this marvellous gorge, is the angular peak of Mount Field. Just past the summit there are a number of graves of men who died of mountain fever, which broke out whilst they were making the line.

Mount Stephen, called after the first President of the Railway, Lord Mount-Stephen, absorbs our attention next. It is certainly the most superb mountain of the Rockies. On its "swelling shoulder" is seen a shining green glacier, "which is slowly pressing forward and over a vertical cliff of great height." The cyclopean masses of rock are richly veined in red and purple. As the train humbly creeps round the base, the summit is entirely lost to us. Opposite are the swelling mountains of the Van Horne range; they touch the muddy, shingly bed of a river.

We breakfast at the pretty hotel at Field, and feel disgusted that the claims of nature must be satisfied, whilst Mount Stephen in its glorious might and strength, and its limitless surface of adamantine rock, raises its hoary zenith immediately above us. We made the greatest mistake in not staying a day here, and, by ascending a neighbouring mountain, being still more impressed with its colossal proportions.

On leaving Field, we travel between the "orderly array of peaks of the two ranges of Otter-Tail and the Beaver Foots."

At Palliser, the driver allows us to ride on the engine through the Second Kicking Horse Pass. It runs madly down into growing darkness, closer and higher the mountains draw. The boiling river disputes the narrow chasm with us, and it is a hand-to-hand struggle in which the line has frequently to give up to the river, and to cross over from side to side to gain a footing. The engine tears wildly down hill, reeling round the sharp curves at an angle of 20°, with the train doubling itself. You cannot hear yourself speak for the noise of the foaming river and the panting of the engine. As we plunge into the dread darkness of a tunnel, the engine whistles, and the echo is dying, dying, dead, to us—as we are lost in blackness. It is wonderful to see the driver control this huge, puffing, black monster by a gentle pressure on two valve handles, which it resents with an indignant snort. We emerge into light and space again at Golden. We come suddenly back to a commonplace life, as represented by this wooden mining village. It is farewell to the Rockies.

I think most people have an idea that the engineering feats of the Pacific Railway were performed in the crossing of the Rockies. They do not realize, any more than we did, that we have another and far more difficult range to surmount, before reaching the Pacific coast. The Selkirk range is more beautiful and grander. It has more snow and glacier peaks than the Rockies.

We are in a green valley, with the Selkirks dimly seen to the left, whilst the Rockies are diminishing to a low range to the right, and we have found a new river in the broad Columbia. We are reminded that we have crossed the Great Dividing Watershed, for this river is running the opposite way down to the ocean.

It is but a short breathing space, for almost at once the mountains close together, and we are in another of those lovely gorges, each one of which, would make famous any railway. Through a perfectly formed natural gateway of rock, so narrow that it can be crossed by a slender sapling, the tempestuous waters of the Beaver River hurry to join the Columbia. This is a smiling little valley, full of blue-green pines, mingling with the tender greens of young poplars, and the yellow moss and lichens covering the rocks. From this valley we pass into the heart of the Selkirks.

We have become accustomed to the line climbing up the mountain side, and we can tell how rapidly we are now doing this by the dwindling of the Beaver River, by whose side we were a minute ago, and which is now far away down in the valley. Its pale green waters trace out the most perfect curves of the letter S, and flow in a park with pine woods. And it is all so far away—down, down—and would be such a terrific fall. Immediately opposite to us are the mountains, and we are equal to about half way up them, and through the haze they appear to us so very near, and so very large. The panorama is magnificent; the detailed picture is impressive, when, from gazing down boundless depths, the eye is lifted through miles of pine forests, up to grey crags, too high for vegetation.

Growing by the side of the line there are gigantic pines, Douglas fir and cedar. They are so straight, without curve, or be knot, that one cannot help thinking what splendid masts they would make for some big ship. Many of their tops are on a level with us, whilst, by peering down, we can with difficulty see their roots. But like all these Canadian forests, the finest trees are dismembered or mutilated by burning, and their graceful, fringe-like foliage is often brown and singed.

The railway is now going to cross several deep gullies on wooden trestle-bridges. These bridges appear frail and weak for the purpose, the valleys being deep, and the trains so heavy. They creak and groan ominously as the train passes on them. Water-butts and a watcher are stationed on them, in case of fire from a spark of the engine. The Stony Creek Bridge, over a sleep V-shaped valley, is one of the loftiest railway bridges in the world; hundreds of square yards of timber were used in its construction, and it rests on three piers, 295 feet above the ravine. We have enchanting peeps up these bright green gullies, with their noisy rills jumping and scrambling down anyhow, so long as they reach the bottom of the valley, and we rush to one side of the car to be pleased by this, and then to the other, to be frightened by gazing into space.

Roger's Pass, the culminating beauty of the Selkirks—named after the engineer—is approaching. There are two mountains, Mount Macdonald and Mount Hermit, but they are so mighty, that if you have not seen them you have no chance of picturing them to yourself. To give you some idea of their colossal proportions, Mount Macdonald is one mile and a quarter in a vertical line above the railway. The bottom is a stone's throw from the car. Mount Hermit is equal in size on the other side. These mountains were united, but some great convulsion of nature has split them apart. This is a moment in your existence, and you would give much to prolong it; the scene is indescribable. The other mountains of this pass are covered with snow, and seven or eight thousand feet above us are many glistening glaciers, pure as crystal.

It is sad that this part of the line is spoilt by the snow-sheds, constructed of massive timber, and into which we are shot and blinded with smoke and coal grit, emerging frequently to get glimpses of these wonderful mountains, with their pale-blue and green glaciers hanging above us,—glimpses which are imprinted on the memory for long, as we shoot into another of these exasperating snow-sheds. It is ungrateful to grumble at them, for the difficulties of this part of the line, with snow in winter, are enormous, and we must always bear in mind that were it not for the enterprise of the Company we should not at this moment be sitting comfortably in a car, passing through the finest scenery in the world. There may be grander, but it has yet to be discovered.

Emerging from Roger's Pass, by a deep bend on the mountain side, we have a sudden transition into the fir-clad valley of the Illicilliwaet, the river of this name far below, and for many miles seeking the bottom of the valley, the railway doing likewise. Straight ahead the white ghost of the great glacier of the Selkirks.

We left the train here, and stayed at the pretty Swiss chalet of the Glacier house. It lies half-way up the valley and under the glacier, with the hoary peak of Sir Donald frowning down on it.

The afternoon had cleared up, there was even a gleam of sunshine, and the first thing to do was to walk up to the Glacier, through a beautiful pine forest, whose interlacing branches are covered with hanging trails of white moss, resembling an old man's beard. The ground is soft, and covered with a bright-brown saw-dust from the decaying trunks that lie around. We cross the path of a mighty avalanche, which, sweeping down from a mountain below Sir Donald, hurled itself across the valley, huge rocks, trunks of trees and débris being piled across the pathway. The green moraine on the mountain shows how soon nature recoups herself. There are wild gooseberry and currant bushes, and we eat plentifully of wild raspberries and blueberries.

As you stand under the Glacier, you see that it has filled in the side between two mountains, and the white rounded outline at the summit is exquisitely pure. It is where it joins the crumbling moraine that it is most beautiful, because here there are caves of intense blue, of pale green, and of that indescribable opaque aquamarine, only seen in perfection in the horseshoe bend at Niagara. From these ice caverns, from under the glacier, torrents of water are always pouring forth. It is the echo from the mountains, that makes such a little volume of water cause such a roaring, rushing sound. Looking down in proud cold sadness on the glacier, is the blue-grey peak of Sir Donald. It is such a cold, unsympathetic peak, rearing its barren head so proudly above its compatriots. Facing homewards, there is that other snow-capped range, with Ross peak and an immense glacier on its shoulder. They are fields of ice and snow untrodden by the foot of man, and covered with eternal snows. As you look round this perfect valley, you are so shut out from the world, that you wonder how you ever entered it. The two iron bands at the platform by the hotel form the only link beyond those impassable walls.

A gentle gloom settles down over the valley. We stroll about after dinner, amidst the deathlike stillness of the mountains, broken only by the murmuring from out the darkness of the ice stream. Looming closely above us, overhanging as if it would slide down, is the dead and white ghost of the glacier. We sleep under its shadow.

The glorious morning sunshine is touching Sir Donald and the snow peaks, whilst the valley we are in lies so deep down, that it is still in shadow. The pleasure of awakening in such glorious surroundings makes us feel the pleasure of living.

We spend the morning in climbing a mountain to Mirror Lake, winding up and up in the shade Of the red-stemmed cedars, and at each precipitous curve, the snow-sheets on the line dwindle, and we seem to get more on a level with the surrounding mountains. The Ross Peak and Range look specially beautiful to-day. The crevasses are so strongly marked with blue shadows, the peaks are such a soft silver grey, and in the very bosom of Mount Ross is the virgin snow of a pure glacier, fit house for the Ice Maiden. I have never any wish to explore mountains such as these. There is a feeling that we desecrate them by trying to come nearer to them, and that nature never meant us to know them, except from below, and then only with admiration akin to awe. I like to feel that their summits are untrodden by human foot, that they have been so for ages, and will continue so until the end of time.

On descending, we were glad to find we had two more hours at Glacier, the west-bound train being late.

Directly the train leaves Glacier it begins to drop down into the valley below, by leaps and bounds, so quickly do we run from side to side of the valley by "the Loops." These Loops describe circles across the valley, and first we face and touch the base of the Ross Peak, then return, by doubling back a mile or more, until we lie under the Glacier House. We describe yet one more loop, and then the train shoots head-foremost into the valley. Looking back and marvelling how the train can possibly mount up this deep pine-filled ravine, you see the great gashes cut across it by the railway embankment. We are rushing downwards at great speed, but not at greater speed than the Illicilliwaet River, which races us. It foams and gushes as we steam and whistle, and so we go down the gorge together, until we are deep in the gloom of its cold shades. We thunder through snow-sheds and over delicate trestle-bridges until we are buried in the Albert Canyon. Here we get out to see the Illicilliwaet compressed into a rocky defile of inky depth and blackness. It foams with anger. We pass other and similar canyons, and so on for another hour, with ever varying and beautiful scenery.

Then a change creeps over the mountains, they are all round on their summits and mostly covered entirely with dense fir forests. There are no more rock and ice-bound peaks. They are opening out a little. Now, as we get lower down, we begin to see some specimens of those splendid fir trees, for which British Columbia is famous. Again, these dreadful forest fires have ravaged them. The river and railway have descended the valley together, and continue side by side on the plain, until at length the last curve is rounded, and we run into Revelstoke. As we walk on the platform we feel such a difference in the temperature. The Pacific air is so soft and warm after the keen dryness of the mountain atmosphere. We meet the Columbia River again after a day's absence. It has been flowing round the northern extremity of the Selkirks, whilst we have been crossing their summit, and has grown into a navigable river. The observation car is taken off, sure sign that the crossing of the Selkirks is a thing of the past.

Before finishing with this part of our travels, I should recommend anyone to profit by our experience, and to stay one day at Field, and to allow of sufficient time for two days at Glacier, as I think anyone would consider it quite worth while to take a freight train back to Golden, returning a second time over the Selkirks by the next day's train. There is a great want (which is, I believe, in process of being supplied) of a detailed guidebook, and by next year doubtless the increased traffic will warrant an additional train a day.

We think that we have seen the last of the mountains, but a few minutes after leaving Revelstoke, and crossing the Columbia, we are entering the Gold Range.

It is getting dusk, we are satiated with mountains, and I am as weary of writing about them as you, forbearing reader, of reading these descriptions. Night comes to relieve us both. One is glad, however, to think that this Gold Range "seems to have been provided by nature for the railway, in compensation perhaps for the enormous difficulties that had to be overcome in the Rockies and Selkirks." At Craigellachie the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Line was driven on November 7th, 1885. With what rejoicings and triumph the surveyors and engineers must have seen the finish of their long and desperate struggle. We pass through a forest fire this night, and see isolated trunks smouldering like fiery cones, whilst others in falling send out a shower of sparks, that kindle fresh flames in many places.

We awake the next morning in the Fraser Canyon, and are going through magnificent scenery for many hours. We hang over the side of the canyon, and look down on the waters swirling and rushing at our feet, whilst over and over again the rocks seem to bar our progress, and we either rush into a tunnel, or creep round them on ledges of rock with the help of trestle-bridges. Breakfast at North Bend, like everything that the C.P.R. does, is excellent, for when they are not able to run a dining car over the mountains, they provide excellent meals at hotels, such as this, and those at Field and Glacier, all of which are run by the company.

We fly over the fertile plains of Columbia, and run on to Burrard's Inlet by Port Moody. This is the beginning of the sea,—so soon to be our home for some time. We see much lumber lying about the low wooded banks opposite, and floating by the shore. We turn a corner, run quickly by the railway workshops, and amidst clouds of dust reach Vancouver. It is a great comfort to wash, unpack, and to settle down for two quiet days.

"And what do you think of our city?" is the question addressed to all newcomers by the residents of Vancouver. This question is the invariable opening to a conversation, we have noticed, by the residents of all new cities. In this case it is very pardonable, as five years ago the site of Vancouver was a smoking plain. A fire had swept away the newly-risen city. As soon as it was known that the C.P.R. intended Vancouver to be the terminus to their 3000 miles of railway, building recommenced with renewed vigour. Like everyone else, we are astonished by the number of streets and handsome stone buildings. The vacant building sites that we see amongst them, are the object of much booming and land speculation. Cordova is now the principal street, but, as it is low down on the wharf, at no distant date it will probably be abandoned to offices and wholesale warehouses, whilst Hastings Street, on the block higher up, will be the fashionable avenue. Real Estate offices abound in Vancouver, and everyone appears to dabble more or less in land speculation. Newcomers are always bitten, and up to the moment of sailing we hesitated (but finally rejected) about becoming possessors of a corner block in Cordova Street. There have been many successful speculations and large sums made in an incredibly short space of time. Ten per cent. is what everybody expects on their investments. Opinions are still divided as to whether Vancouver really has so great a future before it. Some say it is already over-built.

The harbour of Vancouver is thought sufficiently beautiful to be compared to that of Sydney. It is a perfect site for a city, with the wooded ranges of mountains rising on the further shore of the harbour, though it was not until sunset of the second day of our arrival, that the clouds rolled away sufficiently for us to see them. The two peaks, called the Lions, are wonderfully faithful outlines of the lions in Trafalgar Square. The Indian Mission village lying under the mountains, looks clean and bright.

Vancouver has a beautiful park. We drove eight miles round one afternoon and were delighted with it. It is the virgin forest preserved in its natural forest glades, with magnificent Douglas firs, spruce, white pine, cypress, aspen poplar, mountain ash, and giant cedar, whilst bracken ferns and moss grow luxuriantly on the decaying trunks. The road is traced by the side of the sea and English Bay, and the smell of the salt water mingles with the fragrance of the pines and cedars. Some of these pines are colossal in girth and height, though not equal to the big trees of the Yosemite. The cedars are great in circumference, but not of such height, and the finest specimens are sadly mutilated by lightning.

The seeds of eternal enmity were sown between Vancouver and Victoria when the former became the port of the railway. This animosity is carried to great extremes. A Victoria man will not ensure his life in a Vancouver office. Sarah Bernhardt is coming here next week, but because she refused the Victorians' offer of $1000 more, Victoria has determined to boycott the performance at Vancouver, and make it a failure. Their childish jealousy may be likened to that between Melbourne and Sydney, and Toronto and Montreal. We are sorry not to have time to go to Victoria. I believe it is very pretty, for everybody out here has said: "Oh! you must see Victoria, it is so pretty, and so very English." This, abroad, is not precisely a recommendation in our eyes.

Our last afternoon in Vancouver, we went across to Burrard's Inlet, to see the Moodyville Saw Mills. The enormous trunks are raised, attached to hooks, by a pulley out of the water on one side, passed under a saw whose two wheels whirl through and cut up the timber in a few minutes. It is sawn into three planks by another machine, laid on rollers, passed down on the other side of the mill and shipped into the steamer loading at the wharf. In three minutes a tree that has taken 300 years to grow (you can reckon its age, if you have patience, in the concentric rings on the trunk), will be sawn up; in fifteen minutes it will be cut, planed and shipped. The trees we saw operated on were chiefly Oregon pines.

Before leaving Canadian soil, there are several things to mention, which we have observed in travelling across the continent. Canada is in many ways quite as much American as English. They have the American system at hotels of making a fixed and inclusive charge of from three to four dollars per day. They also have the varied ménu, which I counted at one hotel to include fifty items. True, Oolong, Ceylon, besides English breakfast, tea, and fancy bread of all sorts, is put down to swell the items. Still we have often wished that the assortment of food was smaller, but better served. The Canadians use as much ice water, and consume as largely of fruit at all meals, as the Americans. Carriages are as expensive as in America, the reason being that tramways and electric cars are universally used as means of locomotion. Their railway system of drawing-room cars, sleepers, and dining cars are identical. Nor can their mode of speech be wholly excepted, for true born and bred Canadian often speaks with an equally pronounced accent as any American, and makes use of many of their expressions, such as "on such a street, a dry-goods store," etc.

In the universal and domestic use of electric light, Canada, like America, is twenty years ahead of us. Each little city has it, but then this is a new country and there are no great monopolies as in England to be considered. It is the same with the telephone. All public buildings, offices, shops, and almost every private house in a city has its telephone. A great amount of business is transacted through it, and ladies use it for their daily orders to tradesmen. The convenience is great, but the incessant tinkling of the bell invades the sanctity of home, viz. privacy. A lady recently arrived from England rightly called it "the scourge of the country."

As in America, domestic servants are scarcely obtainable. I found most Canadian ladies thought themselves lucky with one servant, and in luxury with two. A nurse is an unknown necessity to many mothers, who tend their children entirely. This accounts for the number of children travelling (we counted nineteen in two cars on one journey) and in hotels. There is no one to leave them with at home. If unavoidable, they are none the less a noisy nuisance.

Canada, if she is to be developed, requires a better line of steamers than the Allan to compete in speed and luxury with the great New York liners. She must be populated, and so long as the White Star and other lines offer such far superior accommodation for the same rates (four pounds) so long will the emigrants select that route. Every trip the 1000 emigrants landed at New York, are 1000 able-bodied English, Scotch, or Irish men lost to Canada. A strong government should initiate a large immigration scheme, vote a handsome subsidy and ask the Imperial Government to contribute a similar one. As we have travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we have passed through thousands of miles abounding in natural resources, of mineral wealth and lumber, lying in their primeval state, undeveloped and unpopulated, whilst her rivals across the border are increasing rapidly the wealth and prosperity of their country by a free immigration, only wisely refusing to be made, like England, the "dumping" ground for the paupers of other nations.

Canada languishes for the want of population and capital. Give them to her, and she will become the finest country in the world, and our most prosperous as well as most loyal colony—British to the heart.

CHAPTER V.
TO THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN

On Wednesday, September 9th, 1891, we embarked on board the Pacific s.s. Empress of Japan. We congratulate ourselves upon having a roomy cabin exactly amidships on the main deck, and the unprecedented luxury of two drawers and two cupboards. Otherwise our voyage does not promise well. The C.P.R. thoroughly understands its opportunities, and their putting on three new steamships, the Empresses of Japan, India, and China, is justified by the large number of saloon passengers. Thirty passengers have been their average up to the last voyage, when it was sixty, and this time it is 130. We hope that the resources of the ship will not break down under this strain, but consider it doubtful. The stewards are all Chinese, and excellent they appear, especially our table steward, who boasted the aristocratic name of "Guy."

It was a miserable day, the rain coming down in torrents, and under the wet awnings we dawdled about until the mails, five hours late, arrived. At six o'clock we left the wharf and went "forward" to see this ship of 4000 tons pass through the confined channel of "The Narrows." We could almost have touched the overhanging branches of the trees in the park, so closely did the ship hug the bank. At midnight we stopped opposite to Victoria to take on board some more passengers. They were in a sorry plight, for they had been sitting on an open barge in pitch darkness, and in pouring rain, for six hours.

The next day was cold, gloomy, and rough. Scarcely a soul but was sick and sorry. The usual whale excited but a feeble interest along the row of deck chairs, occupied by people in varying stages of malaise. We must expect bad weather. In truth we had a miserably cold cheerless voyage across this Northern Pacific Ocean, and it was such a contrast to our bright and sunny passage across the South Pacific, from San Francisco to Auckand, six years ago. The ship takes a northerly course until we get to the mouth of the Behring Sea. Here we had a miserable Sunday. Such an angry grey sea, crested with white horses, seething and boiling around us. It was abominably rough. Everybody was sea-sick again, and, to complete the tale of woe, there was a dense sea-fog, the decks dripping with this clammy moisture and from the spray, as the Empress's nose was buried in the ocean's waves and, quivering from stem to stern, she rose and shook herself. The discordant shriek of the fog-horn was heard all day. Everybody agrees that life on board ship is bearable if you can be on deck, some even may go so far as to enjoy it, though I cannot say that we belong to that number, but when, as on this occasion, that refuge was denied to us, we were indeed miserable. We had service in the saloon, the little remnant able to appear, and all joined in those familiar prayers, that seem to bind us together on the stormy ocean as "one family in heaven and earth." The Bishop of Exeter, who, with his son, the Bishop of Japan, is on board, preached the sermon. Weary of being knocked about at the mercy of the waves, there was not a soul on board but was thankful when night came, and we sought such rest as we could find in our berths.

We shall have a Wednesday missing all our lives, that of Wednesday, September 17th, and we have lost a whole day, besides sundry and many half-hours by the putting back of the ship's clock. We are now just half-way round the world from the Greenwich meridian.

The next day we saw one island of the Aleutian group, and the "early birds" saw a snow-cone on it. These islands extend for many miles at the entrance to the Behring Sea, and we discover that in the event of a shipwreck our boats have orders to steer for this island. There are a number of missionaries, from thirty to forty, on board, who, with their wives and numerous families are bound for China. Some of them are very intolerant, as was shown when the officers got up a dance, and there was some question as to where the piano would come from: "Oh!" said one, "the devil will be sure to provide that."

The last two days we experience a sudden change from the intense cold. We awake one morning to find a tropical downpour, accompanied by a damp heat that enervates everybody, and this is accompanied by the tail end of a typhoon, and a grand sea. All ports are closed, the heat below is terrific, and the ship labours and rolls heavily. And thus ends a most disagreeable and lonely voyage, for we have not seen a single sail since leaving Vancouver.

There is no sensation in the world more delightful than landing in a new country, and especially when it is in such a different corner of the world as Japan.

Our expectations are vague and enthusiastic, but, alas! the approach to Yokohama through the beautiful channel of islands is lost to us. We are on deck at 5 a.m., only to see the lights of the numerous lighthouses on the coast extinguished, and then blotted out in blinding mists of rain. Fugi, the sacred mountain, whose cone, dominating the whole island, we had been taught to watch for in our first view of Japan, is lost to us. Sullen clouds and the gloomiest grey sky hang over Yokohama.

The departure from the Empress of Japan is a scene of more than usual confusion, but we get safely down the one gangway, thronged with passengers and their luggage, and into the steam-launch sent for us by the Government, and are soon speeding along the pretty Bund to the Grand Hotel. The first morning on shore after a long voyage is always a harassing one. There are letters to be posted, the money of the country to be obtained, departure of the next steamer to be ascertained, and here in Japan, above all, passports to be seen about, for you cannot leave the Treaty Ports without one. We afterwards found that in an incredibly short space after arriving in any town, the police always came to inquire for a passport. Then we had to engage a guide, without which you are assured you cannot travel in Japan. I may at once say that, though we had an excellent guide, we found him an unnecessary nuisance, and parted with him in a few days. In going into the interior of the country you require one to cook and arrange, but keeping to the more beaten tracks you can comfortably manage without.

Of course we have spent the whole of our first day in Japan in jinrikishas. Everyone does so. Nor can we resist a visit to the curio shops, though we harden ourselves against temptations, knowing that we shall have but too many opportunities to spend in the future. We were glad of this afterwards, for we heard that the curio dealers, on learning the large number of passengers leaving Vancouver on the Empress of Japan, had met together and by agreement raised their prices. In the afternoon we went for a drive round the Bluff, or European Settlement. Yokohama is a treaty port, and at these ports, which were first opened by the efforts of Commodore Perry to foreigners in 1868, a concession of land was allotted to the Europeans, where alone they are allowed to reside. And very charming houses they have built here, coloured red and green, or grey, and buff, with well-kept roads and pretty gardens, fenced in with bamboo hedges. We drive round by the racecourse, with its grand stand and white railings just like our Epsom course. The Mikado visits Yokohama once a year to come to the races, and we see his private box on the top of the stand. Then home by the sea-shore and across a plain of rice fields, descending through the Settlement once more.

Yokohama is a cosmopolitan place and enjoys the glamour of being the landing-place in a new country and the first sight of a new nation, hut it contains nothing of interest. Along the Bund or sea wall is a row of grey verandahed houses, looking very Eastern amongst their palm trees. Behind the sea front there are two or three streets, chiefly containing curio shops, interspersed with many grey walled godowns with their forbidding barred and shuttered windows. People stay at Yokohama, some because the hotel is comfortable, some, like the American ladies, who, though bringing large boxes of dresses, are so fascinated by the Chinese tailors' prices, that they stay to have more made, others again to haunt the curio shops, and really the selection of articles made with a view to the wants of the ordinary traveller is so good, that you can scarcely do better, we determined afterwards, than shop at Yokohama. Others again are so foolish as to be marked for life, by employing the services of Hori-Chigo, whose advertisement runs thus: "The celebrated Tattooer, patronized by T.R.H. Princes Albert Victor and George, and known all over the world for his fine and artistic work. Designs and samples can be seen at the Tattooing Rooms."

Thursday, September 24th.—Such a glorious day, and we took a sudden determination to go at once to Tokio, a short hour's journey. We found, on arriving at the station, our luggage surrounded by a group of the smallest of porters in neat blue uniforms, and caps with yellow bands, dubiously surveying my large basket, which was ultimately transported by the help of all. The railways in Japan were built by English engineers, and worked by them, until the Japanese learnt to do it for themselves. They are perfectly English, and the names of stations, directions, even the mile posts are written in both languages. The fares are extraordinarily cheap, and the third-class crowded, whilst the one first-class carriage on each train is almost exclusively used by Europeans. There are newspapers in the waiting-rooms; they have the French system of locking you in the latter until shortly before the arrival of the train; and the American check system for luggage. There was a funny little toy train waiting for us on the very narrow gauge, drawn by a tiny black and yellow engine. The long carriages with their seats lengthways have as many as twenty-two windows, and they are lined with Lincrusta-Walton paper. There is a wooden tray with a tea-pot filled with hot water, and glasses for the tea, which the Japanese are always drinking. When we stop at the stations there is such a cheerful chorus of clicking high-heeled clogs, as the men and the little ladies, with their smiling brown babies on their bent backs, tippet and shuffle along.

The short run between Tokio and Yokohama is perfectly flat, with nothing but rice fields, or if there is a little eminence it is crowned by the dwarf forestry, which is the peculiar feature of Japanese scenery.

Tokio or Tokyo, is the official capital of Japan. It is the old Yedo of our schoolroom geography. The Minister of Foreign Affairs had sent his secretary to meet us at the station, with a carriage similar to an English victoria, drawn by pretty thick-set black Japanese ponies, and with the Indian custom of a running sayce, who jumps off and clears the way at the corners. To the right of the broad canal, along which we are driving, we see a grand structure, which we suppose to be an official building at least, and are surprised when we are told that it is the Imperial Hotel. It is as palatial inside, with its broad staircase and passages, and marble dining hall, and its crowds of obsequious servants, who, hands on knees, slide down in deep bows at every corner, and that drawing in of the breath like a gentle gasp, which in Japan is a sign of great respect. The government have shown much enterprise in assisting to build several of these large hotels by grants of lands and subsidies, thus encouraging foreign travellers to come and stay. They serve also as places where imperial guests, like the Duke and Duchess of Connaught (who stayed here), and the Czarewitch, can be entertained, as the palaces, owing to their complete absence of furniture, according to the custom of the country, cannot be rendered habitable for the reception of Europeans.

Tokio, beautiful Tokio, with its multitudinous little brown-eaved houses, crowded in lowly company together, its broad moats, with the green water, over which the mists gather at night and disperse in the early morning sun, its great walls, formed of blocks of stone piled up obliquely without the aid of mortar that guard the Shogun's Castle, and the pale-blue grey skies, with the clear bright atmosphere, which lends such a charm and softness to the picturesque scenes around. The charm of Tokio is undefinable. It is so subtle as only to be felt. But wherever you go, you will be always coming back to those miles of solid masonry and those moats with their grassy banks, with a single row of twisted dragon-shaped fir trees at the top—trees, that like all else in Japan, are dwarfed, and where perhaps two or three solemn rooks will perch and caw hoarsely, or even a red-legged stork, with outstretched wings, will flap idly across.

It was at four o'clock this afternoon that we arrived at Nikko, and drove from the station through the end of the great cryptomeria avenue, past the village, until the jinrikisha was suddenly shot round a corner, down a narrow passage, and stopped at the courtyard step of the Suzuki Hotel. Here quite a little crowd of bowing attendants received us with many deep salaams, and sucking-in of breath; one relieved me of an umbrella, another of a cloak, and another of a book, and went before us, encouraging us with graceful gesticulations and faces wreathed in smiles to enter the house, impressing us in an indescribably charming manner that we were showing them but too much honour in doing so. Of course we drank tea—it is the first ceremony on entering any Japanese house; and then came the second one—the solemn ceremony of the bath.

Bathing is the passion and pastime of the Japanese, and they bathe as often as two or three times a day. In all towns there are public baths, where, in the evening, the population meet to gossip and take a bath for the modest price of two cents. Not long ago men and women in a state of nature bathed together, but Government has forbidden this now. However, we visited one where a wall separated the bath, but still left the entrance to both open to the public view. In villages there will be a tub or barrel outside every door, and one evening we saw a man preparing his bath, with a fire kindling under the zinc bottom of his tub. They take their baths as hot as 110° Fahrenheit, and for some unexplained reason foreigners find that cold or lukewarm baths are unsuited to the climate, and adopt the native temperature. The rule at hotels is that the first arrival is entitled to the first use of the bath.

To take up the thread of the story, we left Tokio at eleven this morning, the Foreign Office sending a carriage to take us to Ueno station.

Through groves of cryptomeria, maple, fir, willow, wild cherry and Spanish chestnuts we travel. Past great clumps of bamboo, which to see only is to be able to picture the mighty growth of their graceful, feathery foliage; by picturesque villages, with their angular brown thatched roofs crowding low down over their mud-wattled walls, nestling amongst banyon groves interspersed with persimmon trees, bare of leaves but laden with bunches of golden fruit. Then we emerge on to the open country, where the cultivation is so exquisitely neat that it resembles a succession of kitchen gardens. There are no hedges, and no grass, but the whole land is taken up by small patches of onions, turnips, maize, millet, sweet potatoes, and the broad caladium-like leaf of another species of potatoes, whose English equivalent to the Japanese name I failed to discover. These alternate with rice fields, where the bright yellow tells of the ripening and bursting of the grain. The soil is rich and black, and labour is done by hand-spade, but the absence of pasture strikes us. However, there are few cows or oxen, and no sheep, numberless experiments failing to rear them; and the ponies live on chopped straw, beans and the refuse of grain.

An hour before reaching Nikko we pass into the mountains. It is such a picturesque, well-wooded range, this Nikko chain of mountains, and they all bear that peculiar Japanese characteristic of rising straight out of the plain, ending with sharp three-sided cones, and like all else in this country, though lofty, they are on a small scale, toy mountains that seem to fit in with the miniature picture.

We had time after our arrival at Nikko, and before dusk, to pass through the village, across the wonderful red lacquer bridge, and following a grass path to come to a Waterfall. On the rock opposite is inscribed the word Hammôn, and the legend goes, that as no one could, as we see, possibly cross the fall to write it, an artist threw his pen at the rock and it inscribed this Sanskrit word. And now in the growing twilight we pass along under the shadow of a row of mutilated grey idols, each squatted on his pedestal with crossed hands, looking over the stream. I counted 120 figures, but no two people have ever been known to make the same number. At the head of this solemn avenue of gods there is a larger one facing the others. They are supposed to be the Judges before whom the spirits of the departed pass, and are judged whether they shall go to heaven or hell; and hence they are covered with many paper labels, the prayers of relatives for the deceased, that grace may be granted them by the gods. It is a solemn tribunal, with its presiding judge, and each face is different in expression, and yet they are such mobile, expressionless faces, as if to represent a dispassionate and unbiassed judgment.

After dinner we adjourned into an empty room, when a man appeared with a card, and before we could look round the whole room was full of merchants producing out of their cotton bundles, beautiful carved ivories, bronzes, silver, china, lacquer, and furs, for Nikko produces excellent ones. They are so persuasive, and ingratiate their wares all round into your hands, that it is with difficulty we escape; and making our airy chambers a little less so by having the shutters run out of their cupboard, we are soothed to sleep by the wailing sounds of the samisen, that comes from the brightly-lighted little tea-house on the opposite hill.

It is amusing the next morning to dress with the wall of the room thrown back, and to hear the constant shuffle of sandals, or the clatter of the clogs as these little men and women in their flapping draperies cross the yard; and this courtyard is so characteristic. It is but a few square feet in dimensions, yet there is a dragon-shaped fir-tree in the centre, whose outstretched arms are supported by bamboo poles, which form a little arbour with a seat in it; then there is a stone lantern and a bronze stork, a lamp-post and a wandering paved pathway, that gives a great idea of distance.

We go directly after breakfast to the Temples to see the tombs of the Shoguns. They are three hundred years old, and as beautiful as carving, colour and design can make them. We ascend up a winding flight of stone steps through the gloom of a magnificent avenue of cryptomerias. They are tremendously tall, impressive trees, with their moss-grown trunks and stems, and these steps wind through their midst, a fit leading up to the great mausoleums. Passing the courts of a monastery, we are first shown a Buddhist temple where, hidden behind the silk-bound bamboo blinds, there are three colossal gold Buddhas seated cross-legged on lotus leaves. In the mysterious gloom, they look solemnly and indifferently into space. On the platform by this temple there is suspended a big bronze bell, which is sounded by a pole propelled against the side. As we stand there it gives forth its sonorous musical toll, and at every hour of the day its sweet and solemn note echoes over the valley. Then, seated in a semicircle, the priests of Buddha begin to chant the morning orisons, droning in a nasal tone, and with the accompanying tom-tom of a drum. We leave them to pass on to the tomb of the great warrior Shogun, Yeyásu.

The wide road, bordered by those walls of mortarless blocks of stone, leads up to the flight of steps and an elaborate Sammon or gateway, the entrance to the first temple. There are a number of wooden tablets outside, on which are inscribed the names of the subscribers to the fabric of the temple. The inner court is full of interest, for you must imagine that all the buildings it contains are covered with decorations and paintings. One of the storehouses where pictures, furniture, and other articles belonging to Yeyásu are kept, has carvings in relief of elephants, in which the joints of the hind legs are turned in the wrong direction. There is the tree which the Shogun carried about in his palanquin with him when it was still small enough to travel in a flowerpot, and the stable for the sacred white pony, kept for the use of the god; over which is a very clever group of three monkeys, representing the three countries of India, China, and Japan. One monkey shows he is blind by covering his eyes with his hand, another deaf by stopping his ears, and a third dumb by closing his mouth. The one signifies that you must see no evil; the other that you must hear no evil; the last that you must speak no evil.

The water cistern, hung round as is usual in these temples with coloured rags, is formed of a single block of granite, so evenly cut that the water flowing over it is a glassy, imperceptible surface. Next to it is a library, where through the grating we see a revolving book-case made of lacquer with gilt columns, containing a complete collection of the Buddhist scriptures.

And now we come to the exquisitely beautiful gate of the Yomeimon, with its graceful arabesques founded upon the peony pattern, its niches and columns, its golden clawed dragons and groups of Chinese sages, which leads into the inner court of the temple. Surrounded by open trellis-work screens, we pass up several flights of steps, and take off our boots by the huge bronze money-box waiting for offerings. The interior is filled with a dim light, but you are in the midst of a place so rich in subdued soft colour, so embroidered in elaborate designs and harmonizing tones, that it is some minutes before you can at all appreciate the full beauty. The ceiling is formed of squares divided by ribs of black lacquer and enamelled in peacock blue and green; there are gilt carved screens, where perch birds of paradise, doves, parrots, ducks, peacocks; others where the asarum or peony, the royal flower, the lily, and the lotus, are carved in high relief. And the ante-chambers on either side are equally perfect; in one there is a carved and painted ceiling with an angel surrounded by a chrysanthemum, and some boldly executed eagles; in another, pictures of unicorns on a gold ground, and some phœnixes.

In an adjoining temple a woman in scarlet and white draperies performed a sacred dance. It is a slow and graceful movement; the bells in her hand keep rhythmical time, while she amuses and charms away the evil spirit from the dead Shogun. We have now a long pilgrimage to perform, up to the platform on high, where rests the body of Yeyásu. The ancient stone stairs, the balustrade and columns, are clothed in the most vivid green moss, whilst the cryptomerias form a dark archway above. There is complete silence around. The place is damp and deserted. We might, from their moss-grown appearance, be the first to tread these steps for a thousand years, and slowly mounting them, we feel we are breaking the spell that has hung over them, as we find ourselves on the stone terrace at the top. Here there is a praying temple, and we pass round to the tomb at the back. It is a simple bronze urn, shaped like a small pagoda, with a stone table in front, on which is placed a bronze stork with a candle in its mouth, an incense burner, and a vase of artificial lotus flowers. Such is the end of all greatness.

Returning home, we took jinrikishas for the mountain expedition to Lake Chữzenji. For some miles we travel by the side of the river's bed and between the mountains, meeting many pack-ponies laden with merchandise, shod like the men with straw sandals. It looks rainy, and the men have donned their waterproof coats, and these consist of a straw mantle formed like a thatch; when you see a fisherman standing in the water with his legs immersed, and only this thatch above, it produces the most comical effect of a floating haystack. As we begin climbing the mountain road, we see many strange and beautiful new shrubs, flowers, and trailing creepers growing amongst the rocks. Soon a tea-house comes in sight, with the front entirely open, and pretty sliding screens of blue paper. Cushions are placed on the floor and tea brought by a welcome-smiling damsel. It is pale, straw-coloured tea made from the young undried shoot of the tea-plant, and it is not allowed to infuse, but is poured straight into the tiny handleless cups, with two or three leaves at the bottom, and served on a lacquer tray with pink and white sweetmeats. But how artistic is the design on the common bronze kettle hanging over the open fire in the centre of the room, and kept always boiling for tea to be quickly made; how delicate the pale blue colour of the thin eggshell cups, with the spray of cherry blossom. It is one of the many charms of Japan, that art is brought to use in all the appurtenances of daily life.

The ascent to Chữzenji, right into the heart of the mountains, is perfectly lovely. I have never seen grander or more charming scenery. When we rest for a minute at one of the many tea-houses, there is such a splendid view of two cascades flowing down a rocky precipice. It is the meeting-place of several valleys, and the joining of several mountain spurs, and there is an open park-like space, which looks so green and smiling amid these rugged fastnesses. There is a movement in those bushes in the valley! It is a troop of monkeys jumping from branch to branch; for Japan is a strange mixture of tropical and hardy growths. You find the flowers and plants of north latitudes growing beside the palms and fruits of the tropics. The ascent becomes more and more trying, though this good, new road was hurried over, to be finished for the visit of the Czarewitch last year, which never took place, owing to his attempted assassination by a fanatic near Kyoto.

Clouds came down as we reached the pretty fall at the summit, so we only heard its roar, dulled by the thick mist; but they cleared away again, as we came to the shores of the lake, 4375 feet above the sea. The deserted houses in the village are used by the pilgrims who come here in August. We rested on the balcony of a tea-house overhanging the lake, and then the descent was accomplished in one unbroken run, one coolie acting as a drag behind, whilst the other in the shafts steadied the jinrikisha round the sharp curves.

September 28th.—We spent a long morning amongst the Tombs again, and we shall carry away with us such a vision of picturesquely pointed black roofs, outlined in gold and red, and graceful bamboo groves, of moss-grown flights of steps under the shadow of stately avenues of cryptomerias, of ancient stone walls with a vista leading to massive torii. We shall dream of the many solemn rows of stone lanterns, of gateways bright with rainbow hues and guarded by dragon monsters, of the bronze urns hidden away up on those quiet nooks in the mountains, and above all of the enchanted atmosphere, the deep stillness, the solemn peace that rests over these shrines of the dead.

We waited on the steps of the temple to hear the big bronze bell slowly send out its voice once more at midday across the valley, and then came home.

On our return journey to Tokio in the afternoon we took jinrikishas to Imaicho, the station beyond Nikko, so as to drive five miles through the magnificent cryptomeria grove that runs parallel with the railway. The avenue extends for fifty miles, and was used by the envoy of the Mikado when he sent to offer presents at the tomb of Yeyásu. These cryptomerias are grand trees, with their stately trunks shooting up in regular lines, whilst their long branches only grow from their summits, and intertwining make a dim twilight below.

On arriving at Tokio, we had a drive through the fairyland of its glimmering streets.

CHAPTER VI.
NEW NIPPON

We were up early to get a glimpse of the Mikado as he passes to open some new barracks. His route is lined with policemen, pigmy but efficient guardians of the peace, with their white duck uniforms and large swords. The morning mists are floating off the grey green moats, as we pass into quite a new quarter of Tokio, where the noblemen have their palaces, amid gardens green with willows and acacias. We drive past the red brick buildings of the Peeress' School, the New Police Buildings, and the Dowager Empress' Palace, guarded by sentries, until we come out on the exercising ground before the barracks.

Scattered about this plain are companies of infantry and cavalry, mounted on small black ponies, whilst a band is being marched inside the barrack square, where are anxious-looking groups of officers in gala dress, ablaze with decorations of the Order of the Chrysanthemum and Rising Sun, awaiting their sovereign's arrival. It is an apathetic crowd, which shows no excitement as the advance guard with an outrider in green and gold livery appears, quickly followed by two closed barouches, the first of which is surrounded by a company of Lancers with flying pennons. We just catch a passing glimpse of a dark man with a beard, rather stout, and looking more than his age of forty. The band plays the National Anthem and the gates close on the procession.

And this is the 121st Sovereign of Japan, the first commencing his reign in 660 b.c., as the preamble to the Constitution runs: "Having by virtue of the glories of our ancestor ascended the throne of a lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal." In connection with the ancestor-worship, which is the only form of worship performed by the upper classes, the Emperor's oath on his accession is interesting. "We, the successor to the prosperous throne of our Predecessors, do humbly and solemnly swear to the Imperial Founder of our House, and to our other Imperial Ancestors, that in pursuance of a great policy, co-extensive with the Heaven and with the Earth, we shall maintain, and secure from decline, the ancient form of government.

"That we have been so fortunate in our reign in keeping with the tendency of the times as to accomplish this work, we owe to the glorious spirits of the Imperial Founder of our House and our other Imperial Founders. We now reverently make prayer to them and to our Illustrious Father and implore help of their sacred spirits, and make to them solemn oath, never at this time, nor in the future, to fail to be an example to our subjects in the observance of the Law."

At eleven o'clock, Mr. Nagasaki, Master of the Ceremonies in the Imperial Household, calls for us in a royal carriage to show us the country Palace of Sheba, whose gardens lie by the sea-shore. Side by side in the grounds, which are approached by a very unpretentious drive and entrance, stand the European Palace, furnished, and the Japanese one of paper screens and matting covered floor, though we are shown here into a carpeted room, with heliotrope satin covered chairs and sofa. It is the custom now in Japanese houses of the upper ten, to have one European furnished room, which is only used for the reception of foreigners. As we take tea out of the little eggshell cups, we do not think the garden looks large, but by the time we have followed the blue uniformed janitor, with the eternal chrysanthemum on his cap, in his up and down wanderings, we feel as if we had walked miles.

The Japanese ideal of landscape gardening is to have a different view from every point, and to this end they make a miniature park. These knolls, mounted by wooden steps on one side and descended on the other, represent hills; the pond crossed by a stone bridge made out of two stones, is a lake; the island in its midst is formed of a rock and one tree; the timber is represented by some dwarfed and distorted fir trees, for the smaller and more spreading, the more valuable they become. The Japanese take great pains with these deformed trees, pruning them back, and picking out the fir needles one by one. They give large sums of money for an old tree, and we were shown a tiny fir in a pot over eighty years old. And yet these Japanese gardens, twisted and deformed as they are, with no open green lawns or bright flower-beds, are very quaint and attractive in their own way. Then we drove on to the Euryo-kwan, another Imperial Palace, where the Emperor and Empress hold their annual cherry blossom party in April, and when the arched avenue we are standing under, is a mass of pink and white bloom. The chrysanthemum garden party at the Palace is in November, and very beautiful, from all accounts it must be, the plants trained into every shape and device, of ships, pagodas, and umbrellas.

Mr. Nagasaki told us a great deal of the bitterness of the struggle of old Japan against the sudden inroad of European custom, a struggle that is apparent everywhere, but more especially in the capital at Tokio. The next generation will be altogether European. The Court is modelled on the etiquette of our English Court, and the Emperor has the same court officials as the Queen, whilst the Empress holds Drawing Rooms, and has her ladies in waiting, everyone wearing European and low evening dresses. We found that all gentlemen wear European clothes, whilst their wives yet cling to the far more comfortable and graceful kimono. English is taught in all the upper-class, schools, and spoken very generally in shops, where the names are also written up in English, though there are only 3000 Europeans altogether resident in Japan. The Mikado has a son of twelve, and two little girls, and the former is soon to have an English tutor.

We drove to Ueno Park, to a luncheon given in our honour by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Enomotto. This restaurant is the "Berkeley" of Tokio, and it was a most elaborate repast, though we could have wished that it had been in a Japanese house. However, Viscount Enomotto, Viscount Okabé, Mr. Nagasaki, and M. Haryashi Tadasu, had brought their wives, Viscountess Okabé being a charming bride who spoke English. These ladies wore kimonos in pale blue, fawn and grey, and their costly embroidered obis were clasped round with a single jewel. They had diamond rings and brooches, and their glossy hair arranged in wonderfully glossy coques with tortoiseshell combs; and such sweet gracious ladies as they were, shyly putting out their hands, and bowing so low and gracefully, and speaking in such soft, caressing tones. Even here, though, European influences were at work, for I saw a pair of high-heeled French shoes, and even a pair of carpet slippers peeping out from under the kimonos.

The room had such beautiful vases of flowers, arranged as only Japanese can, not put together, but as if growing in natural sprays. After much drinking of healths and ceremonious compliments, we adjourned to the neighbouring Technical School of Art, where we saw specimens of lacquer work, and some of the thirty-five processes through which it passes before completion. The natural taste for art in the nation comes out in the work of these 190 students, who pay ten yen a year for their instruction, for their wood carvings and drawings from life are of extraordinary excellence, and executed too with the roughest tools.

The same evening we visited the Maple Leaf Club, to see a performance of "geisha" or dancing girls.

This fashionable club was founded by the Nobles, for the preservation of Japanese customs, and as a protest against the general use of European ones. Thirty dancing girls are maintained, educated and kept in strict discipline from the age of fourteen, in the premises of the club. We are ushered through numerous dimly-lighted corridors, on our stockinged feet, into a large matted room, bare of furniture, where we squat on cushions on the floor. A Japanese dinner is served, course after course being brought in lacquer bowls. A row of maidens, with their almond eyes dancing with laughter, squat before us and smile gleefully as we vainly struggle with our chopsticks, and try with frantic efforts to swallow the recherché dinner, for as Murray truly says: "Europeans cannot eat Japanese food." And this was the ménu. Sweet cakes of rice and sugar, served on plates with the monogram of a maple leaf; soup, a brown liquid with floating lumps of fish; an omelette (of ancient eggs) with fish sauce; a hot trout with upturned tail, with grated cheese coloured pink, a stewed fig, and a finger-like radish that tasted like ginger; more fish with a nasty sauce and stewed seaweed. As will be seen, fish formed a large item of the dinner, for the Japanese eat all that comes out of the sea. Saké is served from the long-necked blue and white bottles into tiny cups. Despair was gaining upon us at the ceaseless arrival of more lacquer bowls, when the work of the evening commenced.

Three demure damsels, in quiet kimonos, with their samisens or guitars, enter, and begin to play and sing. From behind a screen, their faces hidden by their fans, steal in three geishas, dressed in the loveliest grey and pink kimonos, embroidered with the crimson leaf of the maple. Slowly they girate, their clinging garments trailing around their turned-in toes. Deliberate and graceful are their slow motions, and the three figures act as one piece, and not only do their arms move in unison, but their faces do so too, and they elevate the eyebrows and close the eyes with the rise and fall of the body. In pretty imagery they tell the pathetic little story of the maple leaf: its birth and growth, its mature glory, and its death, the dance ending by the fans being thrown upon the floor, even as it falls to the ground and dies. A second performance is a clever mimicry, by the aid of masks, of an old man, his wife and daughter; and the last dance, with the floating gauze streamers that wave rhythmically with the music, is most elegant. These geishas are the favourite form of amusement, and in all villages you pass houses with mysterious gratings, enclosing a floor, where nightly the gentle wail of the samisen is heard and the graceful performance of the geishas is seen.

October 1st.—We have had a terrible experience of a typhoon. It began with a thunder-storm last night, accompanied by violent showers of tropical rain, the drops being as large as small marbles, whilst the thunder claps crackled and boomed overhead, and the dazzling lightning was blinding. The air was full of electricity, and a feeling of restless foreboding took possession of all. This morning the air was so damp and close that you felt scarcely able to breathe. Violent gusts of wind, increasing in succession, alternate with strange pauses of breathless stillness. There is no twitter of bird or hum of beautiful dragon fly, for they are forewarned by these signals of danger, and have crept into safety. The force of the wind increases, and it is blowing a hurricane, as in our ignorance of these dreadful phenomena of typhoons (a word formed from the Japanese meaning "great wind,") we leave the Imperial Hotel at Tokio, on our return journey to Yokohama, just as it reaches its height.

Trying to walk to the station, I was blown away at the first corner, and then two men with a jinrikisha began a hand-to-hand struggle with the wind, making scarcely any progress, and across the open spaces being literally blown backwards, and only able to steady the jinrikisha from going bodily over. How we reached the Shimbashi station I never understood, but I know that we arrived breathless, blinded, and soaked through with the rain, with dishevelled hair and battered hats, thankful only for the shelter of the station; and just as we seated ourselves in the carriage, a lady was brought in very much bruised and hurt by the overturning of her jinrikisha, which had been blown away over an embankment into the canal. You may read descriptions of typhoons, but until you have seen one, I defy anyone to have the smallest idea of its awful power.

The fury of the wind was terrible. The train stood quite still at times, unable to steam, however slowly, against the wind, whilst the carriages trembled and rocked on the narrow gauge with every blast of wind, and we thought more than once that it must be blown over. The sea was carried in long spindrifts or lashed into brown whirlpools; an awfully angry sea, boiling and hungry, lashing up in mist and spray against the breakwater we were on. And here are several heartrending sights, for one sampan has been washed up and completely broken on the breakwater, whilst others are being wrecked against its sides, and we can see the horror-stricken faces of the men clinging in agony to it; whilst other sampans are fast drifting on to it, and we watch with awful fear their frantic efforts to save themselves. Houses are unroofed or blown down, trees bent double or uprooted as we look, hedges collapse, crops are laid low, and we in this little carriage are out in its midst, with nothing to break the full fury of the elements. But even as we begin to wonder what to do on our arrival at Yokohama, we see that the crisis is past and the gale subsiding. At Yokohama the streets are strewn with the débris of the typhoon, and all vessels in the harbour still have their steam up, should their anchors drag. In two hours the most extraordinary change had taken place. The waters of the harbour had become blue, and tranquilly lapped the shore, the sun shone out, the wind died to a breeze. It was a perfect summer's afternoon. The wind when we left Tokio was blowing at 76·8 miles an hour; four hours afterwards it had fallen to 40, and soon after died away.

We spend a happy afternoon in the curio shops, at Messrs. Kühn and Messrs. Welsh, whom we consider have the best things, and then visit, with Mr. Hall, a nursery garden on the Bluff, for we think of having one of those prim little Japanese gardens at home.

The next morning we leave Yokohama, and make an expedition to Kamakura, a pretty seaside village, to see the great Diabutsu. The approach to the Buddha is through a gateway which bears the following beautiful inscription,—

Kotoku Monastery: "Stranger, whosoever thou art, and whatsoever be thy creed, when thou enterest this sanctuary, remember 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.—By order of the Prior."

We left the hotel amid many "Sayonaras" (farewells), reached the station by the drooping avenue of willows, and, with five hours in the train, arrived at Kioto, and settled ourselves into its excellent new Hotel, with palatially proportioned rooms.

CHAPTER VII.
THE WESTERN CAPITAL AND INLAND SEA

Kioto is the western metropolis of Japan, and was the only capital from 793 until twenty years ago, when the present Mikado re-established his supremacy over the Shoguns, and selected Tokio as the metropolis of the Empire.

We began the next day by doing our duty by the sights of Kioto, and commenced with His Majesty's palace, of Gosho, for which a special permission had been sent us. This is now the third Imperial palace that we have visited. I think we were foolish to come, because by this time we might have known that there is really nothing worthy of interest to see.

The palace is enclosed by high walls and covers an area of twenty-six acres. At the gate of "the August Kitchen," we went through an elaborate ceremony of inscribing our names in the lacquer and gold tasselled visiting book of the Mikado, whilst two exceedingly unkempt officials, in rusty black kimonos, superintended our movements. Of course this palace, like the others, is bare of furniture, carpets or hangings. The fusumas, or screens are decorated with splashes of blue paint and green mountains, or with funny little pictures of Japanese life, drawn with a total neglect of perspective. A lot of old women in wicker hats were raking, with bamboo claws, His Imperial Majesty's courtyards. The garden is scarcely so good as the one at the Hotel, with its pond on which floated an unpainted wooden gondola. The whole produces an impression of discomfort.

We pass first into the Seiryoden, or "Pure and Cool Hall," where the square of cement in the corner was every morning strewn with earth, so that the Mikado could worship his ancestors on the earth without leaving the palace. Then into the Audience hall, in the centre of which is the Imperial throne, hung with white silken curtains and a pattern meant to represent the bark of a pine tree. The stools on either side of the throne were for the Imperial insignia, the sword and the jewel. On the eighteen steps stood the eighteen grades into which the Mikado's officials were divided. Then we see the Imperial study, where His Majesty's tutors delivered lectures. The suite of rooms called the "August Three Rooms," where Nō performances, a kind of lyric drama, were performed, and lastly a suite of eleven rooms, where the Mikados, when Kioto was the capital, lived and died. We see the Imperial sitting-room with the bed-room behind, completely surrounded by other apartments, so that no one should approach His Majesty without the knowledge of his attendants. This sounds perhaps interesting enough, and having read Murray's elaborate description we were eager to see Gosho, but the reality is a succession of ordinary Japanese rooms, dark and bare, without the redeeming feature of well painted fusumas.

The obnoxious janitors, notwithstanding our credentials, obstinately refused to show us the only thing of interest, namely the present Imperial living rooms, on the plea that they are being now prepared for the reception of the Heir Apparent who arrives in a few days, and we see bales of furniture covered with green and blue cloths, bearing the royal insignia of the chrysanthemum, being dragged across the inner courts.

The Nijo Palace is surrounded by a moat and pagoda-guarded wall of Cyclopean masonry. It is undergoing repair, and we can therefore only see the handsome outer gateway formed of lacquer and beaten gold, and the beautifully worked gilt fastenings to the gates, but inside the descriptions read like a dream of beauty, which we should be most anxious to see, were it not for the experience we have just gone through at the other palace of Gosho.

Kioto has its Diabutsu, its big bronze bell, its pagodas, palaces, gardens and monasteries, but above all it has its temples—temples large and small, decorated and plain, dull and uninteresting. You might easily spend a week at Kioto seeing nothing save these, but of temples I confess we are by this time thoroughly sick and tired. The sight of a torii makes us turn wearily away, and from a sāmmon (or gateway) we hastily flee. Everyone who visits Japan ends by experiencing this satiety of temples, a feeling induced by their monotonous identity and entire want of originality. Still we feel that we must visit some of the sights, so somewhat half-heartedly we go forth towards the Show Temple of Nishi Hongwanji, the headquarters of the western branch of the Hongwanji Buddhist sect, a dark massive structure. In the courtyard is the large tree which, "by discharging showers of water," protects the temple from fire in the vicinity. We wander through the state rooms, the minor shrines, and the big temple; and in truth the decorations are marvellously beautiful, but I will not weary you with the detailed descriptions of lacquer-ribbed ceilings, golden pillars, of kakemonos (hanging scrolls) over 200 years old, of cornices wrought in coloured arabesques, and shrines painted and carved in floral designs. Again there are those most exquisitely painted scenes on the sliding screens, of peacocks and peahens seated on a peach tree with white blossoms; of wild geese on a dead-gold ground, of scroll patterns carved in the design of the peony or chrysanthemum leaf and flower, nor of the angels in full relief that gaze down upon us from the ceiling. But I must make especial mention of the gilt trellised folding-doors, opening back to disclose a wintry scene of life-sized bamboo and plum trees, and of pine with dark-spreading branches covered with snow.

We wander through the peaceful stillness of the monastery garden, where the jostle and noise of the thick crowding streets around comes over the wall in a dull hum, feed the gold fishes in a pond from the cool cloister, and climb up to a little tower—or pavilion of the flying clouds—where, on kneeling on the ground, we can trace a few pencil lines on a gold ground, supposed to be the work of the great artist, Kana Molonobii.

Then, passing the Hijashi Hongwangi, which, when finished, will be the largest Buddhist temple of Japan, we go on through a narrow street, under an archway, and pass into an enclosure, where booths of gay trifles line the road running to the Sanjūsangendo, or the temple of 33,333 images of Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, where a thousand gilt images of five feet rise in tiers above each other, the number being completed by the smaller effigies engraved on the face and hands of the larger ones. Near by the great Buddha, twin to the Kamakura one, is dwarfed into a building where his head touches the ceiling, and you can only gaze up from underneath at his colossal sleepy features. To the right, hung under a belfry, is one of the two largest bronze bells in the Island, and immediately under it is a little open temple, where five Buddhist priests, squatted in a semicircle, monotone the evensong. We return home with that comfortable feeling that comes of duty performed, and proceed to enjoy ourselves by a drive in the dusk through the fairy lighted streets.

Kioto is a fascinating place, but, as I have said, it is not the sights that make it so. The attraction partly lies, as it always does in Japan, in those wonderful little brown streets, with their wide eaved and diminutive two-storied dolls' houses, hung with original sign posts of fans, monster paper lanterns and gay flags, that stand out in sharp relief down a long vista, from the purple mountains. Kioto is on the plain surrounded by a circle of mountains, and at the end of all the streets, face which way you will, there is always this effective background to the toy town. If you mount a little way up them, you can look back and have a panoramic view over thousands of brown-roofed huts, presenting a perfectly level surface, except when a temple roof, square and dark, overshadows the others.

We had thought Tokio the most fascinating imaginable place, but, except for its grass-grown moats, reflecting waters, and cawing rooks, Kioto is even more enticing. The streets are narrower and more untouched by that dreaded European taint, showing itself at Tokio in small drapers' shops, and cheap lamp and umbrella stores. Life is more primitive, the people are more unsophisticated, as we know by the little crowd, polite and interested, that attends us in our shoppings, and that makes the dusk in the shops darker, by the blackness of their gathering round. The gay china shops, the chemists, blacksmiths, booksellers, the fish and fruit stores cease not to interest us; the walking picture, coming to meet us of a Japanese lady with shapely, tightly-girt figure, with the baby on her inclined back, sheltered under a paper umbrella, charms us as much as ever. The wee children in their blue and white kimonos or wadded jackets, their heads shaved, with a bald circle on the crown, just like the Japanese doll of a toy shop; the little ten-year-old nurses with their brown babies asleep, and heads waddling from side to side as they shuffle along; the ladies, in handsome dress, taking an afternoon airing with their husbands in a double jinrikisha; the sellers crying their goods and attracting attention by the help of a bell, gong, drum, or whistle: all these things, though we seem to have been in their midst for so long, almost at times to have lived all our lives with them, are a never-ending source of interest. But a new charm has been added to these, one that exceeds them all, one that is all-absorbing. We throw temples, palaces, gardens, sight-seeing to the winds, and resolve to devote the few remaining hours of our stay in Japan, to shopping and the curio shops.

We drive through many winding streets and draw up in one not different to the others, and, lifting up the black draperies, enter. There may, perhaps, be a few bronze or lacquer articles spread about, but nothing to indicate the priceless art-treasures that we are presently going to see. With hands on knees, sliding down with bows of reverence, and the gasping produced by sucking in of breath between the teeth, stands the proprietor, surrounded by a background of assistants. With deferential encouragement he leads you to the backmost recesses of the shop, through winding passages, across paved squares, until you come to the prettiest little picture of a garden made out of a courtyard of a few square feet, and here in rooms opening out of this, surrounded by fire-proof godowns, far away from the eyes of an inquisitive crowd of passers-by, he shows forth his precious treasures. This courtyard is so artfully arranged as to deserve description. There will be, perhaps, a clump of bamboos in one corner, a stone lantern on one side, a piece of water with gold fish in it in the centre, and an azalea on bamboo supports trained round it; a bronze urn with drinking water and a wooden scoop by it, and a green metal stork. First of all tea is brought, and the smoking boxes, which contain the hot ashes in a bronze or china urn, and the bamboo trough for the used ashes; then the real work commences. An art museum, the labour of hundreds of years ago, when a man devoted his life-time to the production of one or two works of art, are laid on the matting before you.

From behind cabinets, from underneath tables, boxes are silently produced, and from out of folds of soft crêpe or flannel, and many paper wrappers come lovely objects, lovingly, caressingly fingered and stroked by their owner. There are vases of rock crystal, jade, plaques, and trays of the most exquisite cloisonné, when a magnifying glass is gently pushed into your hands that you may enter into the minutest details of the minute work. Bronzes, and satsuma china, inro or lacquer medicine boxes, with their succession of trays for powders, and those lovely Netsuke or carved ivories where each wrinkle and hair, each line and feature are so faithfully graven in the quaint heads and groups. The prices asked are fabulous, but I often scarcely thought that the dealer wanted to part with his curios, he seemed so proudly fond of them.

I confess that our taste inclined often to the baser kind of shops, where the goods were of doubtful origin, but Japan has, in the last few years, been so overrun with curio buyers and Americans, that the few really antique things left are scarce, and hard to find. The Japanese, like the Chinese, always reserve their best things to the last, and then somewhat reluctantly produce them. We haunted the old shops where great golden Buddhas sat enthroned amidst a most miscellaneous collection—men in armour, memorial cabinets, huge bronze vases, inlaid swords with quaint tsuba, or sword guards, mingling with lovely china vases, which, if modern, are nevertheless a joy for ever to possess—to feast your eyes on their delicate shiny surfaces of ruby sang-de-bœuf, imperial yellow, lilac, blue, apple-green, or rose pink, strewn with a spray of snowy blossom or a spiky shaft of bamboo, where little birds fly across the pale sea of colour, or solemn storks perch beside some waving reeds.

Again and again we are made to wonder how these small shops, so meagre and unpretentious outside, find the capital and become possessed of such wondrous treasures. Hours you can spend there, and hours they will be pleased to show you these, for in Japan no one is ever in a hurry. Life is very leisurely.

The "curio fever" is upon us. To anyone who has visited Japan the description of a Canadian authoress is but "too intensely true."

"You don't 'shop' in this country. Shopping implies premeditation, and premeditation is in vain in Japan. If you know what you want, your knowledge is set aside in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and your purchases gratify anticipations that you never had, to be paradoxical. And you never fully know the joy of buying until you buy in Japan. Life condenses itself into one long desire, keener and more intense than any want you ever had before—the desire of paying and possessing. The loftiest aims are swallowed up in this; the sternest scientist, or political economist, or social theorist that was ever set ashore at Yokohama straightway loses life's chief end among the curios, and it is at least six weeks before he finds it again. And as to the ordinary individual, without the guidance of superior aims, time is no more for him, nor things temporal; he is lost in contemplation of the ancient and the beautiful in the art of Nippon, and though he sell his boots and pawn his grandfather's watch, he will carry it off with him to the extent of his uttermost farthing...."

And so we felt.

But of course it is the crêpe and silk shops that woman-like fascinate me most. Those lovely, soft, crisp, textiles, in rose-pink, coral, lilac, blue, and silver-grey, in sea-green, mignonette, and chrysanthemum-yellow, shades that you can find in no other country, because the secret of these heavenly dyes is known only to the Japanese. Oh! they are things to make your coveteousness strong, your heart ache, unless your purse is full and deep. Then there are the common washing crêpes, with their graceful running designs so artistically disposed, their harmony of colouring, and of which I order kimonos for dressing-gowns for all the children of the family. There is a lovely crêpe with rainbow stripes, not as you who have seen the brilliant orange-green and purple rays of the original would imagine, for it is a white filmy texture, with only a suspicion of pale melting zephyr stripes, slanting across it.

Then there are the silks and crêpes embroidered with blood-red autumn sprays, with butterflies, pink dolphins and sea-shells, or panels of satin of such exquisite workmanship, with ever recurring views of Fuji, and hanging kakemonos and screens and coverlets, all so beautiful, and of such faithful artistic merit. We are shown specimens of a newly-revived industry, handed down from ancient dyers, where pictures rich and soft are raised in velvet, against a pale silk or satin ground. By an ingenious process of wires, running parallel with the hard thread of the woof, bearing the outline of the picture in velvet, which are, after the dyeing and steaming cut out, these quaint pictures, which at first you think painted, are produced. Everything you see in Japan is art. It is brought into the manufacture of the commonest things of daily life, and seen to perfection in these cut velvets and rich embroideries. It is in the air they breathe. For even as we pass out from this rich inner sanctum, into the open street shop, where the crowd of customers, each seated on cushions on the counter step, with a salesman squatted before him, swiftly running the counters of his abaca up and down, multiplying and dividing like lightning by this ingenious machine, we see piles of coloured goods, of quite common quality only one degree less delightful in colour and design, than those we have chosen from. I must not forget to mention in our shoppings the photographs, which are extraordinarily good and very cheap. It might also be of use to someone to know that we found at Kioto, Daimaruicha and Co., and Takashimaya Ilda and Co., the best shops for crêpes, silk, embroideries, and kimonos, made to order, and Nishimura for the cut velvets, these shops having but one price, and with the goods marked in plain figures.

We get up early the next morning, for now that we are so soon leaving Japan, we feel that every hour is wasted that we are not out and about, drinking in last scenes from these bewitching streets. We direct our jinrikishas into a distant quarter of far-reaching Kioto, into the meanest and dirtiest of streets, where most of the shops are full of old iron, and hung round with second-hand goods like a pawnbroker's, but where we are told that the real old-fashioned curio-shops, not got up collections of curio for the circumnavigator, still exist. I must say that they seemed full of impossible rubbish.

In the afternoon, somewhat satiated with buying, we drove out to Shugaku—one of the Mikado's summer villas. It was an intensely hot afternoon, but the first disagreeably warm day that we have had, as our weather has been perfect, with no rain and sunny skies day after day. October and November are always delicious months in Japan.

The villa consisted of an absolutely bare, undecorated, matted, tea-house, of modest, you might in the case of this, its royal owner, say mean dimensions, but the garden is a gem. From it there is a near view of purple hills, all in little crinkled edges, running in lines one below the other, made nearer to us by the warm still atmosphere, whilst behind the garden rises a formal hill; truly Japanese in its conical structure, covered with pine trees, whose pink and purple stems gleam out from the dark fir needles. There is the usual figurative mile upon mile of winding paths, the steep hills to descend and climb up by stone steps, the familiar bridges, one with pagoda-covered roof, and the other of bamboo and turfed, crossing the neatly devised harbours and bays of the artificial lake, whose banks are covered with palms, but it is the hedges that are worth coming to see. They are of azalea and camellia, and honeysuckle, cut low, so that they spread out to an enormous thickness, to a breadth of twenty feet, and it is over these green open ramparts, that you look out on the lovely view.

We refused in coming home, though we had time to spare, to visit any more temples, and we spent the last evening in going to a fair, given in honour of the God of Water. As at Tokio, where we saw a similar festival for the God of Writing, it was held in a special quarter. The dark, narrow streets are outlined in coloured lamps, with arches, the light glowing through the paper, and the varieties of colour—red, green, blue, and pink, forming a soft and effective illumination, not surpassed by many more elaborate Jubilee ones. Many of the houses are decorated with wonderful marine representations of blue waves, with fishes and dolphins, and fir trees placed at intervals, with more lanterns and red paper devices. The locality is en fête, and the entire population is thronging the streets, which we wander delightedly through. There are performances of monkeys and dogs proceeding, and a crowd outside trying to look over the partitions; geishas, with the accompanying twang of the Samisens, are going through their slow performances behind the open bars. Children are flattening their noses against the glass cases of the confectioners', with their sweetmeats and temptingly sugared cakes, or group round the vendors of paper toys stuck on pieces of wood, whilst the women gaze as longingly at the cheap combs, tawdry hair-pins, and gaudy flowers, laid out under the hawkers' glaring oil lamps. There are booths for the sale of cheap soap, cutlery, sandals, glass, jewellery, and candles. The tea-houses are doing an enormous trade, and the naturally contented people look supremely happy.

We left Kioto to pay a flying visit to Osaka on our way to Kobe. Each town seems prettier than the last, and Osaka is no exception. Our chief object in going there was to visit the Arsenal, and according to the special instructions of the Minister of War, we were most courteously received by the chief, Colonel Ota, and given tea at his official residence before being conducted over the arsenal.

We are much struck that instead of having to teach Japan, there is something that we can learn from her. Her civilization, coming, as it has, so late in the decade, breaking in suddenly upon centuries of dark ages, she has benefited by the experience of other nations, and constructed her civilization on the best systems of other countries. Here in this arsenal we see the newest improvements of science in machines of every nation. Some are from England, some from Italy, France, or Germany. The Arsenal is in beautiful order and keeps employed a large number of workmen. They manufacture their own cannon, and we passed through the large workshops, the smelting furnaces, and saw mouldings and castings, the making and filling of cartridges. The arsenal is inside the outer moat or glacis of the castle, and, with canals and rivers, has through water communication to the sea and to the forts on the coast.

It is this rapid civilization, of which the arsenal is only an example, that fills the traveller with admiration. Japan was only opened to foreigners in 1868, and with the fall of the last Shogun and the beginning of the present Mikado's reign European customs rapidly spread. Some say that Japan has gone too fast, and has absorbed and not digested sufficiently the forms of civilized life. The Japanese went to Prussia for a constitution, and call their Parliament the Diet; to England for their railway system, which was built, organized, and worked at first by English engineers and firemen. They went to France and Germany for an army organization, borrowing their blue and scarlet infantry uniforms with white leggings from the French, and their artillery uniform of blue and yellow from Germany. To France again for their culinary art; for which these Japanese have a latent talent, making excellent cooks. To England again for her model of Court etiquette and nobles' titles, and then again to Germany for medicine. The great reaction that followed naturally in the course of this rapid innovation is not yet dead. The struggle is still going on, as one can easily see, but a few years hence the revolution will be complete, and Japan will cease to be so intensely fascinating to foreigners. It presents, perhaps, the most wonderful page in the history of the world: this deposition of the Shogun, the reinstatement of the old dynasty, a great revolution in a remarkable intelligent country, perfectly bloodless, of short duration, and changing the whole face and destinies of the land.

But these Japanese civilize so fast, that now there is scarcely a European employed in their State departments. They are very proud of this, and gradually European agents for their steamships, companies, the managers of banks and commercial houses are being dismissed, or superseded by Japanese, who take the management into their own hands.

But to return to Osaka. If the castle at Nagoya is so well worth seeing, this one of Osaka is equally so, for it is the exact counterpart of the other, only minus the keep and the dolphins. There are the same outer and inner moats, the same white plaster walls edged with crenellated bronze tiles, resting on stone walls, guarded at the four corners with those square towers, loopholed in several storeys; but I think that the perfectly gigantic stones of the walls are even more colossal than at Nagoya, for there are several opposite the entrance by the gateway and the guard-room, that measure at least twelve feet square. It will always remain one of the wonders of Japan, how these stones, with the primitive appliances of the earlier Shoguns, were ever placed in position. The open square of the inner moat is now a garden, and the palace has been used to accommodate the General and his staff. It is worth climbing up to the top of the walls for the splendid view over the plain, always bordered by those chains of mountains, that run as a prickly backbone from north to south of Japan.

Osaka is a charming town. It is called the Venice of Japan, and with its flowing rivers and canals intersecting the streets, its high, arched bridges thrown across on a single sweep, its grassy banks and avenues of weeping willows, it is fitly likened to that Queen City of the sea. The houses are built on piles projecting over the water, and narrow passages in between, lead down to the stone steps, where there are multitudes of boats.

To stand on one of the bridges and watch the ceaseless ebb and flow of the changing stream of life, is a dream of delight, only to be compared to standing on the Bridge of Galata at Constantinople. Blue-coated coolies, with their bare brown legs, roped to heavy carts, with their encouraging grunts; itinerant sellers slung with bamboo trays of vegetables; jinrikishas by the hundred, pedestrians jostled from side to side, closed sedan chairs, from behind the curtains of which peer out priests whose way is cleared by running attendants, for it is a day of ceremony, with much coming and going from the temples—all this kaleidoscopic stream, accompanied by the warning cries, and the dull thud of the echoing wood pavement, is what we see. And then look up and down the river, with a vista of bridges, and see the irregular mass of brown houses, winding round the bend of the stream, with poles on the roof, hung with waving blue cottons, placed there to dry, and the overhanging balconies, from which men are fishing. And then the scenes of river life—the brown shiny figures bathing and plunging in a cool bath, the hundreds of sampans moored by the banks, where reside a large aquatic population, and the high-peaked prows of others, which, propelled along by six oarsmen, again remind one of the gondolas of Venice. There are other sampans, which, with one square brown sail set, come skimming down the canals before the afternoon breeze. Yes, Osaka is a charming place, and these river scenes passed in crossing the bridges, add to the never-ending joys of the dark, narrow streets, compressed on to the restricted peninsulas of land.

Having done our duty by the arsenal, and to our good constituents at Sheffield, we sit out and have tea on the balcony of the hotel, and then go for a prowl in the dusk round the streets.

Then succeeded one of those lovely evenings. I shall never forget those sunsets and twilight evenings, with their pale, washed skies, that we had in Japan. They only last for a short half hour, but they are entrancing. If you watch carefully, you may see the shadows lengthening, but after the brightest and hottest afternoon, suddenly the colour of the sun seems to go out of everything, and in its place steal up soft shadows, the vista of streets grow dim, and darkness falls into the little open shop fronts, whilst the sky is suffused with the palest wash of lilac or saffron. The jinrikisha bulbous lights come out, one by one, like glow-worms, and the single lamp lights a dark interior. And then as we pass across some street, which lies to the west, we see a blaze of orange, lying low on the horizon, where the sun has just dipped. It becomes cold and chilly for an hour, and then begin the fairy scenes of night, in a Japanese town.

It is an hour in the train from Osaka to Kobe, where we arrived at eight o'clock.

Kobe is a pretty seaport, girt round, close at hand, by great mountains, up into which the streets run. It is too cosmopolitan and European to be very interesting. But from the handsome Oriental houses, with their pale buff and grey tints, the deep balconies with green blinds of the foreign consulates on the Bund—from the curio shops, Europeanized like Yokohama, you can pass into the quaintest and brightest native bazaar, where from feeling yourself in Europe (especially if you are staying at the French Oriental Hotel), you can suddenly plunge back again into native Japan. We find the steamer of the Nippon Company in quarantine, by reason of a cholera death on board and coming from Shanghai, an infected port; so we have to wait for two days.

On one afternoon we went up to the waterfall in one of the green mountains, crowned with straggling pine trees, to see sunset over the harbour. After having hovered round and inspected half the gold Buddhas for sale in Japan, now that we have reached the last place of departure, we have at length bought one. Of course, directly we had done so, we immediately saw a much better one in an adjacent shop. I cannot help feeling that it is a matter for thankfulness that we are leaving this seductive country, not ruined, it is true, but greatly impoverished!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII.
THE YELLOW LAND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX.
THE CELESTIAL CITY

A curious difficulty arises in The Celestial City. It is that of locomotion. How are we to get about with no carriages, and only those abominable agonizing carts to drive in? We end by taking refuge on the humble donkey, and every time we went out messengers had to be sent to the walls to charter the best attainable animals.

Great mandarins and ministers-plenipotentiary go in chairs, but smaller fry are not allowed to use them, besides which they are prohibitorily expensive. Even the late Marquis Tsêng, when he returned from his embassy to Europe, was at first denied the privilege of a chair, that he might understand that, although great in England, he was small in China. For the Secretaries, ponies are the chosen mode of locomotion by day, and fifty ponies stand in the Legation stables. At night all must walk, lantern in hand, or go in a cart. So it is with the ladies. Carriages are unknown and impossible, with the result that the majority make, as I have said, a sweet prison of the compound, and lawn tennis has votaries among all ages.

The sky is clear and blue, with a north wind bringing a deliciously crisp feeling into the air, suitable to this October month. The climate of Peking offers a redeeming feature to the Europeans who are isolated here. For the next six months this cloudless sky is uninterrupted. Rain is unknown for nine months together, from July to April, and the worst season is the rainy one of May and June, when the steamy heat is most trying. The winter is perfect—cold, but with warm sun in the middle of the day, and the snow that falls, but occasionally, is soon dispersed by the wind.

Moreover, Peking is fortunate in having a summer resort close at hand in the Western Hills, some fifteen miles distant. Here the Legation lives for the hot months, in a privately-rented group of Temples. The dust storms are the scourge of the town; from the crumbling "loess" and alkaline nature of the soil, they sweep in blinding clouds over the plain, and are most irritating in their fortnightly recurrence. The air is so intensely bracing and dry, as to unpleasantly affect the skin.

The first thing to do is to grasp the topography of the Celestial Metropolis, with its city within city, and wall within wall. We return to the Gate of Sublime Learning, and ascend by it on to the great Tartar Wall.

Peking is spread out at our feet. We can trace out the four Walls, each containing a separate town. The outer and lower ramparts surround the Chinese city. The next exclude the abodes of the conquered from those of the Conqueror. Here upon the higher ground were assigned, two hundred and fifty years ago, spacious residences for the Tartar Bannermen. Within the Tartar town again, and surrounded by its defenders, is the Imperial city, and enclosed again, securely inside this, with further moats and guard-houses, is the Wall of the Forbidden City itself.

These Walls are from fifty feet high, to forty and sixty feet wide. They are built on massive stone foundations, but the walls themselves are of brick, filled in with mud. How have these common black bricks survived the crumbling of ages? But, except where the base has been marauded for the saké of the yellow clay of the mortar, they are as solid as the day they were constructed. At intervals of three hundred yards there are massive flying buttresses, and a crenellated parapet crowns the summit. They are pierced with many gateways, for there are nine to the Tartar city, and eight for the Chinese. Each gate is surmounted by a square tower of many storeys, loopholed for archers and musketeers, and with quaint heavy black roofs, decorated often in gay colours.

Poetical names mark these Gates, such as "The Eastern Straight Gate," "The Gate of Peace and Tranquillity," "Of Attained Victory," "The Gate of Just Law," "The Western and Eastern Gate of Expediency." These vast fortifications extend for twenty miles, and enclose an area of twenty-five square miles. They are all that you see from whichever side you approach the city, for they are loftier than the loftiest interior pagoda or tower. They are the most impressive and venerable sight, and alone would be worth coming to see.

We are walking on the top of this Wall of the Tartar city—over the ancient grass-grown pavement—commanding a splendid view of the Chinese capital, in the early morning light. The pale grey haze over the Western Mountains points the direction where lie the ruins of that beautiful Summer Palace, magnificent even in its decaying fragments, standing for ever as a reproach to the allies, but fit judgment on the barbarous cruelty of a civilized nation. From this bird's-eye view, Peking appears so buried in trees, that it is hard to believe that its teeming streets, with a population variously estimated at from 400,000 to 800,000, is immediately below. We are so far above it, that even the street cries and calls come up in a softened murmur.

We can distinguish the black roofs of several temples, and the bright green-tiled ones that denote the abode of a Prince of the Blood, called the First or the Tenth Prince, in gradation of propinquity. Over there now the sun is shining and gleaming from the many yellow-tiled roofs of the Imperial palaces of that Forbidden City, where shrouded in mystery, unseen by his people, dwells the Emperor who holds sway over a fourth of the human race.

For about two miles we walk upon the ramparts, which would make a splendid promenade, turning the corner of the square by the Eastern Straight Gate, which is beautiful with its pagoda newly-decorated for the recent passage of the Sovereign. The roof is formed of dark crenellated tiles, with deep outward curving lines, underneath which is a lovely inlaid mosaic in vivid blue and green tiles, whilst the green bronze dragons with twisted tails are perched in single file along the curving sweep. From point to point of the gracefully arched line, suspend crescent-shaped eyes, that tremble in the breeze. And each of the numerous gates have equally fine pagodas, so that in our wanderings we were always coming back to one of these familiar features.

But a difficulty occurs. We wish to descend from the wall. There is a ramp; but at the bottom a locked and spiked gate. We call for a ladder, without result. Pulled by the guide, pushed from below, we scramble up and over a nine-foot wall. It was not dignified, and the crowd was amused at our quandary.

We are making our way towards the Tower which leans against the City Wall, belonging to the observatory.

We pass into a shady courtyard to gaze upon the very instruments whereat Marco Polo wondered in his famous travels. There are two planispheres, an Astrolabe of great size, cast in bronze, and supported on twisted dragons of exquisite workmanship, and which are probably the best specimens of bronze work in Eastern Asia. Ascending up some damp stone steps, we find ourselves on the top of the Tower, and inside a finely wrought iron railing, where there is a gigantic Globe of the Heavens, with the planets yet marked in relief on the surface. Also a quadrant, sextant, and sundial; while the large Azimuth instrument in the corner was a present to the Emperor Kanghai from Louis XIV.

And these instruments are as perfect as they were when placed here 300 years ago. Indeed, some of these are still used by the Astronomical Board for their observations. It brings home to us the fact that we must never ignore for a moment, whilst living in China, that in the earliest centuries she was far ahead in civilization of any country in the world. But while the West has gone rapidly onward, overtaking and outstripping the East, China, self-contained and shut off from contact with all other nations, has remained stationary, so that much we see around us dates from that era. The Chinese are under the impression that there is no nation equal to theirs. They suppose themselves the centre of civilization for the last 2000 years, and claim that China knew the art of printing, invented gunpowder, and was learned in astronomy, long before us. They consider that China is the middle of the Universe, as is shown by the name, which, in their language, signifies "The Middle Kingdom." They look upon themselves as superior to us, as we think ourselves to them, calling us Barbarians, and considering all European nations as such. As a nation they never travel, and are down-trodden by the conservatism of the Mandarins, who, risen from the people, wish to retain their superiority by keeping the lower classes under.

The real interest of Peking lies in its intense age. The city is 4000 years old. Conquered by the Mongols, or the "Golden Horde," who, in their turn were overthrown by the Tartars, Peking of the present day is built, like Rome, upon the ruins of many cities. The description of the famous Venetian traveller is as true to-day as it was when written in the thirteenth century. It is in this wondrously preserved life of the middle ages that the curiosity remains; it is because we see the streets under their primitive conditions of dirt, before ideas of sanitation were dreamt of, because we can look on the carts that were in use at a period corresponding with our conquest by the Norman—on the wheelbarrows with the single wheel, which creaks as loudly now as it did then, on the wells with their Eastern earthenware jars, and the water drawn as in the pictures of Isaac and Rebecca—on those great Walls, then necessary for protection from the wild hordes that scoured the plains, and where the gates are still closed, in accordance with the ancient custom, at sundown. It is all the same. We might have fallen into a Rip Van Winkle sleep at Tientsin, and awoke in the streets of the Celestial Capital in the middle of the dark ages.

There is one thing which impresses itself indelibly on the mind, and is called to remembrance with the first mention of Peking. It is the dirt! the dirt! the dirt!

It is impossible to conceive of such awful filth, and, unless you have seen it, I defy anyone to have the faintest idea of the sights and smells of this city of the Flowery Land. The condition of the streets is the same as it was B.C. If they were described faithfully and in detail, common decencies would be violated, even as they are but too openly. Let it suffice to say that they reek with refuse, garbage, and decaying matter of every description; that the houses throw out into dry pits, dug anywhere in the road, their pig's wash and offal, and that the putrefaction and decay fills the air with noisome smells that overpower you at every turn. Filth and refuse you soon grow hardened to in Peking, but occasionally some particularly nauseous sight, such as a dead dog in a far advanced stage of decomposition, or a cat with the entrails protruding, unnerves you again.

Wherever there is water you may be sure that it is a stagnant pool of liquid filth, covered with green slime, and containing untold horrors if stirred up. Also, if you pass down even the comparatively clean Legation Street, in the wake of the watering-cart, the stench from the stirred-up dust is unbearable. Men are seen going along with baskets on their backs, carefully collecting with a bamboo pronged fork every morsel of manure, for this is the only kind that the Chinese use, chemical fertilizers being unknown. Fortunately, too, there are hundreds of pariah dogs, many evil-looking beasts, who, with their sharp noses, are busy turning over the most unsavoury heaps, or lie asleep gorged in the middle of the narrow roads. Also the pigs, great coarse-haired masses of fat (the Chinese pig is a peculiarly revolting species) wallowing in the foul slush. Enough! In every place and corner are revolting sights, unfit for a civilized community.

Then there is the dust. It adds to the unpleasantness of going about. Such dust as it is, all-pervading, all-penetrating, leaving a pungent smell in your clothes, so that I soon found out that it is necessary to keep a special costume to face it. Once outside the Compound, you find yourself in the jostle and crowd, the shouts and disorder of the streets, and as a cart or horseman passes, a cloud is raised that obscures everything for the moment; and so it is that, for half the time you are out you see nothing for the dust, and for the other half only through a dim veil of the same. At sundown the state of affairs is made worse by the succession of mules, purposely loosened to roll over and over.

Lastly there is the incredible state of the roads, with their deep holes in the very middle of the busiest thoroughfares, with huge stones lying across, or a steep embankment, round which you must diverge. There is this excuse, that the soil, owing to its light and porous nature, aided by the extreme dryness of many months of the year, easily shifts with the wind. If the dust is intolerable, what must it be in winter, when it is turned into a quagmire of black mud or sludge? It is no uncommon thing for a mule to be drowned in the streets. He falls into this soft morass and, unable to get a footing, perishes within sight of the bystanders.

There is yet another and a more unpleasant drawback to be met with, in going about the streets of Peking. The Chinese, but particularly the Tartar and Manchu part of the population, dislike Europeans, and openly insult us as we pass along, jeering and laughing in a most offensive manner, and obviously making the rudest observations. Even the little children come out and call us foul names, of which Barbarian and Foreign or Red-Haired Devils are the mildest terms—language which they must have become familiar with by hearing it used by their parents. There are several places where Europeans are almost invariably stoned, and public feeling has been intensified by these late unfortunate riots on the Yangtze.

In the afternoon we go into the Chinese town, passing through the great Chien-men or Front Gate. Inside this there is a large blank square, formed by the meeting walls of the Chinese and Tartar cities, which are pierced by four archways. The centre entrance is only opened and used by the Emperor on the occasion of his yearly visit to the Temple of Heaven. But through the others that connect the towns, there is a constant moving, hurrying crush of people, the two streams meeting and blocking in the arch.

We lift up and pass under some black draperies and find ourselves in the Chinese bazaar—in a passage one yard wide and completely covered in. The shops are a succession of rooms, raised on a step from the earth passage and all open in front, where you can buy fancy articles and artificial flowers. There are the pretty jade pins, which form the centre for the shiny coil of hair worn by the Chinese women, long earrings and bracelets of the same, mandarin buttons in coloured stones, clocks, porcelain, shoes, and silk embroideries. It is the quaintest and prettiest of Eastern arcades, with the afternoon sun penetrating the bamboo blinds in shafts of light, lighting the picturesque groups of buyers and sellers squatted on the floors. The three-foot passage is blocked by a curious crowd, assisting in our purchases.

We penetrate yet further into the Chinese city, across a stone bridge and through a dangerous open square—a meeting of ways—where crates of merchandise, carts drawn by tandem bullocks and mules, palanquins, wheelbarrows with baskets of liquid manure running over, horses and donkeys, are all mingled together, going and coming in different directions. Yes! Sir Edwin Arnold, you speak truly of

 
"The painted streets alive with hum of words,
The traders cross-legged, mid their spice and grain,
The buyers with their money in the cloth,
The war of words to cheapen this or that,
The shout to clear the road, the huge stone wheels,
The strong slow oxen and their rustling loads,
The singing bearers with their palanquins,
The broad-necked hâmals sweating in the sun."
 

Then we go up a narrow street, tortuous and dirty, to another bazaar where there are nothing but lantern, fan, and picture shops.

Half an hour in these streets gives you more idea of Chinese life than all the books of travel you may read in a life-time.

Peking beggars description, still let me try to give some idea of what we see.

Here we are in a narrow lane. This is the aristocratic quarter where the mandarins and officials live. There are a succession of mud-plastered walls, roofed at the top and presenting an absolutely blind appearance to the road, which, when combined with the always dilapidated condition of the latter, gives the most deserted and squalid impression. Opposite the entrance are hung tablets, indicating the offices and titles of the householder. They are on a blank wall, for you must observe that the entrance into a Chinese house is never straight. It always winds, and this is supposed to be a defence against the incursion of evil spirits, for the latter can happily only go straight. For the same reason we see the little children wearing their pig-tails plaited at the side of the head, so that the evil spirit, not finding anything to grip at the back, is unable to catch hold of them. In the houses of poor people, who cannot afford such elaborate precautions, there is always a mud screen erected in front of the door. Let us go inside. We find ourselves in a succession of courts, surrounded by low buildings, where a family and its branches reside, to the number sometimes of 200 persons. There are separate buildings for the cooking, eating, sleeping, and living, but the family all live together. As our "boy" said, when we inquired about these houses, "Family man live there." Truly one, indeed. Yet there is something to be admired about this family life, this care of aged parents and luckless relations.

The streets with shops, present the most wonderful vista of untidy ends of tattered rags flying from poles, of dingy decorations of strips of paper or cloth hanging over the doorways. The houses have a mean appearance, being only of one story, and their walls, unless they are of mud, consist of carved wood openwork, covered in with tattered yellow paper. I think I may truly say that I never saw one, where the paper was not torn and discoloured. Occasionally you come upon a shop, bright with the names of the goods written in gold and scarlet or green. They were originally all like this, and this one is only recently finished, yet in a few months will become as dull and dirty as the rest. Everything is allowed to run to decay. The Chinese never seem to think it necessary to repair or re-decorate, and the climate powerfully aids in this destruction.

In many of the streets, the road is raised on an embankment of loose dust, and then bordered by an empty space, where the garbage of the dwelling-house is increased by the refuse from the various trades pursued in it, and which is thrown out indiscriminately to fester and decay in the hot sun, or it is occupied by cheap-jacks who lay their goods in the dust, hawking and crying their wares. Here are rows of lanterns with a primitive wooden receptacle for the lamp, filled in with opaque paper, and frequent watch-houses, whence the watchmen patrol the city at night with the muffled beat of a gong.

The life in these streets, straggling, ill-compacted, and grimy as they are, is yet full of vivid interest. Not that these open shop fronts, or grimy pig-tailed men, can compare with the fascinating life of a dear little Japanese street. Here is a tea-house, with the distinguishing sign of ornamental green and gold wooden drums outside, and inside a crowd sitting cross-legged on benches, each with a bowl and chopsticks held within an inch of his nose, shovelling his food rapidly into his mouth. There a man with rows of little black balls spread out before his shop; he is a coal and these balls are made of clay mixed with coal dust—a most economical method of firing. That house in the middle with glazed windows is a bank, and whenever we see a particularly bright exterior, we may be sure that it belongs to a pawnbroker, for he does a large business, the Chinese being ever ready to pawn their all for a good gamble or perhaps a whiff of opium, as some unfortunates at home will do for a last drink. There is a man squatted on the ground, shaking some sticks in a bamboo-holder. He is largely patronized, men coming and going and choosing out a stick and putting it back with either a pleasing or dissatisfied look. He is a fortune-teller. Or there is a group intent on a game of hazard, when the stakes in question are a few cash. Yes! these Chinese are certainly inveterate gamblers, and would gamble their food, their clothing, anything away. Or it is a juggler with a simple apparatus giving a street performance, and many of our best tricks are, as we see, borrowed from the Chinese conjuror.

Then the coffin shops, piled high with those ponderous sarcophagi hewn out of a single tree-trunk, so thick, so substantial, warranted to last for generations, and there is no sending for one in a hurry, for generally the coffin has been waiting in the house for years for its occupant. The funeral furnishers also do a thriving business, for we see many of them, hung inside with the green paraphernalia, the lanterns, carrying pagodas and poles that make up such an imposing procession. So do the wedding contractors, which we distinguish from the undertakers by their red decorations.

Then there are the carpenters and ironmongers, the blacksmiths and the book-shops, the laundries and the barbers, and those of other trades, all of which are easily distinguished at a glance, in the open shops, where the work is carried on within view of the world, adding tenfold to the interest of the streets. The travelling cobbler is frequently seated at the corner of a thoroughfare, repairing the soft felt soles of the Chinese shoes. The itinerant musician is seen under an awning with his book and drum, singing to an attentive audience seated round a table. In all these shops, there is a whirligig round which an incense-burning tube is smouldering, and which marks the flight of time. Watch this shopman give change. He produces often from up his sleeve, or from round his neck, heavy strings of copper "cash." Now as 1200 of these go to make up a dollar, the counting of the change is a matter of patience. It is a cumbrous monetary system, but well in keeping with all that is Chinese.

We are in the midst of a moving scene of life. Here the descendant of the Tartar soldiery carrying a cage of performing birds, or a stick with a chaffinch tied to it. It is the thing perhaps that he values most of all his possessions, and you will often see the Manchu kneeling on the grass, collecting grasshoppers on which to feed his favourite. Very cruel to them also they often are, sewing up their eyes so that they cannot see to escape. There is a soldier in uniform of bright Imperial yellow bordered with crimson, carrying an antique matchlock with long stock, and a flint in his belt. Soon after another passes on a pony with arquebus and arrows slung across his back, for all Chinese soldiers must, as in the days of Agincourt, be expert archers.

Here is a caravan of camels bearing loads of tea (and connoisseurs always prefer that which has thus travelled overland, to the tea transported by sea), with their slow, stealthy, deliberate walk, and contemptuous turned-up noses, tied together by the rope passed through the ring in the nose, attached to the tail of the preceding one. The last of the string has a bell which keeps slow and solemn time with his dignified walk, and the driver does not trouble about the end of the file, unless the stopping of the bell tells him there is something amiss. A flock of sheep are being driven down that walled lane. They are white with black spots, and have the great lumps of fat on their haunches peculiar to the breed of Eastern sheep. If we follow to where they are going, to the butcher's shop, we shall see the disgusting scene presented by a slaughter-house open to the street. The animals will be torn asunder, joint by joint, whilst still warm, with the blood streaming, and entrails laid bare.

A blue palanquin, with many bearers, is being carried along. There is a great mandarin squatted inside on the floor, and we can just see the handsome magnate with his embroidered robes lined with sable, his turned-up velvet hat with the peacock's feather stuck out straight behind, the red, blue, or white button on which indicates his rank. He wears the red, and is going to the Yâmen or Ministry. He is preceded by a retinue of mounted servants, who summarily clear the way, with the whip if necessary, and their number announces to the world the rank and importance of their master. Now there gallop past us a party of wild-looking Tartars, veritable barbarians they look, with their yellow faces, short lank hair and fur caps. Comes along next, a wheelbarrow, with the excruciating squeak of the single front wheel, while the merchandise is neatly balanced in baskets on either side. It is a perpetual wonder how they maintain their equilibrium, especially when, as at Shanghai, they are used for passengers, and there is only one seated on the side.

Now we must make way for this long cart, crowded with passengers, which corresponds to our omnibus; also for that uncouth-looking waggon, with its piebald team of a single pony in the shafts, with a troika of two donkeys and a mule roped in front. Again and again these curiously mixed teams excite our mirth, the wheeler being often the smaller animal of the whole. Then there is the never-ceasing stream of those blue and black covered carts, of which we retain such a lively horror since our journey from Tungchau, and out of many, jeer the Chinese ladies, looking with scorn at the "Barbarian's wife" riding a donkey, whilst they are boxed up safely inside, with a curtain in front, and guarded by an armah (or maid) seated on the shafts.

Add to all these sights, crowds of donkeys, small and wiry, with their padded saddles on a wooden frame, with a bulging Chinaman with swinging pigtail seated far back, and with his legs tucked up, trotting along—of horsemen on rough Tartar ponies, generally white in colour, and which run along at a great pace, so that there is no rising in the saddle, and lastly the mules, a beautiful breed, large and strong, with glossy coats, cruelly bitted, with a double bit and wire over the upper gums.

We have grown so accustomed to John Chinaman, with his innocent yellow face, so smooth and hairless,—except when as a grandfather he wears a moustache,—his obliquely-slit eyes, and his flowing pigtail, with plaited ends of cord and tassels, that we have ceased to observe him. We are now quite familiar with his baggy pantaloons, which sometimes he binds tightly to the ankle—with his turned-up hat with velvet brim, or eight-sided cap, always with coloured button atop—with his loose blue coat fastened by two buttons on one shoulder, with the sleeves hanging long over the hands, and that serve him as pockets. It is beginning to get cold, so that the wadded coats worn in winter are coming into general use. Whilst there is a level monotony of colour in the lower classes, the upper have the most gorgeous brocaded coats of crimson, blue, and purple, with pantaloons of other colours, that combine in pleasing effect. Some of the men have the long claw nail, but only on the little finger, in token that they do no manual labour, and a disgusting sight it is to see this transparent substance of several inches in length, bending backwards and forwards, as they use their hands.

The pigtail! What is it for? What is its origin? It is simple. The Tartars were few, the Chinese many. Let not the latter see this and be tempted to say: "Arise, drive out the conqueror." Let them shave three-fourths of the head; let the back hair grow long and braid it into a bridle as is the Tartar custom. The pigtail was intended as a mark of subjection to signify to the Chinese that, even as it resembled a horse's tail, so might they be driven like one, whilst the cuff of the official sleeve to this day is cut into the shape of a horseshoe.

Such, says tradition, was the Manchu order, and off came at a stroke the heads of the disobedient. Two generations pass, and the Chinese love the pigtail, as they do to-day, and dread the agents of the Secret Society snipping it here and there, as an insult to the Tartar.

The Chinese ladies are plain. They wear their black hair plastered from a flat parting on either side of the face, and with bunches of artificial flowers and tinsel stuck in, behind the ear, from which depend long green jade earrings. Others have their hair drawn up over a comb, to form a top knot, rising about four inches above the head. There is yet a still more curious fashion of dressing the hair into a plait wired, so as to stand out from the nape of the neck in a stiff curve, just like the tail of a cat. It has a most peculiar appearance. Has it ever struck you, when travelling, as it has me, how very nearly all the nations of the world have black hair, the English, Germans and Swedes being nearly the only exceptions? The Chinese women smear their faces with rouge, beginning by placing one brilliant vermilion spot under the lower lip. They wear the same dress as the men, loose trousers and coats, and their clothes are of the brightest colours—violent greens, blues and purples, richly embroidered in gold or silver tissue, and rainbow tints. They wear many bangles and rings of jade or crystal, and a silver circle round the neck. They too have the long nails, but on all their fingers. We bought some of the pretty silver claws of immense curving length, which they use as shields.

Oh! to see these poor women totter along, just balancing, ready to fall at every step, with their poor little crippled feet. The weight of a fair-sized woman is supported on a pair of green or blue pointed boots, measuring not more than four inches in length. If we could look inside, we should find the toes laid flat under the sole of the foot, the great toe meeting the heel. From the moment the bandages are put on the children, which is at the age of three or four, they are never removed, however painful the swelling, but drawn tighter and tighter until the deformity is complete. In the upper classes many of the ladies have to be carried or supported on either side by an armah when they walk. And yet they are so proud of their feet, they are such a marriageable commodity, for big feet are sufficient ground, even to-day, for a refusal to proceed with a contract of matrimony, that many are solely deterred from adopting Christianity by the obligations, imposed by the missionaries, of ordinary feet. A Chinese mandarin who had studied "England: as she was, and as she is," said to a friend: "You English seem very fond of your Queen—but is it possible that you allow yourselves to be governed by a woman, however good, with big feet?"

It is a comfort here, to meet with the larger and handsomer Manchu women, who come from Manchuria in Northern China, and are not thus deformed. We always distinguish these latter by their wonderful headdress, which consists of a piece of jade, one foot long, and exactly resembling a paper cutter placed across the head to project from ear to ear, and round which the hair is twisted.

CHAPTER X.
THE FORBIDDEN CITY

Now for some of the sights of Peking.

A long hour and a half's ride on donkeys from the British Legation, brings us to the vicinity of the great temple of Confucius.

We find ourselves on a straight, dusty road, with a gateway at the end. It was through that gateway, and down this same road, that the British troops passed, when in 1860 they marched into Peking.

We are frequently seeing painted wooden archways, called Peilaus. These memorial arches are found all over China. They are only erected by express permission of the Emperor, to good and public-spirited persons—to a great man who has given a large sum of money (often solely for this object), or to a widow who has been sufficiently virtuous to remain faithful to her husband's memory. Like everything else, they are generally crumbling or falling crooked.

The approach to the Temple is through a road with a succession of blank walls, the temple itself being equally well surrounded. Here we see a man doing penance, shut up in a yellow box, and striking a bell with a wooden lever at intervals. His punishment will last a month, and if we could see inside, very likely the box is lined with spikes or nails, so arranged that they prick the sinner if he changes his position. Sometimes it is a means resorted to to obtain money to build a temple. "Give, oh! give. 1000l. I must collect before I am released from this cell."

Foreigners are often refused entrance to the Confucian Temple. We parley, too, through a crack in the door, and are told "No, big man is coming." But as usual, greed, in the shape of the golden key that accomplishes most things, conquers, and amid a rush of dirty on-lookers, who find entrance with us as the gate is opened, we pass inside the court of the temple of the Great Teacher. This court is solemn and silent, neglected and deserted, with its dusky groves of cryptomerias and cooing grey doves. The paved pathway leads up to some steps, that pass on either side of a raised stone slab, covered with ancient hieroglyphics, and embossed dragons with wonderfully twisted tails. In the inner court is the temple itself, with a roof of brilliant yellow tiles, and surrounded by pagodas and smaller halls similarly tiled.

We ascend to a marble terrace with balustrades. The door of the temple is thrown open, and forth rushes a smell of damp air, and as the gloom dissipates we cross some matting, raising clouds of dust. By degrees the lofty proportions of the massive hall, with its roof of blue and green, supported on colossal teak pillars of wood, painted a dull red, begin to dawn upon us. We see in the centre the shrine to Confucius, a humble red wooden tablet, set on a table, bearing this inscription: "The Tablet of the Soul of the Most Holy Ancestral Teacher, Confucius." On either side are tablets to the four most distinguished sages, whilst the others, in a lower position, are for the next best celebrated men of the Confucianist school. And this is the Literary Temple in which the Example and Teacher of all Ages, and ten of his great disciples, worshipped. "All is simple, quiet, and cheerless, fit place for contemplation, and suitable for the Great Thought-giver."

The Emperor comes here twice a year to worship the venerated sage, and every sovereign, in token of veneration, presents a "Tablet of Praise." Each inscription is different, and presents some aspect of his influence; he is called, "Of all men the Unrivalled," "Equal to Heaven and Earth," and "Example and Teacher of all Ages." In another court are seen the celebrated stone drums. They are ten in number, of grey granite or stone, and are believed to date from the eighth century B.C., or to be about 2700 years old. The writing on them is in the old Seal character, and consists of stanzas relating to King Süen's hunting expeditions. They are the oldest things in a country where everything is of such antiquity.

On the opposite side of the court is the Hall of the Triennial Examinations for the highest Literary Degree, the Chinese Doctor of Literature. "In commemoration of each examination, a stone is erected with the names of all the doctors. The oldest are three of the Mongol dynasty, and the Peking University has therefore a complete list for 500 years of its graduates."

Then we cross over to the Classic Hall, where the Emperor meets the literati and graduates to hear, and sometimes theoretically to pronounce a literary address. In the centre of the court there is a pagoda, crowned with a wonderful gold knob (like a mandarin's button at the top of his hat), and surrounded by an extremely gracefully-wrought marble trellis-work, enclosing a moat of sluggish green water. Opposite to it is a beautiful yellow porcelain arch, in three divisions, interwoven with green tiles, forming a vivid contrast, yet blending into a harmonious whole. There are other pagodas, containing those curious memorials, of a pyramidal stone resting on the back of a tortoise. These are, of course, also to the memory of distinguished literati. Open sheds surround the court, and inside the black palings, are the benches where the students sit, when the Emperor comes to hear the address delivered, and behind, against the wall, the 300 precious tablets, on which are engraved the authorized texts of the classics, the oldest remains of ancient Chinese literature. Plenty of other temples for ordinary worshippers we see, and always know them by the two poles outside, with gold knobs on the top.

We return to the city down a road which leads past the Drum and Bell towers, great pagoda-like structures, pierced by solid archways on each side, standing near together, both 100 feet high. The drum is sounded at every hour through the long night watches, and can be heard all over the city. A clepsidra is still kept to mark the time, a good instance of Chinese conservatism. Near here is the temple where Sir Harry Parkes and Sir Henry Loch were confined for the latter part of the time they were prisoners in Peking. Until recently their names could still be seen written on the wall, which, however, has lately been white-washed, perhaps purposely. Just before turning into the Meishan we catch a glimpse, in the far distance, of the beautiful Marble Bridge, spanning a lake filled with lotus. "Standing on this bridge, one overlooks a great part of the Imperial palace. The banks of the lake are studded with castles, temples, and gardens," but this, alas! like so much else in Peking, is closed to foreigners.

We now pass into the Imperial City, which is guarded within a wall seven miles in length, and go down a straight road raised in the centre, the sandy waste between it and the shops being in possession of cheap-Jacks and old-clothes' men. This road is in wonderful repair. The Emperor has recently passed over it, and the lanterns are freshly papered and water-butts are set ready at intervals. Thus the sovereign remains ignorant of the usual state of the roads, and knows nothing of the misapplication of public funds. The governor of the city or of the provinces is responsible for the condition of the roads, but were His Majesty to elect to make frequent journeys, the "squeezes" of the mandarins would be ruinous.

The Chinese legal and moral code is of the highest—on paper—but in practice there is a system of "squeeze," which rules through the length and breadth of the land; which pervades all business dealings, and every department of the government, undermining the integrity of the country. Everybody must have his "squeeze" out of every transaction. The Viceroy "squeezes"; the Governor "squeezes"; the judge, the taotaï, the smaller mandarins "squeeze"; for so they live. The pay is little or nothing. The office is valuable in proportion to its power to "squeeze." Our "boy" squeezes us, and back again there is a "squeezissima" within the Royal City itself.

And now we stand under the walls of the Forbidden City. They are covered with Imperial yellow tiles, a deep moat surrounds them, and they are guarded by bannermen. There are but two entrances. There, straight before us is the Coal Hill, surmounted by a pavilion, within which the last of the Ming dynasty terminated the life of himself and his Imperial house, when the victories of the Tartar invader, the capture of the capital, the submission of the provinces, were completed. It is an artificial mound, 150 feet high, and as we proceed round the square of the walls, we see behind, amid the woods, the five summits, crowned with the five gleaming roofs of peacock blue, green and yellow of the pavilions and temples of the Prohibited City. Within its walls are a park and lake.

Little else is to be seen beyond the upper walls and the yellow roofs of the palaces. There are many of them, none apparently of great size. But in the centre hall is seated Kwang-Su, "The Son of Heaven," "The Lord of ten thousand years." The youth of twenty-two, who in his sixth year, upon "His Majesty the Emperor Tung-che suddenly ascending upon the Dragon to be a guest on high," was called unexpectedly, like our own Queen Victoria, from his bed in a distant part of the city to be saluted, in default of a direct heir, as Emperor of China. Is he the happier? The Imperial life must be dull and monotonous beyond bearing for one so young. In the Forbidden City his Majesty must find all his distractions. To go into the provinces would thrice beggar the exchequer.

There is the Hall of Highest Peace, where his Majesty gave rare audience to the representatives of foreign powers. Once only! and what negotiations it took to bring about! At length, yes! the Son of Heaven would let the envoys of the outer world look on him. But they must "kotow" thrice on their knees, touch the ground with their foreheads, and let the Chinese people take it as the bearing of tribute. No, the British Lion, and the eagles of Monarchs and Republics, cannot bend the knee. The point is carried at length. "But," says the Council of State, "it is only in that outer pavilion that our Lord Buddha will greet you."

The trained consuls report that this again is a mark of contempt, and must not be allowed. A more fitting place is decided upon. Then shall the Prince Ching present the letters of credit of the foreign envoys on his knees? No, that cannot be suffered either. Hand to hand must be the communication of monarch with monarch.

At length all was arranged. Their Excellencies in stars and orders, repair to the palace with their staffs. A long wait, with sweetmeats served, and then the audience.

The German minister, as the senior, reads a short address, and the envoys are named. Prince Ching takes their several letters of credit, and places them before the Son of Heaven. He kneels, and the Imperial youth speaks low a few words.

The president of the Tsung Li Yâmen goes to the ministers, and repeats them. The audience is over—the spell is broken. But even now our old friend the Austrian minister, Baron Biegeleben, is finding great difficulty in arranging for the fitting reception of his Imperial and Apostolic Majesty's Commission.

It is time this nonsense ceased. If China is within the pale of nations, she must do as other nations do. If she is not within the roll of civilized States, she must be dealt with differently. Of two things, one!

Here is the Hall of Central Peace, where the Emperor examines and sanctions the prayers for state worship; the Hall of Secure Peace, where the highest literary degrees are conferred; and the palace of Heavenly Purity, where the Emperor in the still morning hour of three, transacts business with his ministers, and which no one enters or leaves without his express permission.

Here at sunrise, the petitions from the six Boards controlling Imperial affairs are submitted to the Vermilion Pencil of the Throne; the prayers also for present and posthumous honours.

Beyond stands the palace of Earth's Repose, where "Heaven's Consort" rules over her miniature court. Adjoining this is a flower garden. Then the Hall of Intense Thought; where sacrifices are made to Confucius, the teacher and thinker. There are other palaces and offices, amongst them a printing office, for the city is self-contained and need have no communication with the outer world. No one knows the population inside this Prohibited City, whether it is great or small. It is wrapped in mystery, and the imagination is free to float round the holy of holies, this Unknown Capital of the Flowery Land.

There are said to be beautiful gardens, with fountains and cascades. But what can make up for the want of variety? Occasionally "the Son of Heaven" goes forth to worship the ashes of his ancestors, or the earth and the moon, at this or that temple.

Then the way is cleared of all persons—and matting is put up on either side of the roadway to prevent the Celestial eyes falling on the people, or the people from seeing their sovereign. The foreign ministers are required to warn their nationals to keep away from the neighbourhood.

Unfortunate Majesty! How the young Emperor must yearn for some knowledge and experience of the outer world, something more than the views of the aged mandarins around him, to guide him in his decisions. Small wonder that he should reject the suggestion recently made of the censor (who is permitted even to rebuke the throne), that for some hours in each day he should, in addition, have the ancient classics read to him. They say that his youthful Majesty is not wanting in intelligence and ability, and it is even whispered that some of the rescripts of the Imperial Gazette of Peking issue from his own hand. Perhaps too he may look wistfully towards the mausolea being prepared for the Empresses-Dowager, and wonder if they will prove true to their names: "Happy Homes for a myriad years."

We meet a wedding procession as we proceed; indeed, we are constantly getting mixed up in these straggling processions, for both yesterday and to-day the horoscope has cast as lucky, and they have perhaps been long waited for. The one is the Fête of the God of Wealth and the Golden Dragon King; the other of the God of Fire and the Inventor of Writing. Everything is scarlet. First come the bannermen, bearing aloft on poles red boards, on which are inscribed the titles of the father of the bride. They are generally a string of dirty men and boys, the scum of the city, dressed in scarlet, with black hats and feathers sticking up like a Red Indian. More men follow, carrying lanterns and draped pagodas, and a cage with white ducks, an emblem of conjugal fidelity. Next comes the band, with enormous drums, draped in red and yellow silk, and ludicrous gilt trombones, which the musician puffs valiantly into, only to produce a sound like the wheeze of a bagpipe. Lastly comes the closed palanquin, richly gilt and embroidered, followed by another containing the parents. It is the day of triumph for the almond-eyed one with the little feet, within the closely-curtained vermilion palanquin. With blare of trumpets and songs of joy she is borne through the streets, securely locked, to the bridegroom's house, where the mother delivers her up with the key of the chair, to the husband, to whom in childhood's innocent hours she was affianced.

All day we are passing houses, outside which are lanterns on red poles, arranged in a square, with archways and decorations, and waiting palanquins and carts, whilst the feast is proceeding inside. In the afternoon we see several whence the guests are streaming away from the festivity, the ladies of small feet being carried by their attendants to their palanquins. It is the prerogative of every poor relation and connection to attend this feast, and often the parents can ill afford such an expense; still, it must be done, or "face" will be lost. Like the "squeeze," this "face," or prestige, is another prominent feature of Chinese life. It is as pronounced as the caste difficulty in India, and pervades every detail of life. The most roundabout methods and transparent deceits are resorted to, to save a man's "face," viz. his credit, or renown.

A funeral is an equally elaborate ceremony. We saw preparations for one in a village, coming up the Peiho. Outside the deceased's house were erected straw archways, whilst a catafalque of enormous dimensions was waiting at the door. As we watched, a life-sized wooden horse, with a sham rider, arrived, drawn on a board, to figure in the procession. The mourners will all wear white, and as many as sixty-four men will aid in carrying the coffin to its resting-place. Food and money will be offered to the evil spirits to propitiate them, and every care taken that the spirit of the deceased shall rest in peace.

Then the tablet will be placed in the family memorial chamber, and sons and grandsons, and great granddaughters and their children, will come in the ages of the future, to tell the spirit of the departed, of the marriage, of the illness, of the promotion, or the fall of a descendant. It may be, too, that a future scion of the house may render service to the State—be made a Viceroy, a President of a Board, a Member of the Grand Council. Will his Imperial Master reward him with title to descend in a few months to an unworthy son? No, the peerage, the honour, will be posthumously rendered by decree of the emperor to the ancestor, be so notified in the Peking Gazette, and, amid a gathering of all kindred, be heralded unto the great Unknown in the Memorial Hall. "Great is the son who bringeth his father honour."

For this ancestor-worship seems to be the only religion which the people practise. Some are Confucians, some Buddhists, some Taoists, but they are held as only moral and perfunctory faiths, whereas this worship of the dead is very real to them, and faithfully performed. They do right, because they fear to disturb the spirits of their forefathers, who will haunt their homes and cause evil to fall on their families, if they do wrong.

We return home by an even dirtier and more slovenly road, past the various Yâmens of the Board of Works, the Board of War, and the Navy, and the Board of Punishments, which obtained such a bad notoriety for the cruelties perpetrated in 1860. There is nothing, however, to see from outside, but an archway leading to several courts.

We spent the afternoon in visiting the various Missionary Establishments of the different nationalities, which have their headquarters at Peking. First to the spacious compound of the American Methodist Episcopal Church, where we saw the boys' and girls' school, the sleeping apartments and dining halls, for they feed and house, but do not clothe them. Their method is to admit the scholars and give them a Christian education, with good influences, without, however, obliging them to become Christians. But whether the writing of essays in English, and the teaching of the piano to girls, is conducive to or comes under the head of missionary work, I am not competent to judge. I should think it better if the teachers were to learn Chinese, and teach the children in their own language, a knowledge of English not being essential to their becoming Christians.

Next we visited a branch of the French Roman Catholic Mission, which, under the able leadership of Père Favier, has done much good work. The school with its day scholar's enclosure, lies under the beautiful Roman Catholic Church, with its twin pinnacles and splendid interior, the altar being inlaid with cloisonné. The organ was bought with the proceeds of the sale of a valuable carpet that came into the hands of the Fathers. The cathedral and bishop are at Peitang on the other side of the city. Since the early days of the Jesuit Fathers, the Roman Catholics have always been active in China. They claim to have 700,000 converts. Their success, in comparison with other sects, may perhaps be attributed to the fact, that their ritual and gaily decorated churches are more attractive, and in accordance with the Buddhist religion and temples; but it must also be said, that the priests go amongst the people, adopt their life, and wear Chinese clothes, including the pigtail. Aided by the nuns, they minister to the temporal wants of the population, as well as the spiritual. Also these priests, when they leave France, come out for life and receive only 100 taels, or 20l. a year, whilst the American missionaries are reputed to receive 100 taels a month, and 200 taels a year for every child. Perhaps this may account for their numerous families. The S.P.G. Branch of mission work under Bishop Scott boasts, alas! few converts in their schools, but as they are thorough, and refuse to have any suspicion of "rice Christians," as the doubtful converts are called, this can be accounted for. The London Mission does good work, but perhaps the most successful of all is the China Inland Mission, owing its existence to its north-country founder—Hudson Taylor—a man unknown to great fame, but who has done, and is doing a great work in this far-distant corner of the world.

We expected to hear a great deal about these late riots at Wuhu, or Wusueh, when we came to Peking. We had read the alarming articles in the North China Daily News of the excited state of the country, the imminent dangers hanging over the European population at the Treaty Ports, and of the arming of the British Legation here. We are almost disappointed to find a serene atmosphere of safety.

There are some who are found to attribute the pretext for the commencement of these riots to the Roman Catholic nuns, who by succouring the foundlings, especially the despised females, to educate in their convent schools, arouse the suspicion of kidnapping them for the purposes of witchcraft. The mortality being high, they are even accused of taking out the eyes of children to make an elixir of life, and of other atrocities. The same charge brought about the dreadful massacre of Tientsin in 1870. More probably, however, this is only an excuse for a rising, which is really fomented by one of those secret societies, like the Kalao Hui, which honeycomb China.

Peking is celebrated for its furs, particularly for sables. London is the great market of the world, receiving the supplies of the Hudson Bay Company and Canada, but whenever an emperor or prince or great noble in Russia requires a fur, it is to Peking that they send. The sables are wonderfully cheap, only costing from 6 to 8 dollars each, but, owing to a difference of treatment in smoking, they are not so dark as those we call Russian sables. They have also a good many white hairs. There are squirrel skins of soft, brown fur, thousands being sewn together to form a single coat. Then there are black and white astrakans, beaver, and otter, and that lovely, silky white fur, the wool of the Tibet sheep. We were offered a mandarin's sable robe, perhaps a booty from the looting of the Summer Palace, for 300 dollars, and I think we shall always regret that we did not invest in it as an heirloom.

We came out of the Legation Hall one morning, to find a picturesque sight of curio dealers squatted beside their blue bundles, or spreading their bright-coloured embroideries, under the open pagoda porches of this princely palace.

Peking is known for the antiquity and splendour of its embroideries,—the best in China; but I cannot fancy golden dragons on cerise satin grounds, or pink flowers on an ultramarine blue, nor yet all the flaming purples, crimsons and oranges (the Imperial yellow alone being beautiful), after the delicate half-tones, and pale tints of the Japanese embroideries. It is always the same in China. Everything is ugly, the colouring and designs hideous. They are grotesque and not quaint, gaudy and not brilliant. And we have visited many curio shops, only to leave them in despair. The single beautiful things are the objets de vertu in jade and crystal, tiny cups and vases, snuff bottles, carved images, all so delicately wrought, but charged for as if worth their weight in gold.

Then tiffen with Sir Robert Hart, the chief of the Imperial Maritime Customs. He has been out here for 30 years, and knows as much as any man, probably a thousand-fold more, about China. His conversation was most interesting. His position is unique, for Sir Robert collects and has absolute control over all the levies on foreign goods; and a large part of the finances of China pass through his hands.

We proceed to see the Examination Hall of the second and third degrees, that for the first being held under the Emperor's eyes.

This Examination is a remarkable feature in Chinese life. It is the ambition of every man, whatever his position or calling, to become a student, for it is the avenue to all greatness, and the means whereby all posts of honour or emolument are to be obtained.

Strange it is that in this stronghold of conservatism, there should be found such a radical feature, whereby the humblest-born may raise himself by his own efforts to the rank of "big" mandarin. Very honourable it is, too, that the greatest attainment, the highest ambition and reward which the country offers, is the possession of this much coveted "First Degree." Year after year, the same men come up, and it must be a noble and touching sight, when, as is sometimes the case, an old man of ninety will offer himself. Though after a certain age, three trials entitle aged candidates to a degree honoris causa. These examinations are held in each province, and consist entirely in the writing of essays on classical subjects. The successful ones are afterwards published, and the victorious candidates accorded public and local honours.

We pass through some empty courts, under several peilaus, erected in honour of great scholars, once gay with rainbow paint, but now, of course, dusty and decaying. We can go no further—for across the great doors is placed an official seal, consisting of two strips of red paper placed crossways. We presume that the examination is still proceeding; 10,400 students from this great province of Chihli having presented themselves this year. The great expense, and the slow, tedious journey to Peking, does not deter the aspirants. For fourteen days and nights they are shut up in separate cells, with desk, chair, paper, pen and ink, their provisions being handed to them through a trap door in the wall. Thankful they must be when the ordeal is over.

We went on the last afternoon to see the Tsungli Yâmen, or Foreign Office—the Board which alone has dealings with the representatives of foreign countries. We pity these in their frequent pilgrimages thither; for to reach it we passed through a succession of the filthiest lanes, tortuous and narrow, bordered with stinking heaps of rubbish. In one of these was the green lion-guarded residence of the Emperor's cousin, Prince Tung, and all these fashionable dwelling-houses with their crumbling walls, from which the coatings of whitewash are peeling, are surrounded by these disgusting passages. Arrived at the Tsungli Yâmen, I only see the outer gateways of green and gold, for of course its desecration by feminine feet is not to be thought of.

Peking is for this reason a disappointment. There is so much to see, and yet so little that can be seen. Of recent years they have closed nearly everything to foreigners, and the bitter feeling against Europeans seems to be increasing. The Lama Temple you cannot visit on account of the hostile attitude of the people. Closed are all the Imperial buildings of the Prohibited City. The Marble Bridge, the Temple of Agriculture, where the emperor ploughs a furrow in springtime, but above all, invisible is the Temple of Heaven.

This latter temple is the most interesting sight of the Chinese City. Its name properly speaking, means, "the Altar of Heaven," for the Emperor attends here to sacrifice twice a year. It is said that "The worship of the Heaven or Supreme Ruler is the most important of all the state observances in China", before the rationalism of the Confucianists and the polytheistic superstition of Buddhism predominated. There are no images of any kind in the temple, and the offering of whole burnt bullocks, strikingly reminds us of the ancient custom of western religions, as that of the Hebrews and Greeks. The ceremonies of the sacrifices are kept with the utmost severity, and are of a very complicated nature.

The chief sacrifice is at the winter solstice. On the 20th day of December, the offerings and an elephant carriage are sent with great array to the temple, and on the 21st the Emperor follows in a sedan chair, covered with yellow silk, and carried by thirty-two men; he is preceded by a band of musicians, and followed by an immense retinue, including the princes, high officials, "big" and "little" mandarins, all on horseback. Having arrived at the temple, His Majesty offers incense to Heaven and to his ancestors, and inspects the offerings; then he is conveyed on the elephant carriage to the Palace of Abstinence, where he is not allowed to take any animal food or wine, nor to sleep. Next morning, seven quarters before sunrise, he puts on his sacrificial robes and goes to the southern gate of the outer enclosure, dismounts from the carriage and walks to the great altar, where an Imperial yellow tent has been erected on the second terrace. At the moment he arrives at the spot where he kneels, the fire of the sacrifice is kindled and music is heard. The Emperor then proceeds to the upper terrace of the altar, kneels and burns incense before Heaven and also presents incense to his ancestors. Then he makes three genuflections, and one prostration, and offers bundles of silk, jade cups and other gifts, music being heard all the time. Afterwards he kneels at another point of the altar, where an officer reads a prayer aloud. At last he receives kneeling the "cup of happiness" and the "flesh of happiness." With the first dawn the whole party return to the palace. Foreigners, who watched the party when passing the Ch'ien-men from the city wall, speak highly of the splendid appearance of the whole procession: hundreds of officials in brilliant robes of state and numberless followers on horseback, among them a company of the Imperial Life Guards.

A similar sacrifice takes place at the spring solstice, with the same ceremonies, at the northern altar, but the motive is the special prayer for a prosperous harvest, whilst the winter sacrifice is offered for a blessing upon the whole empire.

We cannot see the ruins of the Summer Palace, the Yuan-ming-yuan, or Round and Splendid Garden, and which is distant about ten miles from Peking. "It is a delightful park with a rich variety of groves, temples, lakes, palaces and pavilions," and must from the photographs be very beautiful. It stands there for ever, as a memorial left to embitter the Chinese against us, yet who could say but that Lord Elgin, by destroying the Palace of their thrice sacred monarch, brought home to them a fit and righteous judgment?

But our greatest disappointment of all is that we must give up a five days' expedition to the Great Wall if we would take the French mail from Shanghai. "Fancy going to Peking and not seeing the Wall!" I can hear someone exclaim. Well, we shall not be all unique in this, for three-fourths of the hundred foreigners who live in Peking have never been, nor ever intend to go. An artificial interest, all out of proportion to the reality, is created by its great antiquity. Finished in 204. B.C. (for it took ten years in building) for 1500 miles this great wall, which was intended to keep out all the enemies of China, runs up and down the northern face of the country, in one place over a peak of 5225 feet high. It is constructed of earth and stones. It has been truly said: "that looking over the surface of our globe, it is the only artificial structure that would arrest the gaze."

The grapes are sour. For after all, the visitors who go do not see the real Great Wall, but only a spur of more modern date. Also the walls of Peking are considerably higher and more imposing.

As is only fit and proper, for they are the most interesting feature of the city, we make our farewell to Peking from those grand Walls.

CHAPTER XI.
SHANGHAI AND HONG-KONG

We left Peking at dawn. Through the silent streets of the Tartar City we drove, passing for the last time through the Gate of Sublime Learning on to the sandy waste outside, jolting along under the great Walls, with the sun rising to meet us.

We are returning to Tungchau by the Canal, and so saving the penalties of the road and the dust, but owing to the numerous locks, we have to transship no less than five times from one boat to another. This waterway is in connection with the great Imperial canal, another, like the Great Wall, of those time-enduring monuments of the industry of a great people—and serves to transport the tribute of rice from the south to Peking. The locks are very picturesque, being built of yellow blocks of stone, over which the running water forms a waterfall overshadowed by trees. It is a quaint slow mode of travelling, gently rippling along over the mirror surface of the water, past great rustling beds of pampas grass twelve feet high, opposite one of which some Chinese sportsmen, with their matchlocks and lighted fuses, are crouched ready to fire at the wild ducks that abound in these watery marshes. Amongst the groves of trees, which look golden in their autumn foliage against a clear blue sky, we see many memorial peilaus, and those other monuments of stone pyramids springing from the back of a huge tortoise. The air is still and clear as early autumn, and the sounds from the mud villages we pass, are borne clearly to us. The walls of Peking, with their crenellated gateways, are just fading away into the blue haze.

Five hours of tedious progress makes our eyes glad to see the beautiful carved bridge of Palikiao, where the combat in 1860 took place, and the damage then done to the bridge has never been repaired. In a few minutes more the pagoda of Tungchau looms up, and the canal rapidly narrows.

We reach Tungchau in a veritable dust-storm, that blows the loose sand by the banks into spiral columns and pillars, and embark once more on the house-boat. It seems quite like coming home. Then we begin the Peiho's weary succession of winding reaches, with the endless continuation of mud banks and yellow water.

The prospect next morning was disheartening. The wind was strong and dead ahead, and though our men had worked all night, certain landmarks told us that our progress was far from satisfactory. All through that long day we crawled along; weary work it was for our poor tired crew. As bend after bend opened out before us and receded, each one so exactly like the other, we registered a hope that we might never more see the Peiho. Evening closed in, night succeeded, and we yet vainly looked for the lights of Tientsin. As so often happens after a long watching, we seemed to arrive suddenly. Our plank door was removed, and we found ourselves at Tientsin and the Bridge of Boats, and amid the grateful "kotows" of our men for a gratuity well earned by such patient toil, we sped in jinrikishas through the dimly-lighted city, where everyone carries his own swinging coloured lantern, to the Consulate once more.

We found a China Merchant's steamer, the Shin Sheng, leaving Tientsin the next morning, and embarked at once. Two unsuccessful attempts at turning the steamer opposite the wharf we made; the third succeeded, but when she was broadside across the stream, stem and stern touched the banks. We passed safely through the perilous bends of the river, only grounding occasionally, but once the bows of the Shin Sheng ran up on to the bank, and cut clean away quite ten feet of it. A little mud-house stood on the angle, and the old village harpy to whom it belonged, came out and shook her fist at the captain on the bridge, showering imprecations on his head, and small wonder, for some time previously the bows of his ship had gone into her house and wrecked it! We breathed more freely when the forts of Taku passed, the Bar, or "Heaven-sent Barrier," crossed, and the pilot left behind, we emerged without mishap into the Yellow Sea.

We had a fearful tossing in the Gulf of Pecheli. At Chefoo we called for cargo. It is a pretty seaside place, with a splendid beach and bathing sands, a boon to the residents of Shanghai, who either come here or go to Japan for the summer months. It was too rough for the lighters to come off, so we anchored for the night. The next morning a gale was blowing in the roadstead—the breaking of the north-east monsoon—and we had to move round under the lea of the bluff. Our hearts sink within us, and we despair of catching the French mail, which means waiting at Shanghai a week for the P. and O. Returning when the gale moderated, the agent sent off to say that we were to start at once and not wait for the cargo, so we have wasted eighteen hours rolling and knocking about for nothing.

We had not gone more than two miles out, when the engineer sent to say that a valve was leaking; this necessitated putting back again, and a further delay. At last we get really off. Certainly we have endured much to see Peking. Two days afterwards we are in the mouth of the Yangtze, anxiously looking for the black funnels of the Messageries boat. We know she should have left at noon to-day, and it is just that hour. Yes, it is all right. She is still there, surrounded by lighters, and we steam close to find out that she sails in twenty hours. There has been a delay of one day, luckily for us.

We proceed up the Woosung tributary of the Yangtze. It is a glorious morning. The junks, painted in gaudy colours, with the all-seeing, staring white and black eye, glide past us. The banks are lined with a fort, factories, dock and ship-building yard, a gay scene of thriving commercial activity. Before us now opens out the bright green lawn of the Bund, of Shanghai, with its blue-roofed pagoda for the band, backed by a row of handsome oriental-looking houses and "hongs," with green blinds and deep verandas. There is the buff and grey of the German consulate, and the grey and red of the Japanese, whilst the French tricolour flies over, and indicates the French settlement, and in the far corner, to the right, is the British flag over our own consulate and garden. The numerous tributaries of the Yangtze are bridged over, and join the quay together.

One of the prettiest sights in coming up to Shanghai, or "upper Sea," is to see the men-of-war and gun-boats of all nations, lying side by side in the river before the Bund. There are English, American, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese men-of-war and a Chinese gunboat, each floating their star and stripes, tricolour, Union Jack, Black Eagle, red ball on a white ground (Japanese) and the Imperial Dragon.

Shanghai is a gay, bright clean place, where upwards of 4000 Europeans reside, the majority being British. These claim for it the title of the Paris of the East, and the shops and broad well-kept streets make it worthy of the name. You have, too, the picturesque element of Chinese life without the accompanying dirt and squalor, for the typical Chinese town with its filthy narrow streets is relegated to the back of the settlement. All life centres on the Bund, which we and everyone else are always passing up and down; and here amongst the smart little broughams, that are like Indian gharries, and the Victorias, dog-carts, and phaetons, with their scarlet-clad mafoos and syces, mingle the sedan-chairs of magnates, the Chinese wheelbarrow, with the passengers balancing on either side, and the brightly lined green and red jinricksha. There is the same cosmopolitan crowd on the pavements overflowing into the road, for the white "ducks" and flannels of the Europeans, mingle with the bright blue, green, maroon, crimson, brown and yellow coats of the merchants and compradores. For many of the hongs (as the places of business are called) are on the Bund—whilst the loose coats and shiny trousers of the Chinese ladies, with their smooth coils of black hair interlaced with green jade hair-pins and long pendant earrings, are seen side by side with the flowing robes and turbaned heads of an Indian.

We called at the British consulate, which lies in an enclosure of spacious green lawn with palms and flower-beds. There stands here a superb granite cross erected to the memory of the five victims, and companions of Sir Harry Parkes, and to avenge whose murder, the Summer Palace was burnt and looted by the French. Further along, on the Bund, is the statue to Sir Harry Parkes, a little man with large whiskers, but a very able diplomatist, whose death was universally mourned by the Europeans in China. The English cathedral and deanery lie at the back of the Bund. The streets are so broad and clean, the roads so firm, that it is a pleasure to be on them, particularly after those of Peking. It is because they are under the supervision of an English Municipal Council, and they deserve for them the greatest credit.

At four o'clock we went to a meet of the Tandem Club, the last of the season, held in front of the bank. There are fifteen members, but ten only turned out, and were led off by the only tandem of horses. The other teams were all of the short-necked, thick-set, Chinese ponies driven in a modified dog-cart. Then we strolled along on the grass under the trees to the gardens, to listen to the Manila band. These gardens slope with green lawns to the water's edge, and the wandering paths lead by beds, bright with heliotrope, geraniums, chrysanthemums, and tropical growths of banyan trees, palms, magnolias, indiarubber and castor-oil plants, amidst which pale-faced children are playing in charge of their Chinese amahs. In the evening we dined with Mr. and Mrs. Robert Little. He is the able editor of the North China Daily News.

On a lovely Sunday morning we embark on the steam tug, and once more, for the third and last time, go down to Woosung. In an hour we are on board the Messageries Maritime's s.s. Calédonien, critically surveying our home for the next five weeks.

The Messageries line has the advantage of the P. and O. in that they are more generous in giving separate cabins, the cuisine is said to be better, and indeed they take trouble to make it so, sending the cooks every two years back to a restaurant in Paris. It is also an immense boon (which everybody who has travelled much will appreciate) to have fixed places for dinner only, and at the other meals a free choice of companions. The saloon is spacious, and there is a splendid promenade deck, which is, however, somewhat spoilt by the influx of too numerous, second-class passengers, who share the privilege of using it.

The north-east monsoon is with us, and in two days and a half from leaving Shanghai, and after passing through the Straits of Formosa, between the mainland of China and the island of that name, past Foochow and Amoy, which are too far distant to be seen, we anchor at Hong Kong at midnight. Though dark, it is a starlight night. Hong Kong, or "Good Harbour," presents itself to us in bright electric arches of light, thrown far up on the sides of the peak, whilst its beautiful harbour is traced out for us by the twinkle of lights from the sampans, moored in hundreds along the wharf, by the swiftly moving jinricksha lights coursing along the road of the sea-shore, and the dots of lights on the rocking masts or the gleaming eyes of steam-tugs in the harbour.

We have decided to give up Canton, see what we can of Hong Kong in the time the steamer stays, and not wait a week for the next mail.

I was once told that no one has ever done justice to the beauties of Hong Kong, and as we landed at sunrise on the quay I was inclined to agree to this. The deep verandas of the Eastern-looking houses, with their pale pink and drab tints, the cool arcades, and above all the tropical wealth of vegetation, makes Hong Kong the prettiest of Eastern cities.

Leaving Queen's Road, we are carried up in chairs under a lovely overhanging avenue of banyan trees, whose huge knotted roots lie round the path, whilst from the grateful shade of their thick leaves above, depend the long thread-like tendrils, forming a transparent curtain. Past the grey, weather-stained cathedral we go, hidden away in a little recess under the hills, past the barracks, whence sound the bagpipes of Princess Louise's Highlanders, to the station of the mountain railway up the peak. "The Peak"—what would Hong Kong be without this prominent feature? True, by keeping off the sea-breezes and by penning the town in the narrow strip between the harbour and the mountain, it makes it steamy, unhealthy, fever-stricken and well-nigh uninhabitable in summer, but then it provides a sanatorium on the many summits of its heights, where every available platform is occupied by a house.

Unflinchingly straight up runs the line of the railway, and as we ascend, we look down on the roofs of the houses, perched without any sequence, up and down the side of the hills, into gardens and tennis courts, and the green waters of a reservoir below; over the black and white speckled mass that stands for the town, further out to the harbour, a blue pond studded with black spots by the steamers, whilst the sampans are brown dots. The range of barren rocky mountains close round the harbour, and there is Koolong, with its wharves and godowns, on the Chinese mainland, whilst we are on the Island of British soil. It is a beautiful view, this bird's-eye panorama of the town and harbour, from Victoria gap.

You must see the Peak to realize its real height, its scarcely sloping shoulders, covered with tropical growth in the valley, growing scantier and scantier, until you reach the summit, bare and rocky. Two enormous hotels, and many houses, populate the spacy crest. And the peep over the other side of green rounded hills, running down to the sea, is simply lovely, whilst the views from every point are far-reaching and exhaustive. We take chairs and go to the point, but one degree lower than the topmost one, where stands the signal station, to the bungalow of Government House. Early as it is, and late in the season, we find the heat terrific. Everyone is obliged to come and live up here in the summer, the nights in Hong Kong bringing no relief, and the difference in the temperature is often as much as 9°. As we return we meet all the business men, in the coolest of white costumes, being carried in chairs by coolies in smart uniforms of white with blue or scarlet sashes, to the station, going down to town for the day's work.

In descending, we return to the main thoroughfare of Queen's Road, and after some shopping, go to the City Hall, and the marble palace of the Shanghai and Hong Kong bank, where I wait outside to watch the ever-varying stream of passers-by. Chinamen in their cool cotton jackets and glazed pantaloons, coolies with their bamboo-slung burdens, sedan-chairs, jinrickshas, wheelbarrows, chairs, Sikh policemen with their scarlet turbans, Cinghalese, Parsees, mingling with our own officers and soldiers, under the shadow of the trees.

And then we drive out to the Happy Valley, and come suddenly upon that beautiful green lawn, lying so naturally in the midst of luxuriantly wooded hills. It is truly a felicitous little spot, with its racecourse marked out by white railing and its Grand Stand. But it is the cemetery which fills us with admiration, and one would fain that the Happy Valley were not desecrated by the racecourse, but rather consecrated to the peaceful repose of the dead. They are separated only by the breadth of the road.

Of all the God's acres in all parts of the world, including the beautiful one of Mount Auburn, at Boston, but perhaps excepting the English cemetery on the heights of Scutari, at Constantinople, or that at Cannes, this one of the Happy Valley is the most perfect. Entering by a gate in the walls, you find yourself in a tropical garden, skilfully laid out, and growing around you in profuse luxuriance,—palms with graceful waving arms, mighty clumps of feathery bamboos, delicate spreading tree ferns, crotons of orange and yellow and variegated green, hibiscus with their single blood-red blossom, colias, camellia and azaleas, bushes of flowering wax-like alamanders, trailing masses of purple buganvillea, all the hot-house flowers we prize at home, and that grow so unwillingly with us, when compared to this almost oppressive wealth of nature. Amongst the bright gravel paths and green lawns, rise massive pillars, granite crosses and cenotaphs, memorials erected by soldiers and sailors to their comrades—to many who, alas! have perished from the deadly effects of a climate which yet produces all this beauty that is around us.

We return to luncheon at Government House, on the kindly invitation of General and Mrs. Barker, the acting-governor until Sir William Robinson arrives next month. With a scramble, and the aid of the Government steam-launch, we just catch the Calédonien as she weighs anchor. We passed out through the southern passage of the Island, on our way to Saigon, the capital of French Cochin China.

CHAPTER XII.
COCHIN CHINA

For the last two days we have been in sight of the coast of Annam.

When shall we be at Cape St. Jacques? Shall we lose the tide? This is the question which one asks of the other on board. And by 6 a.m. we find ourselves at rest, waiting outside the bar of the river Dannai, for the tide to turn, to ascend inland to Saigon. Saigon is the French capital of Cochin China, or Indo-China, as it is called, and is the chief city of the provinces of Annam, Tonquin, and before long of Gambogia, when the present King dies.

Cape St. Jacques is a pretty green foreland, jutting out into the sea, fringed with cocoa-nut palms, and has a large white hotel, built by the Pilot. Surely by this roadstead upon the hills, courting the breezes of the north-east monsoon, with the ample anchorage in the rear, the French might have fixed the capital of Cochin China. But no. They placed it, as in olden time, far up a tortuous river, with a narrow channel. The delay, and the pilotage, frighten away the ocean greyhounds of commerce.

We weigh anchor. It is one o'clock. The sun is blazing hot, and there is not a breath of air. But it is cool, they say, compared to what Saigon will be. We shall see. Now we are in the winding channel. North, south, east, west, we steer. Larboard! Triboard! Four hours we steam up the river Dannai, with its flat banks of mangrove swamps, and tangle of tropical vegetation, where they say tigers come out to sun themselves on the sands. We sight at length the cathedral towers of Saigon. They are to the right of us. In another instant they will be to the left. Then we appear to have passed them, for we see the town on the starboard quarter.

But at five we are at the quay, which is shaded by avenues of trees, with the hibiscus, blossoming garden of the agent's house opposite—an old temple with rows of fierce-tailed dragons guarding the roof. On the wharf, the usual motley crowd thickening every minute as the news of our arrival spreads, whilst Victorias, drawn by those beautiful, though rat-like, ponies that are bred in Tonquin, are in waiting. These latter only come out at five in the evening, and in the daytime we must be content with the malabars, as the shuttered gharries are called, from the Annamite name of the coachman.

We take the fashionable drive of Saigon, the tour d'inspection. Off we go, flying as the wind, past some native houses, built on piles over a green swamp, with waving palms above them. Here flourish the Cochin China pig, the real pig of original breed, with its pink, bow-shaped back, and earth-touching stomach, and the bright-plumaged Cochin China fowls. We should like to buy specimens of the animals that have made Cochin China celebrate at home, but doubt the warmth of our reception on board-ship if we return with them. We cross the bridge, and look over the hundreds of sampans that swarm up this creek of the river; then drive along for a few yards by the steam tramway which connects the China town of Cholons with Saigon, out under the cool wide avenues of the Quai du Commerce, with its arsenal and Bureaux d'Affaires. The roads are as flat and firm as a billiard table.

Beautiful boulevards, wide streets, great cafés, where pale-faced Frenchmen sip absinthe and petits verres. It is Paris. Bravo, La France! But it would be much better for these gay causeurs, to play lawn-tennis, and football, cricket, rackets and rounders, as do the English at Hong Kong, Singapore, and Colombo, thus defying, in large measure, or at least postponing, the action of the tropics. It is thirty years since the French acquired Saigon and Cochin China. At one time it promised to be a prosperous colony. But that day is past. Commercial depression reigns supreme, and France wearies of the large subsidies swallowed up without results by Tonquin. That, though, is not our business. We rather admire the feats of engineering, of laying out, and the horticultural skill.

We see this in perfection in the Jardin d'Acclimitasion, but with a wealth of natural vegetation, how easy it is to make a garden such a paradise as is this. In the deep bend of the river are the green lawns and forest-trees of this botanical garden. There are banyan trees with their trellise curtains of roots sweeping the ground, cacti in a mighty spiky group, standing apart. Single aloes, with their blooming crests, and the palms—they form a palmery of themselves, with the various specimens of cocoa or tree palms, their straight grey stems tufted at the top; of sago palms, with their graceful curving arms, shadowing the lawns; of travellers, with their hands of mighty fingers outspread from the single stem, all and every kind luxuriantly magnificent, a single one of which would assist in making the fortune of a London florist, such as we who see them dwarfed and frozen when exiled to our northern climes, are scarcely able to realize that they are of the same species. There are magnolias and camellias, growing to the height of our forest trees, bamboo clumps, whose single-jointed stems spring equally high, and mimosa trees, with their tender sensitive leaf, as spreading as our chestnuts. And all these trees are banked up with and grow out of brilliant beds of variegated green and yellow crotons, of caladiums, with their enormous boat-shaped leaves of pink oleanders, of crimson hibiscus, and purple bougainvillea, and cconvolvulus, whilst orange and lemon trees, India rubber and mangoes, mingle with the heavy green and yellow melon-like fruit of the pommelo. In the midst of this is an aviary, and cages of rare animals, natives of these tropical regions. We particularly notice the white pigeon, with the single blood-red spot on the bosom.

We wander about in the dusky growth of overpowering luxuriance, which to us appears so supremely beautiful, but which they say in its monotonous green, palls upon you when you live amongst it. We come upon a cool arbour, formed of green lattices overgrown with creepers and passion flower, containing an exquisite fernery, damp and green, with a collection of orchids of the rarest kinds—indeed, we saw several specimens of the hardier ones in purple and yellow, growing on the trees near the wharf. The twilight of this little open-air conservatory is made darker by the enormous bananas outside, under whose pale green sword-like leaves, cluster such heavy bunches of fruit, fifty or sixty on a single stalk.

Night though closes quickly in, and if we would see the Annamite suburbs we must give rein to our impatient little black steeds and bowl swiftly out into the country, by some fields of brilliant pale green rice, where the monster grey water buffaloes, with branching horns laid backwards, strong and patient, are being driven home from working in them, by coolies, hidden under bamboo hats the size of umbrellas. The marshes have been in a measure drained, but the miasma rises thickly from the rice fields, near which cluster the wretched huts of thatched bamboo.

On we go, now through an avenue entirely composed of the glossy leaved magnolia or another of feathery mimosa, broken only by groves of tufted cocoa palms. Then we reach the military boundary, and returning homewards another way, pass the cemetery where many a Frenchman lies low. Along these shady avenues, deep and cool, we see the walled compounds and overgrown gardens of the bungalows of officers and merchants, of whom about 1700 reside in Saigon. We meet many of them out for their evening drive, flying along in Victorias, to gain as much air as possible. There are many smart-looking officers in white uniforms, with their wives by their side—pale French ladies, but in Parisian fashions. Poor things, they appear sickly and enervated, yet robust compared to the shop-keepers, who look, if they do not say so, as if it was trouble enough to rise on the entrance of a customer, without serving them.

But it should be a great colony. The Governor-General's palace is magnificent—a Versailles, with its long flights of steps and spacious balconies. But his Excellency is always at Hanoi, vainly endeavouring to get things straight in Tonquin. The Cathedral, with its dim aisles and stained glass; the Grecian colonnades of the Palais de Justice; the post-offices; the theatre, with its bi-weekly performances; the Officers' Club, where the punkahs are lyslow waving to and fro in the balconies,—all betoken the great intentions of its founders.

And there are statues of Francis Garnier, the intrepid and disavowed explorer of the way to south-western China, and in the centre of the great boulevard, leading to the Governor's palace, we distinguish a very large stout man on a great pedestal, his stomach far protruding. When we come near, we see whom it represents: Gambetta in the fur coat worn in the balloon whence he escaped from Paris during the siege, to instil life into France, with his outstretched finger pointing in the direction of Tonquin, as in the memorable day when he came to the Chamber, and said, 'Messieurs, au Tonkin!' A dying soldier, in the act of falling, is on one side, and a sailor, with a bayonet peeping round as if in search of the enemy, on the other. The reverse side of this fine monument bears the legend: "À Gambetta, le patriote, défenseur de la politique coloniale."

In the evening some went to the opera, Traviata, played by the subsidized company, to distract the garrison. The sight, however, of the house with its myriad waving fans, was enough for us. We could not face the heat.

What an awful night we passed on board! Four steam winches in charge of seventy shouting French, with ports shut, tropical heat, and mosquitoes by the million. It was over at sunrise like a bad dream. But a sorry sight, the languid heavy-eyed passengers, with not a face but was severely wounded, presented next morning; for none had slept, and all had come off worsted in the conflict with those venomous brutes. Glad we were of daylight to go on shore, and set off in a gharry at seven o'clock to the open arcades where the curio shops are. The black woodwork inlaid with mother-of-pearl that comes from Tonquin is very pretty, but otherwise we only see curiosities common to other countries. We drive past gardens, which, as in France, are unrailed and open to the public, to the market square, with its deep red-roofed market hall, where a busy scene of buying and selling is progressing. We notice many French cafés, the familiar little marble-topped tables, looking strange among the palm trees of the gardens. There are many French officers, in solar topees and cotton umbrellas, strolling in the streets, but though the French element predominates, there is a wonderful mixture of races—of Chinese, Annamites with their heads bound in red cloths, Cinghalese with high tortoiseshell comb, and Indians in sarong; and the languages are as varied, for here the Chinese and natives have learnt French, instead of pigeon English.

By nine o'clock the sun on the top of the gharry is overpowering. We are quite overcome by the heat, and abandoning all idea of going by the steam tramway to Cholons, the neighbouring emporium of the Rice of Annam, return on board. But at eleven o'clock the thermometer in the shade registered 95° Fahrenheit, and in the sun about 130°, and we lay on the deck ready to succumb to the awful breathless heat, just existing through the long midday hours of the worst part of the day.

The tropical vegetation of Saigon had entranced us, but its charms faded before the experience of this equatorial temperature by which alone it can be produced. We were grateful when at five o'clock the twenty-four hours' sojourn required by the Government contract were over, and we left Cochin China on our homeward voyage.

It is a long, long journey home to England, this one of 10,000 miles from Shanghai to London—lasting for five weeks.

Day after day goes by with the same routine, until we feel that we are automatons. Passengers come and go at the various ports, but "we go on for ever." Night and day there is heard the ceaseless throbbing of the engines, like the beating heart of some great monster. It lulls you to sleep, keeps you company in the silence of the night, and greets you in the morning, and when we are in port, we unconsciously feel that something is wanting. It is a cheering noise, for every revolution of the screw brings us nearer home; 4368 times does it revolve in one hour, and it takes 3,600,000 revolutions to bring us to Marseilles. We consume 52 tons of coal a day, or 1800 tons for the whole voyage, whilst 8000 kilos of oil are used for the machinery.

The ship is like a floating city with a cosmopolitan population, for we have over twenty different nationalities on board: French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Dutch, Austrians, Arabians, Indians, etc., and yet all goes smoothly, save for the passing incident of a passionate Frenchman, who came to ask the captain's permission to fight a duel with an officer from Tonquin, for usurping his place at table.

It is a monotonous thirty-six days of life at sea, alternating with frantic rushes to land, when in port, and sometimes sleeping on shore, where, like at Singapore and Colombo, the ship is hermetically sealed for coaling. Then there is dire confusion on board, everyone loses his head, the stewards are beside themselves, and the organization becomes sadly out of gear. We are thankful to put out to sea once more, into the breeze and calm, to sail away into that great trackless space so well defined "as a circle whose centre is everywhere, and whose circumference nowhere."

We touch at Singapore, and spend the night at Government House, noting the growth of the town, and the great improvements since we were there six years ago. Through the Straits of Malacca, past Acheen Head, the extreme westerly point of Sumatra to Colombo—Colombo with its beautiful sea-shore, where amidst palm groves, the blue breakers of the Indian Ocean are ever rolling in, and casting their surf and foam on the golden sands. Through its tropical avenues we drive, past the barracks, where the pipe of the bagpipes is heard, wailing in their far exile, and the handsome Cingalese merchants, with their checked sarongs and tortoiseshell combs, tempt us with precious stones. Mount Adam, with his pillar-like peak, in the centre of Ceylon, does us honour by showing himself (a rare occurrence) as we put out once more to sea, through the magnificent breakwater of Colombo.

Six days' steaming, and we cast anchor under rocky Aden, whose peaks so barren and sterile, are yet picturesquely deformed, and glowing with warm tints of cobalt and carmine. Then we enter the Red Sea, through the Straits of Babelmandeb, by England's key to the Eastern hemisphere, the Island of Perim, and pass fragrant Mocha on the sandy shore.

One hundred hours through this inland sea, and we are at Suez waiting our turn to enter that great highway of nations, that sandy ditch cut through the desert, that connects the eastern with the western globe. In the daytime we have that strange fascination linked to the boundless plain of sand—the mirage flickering on the horizon, the clear pale blue and pink shades that steal over the desert at sundown, with the golden glory of the sunset sinking slowly into the waters of the Bitter Lake, whilst at night the banks of the canal are illuminated by the broad shafts of light, that sweep from the electric lamp in the bows of every ship.

We spend a dreary Sunday at Port Said, amid its dirty streets, rubbishy oriental shops, thievish donkey-boys, and a population which gathers in the scum of the earth.

The Harbour of Alexandria is entered at sunrise next day, and we look in the dull chill of early morning on its quays and forts, its mosqued domes and windmills, but ere the day is really begun we are on our way joyfully cleaving the waters of the Mediterranean, near, so near home now. The chill winds and the grey atmosphere would make us know we are in Europe once more. The hard even-coloured skies of the East, burning with brazen sun, have been left on the other side of the Canal, and now the skies are full of grey and purple clouds, silver-edged, soft and rounded. The Southern Cross has sunk below the horizon, the brilliant starlight nights, with the purple vault of heaven gemmed with diamond stars, have faded into the past.

Now the snow-clad mountains of Candia or Crete rise up from the ocean above low-lying clouds. Then, the danger of avoiding Charybdis to be wrecked on Scylla safely passed, we thread the green Straits of Messina between the toe of Italy and the Island of Sicily. The smoking cone of Etna is invisible, but the little island volcano of Stromboli shoots forth its black column of lava.

The beacon lighthouses of the Straits of Bonifacio mark out our course between the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. And by the next afternoon the vine-terraced mountains and sunny shores of the Corniche are near at hand, with the white villas of Toulon shining in the sunlight.

The last day on board, the last packing, the last dinner, the last evening. What a pleasant bustle of departure, what a feeling of bonne camaraderie prevails! With the contagious sympathy of joy, passengers speak to each other who have held aloof for the whole month's voyage. We are all restless and excited, and only able to discuss the hour of arrival—no, not the hour, it is the half-hours and quarters that we dispute and wager about.

The sun goes down. The great white cliffs—for they are very near to us now—loom up ghostly in the dim twilight; these are bathed in pink reflections from the rosy sky. We see the little chapel perched on high, where the sailors implore the protection of the sainted Mary ere commencing a voyage—the gloomy dungeon fortress of Château d'If on its island, and with the last gleams of daylight we sight the green Prado, the cathedral towers of Notre Dame, and the large seaport of Marseilles.

For two days we linger in the sunny south, under blue skies and warm sunshine, amid the palms, cacti, and hedges of roses.

We reach Paris in time to see the gorgeous obsequies at the Madeleine of Dom Pedro, the ex-Emperor of Brazil. Then ends our second journey round the world with a fearful gale in the English Channel, reaching Charing Cross in the raw cold and fog of a December night.

APPENDIX

BY C. E. HOWARD VINCENT, C.B., M.P

BRITISH AND AMERICAN TRADE IN CANADA

MEMORANDUM

Addressed to the Chamber of Commerce and Manufacture of Sheffield upon British and American Trade in the Dominion of Canada and the McKinley Tariff in the United States.

September, 1891.

Internal Trade

1.—It is necessary in the first place to state that the internal trade of Canada has made vast progress during the past decade. Not only is this evident from the numerous factories at the principal centres, but it is corroborated by the rapid extension and development of Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg and other towns. Manufacture has taken such rapid strides that not only is a very large proportion of the articles in daily use of home make, but the whole of the iron bridges and much of the plant upon the gigantic railway system, and the greater part of the agricultural machinery are of Canadian construction, but there is a surplusage for export of certain manufactured goods, amounting in the fiscal year ending June, 1890, to 5¾ million dollars—upwards of two-fifths of which were purchased by the British flag.

Increase of External Trade

2.—The external trade (imports and exports) has also increased from 153 million dollars in 1879, when the "National Policy" was inaugurated by the late Right Honourable Sir John Macdonald, to 218 million dollars in the last statistical year.

Imports from the United Kingdom and the Empire.

3.—The imports from the United Kingdom of British and Irish produce have increased from 5,040,524l. in 1879, to 7,702,798l. in 1889.

In the twelve months, July 1st, 1889, to June 30th, 1890, the purchases by Canada from the British Empire amounted to 45¾ million dollars, or only 6½ million dollars less than from the United States with their 60,000,000 of people and conterminous frontier of over 3000 miles, running especially close to the more settled and affluent portions of the Dominion.

This is the more satisfactory when it is considered that less than one-fourth of the British imports were admitted free of a duty averaging 25 per cent. ad valorem, while two-fifths of the American imports were from their nature untaxed.

Competition Between British and American Flags

4.—The Union Jack upon the one hand, and the Stars and Stripes upon the other, are practically the only two competitors for the custom of Canada, and they absorb between them 98 million dollars worth of the import trade out of a total of 112 million dollars.

Superiority of England

5.—In most of the great lines of manufactured goods, such as in the manufactures of iron and steel: of cutlery; of cotton and silk; of wool and linen; of lead, paper and fur; of hemp, twine and earthenware, as also in hats, gloves, combs, umbrellas, embroideries, ribbons, crapes, oilcloth, iron furniture, fancy articles, and in bottled ale, beer and porter, England more than holds her own against the American Republic.

Foreign Intermixture

6.—At the same time it is right to observe that a considerable and increasing proportion of the imports officially attributed to British production were in reality of German, French, or other foreign origin, and this to an amount exceeding last year six million dollars.

They were obtained, however, through English distributing houses instead of direct, partly by reason of transit facilities, but mostly on account of the long credit readily accorded.

Lead of the United States

7.—The United States on the other hand take the lead with manufactures of brass and copper; of gutta-percha and India-rubber; of slate, stone, and wood; of cork and glass; of leather and tin ware, as also in edge tools, Britannia metal, bells, brushes, buttons, carriages, clocks and watches, jewellery, musical and surgical instruments, and in agricultural implements.

Sheffield Trade in Canada

8.—In the staple trades of Sheffield, with the exception of edge-tools, the ascendency of England is fairly well maintained.

Cutlery

9.—Especially is this the case with regard to cutlery. Out of 311,897 dollars (say 62,500l.) worth of table knives, jack knives, pocket knives, and other cutlery imported into the Dominion during the past year, about two-thirds came from the United Kingdom.

Of the remainder the United States supplied 27,900 dollars worth, and Germany 43,500 dollars worth.

Not a few importers of Sheffield cutlery speak anxiously, however, of the growing competition of Newark (New Jersey) and of Germany—especially in the production of attractively got up and elegantly carded knives at low prices.

In Canada itself only one attempt has, I believe, been made to establish a cutlery factory, and this recently at Halifax by a young Sheffield man, assisted by six or eight Sheffield trained artisans. They speak hopefully of their prospects and are meeting with much local encouragement.

Plated Cutlery

It is right to add that although throughout the Dominion the table cutlery bears the names of the leading Sheffield houses, the more easily cleaned plated cutlery is coming into some use. During the past year 919 dozen were imported, to which the United States contributed 774 dozen and Great Britain only 140.

Files

10.—In files and rasps the import from England amounted to 34,358 dollars (say 6800l.), and from the United States to 45,724 dollars.

Saws

11.—In saws the United States made even greater headway with a total consignment amounting to 14,000l., while Great Britain sent scarcely 600l. worth.

Edge Tools

12.—A like disproportion occurs with regard to edge tools, of which the United States supplied 15,000 dollars worth out of a total external purchase by the Dominion of 18,279 dollars.

This has been explained by the untiring efforts constantly made by American manufacturers and their employés to make all tools more and more adapted for the purpose in view, lighter and more facile to the hand, without the slightest regard to former use, old ideas or customs.

Axes

13.—It is frequently alleged that Sheffield lost the Canadian axe trade by adherence to the opinion that it was a better judge of the shape of the handle or the chopper than the backwoodsmen whose livelihood depended upon the skilful use of the axe.

This must, however, be legendary, for I am told we never had the Dominion axe trade.

In any case, at the present time nearly all the axes used in the vast lumber industry are of Canadian make, and out of a total import of 6751 dollars worth last year, the whole came from the United States, with the exception of a single axe contributed by France.

Spades and Shovels.

14.—Of spades and shovels 4000 dollars worth were imported from Great Britain against 6259 dollars worth from the United States

Scythes

In scythes the two countries each supplied one half of a total import of 6731 dollars worth.

Agricultural Implements

15.—But in other agricultural implements—ploughs, drills, harrows, forks, rakes, mowing machines, harvesters, etc., America supplied no less than 117,000 dollars worth, against only 4000 dollars worth, from Great Britain.

The explanation given is similar to that I have often heard in Australasia, that the high-priced, solid made, somewhat heavy and durable machines and implements which find favour in England, are unsuitable for Colonists with small capital, who want a cheap, handy and light implement which can be replaced as soon as a year or two brings easier means, and sees improvements perfected.

It is indeed stated in proof of the adoption of like ideas in the mother country that more Ontario-made self-binding reapers have been sold this year in Great Britain than any of English manufacture.

Bar Iron, Pigs, Rails, etc

16.—It is, however, in bar iron; in boiler or other plate iron; in hoop, band, or scroll iron; in iron, in slabs, blooms, etc.; in iron pigs; in railway bars, rails and fish plates; in rolled iron or steel angles, beams, girders, etc.; in sheet iron, and in wrought iron or steel tubing that the United Kingdom asserts the greatest predominance with an importation last year into Canada amounting to 2,356,523 dollars against 642,129 dollars worth from the United States—that is, nearly fourfold.

At Londonderry in Nova Scotia important rolling mills have been established, and at Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario there are prosperous foundries.

Machinery

17.—England though falls back again seriously in machinery, composed wholly or in part of iron, in locomotive, fire, or other engines, and in cast iron vessels, plates, etc., as also in builders', cabinet makers', carriage and harness makers' hardware, and in house furnishing hardware.

In these lines Great Britain supplied Canada with only about 100,000l. worth, compared to 500,000l. from the United States.

In connection with machinery it may not be amiss to mention the almost invariable practice, throughout the American continent, for all machinery under the control either of the State or public bodies being kept spotlessly clean and as attractive as possible, and, in the case of all stationary engines, allowing the public to see them in operation, from a gallery or other suitable place, so that humble mechanical genius may feast its eyes, and think out problems or improvements, which may advance their authors to wealth, and place further names upon the roll of the world's inventors.

Electro-Plate and Britannia Metal

18.—In electro-plated ware and gilt ware of all kinds the import from Great Britain amounted last year to 51,041 dollars, and to 98,669 dollars from the United States, while in manufactures of Britannia metal (not plated) the importation from America amounted to 40,000 dollars, or eight times that from Great Britain.

Predominance of British Manufactures of Cotton and Wool

19.—It is not necessary to examine in like detail the relative trade in the Dominion of Great Britain and the United States in the manufactures which are not located in Sheffield. But it may be mentioned that the purchases by Canada of British cotton goods exceeded three million dollars last year against one-fifth that amount from the United States, in velveteens exceeded 82,000 dollars from Britain against only 356 dollars from America: while the sale to Canadians of British manufactures of wool were over ten million dollars, or too times that of the States.

The Empire, Canada's best Customer

20.—While, as has been shown, Canada bought last year of Great Britain and Ireland, and British possessions, to an amount exceeding forty-five millions of dollars, the Empire was in return the best customer of the Dominion, purchasing no less than 44,479,992 dollars worth of Canadian products, or 11,156,785 dollars worth more than the United States, and admitting nearly the whole free of all duty.

Preferential Trade within the Empire

21.—It is hardly to be expected that Canada, with her scanty and hard-working population could, with the example of every nation or colony (save one) before her, attempt to raise by direct taxation the twenty-four million dollars of public revenue she now derives from customs duties.

But there can be little doubt that if a preference was obtained for British over foreign goods in the tariff, it would give just that pecuniary advantage calculated to stimulate the undoubted partiality of most British colonists for British made goods, if they themselves are unable to produce them in adequate quantity.

Such preferential trade, large public meetings I have recently addressed in all the principal commercial centres, on behalf of the United Empire Trade League, have declared with practical unanimity and much support from both political parties, that Canada is willing to exchange with the mother country and the Empire, so soon as foreign treaty hindrances (treaties with Belgium and Germany of 1862 and 1865) are removed—it being calculated that no policy would more certainly advance the prosperity, peopling and capitalization of the whole country and the consequent augmentation of customers.

Means of Commercial Negotiation

22.—No more effective means either could probably be found to bring about that reduction of the United States tariff wall, so much desired both by the Dominion of Canada and the mother country, for it would furnish her Majesty's representatives with a weapon of commercial persuasion they now wholly lack in negotiating with foreign countries.

Effect of the McKinley Tariff

23.—It may be too early perhaps to judge definitely as to the effect of the McKinley tariff upon British trade in the United States, There can, however, be no doubt that in many industries, and especially among the receivers of wages in the United Kingdom, it will be very serious, and tend still further to extend the disproportion between the sales of America to Great Britain and the purchases by America of British goods, which have stood for some time in the adverse ratio of three to one.

Much Change not to be expected

24.—It is necessary, therefore, to say that while the organs of the democratic party in the United States and the sanguine views of American importers who are in personal or correspondence relations with England, encourage a hope that the McKinley tariff will be repealed or considerably modified in the near future, I am convinced that, as matters stand, such belief is to a great extent delusive.

In the first place the democratic majority in the House of Representatives, as at present constituted, is practically powerless in the face of a strong and hostile Senate, with an equal mandate from the people, and in the face too of an antagonistic President, to a great extent independent of either, with all his Ministers and machinery of government.

In the second place democratic leaders and advocates in every locality are eager to protest that they do not now desire free trade, do not dream of admitting duty free the productions of competing foreign workmen, and that they aim only at a reduction of the tariff.

Again, it is now well understood that the alleged rise in prices at the time of the election last year for Congress was artificial and impressed upon voters by skilful wire-pulling—such as the hiring of itinerant pedlars to perambulate the agricultural districts with household wares marked up at double cost; by urging democratic retail dealers to serve their party (and their tills) by demanding greatly increased sums for all goods during the campaign "in consequence of the new tariff."

Industrial Prosperity in the United States

25.—There appears to be little doubt that the Federal Commission now sitting will find that, although in some districts there may have been speculating failures, employment was never upon the whole more plentiful or better remunerated than at the present time. As in Canada so in the United States, it is work which is everywhere seeking hands—and not, as with us, men searching, too often vainly, for employment.

On both sides of the border between Canada and the United States the necessaries of life—wheat, flour, bread, meat, are extraordinarily cheap and excellent, while artisan clothing, so often reputed dear and pressing upon the family purse, is readily obtainable, so old Sheffield men have assured me, in very fair quality at from 8 dollars 50 cents. to 12 or 14 dollars per suit, that is 1l. 14s. to 2l. 16s. Indeed, before me is the advertisement of a New York house offering "Jersey Cloth (silk finish, new), blue, black or brown, per suit 14 dollars, quality XXX."

Beyond question the whole standard of industrial life is higher than in Europe—higher too, I am sorry to have to admit, than in Great Britain. Neither poverty nor distress are visible, while drunkenness, so far as it may exist, is kept carefully out of sight.

American Reciprocity Treaties

26.—It will be probably less, however, on the industrial prosperity of American workers, on the success of the high tariff in compelling competitors for the custom of the American people, to employ their capital within the United States, to pay wages to Americans, and use American materials, that the Republican party will appeal next year for a new Presidential lease of power (with what chance of success I do not pretend to prophecy), than upon the unexpected triumph that has attended Section III., or the Reciprocity clause of the McKinley Tariff Act in the hands of Mr. Secretary Blaine.

Already under its provisions free entry for American productions and manufactures has been secured into Brazil—a market taking in 1889 6,232,316l. worth of British goods—in exchange for the free entry of the raw materials and other commodities of that Republic so rich in natural wealth.

The same result has been achieved, and will shortly come into force with regard to Spanish possessions, taking together 8,000,000l. worth of British products every year.

To break up British Trade

27.—This latter treaty is viewed with especial concern in Canada, and the notice of terminating the Anglo-Spanish treaty of commerce which has been given, gives rise to a fear that the Americans will secure the trade with the Spanish Indies heretofore enjoyed by the Dominion.

Both treaties will also very injuriously affect the interests of the fishermen of Newfoundland, who among the Catholic population of Brazil and the territories of Spain seek the principal market for that dried fish, the sale of which, until improved fish trade and other mercantile relations are established with England, as they might easily be, constitutes their principal means of existence.

A like treaty has been concluded with San Domingo, and others are in active negotiation.

The vaunted object is "the breaking up piece-meal of British foreign trade," and whether or no it obtains that aim, the untoward influence these treaties, placing American trade upon a preferential basis, are calculated to exert in that direction, is not, I fear, a circumstance well calculated to induce the masses of the American people, in their present frame of mind, very speedily to destroy the instrument.

Effect of British Inaction

28.—It is a paramount duty to direct the attention of the Sheffield Chamber of Manufacture, as a body representative of the commercial and industrial community of Great Britain and Ireland, to this practical aspect of the present situation, lest buoyed up by a vain hope that the markets of the United States will be thrown open, England allows all opportunity to pass of following the example of America and Central Europe in establishing preferential trading relations on mutually advantageous terms. A commercial union richer in its prospects than any attainable by whatever phalanx of foreign nations, lies now, but not for much longer, ready to her hand—that of the British Empire, of a fifth of the entire world, peopled or fostered by her own people, capitalized by her own capital.

Inaction much longer maintained on the part of the mother country will be ascribed by the energetic minds of Greater Britain to callous indifference to Imperial responsibilities, and can have no other effect than to expose Canada, Newfoundland, the West Indies, British Guiana and British Honduras, aggregating not much short of half the area of the Empire, and not impossibly other Colonies, to the temptation of entering instead into commercial alliance with the United States, involving discrimination in favour of foreigners against the British flag, which even the loyalty of the most loyal Colonial subjects of her Majesty the Queen may not, with due regard to their material interests, be able to resist.

American Pioneers of Commerce

29.—But in any event I must note the amazing energy and push shown by American business houses. On every journey in nearly every quarter of the globe you meet their representatives, who lose no opportunity of skilfully advancing American trade; and while Germany, backed by a vigilant Government, is following closely in the same direction with astonishing results, the reports of her Majesty's Consular officers agree in declaring that the appearance of an English commercial traveller becomes more and more rare.

Boards of Trade

30.—American Boards of Trade, corresponding to our Chambers of Commerce, are also very active organizations, sparing neither expense nor trouble.

They occupy a like position in Canada, and in Toronto the Board of Trade—an enthusiastic meeting whereof I had the honour of addressing—has erected a palatial building, where business men meet daily for the mutual exchange of information and views. The turn of the market is recorded from hour to hour from the centres of commerce, and among the members there exists an admirable system of mutual life insurance.

Canada as a Field for British Capital and Immigration

31.—In conclusion, it is hardly possible to speak of Canada in exaggerated terms as a source from which Great Britain may most readily obtain the larger portion of the supply of corn, meat, and dairy produce, her increased population and diminished agriculture oblige her to purchase from over the sea.

The extremely fertile and virgin soil of the vast region occupied by Manitoba, the North-West Territories, and British Columbia—half the size of Europe, and lying between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean—has now been provided by British Canadian enterprise with a complete network of railways, bringing it, so soon as Atlantic communication by Nova Scotia and Newfoundland has been improved, to within fourteen days' steam of Liverpool.

Capital and immigration are alone needed for their development.

A better field for the former could not be found if British Commercial Union made the market secure of foreign caprice, while for steady industry under the old flag, under like institutions, under the same law, no wider scope exists in the universe.

BRITISH TRADE WITH JAPAN

MEMORANDUM

ADDRESSED TO THE CUTLERS' COMPANY OF HALLAMSHIRE, UPON

British Trade with Japan

Progress of Japan

1.—Little idea can be formed of the progress and development of Japan without a personal visit. That the Japanese Empire should have been brought in less than a quarter of a century from barbaric darkness and isolation to a leading place in the civilized world, is not the least remarkable event of the present generation. The fact that this great revolution has been accomplished without the pressure of external war, and practically without internal riot or bloodshed, renders it the more extraordinary.

Some may affect to prefer the old order of things, may think that the transition has been dangerously rapid, may sneer at the wonderful adaptive faculty displayed. This is, however, certain, that in good order and sobriety, in cleanliness and politeness, in industry and contentment, the Japanese are already in the van of nations.

The police, postal, telegraphic, and educational systems are tributes to their capacity, while over 1400 miles of railway are being efficiently worked by native employés.

Care and caution will be undoubtedly very necessary for many years to come. But if reliance upon indigenous talent, and the new law that Japanese industrial undertakings must be represented by Japanese, are not carried to an extravagant point, the next decade or two may see the vast reforms not only matured, but carried onwards to a summit undreamt of, when, in 1868, the country was released from the chains of ages; or even when a score of years later his present Imperial Majesty, the 121st Mikado and Emperor of his race, voluntarily gave the nation one of the clearest constitutions in existence "in consideration of the progressive tendency of the course of human affairs and in parallel with the advance of civilization."

Concurrent Growth of British Interests

2.—There is nothing more striking in this transformation than the constant growth of British interests in the Empire, with which it has been attended.

Illustrated by large numbers of British Residents and Mercantile Firms and proportion of Trade and Shipping.

This is clearly illustrated by the following notable facts:—

(a) That British residents, numbering 1500 souls, of which two-thirds are males, equal numerically the representatives in Japan of the whole of the rest of the world, excluding the adjacent Chinese.

(b) That a like state of affairs exists with regard not only to the number of foreign mercantile firms, located in Japan, but also in the proportion borne by the British flag of the external trade.

(c) That since 1868, the first year of the new Japanese era, British shipping in the waters of Japan has, according to the calculation of her Majesty's Consul at Kobé, increased threefold in number and fifteenfold in tonnage. It carried last year two-thirds of the (extra Chinese) foreign trade, and 71 per cent. of the whole, in over 1000 ships inwards and outwards, giving employment to more than 25,000 persons, and this notwithstanding the harassing exclusion of foreign vessels from any share in the large coasting trade between other than the six open ports.

Volume of Japanese External Trade

3.—The external trade (imports and exports) of Japan has more than doubled in the past ten years. It amounted in 1890 to 138¼ millions of silver yen or dollars² (say 21,000,000l. sterling) against 62¼ million yens in 1881. The exports, of which the British Empire took nearly a third, amounted to 54¾ million dollars; the imports to 81¾ millions.

The Foreign Element as a Source of Wealth to Japan

4.—The financial value to the Empire of the foreign commercial houses is shown by the passage, through their agency, of 110 million dollars worth of the total external trade.

There is in addition the expenditure of many thousands of foreign visitors to the natural beauties of the country—of which 70 per cent. are calculated by Mr. Gubbins, secretary for Japanese to Her Majesty's Legation, to be British,—a sum estimated at an extreme minimum of three million dollars a year, or about 500,000l.

The Passport System and Disability of Foreigners

There is hope that these important considerations may lead ere long to a modification of the stringent passport regulations, and of the disability attaching to the alien tenure of real estate, hindering as it must do the permanent investment of capital.

Proportion of External Trade with several Foreign Countries.

5.—Foreign countries shared or divided in 1890 the external trade of Japan in the following proportions:—

Purchases by Japan of British Goods

6.—The purchases by Japan from the British Empire exceeded 41 million dollars (say 6,750,000l.), of which 26½ millions worth were obtained from the United Kingdom.

Unfortunately, however, a not inconsiderable proportion of the imports credited to Great Britain, are stated to have been of German, Belgian, or other foreign make, and although obtained through English houses, the advantage to the artisan community at home was thereby materially reduced.

False Marking

The observations on this head of Consul Longford, in his report for 1886, are still deserving of attention:—

"While fully recognizing that it is only reasonable and right that English merchants in Japan should go to those producing centres which show the greatest readiness to meet and satisfy their demands, it is at the same time unfortunate that they should import the goods which they obtained from Germany with English marks and chops on them, even though the latter are only intended to acquaint native dealers with the name of the firm supplying them and not in any sense to designate the country of origin or production… for means are thus placed in the hands of the Japanese middlemen or the ultimate retailer, which may aid him considerably in selling (inferior goods) as English."

Merchandise Marks Acts

The enactment in the United Kingdom of the Merchandise Marks Act of 1887, so largely due to the Cutlers' Company, has no doubt modified this evil at its base. It has not, however, stamped it out, partly because foreign goods can still be imported into England, plain and devoid of any indication of origin, and the detection of subsequent false marking by the few dishonest, prior to home sale or foreign exportation, is practically impossible; and partly because few foreign nations have adopted a corresponding law, or if they have, it is rarely enforced.

The Japanese Trade Mark Regulations of October, 1884, do not touch the question, and moreover have been judicially held, so Mr. Consul Hall informs me, not to apply to foreigners or foreign goods.

Purchases by Japan of Sheffield Goods

7.—The purchases by Japan from Great Britain of those productions of iron, steel, and hardware, in which Sheffield is mainly interested, compare favourably with those from other foreign nations.

Iron Pig, Bars, Rods, Rails, etc

8.—In pig iron, iron bars, rods, plates, sheets, and rails, Japan bought last year from England 1,424,000 dollars worth (say 235,000l.) against one-fourth that amount from Germany, and only 20,000 dollars worth from France. Even this large figure shows some shrinkage on the British import in 1888-89, while the German, although so far behind, has increased.

Pipes and Tubes

9.—In iron pipes and tubes Great Britain supplied Japan in 1890 with 159,000 yen worth, out of a total purchase of 166,000 dollars—an increase of 98,000 dollars worth in two years.

Nails

10.—In nails, however, Great Britain has fallen behind and given place to Germany. Indeed, her Majesty's Consul at Yokohama says in his report for last year:—

"The consumption of wire nails is steadily increasing. The demand for nail rod is now almost extinct—manufactured nails being taken instead. These nails are now mostly of German, and a few of Belgian origin."

This is corroborated by the purchase from England of nails having fallen from 342,000 dollars worth in 1888 to 134,000 dollars worth in 1890.

Screws

This is the more remarkable as in iron screws, Great Britain holds the market with a supply of 70,000 dollars worth in 1890, against only 2000 dollars worth by Germany, and a like amount by France.

Steel

11.—In steel 162,000 dollars worth was obtained from England out of a gross importation amounting to 194,000, France supplying 23,300 dollars worth, and Germany, subject to the observations in paragraph 6, only 3900 dollars.

Mr. Consul Troup has observed "that the steel imported by the Government for the making of barrels at the small-arms factory at Tokio, and for the Osaka arsenal is mostly French, German, or Italian, and at the Yokosuka dockyard there is a certain preference for Creuzot steel."

With the approval of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, whose great courtesy I take leave to acknowledge, and by permission of the Minister of War, I visited the Osaka arsenal to ascertain the cause.

Osaka Arsenal

12.—It is an admirably organized institution with canal service direct to the sea, provided with the best English, German, French, Italian, and Austrian machinery, employing 1400 hands at an average wage of ten pence for a ten hours' day, and turning out 24-ton guns, besides all other material for a standing army, 80,000 strong, formed on the French model with German improvements, and reserves 240,000 in number, but deficient in officers.

Advantage of the Metric Scale

The Director, Lieutenant-Colonel T. Ota of the Imperial Artillery and European trained, was so good as to give me for the Cutlers' Company, on hearing that it included the members of the great iron and steel firms, a complete set of photographs, illustrating the workshops, the guns, and the target experiments. He expressed himself as fully sensible of the excellence of the metal manufactures of Sheffield, and their superiority, both in cost, quality, and workmanship, for original productions. Upon the other hand, though, he frankly said that there was so much risk of error in the measurement by "feet" and by "inches," that it saved much anxiety and trouble, when specific and exact size was required to order from Creuzot, or from Krupp, in the metric scale, adopted by Japan of "mètres and millimètres." One well-known English firm has in consequence, I understand, determined to follow the German example, and to render specifications to foreign governments or individuals in their own lineal and currency calculations.

Partiality of Students for Country Of Education

13.—In this connection the Consul at Yokohama calls attention to another important matter. He says "the Government official prefers the material of the country where he has received his training."

The Japanese authorities have in the last fifteen years sent large numbers of students to Europe. Many have given since their return solid proof of their industry, perseverance, and natural aptitude. More than one Continental Cabinet has taken an active interest in these students. But not so, I understand, her Majesty's Government. Several have consequently gone to France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, who might with advantage have come to England, as well as those studying ship-building and engineering. It is a matter not to be lost sight of in the future, for there are other backward lands likely to be stimulated by the bright example of Japan, and to endeavour to follow it.

Cutlery, Table Knives

14.—The imports of cutlery have averaged 21,000 dollars (say 3000l.) during each of the past three years, and practically the whole came from Sheffield. It is a trade capable, I believe, of great development. At the present time, the use of table cutlery is confined to the foreign population and visitors, and to a small proportion of the Japanese, perhaps 100,000 out of the forty millions.

But this number is likely to increase every year, and, indeed, every day, as European ideas, habits, and costume, encouraged, by the imperial Court, the nobility, and the leaders of commerce and thought, gain a firmer foothold. It is illustrated inter alia by the wide adoption of English head gear on the Lop of the native costume, and the consequent importation of a million dollars worth of English hats and caps in the last triennial period.

Encouragement of Table Cutlery

At a recent industrial conference with some of my constituents, an artisan asked if nothing could be done to encourage Eastern races to abandon "chop sticks" in favour of knives and forks. The question created some amusement, but it showed much intelligence and acumen. It has since occurred to me that possibly advantage might be taken of the Japanese and Oriental generous custom of present-giving to stimulate a taste for our cutlery, by enabling donors to obtain at a small cost a gift knife and fork, attractively got up either upon a card or in a case. In any case an experiment would not be ruinous.

Razors, Scissors, and Pocket Knives

15.—I have obtained for the information of the Sheffield trade, specimens of the razors, scissors, and pocket knives now in use among the Japanese, and shall on my return forward them to the Cutlers' Hall. As will be seen, they are of a very rough and primitive description.

Skill of Japanese as Cutlers

Time was when, according to Professor Rein, the German scientist sent by the Prussian Government to report upon "The Industries of Japan," "among the nations of Eastern Asia the Japanese were known as skilful workers in iron, which their celebrated armourers transformed into famous weapons of excellent steel. The forging and polishing of swords was a wearisome work demanding much skill and practice. The tempering of the edge was carefully done in the charcoal furnace, the softer backs and sides being surrounded up to a certain point by fire clay, so that only the edge remained outside. The cooling was in cold water. Skilful sword cutlers gained for themselves high social position, and won great glory and fame with their swords."

It now survives only in collections of old weapons. An Imperial edict forbade the carrying of swords, and in a few weeks the most costly arms were a glut in the market.

Demand for Razors

It is noteworthy that the Japanese very rarely allow any hair to grow upon the face, and the humblest peasant is regularly shaved by the barber, "dry," and with a rude handleless razor.

There is scope here. Indeed, a contract has just been concluded with an English house in Japan, for the supply of a considerable quantity of soft "German" steel, for the blocking out of razors, and I noticed one considerable shop-keeper announcing himself as "manufacturer of all kinds of European hardware."

Locomotive and other Engines

16.—In locomotive engines Great Britain supplied Japan in 1890 with 474,000 dollars worth out of a total of 659,000 dollars, Germany following with 81,000 dollars worth, and the United States with rather more than half that sum. In other engines and boilers 253,000 dollars worth came from England out of a total import of 345,000 dollars, while of railway carriages the United Kingdom supplied 10,000l. worth, or the whole save 600l.

Zinc

17.—In zinc, however, Germany took the lead with consignments amounting to 141,000 dollars against 89,000 from Great Britain. As the prosperity of the country advances the use of zinc, especially for roofing purposes, is likely to increase.

Woollens and Flannels

18. While in woollen cloths England holds her own in Japan with the supply of three-fifths of a gross import exceeding last year a million dollars, she falls far behind in woollen yarns and flannels. In the former Germany led in the proportion of 3½ to 1, and in the latter by a sale of 715,000 dollars worth out of 927,000 dollars, and I understand that the representative of a well-known English house recently found the trade much overrun and business exceedingly difficult.

Apprehended Decline of English Cotton Trade

19.—It is, however, the cotton trade of Lancashire which is likely to feel a serious change ere long in its relations with Japan. Her Majesty's commercial representatives have given warning of it for some time, and shown not only the danger to be apprehended by English operatives from the competition and cheap labour of India, but also from the establishment of cotton spinning factories in Japan, and the growing preference for the home made article.

In 1885 there were only 62,000 Japanese spindles at work. Now there are over 313,000 in 35 mills. Some have not done well owing to defective management. But others are working day and night. The importation of raw cotton has quadrupled in the last three years, while that of cotton on the seeds has doubled. A million dollars worth of the most improved British spinning machinery was laid down last year, and much attention is being given to the cultivation of the cotton plant, although, owing to the typhoons, with indifferent success.

While British cotton velvets, satins, and handkerchiefs have not lost ground, and grey shirtings, T cloths, and Italian cloths came almost entirely from England, as also turkey reds and victoria lawns, the work of the Japanese mills is evidenced by a decline in the importation of cotton yarns by over three million dollars since 1888, of which two million fell on Great Britain, and a diminution in the purchase of foreign cotton drills by two-thirds. In shawls also there has been a shrinkage.

A Fresh Market for Lancashire

It is clear, therefore, that Manchester will have before long to a great extent to replace her Japanese market, of which she had, until lately, a monopoly. This may probably be done most advantageously and effectively in the direction of United Empire trade.

Proposed Increase of Japanese Tariff

20.—Closely allied with this question is the almost certain increase in a year or two of the Japanese tariff. The amount collected at the present time by the Customs Bureau (whose returns are compiled with much care and despatch) comes to about 5 per cent. ad valorem (60 cents per 100 catties or 133⅓lbs. of steel, and 30 cents per 100 catties of manufactured iron in rods, bars, etc., and 15 cents per 100 catties of pig), and yielded last year 4,488,384 dollars, or nearly double the customs revenue of 1881.

It is highly probable that this rate will be doubled, or even increased to 11 or 12 per cent. in accordance with the demand of national manufacturers and operatives.

Powerlessness of Her Majesty's Government. Partiality of the Japanese for the English

21.—Under present fiscal conditions in the United Kingdom Her Majesty's Government is powerless to negotiate for a special arrangement as regards England. Were we differently situated it is not impossible that the Emperor's Government might be willing to treat preferentially with Great Britain, not only by reason of the preponderance of British interests in Japan and Japanese waters, but also on account of the popular partiality throughout the empire for our countrymen and their productions. This is evidenced in a thousand ways in the national life of this most attractive people, and not least of all by the adoption of English as the secondary official and commercial language, to an extent so great as to render it ample for travel in all but the remote districts.

A Close Alliance with Japan most Desirable

22.—It is much to be desired that this feeling may receive all possible encouragement. No question is likely to disturb the harmony of Anglo-Japanese relations, and no alliance is calculated to be of greater mutual advantage to both nations.

"BRITISH INTERESTS IN CHINA."

REPORT TO CENTRAL SHEFFIELD

Having regard to the apprehension caused by the danger in which foreigners in China have been lately placed, many of my constituents desire to know the result of recent inquiries at Peking and elsewhere, into the condition of affairs as affecting British Trade and Industrial Employment. I have the honour, therefore, to submit the following report.

The details have been collected partly from official sources and partly from the views of authorities in various spheres who have favoured me with opinions founded for the most part upon long personal experience.

Extent of Chinese Empire

1.—It may be desirable, in the first place, to call to mind the area and population of the Chinese Dominions, and the system of government.

The Empire of China proper is about 1,500,000 square miles in extent, or twelve and a half times the size of the United Kingdom; sevenfold the area of France or of Germany; yet less than one-sixth the British Empire. To this must be added the dependencies of Mongolia, Manchuria, Thibet, &c., say 2,000,000 square miles.

Population

2.—This vast and productive Empire, bordered upon the West and South-West by the possessions of the British in India and Burmah, and by Thibet; upon the North by Asiatic Russia, and upon the South-East by French Indo-China, is estimated to contain about four hundred millions of what an English authority has described as "the most cheerfully industrious, orderly, and wealthy nation in Asia."

The Emperor of China

3.—Over them despotically reigns, from the absolute seclusion enforced by tradition of The Forbidden City at Peking, the youthful descendant of The Conqueror who, two centuries and a half ago, placed for the second time the Tartar sceptre over the Chinese, and assumed the style of "The Son of Heaven."

The Crown does not devolve by primogeniture, but by the posthumously declared selection of the reigning Emperor among the male members of a younger line of the Imperial House.

The Imperial Government

4.—The Central Government is regulated by an Inner Chamber, a Grand Council, and the following six Ministries or Boards: (a) Civil Office, (b) Revenue, (c) War, (d) Works, (e) Ceremonies, (f) Punishments. Each Board is composed of Manchus (Tartars) and Chinese in equal numbers, with two Presidents—a system excluding individual power or responsibility.

The executive orders go from the Throne, and are obtained, according to ancient custom, on petitions presented by the Presidents of Boards or Members of the Grand Council, upon their knees, at or before sunrise,—the course of the Vermilion Pencil of the sovereign being, it is said, much influenced by the Empress Dowager, who, during the Imperial minority of seventeen years, skilfully administered the Regency.

Foreign Affairs

5.—The relations of China with Foreign Powers are conducted through a special Board or office—the "Tsung-Li-Yamen,"—consisting of eleven members of the Grand Council and six Chief Secretaries, a considerable number of whom, with a large retinue of servants, receive, round a sweetmeat-covered table, the official visits of diplomatic representatives. This collective conduct of state business, added to the difficulties of a language which, although monosyllabic, contains over 20,000 characters, and the necessity of all communications passing through interpreters (except in the case of the French Minister, who speaks Chinese), much restrains and practically prohibits the confidential and personal negotiations which, in other countries, so much facilitate the satisfactory conclusion of public affairs.

Provincial Administration

6.—For purposes of provincial administration, China is divided into several Viceroyalties, each invested with a large amount of sovereign power, including taxation, internal order and defence. It is subject, however, to many ingenious checks. In the first place, a Tartar General is attached to each Viceroy, in a semi-independent position, and his assent to many administrative matters is essential. Secondly, there is a rule against the appointment of a Chinese Viceroy over any province or provinces whereof he is a native. There is also the vigilance of a Board of Censors, established 160 years B.C., and theoretically consisting "of the most enlightened, righteous, and firm persons," whose duty it is to warn the Emperor direct of anything done to the public detriment, not excepting even Imperial laches; for the Chinese maxim runs—"To violate the law is the same crime in the Emperor as in a subject."

There are, within the Viceroyalties, 18 provinces, over each of which is an Imperially-appointed Governor, a Treasurer, a Judge and Comptrollers of the Salt Monopoly and the Grain Tribute. Every province is again subdivided into prefectures, departments, districts, and townships under small Mandarins, and into village communes under Headmen.

The territories of Mongolia and Manchuria are administered martially; in Thibet and Corea there are "Residents" representing the Chinese Suzerain.

The Mandarinate

7.—The Mandarinate is not hereditary, save in the case of a few princely families, largely debarred from public life, and the still surviving house of Confucius, which was elevated to a Dukedom, 1500 years after the death of its founder, in 479 B.C.

Public Offices

Public Offices are filled by nominated Mandarins of various grades. They obtain their posts partly by proficiency in successive urban, provincial, metropolitan, and palace open competitive examinations in Chinese classical lore, and partly by purchase or judicious bribery.

The former literary tests were established twelve centuries ago, and at least 1100 years before merit or study had much place in European patronage.

The brilliant graduate of humble origin rarely lacks, moreover, the pecuniary support necessary for the prosecution of his studies, or for official recognition of his examination laurels. Localities, banks, and capitalists are usually ready to stand behind a man of promise, as an investment, to be liberally recouped by ulterior "squeeze,"—on his attaining place,—smally paid in itself, however exalted, but prolific in indirect sources of enrichment.

Influence of the Literati

8.—Nothing is declared to press so heavily upon the social, political, and national progress of China, as the adverse influence of the "educated" classes. So it was even in the time of the great monarch who, 200 years before Christ, consolidated the Chinese Empire, and built the still-enduring Great Wall, in hopes of thereby defeating Tartar incursions. To overcome the opposition of the Literati, he ordered all their books to be destroyed. But the fact remains that the vigorous heads among the people, who, in other lands, have had to carve their forward path, by agitation and revolution, through the barriers of social rank, caste, and the privileges of wealth, have had for ages in China an open avenue to advancement.

Thus it is that the student tendency, instead of being, as in every other part of the world, in the direction of reform, is applied to the most absolute maintenance of the present system, and to the rejection alike of the methods and appliances of the Western world.

Students sent to Europe

9.—It is true that a few youths have, from time to time, been sent to Europe and America, but their studies have been either cut short, or the palace circle has succeeded in relegating them, on return, to distant posts. Some also have gone back, not imbued, like the Japanese, with ardent enthusiasm for reforms, but apparently more embittered than ever against the foreigner.³ How little influence they have had, and how little is really known of the West, may be illustrated by the belief said to have been expressed by a provincial functionary in high office, that foreigners came to China, from the barren rock of Europe, to obtain "rice" as a means of subsistence; and to the opinion of another, that we owed scientific progress, not to our own discoveries, but to having obtained a copy of the ancient Chinese classics, saved from the above-mentioned Imperial destruction.

National Result

10.—The national result is that, although recent events have hastened forward the completion of a telegraph system, there is throughout the Chinese Empire but one short railway, no proper road communication, and defective attention to the unrivalled waterways, no uniform system of taxation, no reliable administration of justice, no Chinese currency (other than brass cash), no postal system, and little regard for the public health and welfare; yet, wherewithal, there is great respect for private property and the due transmission of the small holdings into which the land is divided.

Prospect of Reform

11.—That a people sometimes accounted "the active race of mankind"; as keen and reliable in business as any in the universe; the reputed first inventors of the mariner's compass, of gunpowder, of ink, printing, and paper (which have contributed so much to England's greatness), should be content with such a condition of things may well pass belief. Ambassadors have of late been sent to Europe, Diplomatists, consuls, traders, and missionaries have endeavoured to show the light. The example of Japan is at hand. Yet no man can say, upon any foundation of actual fact, that a change is probable or imminent.

It is true that fully two millions of industrious Chinese emigrants can testify to their speedy acquirement of comparative wealth under happier conditions, despite laws of exclusion in America. The majority are said, however, to return quietly home and settle down (awaiting interment in one of the family burial places which cover the surface of the country and much prevent the sale of land) to that worship of ancestors, filial obedience, and veneration for authority, which are quoted with pride as contrasting favourably "with a society where each generation despises the one which immediately preceded it, and strains after the future without respect to the past."

Want of Leaders

12.—There is also an undoubted want of men willing to champion, or capable of leading, a party of reform.

The two most conspicuous statesmen in the Empire—and, indeed, the only ones—are the Viceroy of the Metropolitan Province of Chilhi, and the Viceroy of Hupeh.

The former is His Excellency Li Hung Chang, who, for 40 years, has possessed a great and beneficial influence. To the viceregal functions are united those of Grand Secretary of the Empire and Commissioner for Northern Trade, in which capacity His Excellency is consulted on all foreign and naval matters. He has the forts on the Peiho in good order, the troops well trained and armed—not with matchlocks or bows and arrows, as in other viceroyalties, but with modern weapons, replenished from arsenals at Tientsin, under foreign direction. A railway⁴ runs, moreover, under English management, to the Gulf of Pechilhi, and its extension to within 14 miles of Peking was once authorized, but subsequently disallowed.