The Bay Is Deep Blue, Flecked
With Violet Shadows, And About Sixty Junks Are Floating Upon It At
Anchor.
There are vessels of foreign rig too, but the wan, pale
junks lying motionless, or rolling into the harbour under their
great white sails, fascinate me as when I first saw them in the
Gulf of Yedo.
They are antique-looking and picturesque, but are
fitter to give interest to a picture than to battle with stormy
seas.
Most of the junks in the bay are about 120 tons burthen, 100 feet
long, with an extreme beam, far aft, of twenty-five feet. The bow
is long, and curves into a lofty stem, like that of a Roman galley,
finished with a beak head, to secure the forestay of the mast.
This beak is furnished with two large, goggle eyes. The mast is a
ponderous spar, fifty feet high, composed of pieces of pine,
pegged, glued, and hooped together. A heavy yard is hung
amidships. The sail is an oblong of widths of strong, white cotton
artistically "PUCKERED," not sewn together, but laced vertically,
leaving a decorative lacing six inches wide between each two
widths. Instead of reefing in a strong wind, a width is unlaced,
so as to reduce the canvas vertically, not horizontally. Two blue
spheres commonly adorn the sail. The mast is placed well abaft,
and to tack or veer it is only necessary to reverse the sheet.
When on a wind the long bow and nose serve as a head-sail. The
high, square, piled-up stern, with its antique carving, and the
sides with their lattice-work, are wonderful, together with the
extraordinary size and projection of the rudder, and the length of
the tiller. The anchors are of grapnel shape, and the larger junks
have from six to eight arranged on the fore-end, giving one an idea
of bad holding-ground along the coast. They really are much like
the shape of a Chinese "small-footed" woman's shoe, and look very
unmanageable. They are of unpainted wood, and have a wintry,
ghastly look about them. {22}
I have parted with Ito finally to-day, with great regret. He has
served me faithfully, and on most common topics I can get much more
information through him than from any foreigner. I miss him
already, though he insisted on packing for me as usual, and put all
my things in order. His cleverness is something surprising. He
goes to a good, manly master, who will help him to be good and set
him a virtuous example, and that is a satisfaction. Before he left
he wrote a letter for me to the Governor of Mororan, thanking him
on my behalf for the use of the kuruma and other courtesies.
I. L. B.
LETTER XLIII
Pleasant Prospects - A Miserable Disappointment - Caught in a
Typhoon - A Dense Fog - Alarmist Rumours - A Welcome at Tokiyo - The
Last of the Mutineers.
H. B. M.'s LEGATION, YEDO, September 21.
A placid sea, which after much disturbance had sighed itself to
rest, and a high, steady barometer promised a fifty hours' passage
to Yokohama, and when Dr. and Mrs. Hepburn and I left Hakodate, by
moonlight, on the night of the 14th, as the only passengers in the
Hiogo Maru, Captain Moore, her genial, pleasant master,
congratulated us on the rapid and delightful passage before us, and
we separated at midnight with many projects for pleasant
intercourse and occupation.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 213 of 219
Words from 111403 to 111980
of 115002
