But A More Miserable Voyage I Never Made, And It Was Not Until The
Afternoon Of The 17th That We Crawled Forth From Our Cabins To
Speak To Each Other.
On the second day out, great heat came on
with suffocating closeness, the mercury rose to 85 degrees, and in
lat.
38 degrees 0' N. and long. 141 degrees 30' E. we encountered
a "typhoon," otherwise a "cyclone," otherwise a "revolving
hurricane," which lasted for twenty-five hours, and "jettisoned"
the cargo. Captain Moor has given me a very interesting diagram of
it, showing the attempts which he made to avoid its vortex, through
which our course would have taken us, and to keep as much outside
it as possible. The typhoon was succeeded by a dense fog, so that
our fifty-hour passage became seventy-two hours, and we landed at
Yokohama near upon midnight of the 17th, to find traces of much
disaster, the whole low-lying country flooded, the railway between
Yokohama and the capital impassable, great anxiety about the rice
crop, the air full of alarmist rumours, and paper money, which was
about par when I arrived in May, at a discount of 13 per cent! In
the early part of this year (1880) it has touched 42 per cent.
Late in the afternoon the railroad was re-opened, and I came here
with Mr. Wilkinson, glad to settle down to a period of rest and
ease under this hospitable roof. The afternoon was bright and
sunny, and Tokiyo was looking its best. The long lines of yashikis
looked handsome, the castle moat was so full of the gigantic leaves
of the lotus, that the water was hardly visible, the grass
embankments of the upper moat were a brilliant green, the pines on
their summits stood out boldly against the clear sky, the hill on
which the Legation stands looked dry and cheerful, and, better than
all, I had a most kindly welcome from those who have made this
house my home in a strange land.
Tokiyo is tranquil, that is, it is disturbed only by fears for the
rice crop, and by the fall in satsu. The military mutineers have
been tried, popular rumour says tortured, and fifty-two have been
shot. The summer has been the worst for some years, and now dark
heat, moist heat, and nearly ceasless rain prevail. People have
been "rained up" in their summer quarters. "Surely it will change
soon," people say, and they have said the same thing for three
months.
I. L. B.
LETTER XLIV
Fine Weather - Cremation in Japan - The Governor of Tokiyo - An
Awkward Question - An Insignificant Building - Economy in Funeral
Expenses - Simplicity of the Cremation Process - The Last of Japan.
H. B. M.'s LEGATION, YEDO, December 18.
I have spent the last ten days here, in settled fine weather, such
as should have begun two months ago if the climate had behaved as
it ought. The time has flown by in excursions, shopping, select
little dinner-parties, farewell calls, and visits made with Mr.
Chamberlain to the famous groves and temples of Ikegami, where the
Buddhist bishop and priests entertained us in one of the guest-
rooms, and to Enoshima and Kamakura, "vulgar" resorts which nothing
can vulgarise so long as Fujisan towers above them.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 214 of 219
Words from 111981 to 112532
of 115002
