At dawn on the 13th the Carnatic entered the port of Yokohama. This
is an important port of call in the Pacific, where all the
mail-steamers, and those carrying travellers between North America,
China, Japan, and the Oriental islands put in. It is situated in the
bay of Yeddo, and at but a short distance from that second capital of
the Japanese Empire, and the residence of the Tycoon, the civil Emperor,
before the Mikado, the spiritual Emperor, absorbed his office in his
own. The Carnatic anchored at the quay near the custom-house, in the
midst of a crowd of ships bearing the flags of all nations.
Passepartout
went timidly ashore on this so curious territory of the Sons of the
Sun. He had nothing better to do than, taking chance for his guide, to
wander aimlessly through the streets of Yokohama. He found himself at
first in a thoroughly European quarter, the houses having low fronts,
and being adorned with verandas, beneath which he caught glimpses of
neat peristyles. This quarter occupied, with its streets, squares,
docks, and warehouses, all the space between the "promontory of the
Treaty" and the river. Here, as at Hong Kong and Calcutta, were mixed
crowds of all races, Americans and English, Chinamen and Dutchmen,
mostly merchants ready to buy or sell anything. The Frenchman felt
himself as much alone among them as if he had dropped down in the midst
of Hottentots.
He had, at least, one resource to call on the
French and English consuls at Yokohama for assistance. But he shrank
from telling the story of his adventures, intimately connected as it was
with that of his master; and, before doing so, he determined to exhaust
all other means of aid. As chance did not favour him in the European
quarter, he penetrated that inhabited by the native Japanese,
determined, if necessary, to push on to Yeddo.
The Japanese
quarter of Yokohama is called Benten, after the goddess of the sea, who
is worshipped on the islands round about. There Passepartout beheld
beautiful fir and cedar groves, sacred gates of a singular architecture,
bridges half hid in the midst of bamboos and reeds, temples shaded by
immense cedar-trees, holy retreats where were sheltered Buddhist priests
and sectaries of Confucius, and interminable streets, where a perfect
harvest of rose-tinted and red-cheeked children, who looked as if they
had been cut out of Japanese screens, and who were playing in the midst
of short-legged poodles and yellowish cats, might have been gathered.
The
streets were crowded with people. Priests were passing in processions,
beating their dreary tambourines; police and custom-house officers with
pointed hats encrusted with lac and carrying two sabres hung to their
waists; soldiers, clad in blue cotton with white stripes, and bearing
guns; the Mikado's guards, enveloped in silken doubles, hauberks and
coats of mail; and numbers of military folk of all ranks—for the
military profession is as much respected in Japan as it is despised in
China—went hither and thither in groups and pairs. Passepartout saw,
too, begging friars, long-robed pilgrims, and simple civilians, with
their warped and jet-black hair, big heads, long busts, slender legs,
short stature, and complexions varying from copper-colour to a dead
white, but never yellow, like the Chinese, from whom the Japanese widely
differ. He did not fail to observe the curious equipages—carriages and
palanquins, barrows supplied with sails, and litters made of bamboo;
nor the women—whom he thought not especially handsome—who took little
steps with their little feet, whereon they wore canvas shoes, straw
sandals, and clogs of worked wood, and who displayed tight-looking eyes,
flat chests, teeth fashionably blackened, and gowns crossed with silken
scarfs, tied in an enormous knot behind an ornament which the modern
Parisian ladies seem to have borrowed from the dames of Japan.
Passepartout
wandered for several hours in the midst of this motley crowd, looking
in at the windows of the rich and curious shops, the jewellery
establishments glittering with quaint Japanese ornaments, the
restaurants decked with streamers and banners, the tea-houses, where the
odorous beverage was being drunk with saki, a liquor concocted from the
fermentation of rice, and the comfortable smoking-houses, where they
were puffing, not opium, which is almost unknown in Japan, but a very
fine, stringy tobacco. He went on till he found himself in the fields,
in the midst of vast rice plantations. There he saw dazzling camellias
expanding themselves, with flowers which were giving forth their last
colours and perfumes, not on bushes, but on trees, and within bamboo
enclosures, cherry, plum, and apple trees, which the Japanese cultivate
rather for their blossoms than their fruit, and which queerly-fashioned,
grinning scarecrows protected from the sparrows, pigeons, ravens, and
other voracious birds. On the branches of the cedars were perched large
eagles; amid the foliage of the weeping willows were herons, solemnly
standing on one leg; and on every hand were crows, ducks, hawks, wild
birds, and a multitude of cranes, which the Japanese consider sacred,
and which to their minds symbolise long life and prosperity.
