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.
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.