Read Ebook: The Japan expedition. Japan and around the world An account of three visits to the Japanese empire with sketches of Madeira St. Helena cape of Good Hope Mauritius Ceylon Singapore China and Loo-Choo by Spalding J W J Willett

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Before nightfall on the 11th of January, we were under way for the Cape of Good Hope from St. Helena.

"The fleets that sweep before the eastern blast, Shall hear their sea-boys hail it from the mast; When Victory's Gallic column shall but rise, Like Pompey's pillar, in a desert's skies, The rocky isle, that holds, or held his dust, Shall crown the Atlantic like the hero's bust."

As your boat approaches the mole, you pass through large flocks of the black gull and cormorant, and nearer the shore, groups of the pelican are feeding. Should a southeast wind prevail when you reach the wharf, you will scarcely be able to see the place. Dense clouds, not of dust, but of coarse red sand, fill the streets, and are borne in fitful eddies around the corners. It fills your eyes, if you are so rash as to open them but for a second, your ears, nostrils, and insinuates itself underneath every garment that you wear; you are doing the penance of walking with gravel under your sock, although sandal-shoon be on. The male residents who move about wear veils attached to their hats, but to a stranger the annoyance is horrible. During the prevalence of this wind, the houses are closed as well as they may be, but it is insufficient to keep out the plague. In the parlor-windows of an English hotel at which I dined, the dust had accumulated in a morning to the thickness of velvet, and from the front of the house I saw a Hottentot servant removing the sand piled on the pavement, as we would a small snow-drift in our own country.

On a bright Saturday morning, a Malay, with a good coach and four very good horses, drove a party of us out to Constantia, famous for the making of the celebrated wine of that name. The distance from town is about nine miles, and the road a very good one. You pass through long rows of the pine-tree, which I saw planted for ornamental effect for the first time, and here and there you see the native silver-tree, its bright leaves glistening prettily in the sun. The residences on the route are very cosy-looking, and much taste is displayed in laying off the approaches to them. A house not long before occupied by Sir Harry Smith, while governor of the colony, was a very attractive place.

The mode of cultivating the grape for the production of wine at Constantia is peculiar. They use no arbor for the support of the vines, but sustain them, a small distance from the ground, with sticks. When the fruit has reached maturity, the leaves are cut away to permit its being reached by the rays of the sun, and is only plucked for pressing when it has become nearly as sweet as a raisin; hence the taste of the wine, its high value, and its body.

During our stay at Cape Town, the Kaffir war still continued, and on our way back from Constantia, we drove to the little settlement of Wynberg to take a look at the captive Kaffir chief Seyolo, whom the English had confined in the prison at that place. We found the prisoner in a small cell, a stalwart woolly-headed negro, not of the darkest complexion, standing six feet one and three quarters inches high. His dress consisted of a lit cigar, and a single blanket thrown round his person. His wife, Niomese, with a good countenance and very small hands and feet, was with him. In an adjoining cell was his chief counsellor and his wife. They appeared quite cheerful and decidedly lazy. When the unintelligent face and elongated heel of Seyolo, was considered, it was a matter of surprise, how such a creature could have exercised with any force the power of command, or displayed any strategic skill to the annoyance of the English; but it was said that he had not been anything like as troublesome to the colonists as a withered-legged Kaffir chief named Sandilli, who having been once taken and turned out on his parole, would be shot in obedience to the sentence of a drum-head courtmartial, if again captured. The accounts from the seat of hostilities, during the time we lay at Cape Town were very unpropitious, owing to the severe fatigue and exhaustion which the hale hearty soldiers in their illy-adapted uniform, were compelled to undergo in bush-fighting or climbing steep places in pursuit of the alert and fleet-footed Kaffir, while with the best protection that could be extended to the kraals of the settlers, their cattle were continually being driven off by the thieving enemy.

A stroll through the botanical garden remunerates one very well. The exotics are rare and tastefully displayed, while the Fuchias and the Cape Jasmin laden the air with sweet perfume. The wheat of the colony is ground in steam-mills situated in the midst of the city.

We ran to the eastward for some days for the purpose of getting a favorable wind and then headed northward for our port. The weather continued rough and disagreeable. The anti-scorbutic notions of the commander-in-chief--although we were not a sailing vessel liable to be out of port for any considerable length of time, but a steamer whose necessity for coal would require short runs, caused to be put on board of us before leaving Cape Town, twelve of the large, wide horned cape-bullocks, and a number of the cape-sheep with tails as wide as a dinner plate. The stalls of the larger cattle were on the forecastle and on the quarter-deck, tied up to the halyard racks. When the ship rolled heavily, the noise of these poor animals endeavoring to conform to her movement, or disturbed by the men in getting at the ropes which their large horns covered, and their continued tramping over the heads of those below deck, was of course increasing the comfort of shipboard hugely. Then during a rough night although cleats had been nailed on the deck to steady them, some steer would tumble down and dislocate his thigh, requiring the butcher's axe to despatch him next morning. On the port side of the "quarter-deck," y'clepted, I believe, in the time of Drake, the "king's walk," the impromptu bleating of the sheep from a fold made by lashing oars from the breach of one gun to another, was quite mellifluous.

If the necessity had arisen of fighting the ship, overboard would have to go the beef-cattle: if the ship had been required to salute a superior command met on the sea, the orders would have been given, perhaps, as follows: "Starboard fire!" "Port fire!" "Starboard fire!" &c. The efficiency of the ship for war purposes was seriously impaired, if not destroyed, during their presence.

Two days from port, the anti-scurvy idea still predominant, punch made with ship's whiskey and lime juice, was served out to the crew, but many an old shell-back as he took his tot, looked as if he would have preferred the ardent minus the other ingredients.

On the 14th of February we discovered a tant vessel to the windward of us. It proved to be a steamer under sail alone, her engines out of gear and dragging her wheels. She stood down in our direction as if desirous of speaking us, and many expressed much surprise at our not stopping, but all at once we had stopped, and the stranger shot across our stern. In answer to the hail, "What ship is that?" the reply was: "Her majesty's steamer Styx, bound to the Mauritius; please report us under sail." Our stopping was involuntary, a screw of one of the "cut-offs" to our engines having come out, which was promptly fixed with a block of wood by one of the admirable engineers which it was the good fortune of the Mississippi to have; so that we were ready to go ahead again in a very few minutes. The Englishman, no doubt, was none the wiser for the belief that we stopped in courtesy to him.

The weather just before reaching Mauritius was much smoother than it had been; the sun now came up upon the right, and his going down in the Indian ocean at night, was a sight most beautiful to look upon, its whole bosom bathed in fiery floods, and way above, tower above tower, rose in radiance and glory illuminated clouds. When our band's best strains were filling the ship at evening and these sights preceded night, we could hardly realize that we were in the Indian ocean--the ocean of squalls, calms, heavy rains, gale, storm, and hurricane.

About 11 o'clock on our fifteenth morning out from the Cape of Good Hope, the southwestern end of the island of Mauritius was visible from the masthead, and we put on all our furnaces so as to reach Port Louis before night. On approaching the land we ran for two hours, past highly-tilled fields encompassing the cosy houses of the planters, sloping to the water's edge in living green. As we neared the small crescent on which is built the little town of Port Louis, we were boarded by two English harbor-masters, who conducted us to our anchorage, and assisted in mooring the ship head and stern, as the place is too contracted for a vessel of any size to swing in. Their costume showed the philosophy which John Bull always carries into torrid temperatures. They were dressed in white linen roundabouts, pants and shoes, and on their heads were wide-brimmed hats, made of the pith of a tree and covered with white. We had gotten the ship secured just about the time a gun from one of the forts nigh us, announced the hour to be 8 o'clock. I sat upon the wheel-house looking at the necklace of lights that marked the town; the moon as if moved by the notes of our band which was playing delightfully "Katy Darling," and the "Old Folks at Home," seemed to rise more rapidly, and as it came it displayed the lofty outline of Peter Botte mountain, of Penny Magazine memory; the tall palms that fringed the beach on the right looked more stately and graceful in the silver light, and the scene altogether was so enchanting, that no one who looked upon it, could keep from feeling Bernardin-St.-Pierreish.

At daylight next morning we got a look at Port Louis. The town is not extensive, though nestling prettily under tall volcanic hills. Its suburbs are composed of the red-roofed huts of liberated Africans, making long streets. In its bazar, like nearly all places in that portion of the globe, your attention is first arrested by the grotesque--the kaleidoscope of costume. Of course your ubiquitous pig-tail friend "John Chinaman" is present. Here he attires himself in dark nankeen clothes, wears his clumsy shoe without sock, twists his plaited queue under a Manilla hat, and with his Paul Pry umbrella which he seldom hoists, looks as much like another "John Chinaman" who passes him, as two bricks in a house. You see the Arab with his head entirely shorn, or the dark-haired Lascar most diminutive in loin wardrobe, but gaudy in the vest that covers his fine-formed chest; the Parsee clothed in his gown of white muslin, his turban and pointed shoes; the Malayan women in very brief attire, their children strapped on their backs, sitting on the wayside, chewing the areca-nut or the betel-leaf that they may spit blood-red saliva, and none the better looking for having a large ring fastened through the skin of their foreheads, or hanging from one nostril. These people are all very graceful in their movements. Their religions are comprised in Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Hindoo, &c. They number some six thousand of the population of the place.

I had a pleasant drive into the country, over fine English roads, Macadamized with volcanic stone by chain gangs. Our fancy-turbaned Lascar driver kept up the while a noise like that of our swamp-sparrows, to encourage his horses. We saw the large fields of sugar-cane, rustling in their deep green, with here and there the tall white chimneys of a sugar-house, or the painted roofs of the chateaus of the Creole, who live very luxuriously, rising in the midst of the promising crops, whose aggregate yield it was thought would be one hundred and sixty millions of pounds of sugar. The foliage that encroaches on the roadside with its luxuriance, or stretches way back to the base of the steep volcanic hills in sight, says "Tropical, tropical;" "the acacia waves her yellow hair," you have the wide-spreading banyan, the tall rough barked cocoa, the cabbage-tree--its branches interlocked, the banana, the plantain, the ever-graceful palm,-- each one of its leaves large enough to make a fan; and then too the traveller's tree, which on being tapped, affords the weary and athirst a substitute for water. Underneath this mass of rank green, you notice the straight-stemmed aloe with its graceful top-knot, and in the hedges that porcupine plant, the cactus, whose prickly leaf and long thorn, prevent the hump-backed, or Hindoo cattle of the country from getting in the fields of green cane. Then the birds are beautiful to see: the pure white boatswain, the noisy little paroquet, the black frigate bird, and the pretty little cardinal with his feather cowl.

The morning scene along the roads is at all times animated. With his proverbial industry, in rope-harness, one John Chinaman is pulling and another John Chinaman is pushing, heavy burdens in a small wagon; or, footing it in a trot to the town, with his bamboo-baskets strapped on shoulder, goes the chicken-merchant with his juvenile Shanghaes. Walking past you in groups, their hands clasped one with another, or stretched on their back, the rays of the sun kept off by the shady branches of the palm, or sitting under a roof made of its leaves, having his head shaved, or the hairs of his moustache plucked out here and there, to make the outline more graceful, is the semi-denuded and meat-hating Lascar.

This is a very small picture.

Next you have a view of Tomb Bay, where the young unfortunate went to her death by shipwreck, and after thinking about the height of the breakers, and the hardness of the coral reef, you soothe the fervid mood by a stroll through one of the most attractive botanical gardens that the whole East presents. The sun poured down his hottest rays, but the lofty and strange trees that meet above your head, as a Gothic archway, afford shade, and the great moisture produced under foot, by this exclusion of the sun, brings up a thick green moss, so you walk on a thick velvet carpet, while on both sides of you, rivulets of clear water run gurgling all the time. Whether there was ever such people as the two little loving recipients of morality, Paul and Virginia, or not, or that the Saint Giran was ever wrecked, it is a beautiful spot apart from the story.

But there is reality as well as romance in the Isle of France; the present owner, John Bull, supplies it. On the iron gateway under which you pass, in landing, is "Victoria Regina," and Victoria Regina levies heavy taxes on the planters. A walk on the esplanade shows you a fence of half-buried cannon--the trophies of the English when they captured the island from the French. In front of the house of the governor, who gets ten thousand dollars more salary than our president, red-coats continually mount guard. Policemen throng the streets in the same uniform I saw in Canada, and in the barrack is quartered a fine regiment of fusiliers to keep the people in subjection.

The island, like others in the Indian ocean, has suffered from hurricanes; the cane may be most promising in the field, but destroyed before garnered. The most violent hurricane they ever had, piled three hundred houses of Port Louis in ruins, and stranded thirty ships in its harbor.

The Portuguese, the discoverers of the island, called it Cerni; the Dutch who came afterward, "Mauritius," after Prince Maurice of Holland; and the French, Isle of France. In the Champ de Mars, a fine open plain, where the regimental bands play, the troops drill, and the pretty Creole women take their evening drives and promenades, I noticed a very tasteful tomb of a French governor, Malartie, which was finished by the munificence of Sir William Gomm, an English governor.

Four days after our arrival, being the anniversary of the birthday of the Father of our Country, our ship was appropriately dressed with our national ensign, and at mid-day we fired a salute of twenty-one guns, in which the English man-of-war, the "Styx," which had reached port, would have joined us, but an order from the admiralty forbids the firing of salutes by their national vessels unless their battery reaches a certain number of guns.

We reached Mauritius just in time to enjoy its pleasant fruits, consisting of the pine-apple, the banana, the plantain, the mangoe, and the alligator pear, which could be plentifully obtained from the fruit boats that flocked around the ship; and then, too, before breakfast, we drained the cocoa's milky bowl.

With a pleasant remembrance of the hospitalities received from the people of Mauritius, we left Port Louis for Point de Galle, on the 25th of February.

We had a run before us of two thousand five hundred miles, and expected in the stormy ocean we had to traverse, to meet with rough weather on the passage, perhaps one of those dreaded typhoons; and that its approach might be indicated at the earliest possible moment, our barometer had been compared with the standard one in the observatory at Mauritius, whose able and persevering superintendent is devoting himself to the advance of meteorological information in that quarter of the globe, and the increase of nautical science, like our own Maury. His name is Bosquet, and, at the time of our visit, he was preparing a moveable index card, showing the various quadrants of a revolving gale or cyclone, which must prove of great benefit to the practical navigator in those seas. We had a smooth sea during the run, hot weather, and a light head wind. When General Pierce was taking the oath of office, on the 4th of March, our nine o'clock lights were extinguished.

About nine o'clock of the night of the 10th of March, the lookout in the top sang out, "Light, ho!" which we knew must be on the island of Ceylon. The entrance to the harbor of Point de Galle, being quite narrow, we endeavored to get such soundings as would enable us to come to anchor until daybreak, but not succeeding in this, the ship's head was put off shore, and we lay-to for the night.

That most ancient and quasi-veracious traveller, Sir John Mandeville, who had great injustice wrought him by the wits of his day, I think it was, who, in speaking of the approach to Ceylon said, that the spicy odor therefrom could be smelt long before "the land thereof might be discerned from the tallest masthead of a ship." If this be true, Sir John, great changes have taken place in these latter days. We did not detect anything unusually odoriferous in the atmosphere; and I subsequently found that one might walk through a cinnamon grove without being attracted by the scent, as the cinnamon proper is hermetically sealed by a kind of epidermis bark, which has to be removed before it is gotten at. The nutmeg, with the mace around it, at first of a deep-red color, is enveloped in a covering as thick as the enclosure of the stone of the apricot, and on the tree resembles this fruit before ripening. The "spicy breezes" blow very "softly o'er Ceylon's isle."

We had scarcely anchored when the ship was surrounded by native canoes, called d'honies, which, at a little distance, resemble planks edgewise upon the water, fifteen or twenty feet in length. They are hollowed out of logs so narrow, that the paddling occupant usually keeps one leg dangling over the side. To prevent their capsizing, a solid log, much less in size and length, pointed at both ends, is placed about ten feet off and parallel with the boat. This is connected with the boat by arched bamboo poles, and forms an out-rigger. A paddle propels them very easily, and they sail quite fast.

These boats were filled with Indiamen and Ceylonese, who would have been dressed if they had only had some garment from the slice of cotton about the loin, up to their neck or down to the heel. In a short time our decks were filled with them; also Mussulmen and Arabs, with their small oval caps and vests, exposing breast and arms, and others wearing kerchiefs of all manner of gaudy colors wrapped about them and hanging to the knees like a skirt. But the thing that strikes you with the most singularity is, that the men whose heads are not shaved, wear their hair in a knot like women, secured to the back of the head with a large tortoise-shell comb. These fellows "salam" you, and their salutation is extremely servile. Some of them come for your clothes--they are washermen, and return your garments with remarkable quickness for the East. Others pull out of their kummerbunds at the waist a lot of what they call precious stones, and say, "Wantshee, me have got good mooney stones--star stones, ruby, cat's-eye stone, sapphire," &c.

"Where every prospect pleases, And only man is vile!"

The "prospect" of being cheated is not a pleasant one at any time; and these men are very "vile." The fellow will hold the precious jewel to the light, and in the dark, vary its position, rub it, and praise it with great earnestness and sincerity, but should you be verdant enough to purchase the gem, even at half the estimate set upon it by him of the land of Golconda, an ordinary rat-tail file will very soon assure you that you have got a fine specimen of cut-glass. The genuine, or precious stones, are bought up by agents and sent to London. Should their sales grow very slack they are most desirous of trading for any old clothes you may have--oriental and old clothes!

One is struck with the fullness, beauty, and glossiness of the hair of the natives, especially when he bears in mind, that those who do not shave their heads, walk uncovered under the hot sun of their clime. I had some curiosity to find out the secret of this. They use on their hair twice a-week the juice of limes, obtained by boiling them, and then dress it with an oil pressed cold from the queen cocoa, scented with "citronella," a very singular and powerful perfume which they distil on the island. Sixty drops of the citronella is sufficient to perfume a bottle of the oil of considerable size.

The news is conveyed from Point de Galle to Colombo by a pigeon-express, none of your "fly away to my native land, sweet dove," business, with billet-doux, and riband around neck, but despatches, which are tied to the feet of the bird, who in flying draws them up under him, and in that way the paper is kept from a wetting, should it rain. The birds from one point are sent to the other by a coach, and not being fed in this strange cote, upon being turned out with their despatch they fly home. They fly seventy-two miles in an hour and three quarters.

This is an outline of modern Ceylon. The men who "bow down to wood and stone" here will tell you, that the footprints of a man, in stone, on the top of a mountain, is the footprint of their God, where he stepped over to the main land; but it is called Adam's Peak, and the Mussulmen say that Adam and Eve dwelt there. They will tell you that Paradise was in the Seventh Heaven, and that Adam and Eve were expelled by the command, "Get you down, the one of you an enemy to the other, and there shall be a dwelling-place for you on earth." Adam fell on Ceylon, or Suendib, and Eve at Joddah on the Red sea, and after two hundred years the angel Gabriel conducted Adam to where Eve was, and they came and dwelt in Ceylon.

Before leaving Point de Galle, a green boat came alongside, bearing an elephant flag, out of which came the captain of a Siamese man-of-war, to pay a visit of courtesy. He was quite a young-looking man, dressed in a red jacket with a yellow silk skirt. Behind him walked an attendant bearing a pearl box in his hand. One of our midshipmen thought this must contain his "character." As he spoke but Siamese, and our commodore did not speak Siamese, the interview must have been quite satisfactory.

On the 15th of March we left Point de Galle, and headed across the bay of Bengal, in the direction of the northwest end of Sumatra. We did not take in our entire quantity of coal at Ceylon, but got on board fifty tons of the wood of the place, to try the experiment of its burning in our furnaces. It did not answer; the expense of consumption per hour was twenty dollars, while coal would have been about six, and producing less steam, while it induced greater danger of setting fire to the ship. In our run across the bay of Bengal we had a smooth sea, hot weather, and moonlight nights. In five days we were off the island of Nicobar, and entered the straits of Malacca, the weather changing to squally and rainy. Here we passed the English oriental mail-steamer from China, having on board commodore Aulick, whose late command of the East India squadron was soon to be assumed by the commodore aboard of our ship. Our run through the straits of Malacca was not signalized by any remarkable incidents. We saw the shore on either hand at times; passed in sight of the English East India penal settlement, Pulo-Penang, and close aboard of some most lovely tropical islands, anchored at night, and caught some red fish; made lay to, and frightened half to death, the captain of a Malay boat, called a parrigue, who had been manoeuvring very suspiciously about nine at night, by firing a couple of muskets at him; and received and returned a salute. This was the English frigate Cleopatra, in tow of an East India Company's steamer, one day's run from Singapore. As they neared, the frigate broke stops with an American flag at the fore, and let slip with twenty-one guns. The old Mississippi was not to be caught napping, and although we had to lower away our quarter boats to prevent their injury by the concussion from our large guns, we soon had flying the English ensign at the fore, and replied with twenty-one. It is not the greater part of a century, that an American man-of-war would have been allowed to pass without any such national courtesy being shown by an Englishman. As the two vessels passed under our stern and stood on their way, our band gave them in its best style, "God save the Queen!"

At one o'clock in the day we were boarded by a native pilot, who brought from the consul at Singapore a letter-bag for us. It was the first news we had gotten directly, since leaving the United States, then out eighty days, and almost antipodal to our homes, and no one but he who has experienced it can appreciate fully the joy of getting a letter at such a time. It was the first that had come to me away from my own land, and I could have hallooed.

In the afternoon we rounded in among some beautiful islands, standing like verdure indexes to the harbor, and soon after anchored in the English free port of Singapore, about two miles from the shore.

The Malay boats around the ship soon after we arrived, were most symmetrical in proportion, and pretty to look at. They are "dug-outs," rather crank, but beautifully and sharply modelled. The song of the native rowers is quite strange, and far from unpleasing. The man who sits behind you in the sharp stern, steering with a paddle, pitches his voice, and gives the key-note of the "barbaric pearl" ditty , goes on with the burden, and the two rowers amidships, rather indifferent to the fact that the unsteadiness of their boat does not suit you, musically chorus, "A--lah! A--lah! El--lel--la!" Their larger boats called prahus, with their graceful latine sails, move with great rapidity through the water, and are said to be as elegantly modelled as any yacht "America." Indeed, some are of the opinion that the fast modern pleasure-boat, owes its origin to the prahus of the Malay.

Thackeray, in his "Cornhill to Cairo," has most pleasantly and truly described the keen relish which is afforded to travel if one could be taken up, and suddenly translated--or immersed as it were--among a people entirely different in complexion, habit, and costume, from his own. Unfortunately you are deprived of this in the East; your arrival at one place is continually anticipating another; and so at Singapore, most unwillingly, you get too large a slice of the picture, too much foretaste of the grand "central," "celestial," "flowery," "middle kingdom," though in a few days' run of China. The first thing that met our gaze, laying in shore of us, their unsightly masts unshipped, their large sails under cover, their high stems and decks in the shadow of mats and bamboo, waiting for a change of the monsoon that they might go back to Quangtung or Fungching, were moored the ungainly Chinese junks. Of course, as is invariably the case, even on their smaller boats, from either side of the square bow peers the big painted eye; and if the stranger should be curious enough to inquire why they are put there, the matter-of-fact Chinaman, with a "Hy-yah,"--more expressive than the shoulder shrug of the Frenchman--would make answer, "No hab eye, how can see?"

On landing, the Chinese features of the place are found to predominate over all others, though the population of the town is also composed of English merchants, Malays, Arabs, Jews, Parsees, Hindoos, &c., amounting in all to about forty thousand. You no sooner put foot on the stairs that lead from the little bridged river, which equally divides the city, than your ears are filled with the interminable banging of gongs, more terrific than those which broke on the tympanum of Mr. Benjamin Bowbell when he was going to be buried alive with an Eastern princess. If a Chinese funeral is progressing, the gong is heard, if some mart has just been opened, or a public sale is to take place, beat the gong, and at sundown from the junk, "Joss" is "chin-chinn'd" by gong-beating. The streets present a scene of much bustle and activity, and traversing them are the most grotesque and picturesque oriental costumes--the large tassel pendent from the Fez cap of the Parsee, of as bright a scarlet, or his loose vest of as deep a blue, and the handle of his pipe just as long, as others that I had seen at prior places.

On the eastern side of the town, fronting on a fine parade or drive, are the residences principally of the Europeans, with the exception of some who have their bungaloes near the suburbs. Here are also situated government-offices, a very plain-looking Protestant church, whose swinging fans mitigate the intense heat to the worshipping congregation; a very fine hotel, under whose pleasant mahogany--located in arbored buildings, kept cool by moving punkas--we so agreeably placed our knees, to enjoy fine fruits, and for a time, keep from the rays of a torrid sun; and a pyramidal column, whose inscription tells in English, Arabic, and Hindostanee, how grateful the people there resident are for the service rendered them, while a prominent member of the East India Company's government, by one Earl Dalhousie. He may be a scion of Pope's

"Next comes Dalhousie," &c.

Not far from here we went through the ward of a hospital for English sailors, and also another for Chinese, whose inmates were lying on elevated and inclined shelves, the victims of every terrible disease of the climate.

The Joss-house at Singapore is as fine, though it may be not as large, as any to be seen in China. An elaborately-designed and gaudily-ornamented pagoda, of colored porcelain, rises from its centre; its doorway is guarded by two gorgons dire, in a sitting posture, in whose snarling mouths large balls have been ingeniously carved, so that you may place your hand between the teeth and roll them about, yet the whole is cut from a block of blue flinty granite. The court and alley are paved with colored porcelain tiles, while the altar and the sleepy idol that fills its rear, are decorated expensively and fantastically. One of the wings of this temple, from which issued a more cook-shop than savory smell, I noticed was appropriated as a kind of popular restaurant, and filled with Chinamen down to the lower cooly, all seated at small tables, uttering their mushy jargon, and bolting with chop-sticks the boiled paddy. Their proximity to their "Joss-pigeon" neither restrained their appetites nor their noisiness. "John Chinaman" will tell you that "Joss" is a very good man, but that there is no reason why he should have a large temple all to himself. Opposite the temple I saw the first Chinese "Sing-Song," a street-theatre, made by the elevation of a staging of bamboos covered with mats. Upon "these our players," gaudily attired, and accompanied by caterwauling instruments and "tom-toms," appear to the infinite delight of their street auditors, who guffaw loud their approval, as they stand protected from the sun under their paper umbrellas.

At Singapore is the prison in which nearly all the convicts from the possessions of the English are confined, and a collection of more villanous visages could not be met with in the walls of any other jail. Those who have been convicted of murder, have the word "Doomga"--Hindostanee for their crime-- branded on their forehead. Those who have been guilty of lesser offences are put into chain-gangs, and made to keep the road in order. There was one inmate, in the person of a negro, from Long Island, who had been sentenced for fifteen years.

Singapore was established by the English as a competitor for the trade of the Dutch at Batavia, in the East Indian Archipelago, and being declared a free port, has accomplished the desired result to a very great degree. Numbers of prahus, that can play pirating or trading as the opportunity presents, come there, bringing their commodities, but principally that they may get powder and shot, to play Lambro with neighboring Dyaks. It was founded in 1819, and settled with the consent of the rajah of Johore, a part of whose possessions it was. This rajah still receives a large annuity from the English, and resides in the vicinity of the place. With a friend I drove out to his place. The building was a plain one, fronted with a verandah, and the entrance ornamented with two little brass howitzers. We were received by the rajah's son, who spoke a little English. He was gaudily attired in turban made by wrapping a parti-colored kerchief about the head, from his side hung a handsomely-mounted dagger, and he also sported a fine gold watch. His features were quite handsome for a Malay. We were ushered into an upper room, at one end of which, on a sofa, with his feet drawn up under him, similarly attired with himself, sat his father the rajah, and his brother whom we understood to be a "sultan" of some neighboring province or country. On the table in front of them lay their krisses, the hilts inlaid with costly jewels. They were quite jolly-looking old fellows, and had a great many questions to ask about the mission on which our ship was bound, &c., but the defective translation of his son made the business of answering a slow one. Before leaving him he caused tea and sweetmeats to be brought in, and joined us quite sociably. The next day his son paid us a visit aboard ship.

On the 29th of March, we left Singapore, and in a short time were heading our course in the China sea. On the 2d of April the heat became very oppressive. What little breeze moved on the water was aft, and the steamer moving faster than it, the windsails which led to the lower quarters of the ship afforded no comfort, and hung collapsed from their halyard. Some of our firemen; whose duties always severely onerous, but particularly so in those burning latitudes, fainted as they stood in the fire-room while feeding their furnaces. Such is the exhausting effect of the climate on those engaged by the peninsular and oriental steamers, that engineers and firemen, it is said, are rotated at intervals, with those engaged on the more healthy part of the route on the other side of the isthmus of Suez. The greatest mortality among them arises from diseases of the liver.

"All Fools' Day" is not forgotten on shipboard. The better to remember it in the younger messes, it is set apart for the celebration of the caterer's birthday ; the table is spread in the best way, and not until the caterer's health has been proposed in sherry--"a bumpers and no heel-taps"--and the wine-glasses emptied, does the choking sensation remind the uninitiated that he has bolted a wine-glass of rather strong whiskey.

In two or three days the weather suddenly changed to blanket temperature; we ran into a heavy head sea; the spray was chilly, and the sun sank as if in the cold gray of autumn. On the morning of the 6th April, the Ladrone islands appeared in sight, and we ran into a fleet of some three hundred Chinese fishing boats--we were off the shores of the Middle Kingdom. The sight of these awkward boats, with their build, showing what travellers to Cathay have called the celestial propensity to "reverse" everything, was an interesting one. But why say the Chinese reverse? They had a national existence, when these our moderns were not even in embryo; their laws had an existence long before the code of Lycurgus was promulged, and their hieroglyphic record goes away back to a period which our own sacred revelation does not compass, so it is we who reverse. John Chinaman knows that though the stern of his boat is broad and high; that its bow runs wedge-like and low; that his masts, instead of raking aft, lean forward; and if his boat, under sail, look as if she was going to run under, still that she has borne him safely when many a "ty-fung" blew. We wished a pilot, but in answer to the inquiry whether any could furnish one, they nodded assent, and held up fish and some rice. The weather being thick we ran in under one of the Ladrones and anchored for the night in thirty fathoms water, and fired a gun for a pilot. The next morning at daybreak, we ran in and anchored in the roadstead of the old Portuguese city of Macao, about four miles from the shore. Though the turbid water all around, and the naked islands that encompassed the anchorage, did not afford a prospect calculated to prepossess one with his first glance at the "Flowery Kingdom," still we had a feeling of gladness that after an almost uninterrupted run of over four months we had reached our goal, or the region which was to be the theatre of our movements--yes, for months.

The oriental salute seldom consists of more than three guns, and many of the natives of the East are unable to see why this number should be fired; they can not comprehend why you should burn in compliment the same material, which you would employ in sending deadly missiles at them, if in anger. But we, Christian nations, manage things differently; and the next day after our arrival told it: from the rising to the setting of the sun nearly, it was powder burning. Upon hoisting the colors at eight o'clock we saluted the town with twenty-one guns, and twenty-one were returned by a water-battery; the French saluted us and we saluted them; then came the admiral and commodorial salutes, English and French, which were returned in the old style by letting fall fore-top sails the while; and so that day the noise of one hundred and seventy-nine guns, broke and tumbled along the naked hills of Hong Kong, with nearly as splendid an effect as at St. Helena.

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