Pleasant Prospects—A Miserable Disappointment—Caught in a Typhoon—A Dense
Fog—Alarmist Rumours—A Welcome at Tôkiyô—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 Hakodaté, 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.
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°, and in lat. 38° 0′ N. and long. 141°
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 [Picture: Entrance to Shrine of Seventh Shôgun,
Shiba, Tôkiyô] 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 Tôkiyô 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.
Tôkiyô 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.