THE IMPERIAL GARDENS.
The next morning Nicholas proceeded on his mission, and, as the courts
of the palace were crowded with soldiers and mandarins of various ranks,
in waiting to receive the great lords of state, who were that day to
have audience with the Emperor, he managed to pass through the crowd
without being once challenged. With but little difficulty, he found the
door mentioned by Ki, and passing through by means of the key, he
entered a narrow lane between two walls. Near the inner wall stood the
mulberry-tree, up which he clambered quickly, for he knew not who might
enter the passage. When, by means of one of the branches, he had gained
the top of the wall, his eyes drank in a new pleasure. There, before,
beneath were the magnificent gardens of the inner palace, and so charmed
were his senses that for a minute it seemed as if the penalty of death
were but a small price for the vision. The enclosed grounds were of many
miles extent, and so varied in their arrangement, that they might have
served for a model of the empire itself. There was something of most
things natural and artificial in China: towering mountains cut into
terraces and planted with trees of rarity and beauty; fertile valleys
laid out in orange groves and intermingled with murmuring rivulets;
then bridges of tinted marble, wrought to resemble flying dragons, whose
eyes and scales were fashioned from colored metals, flew across small
lakes of clear, transparent water, in which, as a paradise of their own,
gamboled shoals of gold and silver fish, which at that time had not been
brought to Europe; then orchards of fruit trees, making the morning air
redolent with the mingled scents of rare specimens of pears, apples,
peaches, citrons, apricots, muscadine grapes, pomegranates, and oranges.
The sides of the main canal, from which the dripping rivulets sprang,
were embossed with cypress and mulberry-trees, whose feet seemed planted
in a sprinkled fringe of water melons. On this canal, with its awning of
yellow silk and golden fringe, floated the gilded japanned pleasure
barge of the ladies.
For a time the boy's head swam with a new sensation. Such, thought he,
must have been the garden of that Emperor whose jealousy of the powers
of the cruel winter over his summer beauties caused him to waste the
revenue of a kingdom and the industry of a whole people in creating a
garden of artificial flowers, forgetting that the annual decay was alone
the cause of the ever-living freshness and perfume of nature.
Then the sweet scents and beauteous sight tired Nicholas, for he thought
of the suffering, starving people. Surely it should not be possible for
such a paradise to exist in the midst of so much treason and
rotten-heartedness, and then the bold sea boy thought of his own rough
life, and became disgusted with himself for dwelling upon so much
sensuousness, for he knew that the empire had never smiled and prospered
with a happy, peaceable and well-fed people, except when the Emperor had
set the example of temperance and labor; and, moreover, that luxury and
indolence had ever preceded the downfall of dynasties; and then by far
more interesting became the cotton, the tallow and the mulberry-trees
that Heaven had bestowed upon the land of China for the support of its
hundreds of millions, and which had no vocation in such a garden of
luxury.
As it must be interesting to my young readers, I will give a description
of these singularly valuable trees. The seed of the cotton shrub is sown
by the husbandmen on the same day that they get in the harvest. When the
rain has moistened the earth the shrub thrusts itself forward to a
height of about two feet, and in the month of August gives forth a
yellow or a red flower, which fades into a pod, which on the fortieth
day after the appearance of the flower divides itself into three parts,
each containing a wrapping of pure white cotton, similar in size to the
ball of the silk-worm. At this period, the husbandmen fasten the ball to
the pod, leaving it till the following year, when the fibres of the
cotton become so securely fastened to the seeds, that the husbandman is
compelled to separate them by means of two thin rollers, one of wood and
the other of iron, placed so close to each other, that in passing the
cotton between them, the naked seed is exuded from behind. The cotton
is then carded and ready to be converted into calico, an employment that
gives food to many thousands of people.
Of equal value and more curious is the tallow-tree, which lights the
whole of the empire. While the leaves and long stalks of this plant
cause it to resemble the aspen and the birch, its trunk and branches
resemble in shape, height, and size the cherry-tree. From the grey bark,
spring long elastic branches, the leaves of which grow but from the
middle to the end, where they finish in a tuft, where the fruit grows in
a hard brown husk of triangular form. The husk generally contains three
kernels, covered with a thin substance resembling white tallow. When the
husk begins to open and fall away, the fruit gradually appears. Each
kernel contains another of the size of a hemp seed, which from its
oleaginous nature is converted into oil.
To make the tallow, the shell and kernel are beaten together in boiling
water till the surface becomes covered with fat, which when cold,
condenses; then, by adding fair proportions of linseed oil and wax to
give consistency, they have produced the material which, when shaped
around a wick of hollow reed, produces the candles in use in China. Thus
does nature and the ingenuity of the people create from this
extraordinary tree a double means of lighting the empire.
As for the mulberry-tree, it is so well known that I need but tell you,
that after rice, the Chinese consider its culture as a sacred duty, and
deservedly so, for by feeding the silk-worm, it not only clothes the
people, but silk, being in immense demand over the known world, is the
primary means of giving them employment; indeed the mulberry-tree is an
"institution," and of such ancient date, that even in four thousand
years old China, which contains the oldest records in the world, there
is no authentic record of its discovery. There is a legend, however,
"that, till the days of Ti-Long, the wife of the Emperor Hoang-ti, the
people were savages, and used the skins of animals for clothing, but her
far-sighted majesty noticed that as the people were many, and the
animals few, they would soon become short of garments, when, like the
parent of invention, she was pushed to a discovery that worms might be
made the greatest manufacturers of her empire;" and that there is some
truth in this fable seems likely, as, from the earliest times, the
Empress of China has had a portion of the grounds of the palace planted
as a mulberry grove, where, at certain periods of the year, she goes in
state, to show her interest in the silk manufacture, by gathering three
mulberry leaves, and unwinding a quantity of silk. Lastly, I may tell
you, that the most learned men and the greatest ministers have devoted a
great portion of their lives to teach the people "how to bring up and
feed silk worms, so as to obtain the greatest quantity and best quality
of silk."
Is it not unjust that the race of worms should have been so long
despised, when, for thousands of years, one of their representatives has
been at the base of the prosperity of the largest, most populated, and
longest-enduring empire since the foundation of the world?