At Penang, in the Spice Islands, the
verge of the Flowery Kingdom seemed to have been reached.
“We might say that that land had bloomed over
its own borders, and its blossoms had fallen here....
Nearly the entire population of this island, 125,000
in all, are Chinese.” At Singapore, the
town of lions, he met an American hunter named Carroll,
who lived with the natives and had won fame as a dead
shot. Fortunately for humanity, that contests
with the aboriginal beasts a possession of this part
of the earth, the leonine fathers frequently devour
their cubs, else the earth would be overrun with the
lions.
Seventeen days on the Clan Alpine
passed by, and then, on the 10th of June, the captain
pointed out the “Asses’ Ears,” two
black specks on the distant horizon, which gave them
their first glimpse of China. On Saturday afternoon,
Mrs. Coffin had the pleasure of being told, by the
healthy-looking captain of the sampan or boat by which
they were to get ashore, that she was “a red-faced
foreign devil.” This was a Chinese woman,
of thirty-five or forty, who commanded the craft.
The next day, Sunday, they went to church in sedan-chairs,
and sat under the punkas or swinging-fans, which cooled
the air. On Monday, while going around with,
or calling upon, the missionaries Preston, Kerr, and
Parker, the Americans who had a sense of the value
of minutes found that the “Chinese are an old
people. Their empire is finished, their civilization
complete, and time is a drug.” The walls
of the great Roman Catholic Cathedral, costing over
four million dollars, were then but half-way up.
Being a true Christian, without cant
or guile, Carleton, as a matter of course, was a warm
friend of the missionaries, and always sought them
out to visit and cheer them. He rarely became
their guest, or accepted hospitality under the roofs
either of American consuls or missionaries, lest critics
might say his views were colored by the glasses of
others. He would have his own mind and opinions
judicial. Nevertheless, he knew that those who
knew the language of the people were good guides and
helpers to intelligent impressions. In Shanghai
he met Messrs. Yates, Wilson, and Thomson, and, in
the Sailors’ Chapel, Rev. E. W. Syle, afterwards
president of the Asiatic Society of Japan. Carleton
noticed that when the collection was taken up among
the tars present, the plate, when returned, showed
several silver dollars. The travellers went up
the Yangtse in a New York built Hudson River
steamer, commanded by a Yankee captain from Cape Ann.
At Wuchang he called on Bishop Williams, whom he had
met in London at the Pan-Anglican council, and who
afterwards made so noble record of work in the Mikado’s
empire.
So far from being appalled at what
he saw of the Chinese and their civilization, Carleton
noted many things to admire, their democratic
spirit, their competitive civil service examinations,
and their reverence for age and parental authority.
At the dinners occasionally eaten in a Chinese restaurant,
he asked no questions as to whether the animal that
furnished the meat barked, mewed, bellowed, or whinnied,
but took the mess in all good conscience.
From the middle of the Sunrise Kingdom, the passage was made
on the American Pacific mail-steamer Costa Rica, through a great storm. In those
days before lighthouses, the harbor of Nagasaki was reached through a narrow
inlet, which captains of ships were sometimes puzzled to find. They steamed
under and within easy range of the fifty or more bronze cannon, mounted on
platforms under sheds along the cliffs. Except at Shimonoseki, in 1863 and 1864,
when floating and fast fortresses, steamers and land-batteries exchanged their
shots, to the worsting of the Choshiu clansmen, the military powers of the
Japanese had not yet been tested. Accepting the local traditions about the
Papists’ Hill, or Papenberg, from which, in 1637, the insurgent Christians are
said to have been hurled into the sea, Carleton wrote, “The gray cliff, wearing
its emerald crown, is an everlasting memorial to the martyr dead.”
It was in this harbor that the American
commander, James Glynn, in 1849, in the little fourteen-gun
brig Preble, gave the imperious and cruel Japanese
of Tycoon times a taste of the lesson they were to
learn from McDougall and Pearson. Soon they reached
Deshima, the little island which, in Japan’s
modern history, might well be called its leaven; for
here, for over two centuries, the Dutch dispensed
those ideas, as well as their books and merchandise,
which helped to make the Japan of our day. Carleton’s
impressions of the Japanese were that they had a more
manly physique, and were less mildly tempered, but
that they were lower in morals, than the Chinese.
The women were especially eager to know the mysteries
of crinoline, and anxiously inspected the dress of
their foreign sisters.
Japan, in 1868, was in the throes
of civil war. The lamp of history at that time
was set in a dark lantern, and very few of the foreigners,
diplomatic, missionary, or mercantile, then in the
islands, had any clear idea of what was going on,
or why things were moving as they were. It may
be safely said that only a handful of students, who
had made themselves familiar with the ancient native
records, and with that remarkable body of native literature
produced in the first half of this century, could
see clearly through the maze, and explain the origin
and meaning of the movement of the great, southern
clans and daïmios against the Tycoon. It
was in reality the assertion of the Mikado’s
imperial and historic claims to complete supremacy
against the Shogun’s or lieutenant’s long
usurpation. It was an expression of nationality
against sections. The civil war meant “unite
or die.” Carleton naturally shared in the
general wrong impressions and darkness that prevailed,
and neither his letters nor his writing give much
light upon the political problem, though his descriptions
of the scenery and of the people and their ways make
pleasing reading. In reality, even as the first
gun against Sumter and the resulting civil war were
the results of the clash of antagonistic principles
which had been working for centuries, so the uprising
and war in Japan in 1868-70, which resulted in national
unity, one government, one ruler, one flag, the overthrow
of feudalism, the abolition of ancient abuses, and
the making of new Japan, resulted from agencies set
in motion over a century before. Foreign intercourse
and the presence of aliens on the soil gave the occasion,
but not the cause, of the nation’s re-birth.
The new government already in power
at Kioto, under pressure of bigoted Shintoists, revamped
the ancient cult of Shinto, making it a political
engine. Persecution of the native Christians,
who had lived, with their faith uneradicated, on the
old soil crimsoned by the blood of their martyr ancestors,
had already begun. Carleton found on the steamer
going North to Nagasaki one of the French missionaries
in Japan, who informed him that at least twenty thousand
native Christians were in communication with their
spiritual advisers. At sea they met the Japanese
steamer named after Sir Harry Parkes, the able and
energetic British minister, who was one of the first
to understand the situation and to recognize the Mikado.
This steamer had left Nagasaki three weeks previously,
with four hundred native Christians. These had
been tied, bundled, and numbered like so many sticks
of firewood, and carried northward to the mountain-crater
prisons of Kaga.
Many of these prisoners I afterwards
saw. When in Boston I used to talk with Mr. Coffin
about Japanese history and politics, and of the honored
Guido F. Verbeck, one of the finest of scholars, noblest
of missionaries, and best friends of Japan. No
one was more amused than Carleton over that mistake,
in his letter and book, from hearsay, about “Mr.
Verbeck, a Dutchman who is trading there” (Nagasaki).
They passed safely through the straits
of Shimonoseki, admiring the caves, the surf, the
multitudes of sea-fowl, the silver streams falling
down from the heights of Kokura, on the opposite side
of Choshiu, and from mountains four thousand feet
high, and made beautiful with terraces and shrubbery.
Through the narrow strait where the water ran like
a mill-race, the steamer ploughed her way. They
passed heights not then, as a few years before, dotted
numerously with the black muzzles of protruding cannon,
nor fortified as they are now with steel domes, heavy
masonry, and modern artillery. Here in this strait,
in 1863, the gallant David McDougall, in the U. S.
corvette Wyoming, performed what was perhaps
the most gallant act ever wrought by a single commander
in a single ship, in the annals of our navy.
Here, in 1864, the United States, in alliance with
three European Powers, went to war with one Parrott
gun under Lieutenant Pierson on the Ta-Kiang.
Like nearly all other first gazers
upon the splendid panorama of the Inland Sea, Carleton
was enthralled with the ever changing beauty, while
interested in the busy marine life. At one time
he counted five hundred white wings of the Old Japan’s
bird of commerce, the junk. At the new city of
Hiogo, with the pretty little settlement of Kobe yet
in embryo, they spent a happy day, having Dr. W. A.
P. Martin to read for them the inscriptions in the
Chinese characters on the Shinto temple stones and
tablets.
The ship then moved northward, through
that wonder river in the ocean, the Kuro-Shiwo, or
Black Current, the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, first
discovered and described by the American captain, Silas
Bent. The great landmarks were clearly visible, Idzu,
with its mountains and port of Shimoda, where Townsend
Harris had won the diplomatic victory which opened
Japan to foreign residence and commerce; white-hooded
Fuji San, looking as chaste and pure as a nun, with
her first dress of summer snow; Vries Island, with
its column of gray smoke. Further to the east
were the Bonin Islands, first visited by Captain Reuben
Coffin, of Nantucket, in the ship Transit, in
1824. When past Saratoga Spit, Webster Isle,
and Mississippi Bay, the party stepped ashore at Yokohama,
where on the hill was a British regiment in camp.
The redcoats had been ordered from India during the
dangers consequent upon civil strife, and belonged
to the historic Tenth Regiment, which Carleton’s
grandfather and his fellow patriots had met on Bunker
Hill.
It was a keen disappointment to Carleton
not to be able to see Tokio, then forbidden to the
tourist, because of war’s commotion. A heavy
battle had been fought July 4, 1868, at Uyeno, of old
the place of temples, and now of parks and exhibitions,
in the northern part of the city. The Mikado’s
forces then moved on the strongholds of the rebels
at Aidzu, but foreigners knew very little of what was
then going on. After a visit to the mediaeval
capital of the Shoguns, at Kamakura, he took
the steamer southward to Nagasaki, and again set his
face eastward. He was again a traveller to the
Orient, that is, to America. On the homeward
steamer, the Colorado, were forty-one first-class
passengers, of whom sixteen were going to Europe, taking
this new, as it was the nearest and cheapest, way
home. Below deck were one thousand Chinese.
Before the steamer got out of the harbor it stopped,
at the request of Admiral Rowan, and four unhappy deserters
were taken off.
The Pacific Ocean was crossed in calm.
It seemed but a very few days of pleasant sailing
on the great peaceful ocean, with the days’
gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, which hollowed out of
the sky caverns upon caverns of light full of color
more wonderful than Ali Baba’s treasure-chamber,
and nights spiritually lovely with the silvery light
of moon and stars. On August 15th, 1868, they
passed through the Golden Gate, and “Aladdin’s
palace of the West,” the cosmopolitan city of
San Francisco, was before their eyes.
Not more wonderful than the things
ephemeral and the strange changes going on in the
city, wherein were very few old men, but only the
young and strong of many nations, were the stabilities
of life. Carleton found time to examine and write
about education, the libraries, churches, asylums,
charities, and the beginnings of literature, science,
and art. In one of the schools he found them
debating “whether Congress was right in ordering
Major Andre to be executed.” Lest some might think Carleton lacking in love to
“Our Old Home,” we quote, “It is neither politic, wise, nor honest to instill
into the youthful mind animosity towards England or any other nation, especially
for acts committed nearly a century ago.”
In his youth he had played the battles
of Bunker Hill and Bennington, in which his living
ancestors had fought, and of which they had told him, using
the roadside weeds as British soldiers, and sticks,
stones, and a cornstalk knife for weapons. In
after-life, he often expressed the emphatic opinion
that our school histories were viciously planned and
written, preserving a spirit that boded no good for
the future of our country and the world. In the
nineties, he was asked by the Harpers to write a history
of the United States for young people. This he
hoped to do, correcting prejudices, and emphasizing
the moral union between the two nations using English
speech; but all too soon the night came when he could
not do the work proposed.
Remaining in California over two months,
Carleton started eastward in the late autumn over
the Central Pacific railway, writing from Salt Lake
City what he saw and knew about Mormonism and the polygamy
and concubinage there shamefully prevalent. From
the town of Argenti, leaving the iron rails, they
enjoyed and suffered seven days and nights of staging
until smooth iron was entered upon once more.
They passed several specimens of what Carleton called
“pandemonium on wheels,” those
temporary settlements swarming with gamblers and the
worst sort of human beings, male and female. They
abode some time in the city of Latter Day Saints.
They saw Chicago. “Home Again” was
sung before Christmas day. Once more he breathed
the salt air of Boston. Carleton wrote a series
of letters on “The Science of Travel,”
showing where, when, and for how much, one could enjoy
himself in the various countries and climates in going
around the world.
Carleton summed up his impressions after completing the
circuit of the globe in declaring that three aggressive nations, England,
Russia, and the United States, were the chief makers of modern history, America
being the greatest teacher of them all, and “our flag the symbol of the world’s
best hope.”