MAIL SKETCHES IN CHINA BY A LADY.-No. V.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 310, 6 February 1875, Page 3

MAIL SKETCHES IN CHINA BY A LADY.-No. V.

FEOM JAPAN TO CHIJTA. left Yokohama on Monday last, and T was prepared to do ever--so-, mijch. writing ere this, .but all Monday Tuesday the rain poured in torrents, and the wind blew and roared, and the" sea was mountains high and the saloon and cabins so wet, and I found it impossible' to sit at table to write. I could do not'hV ing but read, and pass the time as'best I could. We did a good deal in the- eating and drinking line too—much to the disgust of some who were sick, and looked upon us as hard-hearted monsters apparent want of sympathy. As .you may have supposed, we are now on our way back to China, and sorry I am that it is so, as we had a pleasant time of it in Japan, and the heat is now fairly set in in China. Yesterday morning at daybreak we reached Kobi, at the head of the Inland Sea. "We spent the day there wiLh some friends, and sailed at daybreak again to-day, and now we are steaming down the Inland Sea. It is still and smooth as glass, and as blue as the deep vault of heaven. On both sides hills rise right from the water's edge, mostly covered with dense wood, and rich vegetation. The trees come right down to the edge of the water. At some places the hills are so close together that there seems no room for the steamer to get through. It is not like a sea —rather like a succession ot beautiful lakes, and is dotted over with rocky and wooded islets, among which this steamer winds in and out in the most wonderful inanner. I am writing this sitting under the awning, and L is enjoying a lounge on a couch. There are about a dozen more European passengers, and about twenty first-class, and two hundred second-class Japanese. "We will be in the Inland Sea all to-day, and till to-morrow night, when we get out to the open sea, and next morning we will reach Nagaski, one of the - most lovely sea-ports in the world. We stay-there a day or two, and then four or five days more of open sea, and we reach *China again. Now I must begin and give' you some account of ourselves since we left China. "We left for Japan on Monday, the 18th. It was very , rough, as it always is, crossing that arm of the dhina Sea, but the wind was behind us, "and took us over quickly. We reached Nagasaki on Thursday forenoon.

NAGASAKI. I can liardly describe Nagasaki to you. How lovely Nagasaki is after being tossed abouton a rough sea. You sail in between two high islands, bare and rocky on the sea side, but one .mass of wood on (hi. land side. Then you turn about amoug some more wooded islands, and at last turn a sharpish corner, and go through a narrow pass between two high hills, and find yourselves in a most lovely little bay. On looking back to see where you came in you can hardly tell. There seems no outlet. You are just as if you were in a clear, calm little lake, with one .thickly, wooded island dotted over it, and surrounded by high and. very denselvwooded hills. The wood-is no ordinary wood, but full of lovely evergreen trees. This is the season for the eamelias to flower, and the woods are full of great wild cameha-trees over thirty and forty feet high, and these are one mass of blossom. Some white, like heaps of snow ; others and. most commonly, deep red, or pale pink. Oa one of the islands there is a Buddlust temple, of very fine style, with splendid old wood carvings all in gold and red. It has a very fine effect among the trees. At one end of the bay round the toot of a wooded hill are the offices and business places of the foreign residents ; l , e -» eilind ' scattere d over the slopes of the hill among the trees, are their Bungalows. Such sweet little dwellings they are, overlooking the little harbor, with all its native and foreign shipping. The native town, which is very large, is on the slope of another hill to the right. Jt is a great contrast to any Chinese town as are all Japanese towns, in China the

towns are so filthy, and the_ streets so narrow; and the houses even of the better classes really more like pigsties than human dwellings. 'The Japanese on the contrary /have' streets three times the width, and they are clean arid well-kept, and drained after a fashion, arid the" houses are all clean, and so neat. We landed as soon-as the steamer stopped, being taken on shore by a small native boat. After visiting our friends, and having refreshments, we all walked down to the native town, and to the porcelain shops for which Nagasaki is celebrated. We bougKSSt set of tea dishes; and one-or two little vases and other ornaments, and then wandered over the hill to the foreign quarter. Dining with a friend there, we then returned to the steamer by moonlight. At daybreak we sailed, and the same evening by six we had passed through Simonaseki Straits, where the last battle between the English and Japanese took place, now four years ago, and where we can see the small English graveyard on the hillside, where numbers of our poor fellows who were killed, are laid. The scenery through these Straits is very grand. They form the south entrance to the Inland Sea. From there to Kobi we were two days and a half—all the time sailing through this Inland Sea with land on either side all along our course. We reached Kobi on Sunday forenoon. "'■; KOBI. , It ties at the north end of the Inland Sua, and—like all Japan—is a place with very ■; • i hi'gh,. wooded hills.. The town' stretches half-moon shape along the beach, and'-runs up: ; a 10ng,., broad hill, behind which there ar&some splendid woods, and some to which we went that afternoon^-there being no church. ' Kobi has only lately been open to foreigners. When we parsed through it on our way home in August, 1869, there were not over twelve' foreign residents.- Even these were-in constant terror of iheir lives, -and lived mostly on hulks moored in close proximity to the shore. Now there are some twenty qv thirty. business firms" established, and they have all fine houses built "along, the back at the end of the" jAn -old friend came off as soon as the'steamer anchored, and took us on-shore with him, and we stayed that night in his.house. It so happened'that they had just had two very severe"'earthquakes treats very common in every part of Japariv~so earthquakes were the topic of the moment, and at dinner we heard a long account of the damage done by the last two, and in consequence I, spent a very uneasy night jn Kobi. We got up early, and—as we had the whole day in Kobi up till daybreak next morning—we determined to go and see the city of /

-OSAKA, of which Kobi is the seaport. has only very'lately been open to foreigners, and very few have ever.been there. Yet we tnade'upa_ smallrparty,;. only our two selves and .Captain; P— -?—.- We started biffin, a small Japanese steamer at eight o'clock for ..Osaka. It is a huge city—the commercial.capital of Japan. It is twenty.eight.milfes froin Kqbi up a.river. The ' steamer, was "crowded-with Japanese. We found a nice'corner of the deck whore we - eould see the l couutry-froin, but were no sooner at'test found-that—though vthev steamer had onc.e been built and managed by English was then in; anything but.skilful Shands,'&r the way tbeyniade it race.on at fall speed—now : rushing across to the. one side, now to the other, and then tearing right up, regardless .of boats or junks, or anything in its way. Once we met another little steamer comingdown, which was an equally misguided-little craft. We were quite expecting..to get done for. Neither could make. up.'its ; niind -which side to pass on, and a collision seemed inevitable. However, they did. pass safely, but just by a hair's breadth. . It vras quite a marvel evidently to the conductors themselves how they did it. Some parts of the, river are very shallow, and just at one of the worst parts, when we were almost scuffing against the bottom, we ran full speed into a great, flat barge laden with immense blocks, of-stones. It turned clean over, and the stones went down in a heap into the channel. How we managed to pass over I don't know. We bumped a good deal, but got over-at last, and saw all the boatmen get picked up by other boats hear:- We never stopped, but went on as if nothing had happened, and in two hours and a half arrived at'the outside of Osaka, very glad to get off the-steamer with our lives. We wemVto" a Japanese inn (or tea-house) near to get some tiffin. They gave us some hashed up chicken, stewed with rice, and some green, spinach sort of vegetable; also fish,, mixed and made intd a sort of pie with rice, and also plain roast fish, and plenty of sweet potatoes or yams; All these things;, with tea, made quite a good meal, though-all was served in basins, and we had to. eat with porcelain.spoons, instead of forks, and sit on th£ floor—chairs; and tables not being in fashion. We then hired a guide and three gin-rick:shawsj made for one person, just like a gqibd But, instead of being pushed forward from behind,, this thing has two shafts and a man runs between them like a pony. A strap is fixed to each shaft, and goes over the man's shoulders. The. men who run in them are all but naked, only a narrow slip of cotton round their loins ; but the whole of their bodies are tatooed, from their heads to their heels, in all manner of devices,' and in all kinds of colors. .You can scarcely see an inch of natural skin, and they really don't look naked after all. They are brought up from earliest youth to run. All despatches and posts in Japan are run by foot at a good quick trot. A man runs twenty miles a stage without a rest. We —being anxious to go faster than ordinary—hired two men each : one went with a long rope as a tracer, the other in the shafts. We got in, each in his gin-rick-shaw, and off we started, rattling over the ground at a great rate. We went in a line : L first, I in the middie, and Captain P behind. A lady especially caused a good deal of sensation in the streets. But we went so fast we gave no time for a crowd to gather. We were delighted with the city, so clean and neat after China, and' shops and streets so~ orderly and well kept. We went all through the chief streets, and up the hill, to See the* Prince of Osaka's castle a huge place, extending over miles, with three immense moats,- one within the other, and any number of fortifications, all full of cannon and soldiers. We were allowed to go within the second moat only. The soldiers being inclined to be rather troublesome to foreigners, we did not Ktay long, but returned to our gin-rick-shaws, ;which we had had to leave at the outside gate, and started on our way back. We went-through other streets, and stopped at oiie'or two shops to buy

porcelain. Just ax..a little curiosity w » went to the wax-works. The Japanese ire very clever at that work Their figures, are life-size, and so are the animals —thelatter especially wonderfully life-likv: We could have seen other sights, but our time was limited; so back wc rattled to the little.inn and had another mtal same as before, and then ai four o'clock once more embarked on board our littlt steanif r—not without sundry misgivings as to the safety of pur homeward-bound voyage. We took our places where we had been before; but this time there were two other Europeans going down, and rhev came with us. We went on all right till we came to where the stone-boat was capsized, wid then all of a sudden we came bump on the stones, and then we could hear a tearing and a scraping, and then a jerk that nearly tilted the stern right up. • We conld"*do nothing but sit still; and there was a grand scrimmage. They stopped the vessel, and tried the pumps ; and then some men went round and poked about under the ship, and by and bye they told us that all the copper bottoni was torn off—but no water came in. So on we went again, but we were rather nervous about it. We got on for about an hour, when the rushing from side to side of the river and getting in the way of e»erything kept going on worse than ever. At last we went round rather a sharp bend of the river, and came broadside on to the bow of a junk that was lying at anchor. The bow went right into our. paddle, and took paddle and hqx clean away; and there we stuck, and thought we'd stay there for the rest of our- lives. The" junk people seemed-to think- nothing about it, but sat calmly watching' all our efforts to get clear. At last the foreigners on board took the thing into their own hands, and ordered them to go full speed a-head, which'they did, ana the junk swung round into the middle of the stream, and we got off. Fortunately, on going to tho engineroom, they found a real live Scotchman in charge of the engines. He 'said that, in going over the stones, the rudder got broken, and the ship would not steer; but that he kept sounding the pumps, and .they were keeping pretty dry, .and he thought we'd paddle away with' one wheel pretty safely. If we had kiiown before of the foreign engineer we should have felfcsafer. There should, he said, be a foreign captain, but he did not know the river, or anything about it, and was on board, but only helped to steer in some covered place down below. It seemed to us a very queer arrangement altogether, and I don't believe either captain or engineer had ever learned about a ship or an engine. They had been two men out of employment, and had told the Japanese that they could be a skipper and an engineer, and so had been taken on. We heard afterwards that this was the first trip of that steamer up the river, and that she had just been repaired after being blown up I These were a comfortable lot of .'facts-.•to learn. However, we. got to Kobi at last, but we went bumping about on the-banks, and having only one paddle we crawled along at a very slow rate, all after one side, like a crab. We really hardly thought we would get to Kobi, for, after "leaving the river, we had a good ten miles of bay to cross, and the" wind blew pretty fresh, and we could find that the steamer got much deeper in the water, and hung down all to one tide. However, we got safe there, but never again shall I go in a Japanese steamer, unless when they have European officers who don't hide themselves when foreigners go on board. We went at once on board Our own steamer, and had some dinner, arid went soon to rest. V