THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN’S HAREM.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 5, 25 February 1871, Page 4

THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN’S HAREM.

Sousouhanan, wishes to surprise those he loves for the first time and allows Europeans to cross the sacred threshold of conjugsl felicity. This was the order of the march Ist the Sultan, giving one arm to the Prince and another to the Resident, with their immense umbrellas to 2nd, The maids of honour, three and three, like the sculptor’s Graces, carrying boxes sparkling with diamonds, and filled with matches, perfumes, and the thousand and oneet ceteras required by > the Emperor. 3rd. Fauvel and I, also under umbrellas. 4th The court officials in procession. We were not long before we entered a most curious room, where our eyes fell upon a mass of gilding and mats, and arabesques, and colored and ornamented couches. In the midst of spiral stairs of sandal wood were niches with little altars surounded with hanging cups of odoriferous burning perfumes half hidden by the smoke, which was wafted away in clouds. This room, which might have been some hundred and fifty yards long, teemed full of valleys and mountains: frightened women hid like flitting shadows in a perfect labyrinth of wainscots carved in open work". But the sultan called, and all the forty wives appeared before us. They were like very shiny wax dolls, their beauty consisting more in youth than in complexion, as they smiled beneath his glances and placed themselves in languishing attitudes; their beautifullymoulded bosoms had no covering save strings of jewels, while rose-colored skirts were fastened round their waists. I felt as though in a dream, with a vision of the “ Arabian Nights” before me. But the crying of a child soon brought me back to earth, and proved that all was real ; the thirty-third son was presented to us. He was as noisy and ugly as children of a day old are in all latitudes. We cordially shook him by the hand to impart the promised blessing, which made him cry ten thousand times more. The Sultan seemed delighted, and numbers of curious servants put their heads in above the highly ornamented furniture, or between the bars of the winding stairs, which, covered with carved mythological subjects, rose to the ceiling. Sousouhounan presented us to his mother, and to four other worthy old hags, who had also been the wives of his late father. Then it was his daughters’ turn, of whom the greater number had nothing on but a set of diamond ornaments. It was no use our lavishing our sweetest smiles on them, our mere presence caused them such terrible fear. They are 48 in number; so the Sultan having been married at 12 years of age, it gives an average of three daughters a-year, added to the two sons.—-A Voyage Round the World, by the Marquis de Beauvoir,