At Yokohama, Admiral Yamamoto, Minister of Marine, courteously invited me to visit the dockyard and fleet at Yokohama, placing H.I.M. cruiser Takasago at my disposal. The vessel was throughout in as good condition as a man-of-war could be; and her ship's company were smart, well dressed and well disciplined.
At Yokosha is a large torpedo depot, at which everything connected with torpedo warfare is organised under its own administration; a system preferable to the British method, in which the torpedo departments are auxiliary to the dockyards.
The impression disengaged by my sojourn of a fortnight in Japan was that both the political and commercial classes were determined to enforce the "Open Door" in China, where their commercial interests were extensive. I observed that the nation was arming itself steadily and effectively; and that a spirit of patriotism was universal. Four years later, the Russo-Japanese war broke out.
CHAPTER XLVI
TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES (Continued)
III. THE UNITED STATES
The many invitations sent to me while I was in China from the United States determined me to visit that country on the way home; in order to explain to the American nation the situation in China; to encourage if it might be, the growth of amity between the English and the American peoples; and incidentally to mark the contrast between the most ancient and static Empire of the East and the restless dynamic forces of the latest experiment in Western civilisation. I had arrived at Nagasaki on the 11th January, 1899; traversed Japan as a half-way house, in which West and East had married, and in which their offspring were presently to astonish the world; and came to San Francisco on the 10th of February.
Immediately the wheels of life began to revolve with an extraordinary velocity. I was caught up in the sumptuous hospitality of that generous people—deluged with invitations; and haunted by interviewers. In looking back, great cities rise one upon another, like cities in a dream; I seem always to be speaking to a field of keen, upturned countenances; the only respite comes in the days and nights, all run into one to the long roll of the cars, as the train eats up the miles of that land of vast spaces; and everywhere there are welcome and cordiality and friendship.
And everywhere there were Irishmen, rushing to shake hands with a countryman; rushing any distance, often hundreds of miles, just to exchange greetings at the latter end. Irishmen are so, the world over.