The next day was cold, gloomy, and rough. Scarcely a soul but was sick and sorry. The usual whale excited but a feeble interest along the row of deck chairs, occupied by people in varying stages of malaise. We must expect bad weather. In truth we had a miserably cold cheerless voyage across this Northern Pacific Ocean, and it was such a contrast to our bright and sunny passage across the South Pacific, from San Francisco to Auckand, six years ago. The ship takes a northerly course until we get to the mouth of the Behring Sea. Here we had a miserable Sunday. Such an angry grey sea, crested with white horses, seething and boiling around us. It was abominably rough. Everybody was sea-sick again, and, to complete the tale of woe, there was a dense sea-fog, the decks dripping with this clammy moisture and from the spray, as the Empress's nose was buried in the ocean's waves and, quivering from stem to stern, she rose and shook herself. The discordant shriek of the fog-horn was heard all day. Everybody agrees that life on board ship is bearable if you can be on deck, some even may go so far as to enjoy it, though I cannot say that we belong to that number, but when, as on this occasion, that refuge was denied to us, we were indeed miserable. We had service in the saloon, the little remnant able to appear, and all joined in those familiar prayers, that seem to bind us together on the stormy ocean as "one family in heaven and earth." The Bishop of Exeter, who, with his son, the Bishop of Japan, is on board, preached the sermon. Weary of being knocked about at the mercy of the waves, there was not a soul on board but was thankful when night came, and we sought such rest as we could find in our berths.
We shall have a Wednesday missing all our lives, that of Wednesday, September 17th, and we have lost a whole day, besides sundry and many half-hours by the putting back of the ship's clock. We are now just half-way round the world from the Greenwich meridian.
The next day we saw one island of the Aleutian group, and the "early birds" saw a snow-cone on it. These islands extend for many miles at the entrance to the Behring Sea, and we discover that in the event of a shipwreck our boats have orders to steer for this island. There are a number of missionaries, from thirty to forty, on board, who, with their wives and numerous families are bound for China. Some of them are very intolerant, as was shown when the officers got up a dance, and there was some question as to where the piano would come from: "Oh!" said one, "the devil will be sure to provide that."
The last two days we experience a sudden change from the intense cold. We awake one morning to find a tropical downpour, accompanied by a damp heat that enervates everybody, and this is accompanied by the tail end of a typhoon, and a grand sea. All ports are closed, the heat below is terrific, and the ship labours and rolls heavily. And thus ends a most disagreeable and lonely voyage, for we have not seen a single sail since leaving Vancouver.
There is no sensation in the world more delightful than landing in a new country, and especially when it is in such a different corner of the world as Japan.
Our expectations are vague and enthusiastic, but, alas! the approach to Yokohama through the beautiful channel of islands is lost to us. We are on deck at 5 a.m., only to see the lights of the numerous lighthouses on the coast extinguished, and then blotted out in blinding mists of rain. Fugi, the sacred mountain, whose cone, dominating the whole island, we had been taught to watch for in our first view of Japan, is lost to us. Sullen clouds and the gloomiest grey sky hang over Yokohama.
The departure from the Empress of Japan is a scene of more than usual confusion, but we get safely down the one gangway, thronged with passengers and their luggage, and into the steam-launch sent for us by the Government, and are soon speeding along the pretty Bund to the Grand Hotel. The first morning on shore after a long voyage is always a harassing one. There are letters to be posted, the money of the country to be obtained, departure of the next steamer to be ascertained, and here in Japan, above all, passports to be seen about, for you cannot leave the Treaty Ports without one. We afterwards found that in an incredibly short space after arriving in any town, the police always came to inquire for a passport. Then we had to engage a guide, without which you are assured you cannot travel in Japan. I may at once say that, though we had an excellent guide, we found him an unnecessary nuisance, and parted with him in a few days. In going into the interior of the country you require one to cook and arrange, but keeping to the more beaten tracks you can comfortably manage without.
Of course we have spent the whole of our first day in Japan in jinrikishas. Everyone does so. Nor can we resist a visit to the curio shops, though we harden ourselves against temptations, knowing that we shall have but too many opportunities to spend in the future. We were glad of this afterwards, for we heard that the curio dealers, on learning the large number of passengers leaving Vancouver on the Empress of Japan, had met together and by agreement raised their prices. In the afternoon we went for a drive round the Bluff, or European Settlement. Yokohama is a treaty port, and at these ports, which were first opened by the efforts of Commodore Perry to foreigners in 1868, a concession of land was allotted to the Europeans, where alone they are allowed to reside. And very charming houses they have built here, coloured red and green, or grey, and buff, with well-kept roads and pretty gardens, fenced in with bamboo hedges. We drive round by the racecourse, with its grand stand and white railings just like our Epsom course. The Mikado visits Yokohama once a year to come to the races, and we see his private box on the top of the stand. Then home by the sea-shore and across a plain of rice fields, descending through the Settlement once more.
Yokohama is a cosmopolitan place and enjoys the glamour of being the landing-place in a new country and the first sight of a new nation, hut it contains nothing of interest. Along the Bund or sea wall is a row of grey verandahed houses, looking very Eastern amongst their palm trees. Behind the sea front there are two or three streets, chiefly containing curio shops, interspersed with many grey walled godowns with their forbidding barred and shuttered windows. People stay at Yokohama, some because the hotel is comfortable, some, like the American ladies, who, though bringing large boxes of dresses, are so fascinated by the Chinese tailors' prices, that they stay to have more made, others again to haunt the curio shops, and really the selection of articles made with a view to the wants of the ordinary traveller is so good, that you can scarcely do better, we determined afterwards, than shop at Yokohama. Others again are so foolish as to be marked for life, by employing the services of Hori-Chigo, whose advertisement runs thus: "The celebrated Tattooer, patronized by T.R.H. Princes Albert Victor and George, and known all over the world for his fine and artistic work. Designs and samples can be seen at the Tattooing Rooms."