And it is in the dull light of a clouded afternoon that we glide out of the beautiful harbour of Nagasaki, and in a few hours even the coast line is lost to us, and fair Nippon, the Land of the Rising Sun (such an appropriate name for the swiftly progressing Island Empire) is a remembrance of the past. Bright memories will linger with us in a medley dream, of rosy sunsets, of clear skies in those marvellous pale washes, of gaudy temples with their moss-grown steps, hallowed by the solemn hush around, mingling with the pictures of those queer, dark little shops, of tiny gardens comprised in tiny courtyards, of gentle little men and women in flapping cotton garments, of golden lacquer, red and black, of gorgeous kakemonos, bronzes, cloisonné, of delicately tinted textures, and above all of solemn gilt Buddhas, seated on lotus-leaved pedestals, and gleaming at us from out dark corners.
We pass out into the grey space of the Yellow Sea.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE YELLOW LAND.
The turbid orange-coloured waters of the great Yangtze are around us—"the river of the golden sands," far too poetical a name for the muddy waters, that with a strong current swish and eddy against the ship's side.
The spirit of travel that rises strong within you as you approach the landing to a new country, is discouraged by that thin line of flat, ugly land, which is all we see on that dull October morning, through a mist of rain, of the coast of China.
The Yellow Land! Rightly named, indeed. The sea is yellow, the rivers are yellow, the land is yellow, the people, too, are yellow—and the Dragon Flag is yellow. Yellow, too, might China be with gold if only her rulers, the mandarins, would let her people give scope to their abilities, develop the rich resources of an as yet barely touched country, and strike ahead among the nations of the world.
We had anchored at the Saddles, some little Islands with a fancied resemblance to that equine article, and then moved up with the tide, opposite to the fleet of sampan masts at Woosung; but still the water on the bar is too low, and they whistle for a steam tug to take us off the Saikio Maru, and up fifteen miles of the deadly uninteresting reaches of the Wung-Poo—the last tributary of the Yangtze—to Shanghai.
What a mighty river this Yangtze is. The name signifies the Child of the Ocean, and the Chinese have various others for it, such as "The Father of Rivers," "The Girdle of China." "It is the richest river in the world—richest in navigable waters, in mighty cities, in industrious human beings, in affluent tributaries, in wide margins of cultivated lands of inexhaustible fertility. This vast expanse of turpid fresh water is saturated with the loam of fields 1500 miles away." The Yangtze rises in Central Asia, and drains an area of 600,000 square miles of Midland China.