CHAPTER I.
The cruel treatment which had long been practised by that singular and secluded people, the Japanese, toward American whalers who were thrown by the misfortune of shipwreck upon their coasts, the incentive of mercantile cupidity, and the urgency of personal ambition, induced the government of the United States, in 1852, to project an expedition to Japan, to obtain some assurance from the government of the country against a continuance or repetition of the inhospitality and cruelty inflicted upon our unfortunate citizens, and, if possible, to open the sources of trade. The East India squadron was accordingly augmented for this purpose, and Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry was invested with the command, and charged with the performance of the duty.
After almost conjugating delay in all its moods and tenses, induced by the failure of the boilers of the unfortunate “Princeton,” and other causes, his flag-ship was ready for sea in November, 1852; and on the 24th of this month and year, with a desire to visit the hermetic empire, whetted by reading the Dutch historians, I found myself, as commander’s clerk, on board of her. At mid-day we had dropped, not below the “kirk or hill,” but below the hospital at Norfolk, and night found us ploughing deeply the ocean in the direction of Madeira; and before a very late hour the gleams from the Cape Henry lighthouse disappeared altogether.
The ship was the old steam-frigate “Mississippi,” which, as her name is a synonyme for the “father of waters,” may be termed the father of our war-steamers, having been the consort of the pioneer ship, the Missouri, destroyed by fire on her first cruise, under the rock of Gibraltar. She had been engaged unremittingly since she first slid from her ways. The power of her engines had pulled from a reef in the Gulf a large ship, and saved to the country the fine frigate Cumberland. The shot and shell from one of her sixty-eights, in the naval battery at Vera Cruz, had contributed to the downfall of the castle of San Juan. She had lain at her anchor near the site of once classic Athens, and in full view of what now remains of the once great city of Hannibal. She had once sought shelter from a Levanter near Brundusium that was, with its Appian way. Her paddle-wheels churning up the water of the Black sea, announced the first appearance of an American man-of-war in that stormy water; and on her decks, surrounded by his late fellows in exile, Kossuth, fresh from the damp of his Kutahia prison, addressed the seething populace around in the harbor of Marseilles, with a fervor and eloquence which almost extenuated so indefensible a violation of the national hospitality which our nation was then extending him; and now the old Mississippi was leaving her own country, bound to the other side of the great globe, bearing the hopes of many, and embarked in a mission which might be successful—which might, perhaps, come to naught.
I said she ploughed deeply on getting beyond the Capes, because, with the considerate intelligence and humanity which preside over our naval affairs, sending boxes of guns to sea with national names, bringing about such sad losses as those of the Albany and the Porpoise, the Mississippi, designed by her constructor to draw eighteen feet of water, and to carry four hundred and fifty tons of coal, has her bunkers enlarged to the capacity of six hundred tons, additional lines of copper put upon her, and goes out drawing twenty-one feet, her guards but a short distance from the water. In this state we left the United States; her decks not yet cleared of the stores hastily put aboard for the different messes; the lengthened visages of sad people all around, thinking whether they had omitted anything in their notes of last adieu sent back by the Pilot; the mustering and stationing of a new crew at their division and fire quarters; the making everything ready for sea, all presented such a novel scene to one who was on a man-of-war underway for the first time, that he was too much engrossed in observing, to tell his “native land good-night,” turning to do which, he found that it had “faded,” not over the “waters blue,” but behind an expanse of dull slate-colored ocean, which the heavy striking of our deeply-immersed paddles was slowly and drowsily disturbing. There was none of the graceful undulatory motion, and bellying out of the great white canvass of the sailing-ship, which writers of much imagination and nautical turn of mind, delight so much to sing about. It was only the sturdy prose of a warlike old steamer belching from the jaws of her great funnel columns of thick black smoke, which separated at her mainmast, or rolled away in dense masses astern, perversely holding on her way to the port of her destination. The “loguey” motion of the ship, while it kept her decks wet from the swashing of a cross sea over her head rail, at least had the advantage to a landsman of enabling him to get on his “sea-legs” all the sooner.
The scene at night on a man-of-war, is one full of interest to him who sees it for the first time. The decks, busily thronged during the day by the men in the performance of their duties, at an early hour of the night, with the exception of the watch, are apparently deserted; a number equal to the population of a small village, crowded close together, swing in their pendent beds in oblivious sleep, which the exertions of the day makes more profound, leaving nothing to disturb the quiet of the vessel, save the half-hour striking of the ship’s bell, and the quick responses of the different look-outs assuming their watchfulness, or the drumming of the wheels as they send the yesty water along the side.
In a few days we crossed that great liquid fortification of our coast—the Gulf-stream—when the temperature became greatly moderated, our stoves were taken down, the cloudy skies that we had had disappeared, and we hailed the sun. The water had changed from 41° to 71°, the sun came up magnificently from the ocean, and the air felt like a balmy spring morning; away off in the southeast floated piles of clouds like inverted illuminated pearl-shells, and for the first time since leaving Norfolk, we were enabled to look upon the deep blue sea, and the blue deep sea. Then, too, our fine band, composed of twenty-three brass and reed instruments, discoursed its most pleasant strains for the first time since we had been out, under the leadership of a talented old Italian musician—the only man I ever saw who, with a nice “ear for music,” kept both of his auriculars continually stopped with wool.
The cry of “Land, ho!” on the evening of the 11th of December, announced our vicinity to Madeira, after a rough and lonely passage from the United States of eighteen days. The weather proving rough, we wore ship and stood off during the night, and early in the morning again stood for the island, and it was not long before we were running under the lee of its northern side. Madeira at a distance, wrapped in its hazy robe of blue, presents the appearance of a huge monster reposing on the water, but running in under the land, the aspect is far more attractive. Being the first foreign land on which my eyes had ever rested, I gazed with increasing pleasure on the parti-colored soil, on the graceful and silvery cascades precipitating themselves down its steep shores, presenting the appearance of tapering spires of churches, while nestling here and there on the cliffs, amid thick verdure, were the happy-looking quintas and farmhouses. Toward evening, leaving the singular formed rocks “Las Desertas” on our left, we rounded the northeasternmost point of the island, and Funchal, in its terraced beauty, came in full view. We fired a gun and hoisted a jack for a pilot, but we were permitted to approach without the aid of that functionary. It being Sunday, perhaps they did not officiate on that day. Just before sundown we came to in the harbor, near the Pontinha, and immediately on anchoring were boarded by the Portuguese health-officer, who, finding we had no contagious disease aboard, granted us pratique. The second promptest visiters to welcome us were the washerwomen, who are all eager for the possession of the soiled linen, at the same time evincing a wonder of recognition and recollection perfectly satisfactory to themselves, but not at all convincing to anybody else. One old shrivelled dame of a laundress insisted that I had visited the island before, and pretended to adhere to the opinion with the tenacity of Dolly, in Oliver Twist, when she called upon the good bystanders to make her brother go home. This was old Madam Yesus, and, as my poor battered garments subsequently proved, she washed “not wisely, but too well.” They were eminently communicative on general topics, told us how “mucher pauvre” they were, gave us the first news of the approaching famine, and to men who had been tumbling about the ocean for over half a month, the unsavory intelligence that wine, which but a short time before could be bought for forty cents per bottle, could now only be obtained for a dollar.
Funchal, from the water, presents a very attractive appearance to the traveller who sees it for the first time. I don’t know when I have been more impressed with the beauty of any scene, than when from the deck of our ship, with a delicious atmosphere that obliterated all recollection of the month being December, a setting sun more keenly defining and causing to loom up each object, I looked upon its bright houses, made more so by the deep red of their tiles, as they rose in a terraced crescent, one above another, the convent of Santa Clara, the deep-hued verdure that filled up the interstices of the picture, the Loo Rock fort, and the cathedral in the foreground, with just enough of time-stain on its towers to make more venerable its front, and the tortuous paved road, running up the hills like an immense, stony serpent, terminating at the church of our “Lady of the Mount,” elevated nineteen hundred feet above the sea; and the vineyards in the distance.
Being an open roadstead, with the wind from a certain direction a very heavy sea tumbles into the harbor, and there is at all times a considerable surf breaking on the beach. On going ashore you have to employ Portuguese surf-boats, which are much better constructed for purposes of landing than our own. On either side, not far from the keel, they have projecting pieces resembling the side-fins of a dolphin, which gives them much steadiness in a sea-way, while head and stern they have perpendicular handles as it were. As they near the beach, one of the boatmen jumps over into the water, and, seizing the piece at the prow, keeps the boat head on, when the succeeding swell sets her high, if not dry, upon the sand, and you are ashore. Your way thither may only be delayed a short time, by the officer contrabandista, who, pulling alongside, touches his hat, and proceeds, by an inspection of your boat, to see whether his aquatic countrymen are not attempting to smuggle ashore such things as soap and tobacco, which his most gracious sovereign of Portugal has been pleased to reserve as a government monopoly. When the weather is rather rough, the customary place of landing is the Pontinha, a steep rock terminating an arched causeway, or kind of breakwater, from which the coal is usually embarked for the steamers stopping at the island. The scene presented, or the horrible clamor that salutes your ears, is not particularly calculated to prolong the pleasant illusion which the more distant sight of the place gave you. You no sooner put your foot on the stone stairs than your winding way of ascent is beset by innumerable lazzaroni most offensive in habit and appearance, whose rabid importunities for alms will not permit you to say them nay. Once through this crowd of “dago” pauperism—the most squalid and effete of all pauperism, your movements on the causeway are impeded by the boisterous calls of the Borro Querros, with their horses already saddled and bridled for “gentlemin” to ride. The bellowing guttural of one fellow provokes your attention to his steed, in whose praises he is loud, having gotten which, he digs him in flank, and dashes off over the stony pavement, to show you his paces. Your charger selected (I had a weakness in the matter of a fine bay myself,) the din ceases. Our party, consisting of five or six well mounted, determined on a gallop to the “Petite Coral,” calling on the polite and hospitable consul on our way thither. One peculiarity strikes you on starting, that is, that your dago friend, of whom you obtained your charger, acts as a kind of equerry during your ride, and the better to enable him to accompany you, when you are inclined to give your horse the rein, he seizes that animal by the tail with one hand, keeping off the flies with a wisp in the other, or uses it as an accelerator on his haunches, holding on meanwhile with a grip which the Kirk Alloway witches would have envied when they brought about that finale to “poor Maggy.”