During the day, we were running down the westward side of the chain of naked islands that extend to Loo-Choo. At four o’clock, Foogee Yama, from his cloudy eyry, was seen like an angel’s wing, and then withdrawn. Well, good-by, Foogee; admiration continued, is the most tiresome of things, and one can tire of the brilliancy of Burke, with his—“Around whose base things may moulder, but upon whose summit eternity must play.”
On the fourth day of the run, after those charming incidents of sea-life—sky overhead and water all around—we were abreast of the island of Oo, which the severe gale encountered in July, 1853, on our return from our first visit to Japan, prevented an examination of, that the correctness of a harbor laid down on a French chart, might be ascertained. The ships laid off for three hours, during which time Lieutenants Maury and Webb went ashore, taking with them bags of pork and bread. The people on shore at first appeared quite alarmed at their approach. Their dress was the same as those of the Loo-Chooans. Some fowls and potatoes were obtained from them by giving them some pork and bread in exchange; they refused money. It is supposed that we are the first Christian people that ever had communication with these people; rather an absurd supposition, considering the charts and surveys that have been made in those seas by other nations, before we had either the opportunity or desire to know anything about them.
The next day, off the Great Loo-Choo island, the Southampton was cast off, and proceeded to Hong Kong. That afternoon we saw quite a large ship ahead. She was coming down before the wind with studding-sails set. It was thought desirable to speak her, having had no mail intelligence since March, in the bay of Yedo. Our colors were hoisted, and the commodore directed a forward-gun to be fired, to attract attention. The stranger, however, without appearing to notice it, changed his course and then changed it again, declining to raise his ensign, and keeping his nation to himself. Another gun was fired, still no colors did he show. By this time the two steamers having come up with him he lay to, and hoisted English colors. Upon sending a boat to know what he meant by such conduct, it appeared that he feared meeting the Russian squadron in that vicinity, and took us for Russian steamers, and even after seeing the American ensign, thought it might be designed to entrap him. The captain expressed regret for the detention he had occasioned, and by newspapers from him we had the first intelligence of England and France having united in hostilities for the sultan. The ship was the Great Britain, from Shanghae, with a valuable cargo of teas and silks, for London. She would have proved a precious prize for Pontiatine.
The next day we anchored in the roadstead of Napa, Loo-Choo. The first intelligence from Captain Glasson, of the Lexington, was that a seaman from his ship had been found in the waters of Junk harbor dead, and expressed the belief that the man had come to his death by violence. An investigation of the matter showed that the man had not only been killed by the natives, but that he deserved to have been killed. The poor Loo-Chooans being very much frightened about the occurrence, and the local officers of Napa regarding the offence of the man as a mortifying disgrace to their country, did not make a true report of the circumstances to the prince-regent, and that high functionary, upon a demand being made upon him by the commodore, himself misled, reported that the man had fallen into the water when drunk and been drowned. The commodore demanded a full investigation according to their laws, though satisfied at the time that the man Board had been guilty of a most heinous offence. From this it appeared that the man had been first stoned by the crowd and badly wounded, and then fell into the water and was drowned; after the commission of an offence—to use the prince-regent’s language—that “All men detest and are angry at, and would, without thinking, strike and wound the one guilty of it.” The sentences adjudged by the Loo-Chooan tribunal, were to deprive the mayor of Napa of his rank, and the deputy-magistrates of their offices, for having made erroneous reports to the regent; Tokisi, the leader of the mob who stoned, was banished to Pachung Sang for life, while five others were banished to Taiping San for eight years.
The severity of this punishment was very great, and it is to be regretted that during the session of the tribunal that decreed it, the commodore resorted to the menace of sending marine-officers ashore to examine their forts, and then took possession, with some marines—the United States bullying Loo-Choo! as Wise said to Bynum, “bullying a fly!” The poor prince-regent was frightened nearly out of his senses; he came off himself to the Mississippi with the poor devil Tokisi, with a halter about his neck, offering to give him up to American custody, prostrating himself before the commodore in his cabin—a pitiable spectacle. He is next addressed by the American “Opperbevelhebber,” in a communication commencing “Your Highness.”
We ascertained from the master’s-mate who had been left in charge of the invalids and coal-shed ashore in February, that a few days after our departure for Japan, the Russian admiral Pontiatine, with the frigate Diana (since lost by an earthquake at Simoda), a corvette, and the steamer Vostock, visited Napa roads, staying some days, during which time he drilled his men ashore, and grazed his cattle. He had not then certain intelligence of England and France having gone to war with his country, but notwithstanding his assurance of the proximity of such a thing, as also of superior English and French naval forces, he generously assisted the English ship Robena (which had been there to bring the successor of Dr. Bettelheim) to get off the reef, taking the while, her cargo of coolies aboard of his own ship.
On Sunday, the Rev. E. H. Moreton, the successor of Dr. Bettelheim, a pleasant-voiced little preacher, with mild face and cockney aspiration of the letter h, read the English church-service, and delivered a discourse on board of the Mississippi. He had come with his wife and child from England to dwell in Napa, as spiritual teacher to a people who are about as well prepared to receive Christianity, as they were when his predecessor, six years before, went among them. The men and officers of the squadron raised an amount of money for him before leaving.
The next Sunday on board, a sermon, blasphemous in character, was preached by a missionary, in which the American commodore was likened to another Jesus Christ, and a parallel deliberately instituted between our Savior’s mission on earth and Commodore Perry’s mission to Japan. That functionary sat on the quarter-deck, meanwhile listening to all this without evincing, so far as any one could perceive, the slightest displeasure.
The steamers were coaled from shore by Loo-Chooan junks, during our stay; the gunner of the Mississippi was sent to an island, called Reef island, in a boat, to see whether it was used as a female penal settlement as had been stated; and we saw the Japanese junks departing, bearing away the rice of the island, some to Japan, some to Chapoo in China, where the sons of the wealthy in Loo-Choo are educated without cost.
The American opperbevelhebber seems to have had a “would be a nun, and a wouldn’t be a nun” idea of the status of Loo-Choo: In a letter to the secretary of the navy, as found in Senate-Document, No. 34 of the XXXIIId Congress, he first says: “I am constantly obtaining information confirmatory of the opinion that Loo-Choo, Meyaco-Sima, and the Oho-Sima islands, are all dependencies of Japan.”