But the Macedonian having gotten back from Manilla, the time had arrived when Opperbevelhebber Perry was to leave in the mail-steamer. This interesting event took place on the 11th of September, one day after the date of the great naval-battle of his Hyperion brother on Lake Erie, and one before the battle of North Point, and three before the allied armies landed in the Crimea. Previous to this important epoch, the American (!) merchants at Canton addressed him an epistle as characteristic as the speech of the
“—— men of Coventry,
Who came down to see
Her gracious majesty!”
This bijou of toadyism had this for a superscription:—
His Excellency Commodore Matthew C. Perry,
Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces U. S., in the East India, China,
and Japan Seas, and late Envoy to Japan, &c., &c., &c.
They first acknowledged the promptitude with which he extended protection to their interests, so much needed, during his command in those seas.
“Protection.” Commodore Perry arrived in the waters in the vicinity of Canton, on the 7th of April, 1853, and on the 27th of the same month he ran up to Shanghae, and after a short stay there, he bundled off with all the ships he could to the island of Loo-Choo, where he lay inert from the 26th of May to the 2d day of July; and did not return to China until August. The gentlemen who much do congregate on the rialto of Canton, address “His Excellency,” concerning the magnitude of the interests, which requires protection, and the storeship Supply, like the other ships, not being required until the next visit to Japan, she is sent up to lay off the hongs. This tub to the mercantile whale, satisfied for a time, but when the period arrived for the return to Japan, luckily for “His Excellency,” the merchants suggested the charter of a miserable little English steamer, and he not regarding it his duty to inform the opium gentry, that the carronades of the Supply would afford more protection than the penny-whistle battery of the jolly-boat steamer, gladly withdrew the needed storeship, and chartered the Queen. The puny craft when started in Hong Kong harbor, was amusing. A Chinaman on one wheel-house with a bamboo-pole, prized the wheel over the “centre,” and four or five men being required at her “starting-bar,” when they got her going they did not like to stop her, and she spun about the harbor like a chicken, minus his head. The arms of her wheels being wood, before getting over to Macao she broke off several. Her pop-guns, only two of which were aside, had perhaps never been “scaled,”
“And like gun well aimed, at duck or plover,
Bear wide the mark and kick the owner over.”