Then comes an epistle from four little Malwa and Patna “tuft-hunters” of Hong Kong, who also like to make Judy Fitzsimmons of themselves. After giving “His Excellency” much that is fulsome and adulatory, they speak of his having opened the “commerce” of Japan, “not only to us, but to the world.” What nonsense.
We have no commercial treaty with Japan, but only one “of peace and amity,” and strange that the newspapers will persist in saying so. Mischief may come of it in inducing some Yankee trader to go there with an assorted cargo, who will be very apt to have his labor for his pains.
But for the seriousness of speech that marked the presentation to “His Excellency,” by the governor of Rhode Island, on behalf of its general assembly, of a splendid salver, having on it “in testimony of their appreciation of his services to his country in negotiating a treaty of amity and commerce with Japan,” together with the commodore’s teaching the heathen the observance of the Sabbath, that worthy functionary would be deemed waggish.
On the morning of the 11th of September, being the ninth day, of the ninth moon, of the fourth year of the reign of Hien-fung, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry left in the English mail-steamer Ganges for home; the Mississippi and the Macedonian firing the parting salute, and the men in the rigging giving three cheers.
We were to have taken our final leave of the grand, celestial, central, middle, flowery kingdom, on the same day, but it stormed, and we did not leave until the next morning, and few, if any, saw the naked hills of Hong Kong fade in the distance with regret. A few hours before us, the poor Porpoise got under way and left the port—that port to which her sail
“Should never stretch again.”
This was the last that was seen of her, and she no doubt foundered in the typhoon of the 7th of October, encountered by the Mississippi, which noble old ship struggled and maintained her existence for mortal hours under the force of a hurricane, and received the terrific blows of the infuriated sea more bravely than did the black knight under the pounding of the stalwart friar—if “aught inanimate” can have bravery, all honor to thee, old ship! and with more fervency than blesses the bridge that carries us over, honor to thee, old ship, again!
We stood up the Formosa channel, and in nine days were entering again the harbor of Simoda. We found here the Susquehanna and the Southampton. The former vessel left for the Sandwich Islands on the 24th of September. The stormy season having commenced in that latitude, it was too rough for us to commence coaling for several days, from the storeship. We ascertained that the Susquehanna had buried Surgeon Hamilton at Simoda, making the third interment in the contracted American burial-place. The shafts over the tombs were well proportioned, the letters of the inscriptions, with the imitative art of the Mongolian race, cut with exactness, and gilded, and the cap-stones, an original ornament, seeming to blend an urn and an acorn.
Captain Lee, of the Mississippi, with a suite of officers, made an official call on the lieutenant-governor of the now imperial city of Simoda, and was received with marked courtesy, and entertained in the Japanese style. The little strips resembling fried eel were as attractive as fried snake, but the crystallized grapes, with indifferent sugar, were rather palatable. There was handed around a small berry, not unpleasant to the taste, resembling the haw cultivated. The old Rip Van Winkle—Yemanese Koso—plied his guests with the little thimbles of imperial saki, that he might unite with them.
Captain Lee returned these civilities with a collation on board of his ship, and treated the Japanese to the music of the Mississippi’s fine band, of which they are unaffectedly fond. He had a correspondence with the authorities relative to the absence of the spar-buoys which had been placed to mark dangerous rocks in the harbor. They replied that they had been washed away by the severe gales preceding our arrival, but that they would replace them, which they did.