The Master, A
Worthy Man, So Far As I Ever Saw Of Him, Was Goth, Vandal, Hun,
Visigoth, All In One.
The ship was damp, dark, dirty, old, and cold.
She was not warmed by steam, and the fire could not be lighted because
of a smoky chimney.
There were no lamps, and the sparse candles were
obviously grudged. The stewards were dirty and desponding, the serving
inhospitable, the cooking dirty and greasy, the food scanty, the
table-linen frowsy. There were four French and two Japanese male
passengers, who sat at meals in top-coats, comforters, and hats. I had
a large cabin, the salon des dames, and the undivided attention of a
very competent, but completely desponding stewardess. Being debarred
from the deck by incessant showers of spray, sleet, and snow, and the
cold of mid-winter being unbearable in the dark, damp saloon, I went
to bed at four for the first two days. On the third it blew half a
gale, with a short violent sea, and this heavy weather lasted till we
reached Hong Kong, five days afterward. During those cold, dark, noisy
days, when even the stewards could scarcely keep their feet, I suffered
so much in my spine from the violent movements of the ship that I did
not leave my cabin; and besides being unable to read, write, or work,
owing to the darkness, I was obliged to hold on by day and night to
avoid being much hurt by the rolling, my berth being athwart ships;
consequently, that week, which I had relied upon for "overtaking" large
arrears of writing and sewing, was so much lost out of
life - irrecoverably and shamefully lost, I felt - as each dismal day,
dawned and died without sunrise or sunset, on the dark and stormy
Pacific. No one, it seemed, knew any more English than "Yes" and "No;"
and as the ship knocked French out of my memory, I had not even the
resource of talking with the stewardess, who told me on the last day of
our imprisonment that she was "triste, triste," and "one mass of
bruises!"
In this same gale, but on a dry day, we came close up with the mainland
of Eastern Asia. Coasts usually disappoint. This one exceeded all my
expectations; and besides, it was the coast of Asia, the mysterious
continent which has been my dream from childhood - bare, lofty, rocky,
basaltic; islands of naked rock separated by narrow channels, majestic,
perpendicular cliffs, a desolate uninhabited region, lashed by a heavy
sea, with visions of swirling mists, shrieking sea-birds, and Chinese
high-sterned fishing-boats with treble-reefed, three-cornered brown
sails, appearing on the tops of surges, at once to vanish. Soon we
were among mountainous islands; and then, by a narrow and picturesque
channel, entered the outer harbor, with the scorched and arid peaks of
Hong Kong on one side; and on the other the yet redder and rockier
mainland, without a tree or trace of cultivation, or even of
habitation, except here and there a few stone huts clustering round
inlets, in which boats were lying. We were within the tropic of Cancer,
but still the cold, coarse bluster continued, so that it was barely
possible to see China except in snatches from behind the deck-house.
Turning through another channel, we abruptly entered the inner harbor,
and sailed into the summer, blue sky, blue water, a summer sun, and a
cool breeze, while a tender veil of blue haze softened the outlines of
the flushed mountains. Victoria, which is the capital of the British
colony of the island of Hong Kong, and which colloquially is called
Hong Kong, looked magnificent, suggesting Gibraltar, but far, far
finer, its peak eighteen hundred feet in height - a giant among lesser
peaks, rising abruptly from the sea above the great granite city which
clusters upon its lower declivities, looking out from dense greenery
and tropical gardens, and the deep shade of palms and bananas, the
lines of many of its streets traced in foliage, all contrasting with
the scorched red soil and barren crags which were its universal aspect
before we acquired it in 1843. A forest of masts above the town betoken
its commercial importance, and "P. and O." and Messageries Maritimes
steamers, ships of war of all nations, low-hulled, big-masted clippers,
store and hospital ships, and a great fishing fleet lay at anchor in
the harbor. The English and Romish cathedrals, the Episcopal Palace,
with St. Paul's College, great high blocks of commercial buildings,
huge sugar factories, great barracks in terraces, battery above
battery, Government House, and massive stone wharves, came rapidly into
view, and over all, its rich folds spreading out fully on the breeze,
floated the English flag.
But dense volumes of smoke rolling and eddying, and covering with their
black folds the lower slopes and the town itself made a surprising
spectacle, and even as we anchored came off the rapid tolling of bells,
the roll of drums, and the murmur of a "city at unrest." No one met me.
A few Chinese boats came off, and then a steam launch with the M. M.
agent in an obvious flurry. I asked him how to get ashore, and he
replied, "It's no use going ashore, the town's half burned, and burning
still; there's not a bed at any hotel for love or money, and we are
going to make up beds here." However, through the politeness of the
mail agent, I did go ashore in the launch, but we had to climb through
and over at least eight tiers of boats, crammed with refugees, mainly
women and children, and piled up with all sorts of household goods,
whole and broken, which had been thrown into them promiscuously to save
them. "The palace of the English bishop," they said, was still
untouched; so, escaping from an indescribable hubbub, I got into a
bamboo chair, with two long poles which rested on the shoulders of two
lean coolies, who carried me to my destination at a swinging pace
through streets as steep as those of Varenna.
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