Here are the waters of the Pacific, and Vancouver
(completely destitute of any decent defences) grown
out of all knowledge in the last three years.
At the railway wharf, with never a gun to protect her,
lies the Empress of India—the Japan
boat—and what more auspicious name could
you wish to find at the end of one of the strong chains
of empire?
The mist was clearing off Yokohama harbour and a hundred
junks had their sails hoisted for the morning breeze,
and the veiled horizon was stippled with square blurs
of silver. An English man-of-war showed blue-white
on then haze, so new was the daylight, and all the
water lay out as smooth as the inside of an oyster
shell. Two children in blue and white, their
tanned limbs pink in the fresh air, sculled a marvellous
boat of lemon-hued wood, and that was our fairy craft
to the shore across the stillness and the mother o’
pearl levels.
There are ways and ways of entering Japan. The
best is to descend upon it from America and the Pacific—from
the barbarians and the deep sea. Coming from
the East, the blaze of India and the insolent tropical
vegetation of Singapore dull the eye to half-colours
and little tones. It is at Bombay that the smell
of All Asia boards the ship miles off shore, and holds
the passenger’s nose till he is clear of Asia
again. That is a violent, and aggressive smell,
apt to prejudice the stranger, but kin none the less
to the gentle and insinuating flavour that stole across
the light airs of the daybreak when the fairy boat
went to shore—a smell of very clean new
wood; split bamboo, wood-smoke, damp earth, and the
things that people who are not white people eat—a
homelike and comforting smell. Then followed on
shore the sound of an Eastern tongue, that is beautiful
or not as you happen to know it. The Western
races have many languages, but a crowd of Europeans
heard through closed doors talk with the Western pitch
and cadence. So it is with the East. A line
of jinrickshaw coolies sat in the sun discoursing
to each other, and it was as though they were welcoming
a return in speech that the listener must know as
well as English. They talked and they talked,
but the ghosts of familiar words would not grow any
clearer till presently the Smell came down the open
streets again, saying that this was the East where
nothing matters, and trifles old as the Tower of Babel
mattered less than nothing, and that there were old
acquaintances waiting at every corner beyond the township.
Great is the Smell of the East! Railways, telegraphs,
docks, and gunboats cannot banish it, and it will
endure till the railways are dead. He who has
not smelt that smell has never lived.
