Account of a voyage of discovery to the west coast of Corea, and the great Loo-Choo IslandHall, Basil
History
Account of a voyage of discovery to the west coast of Corea, and the great Loo-Choo Island
Hall, Basil
Korea -- Description and travel; Ryukyu Islands -- Description and travel
21st of October.--While Mrs. Loy was employed at the well to-day washing
clothes, at a moment when every body else was out of the way, she was
visited by a Loo-choo lady, accompanied by a numerous guard of men. She
describes her as being about eighteen years of age, well dressed, fair
in complexion, with small dark eyes, and not without beauty; her hair
was of a glossy jet black, made up into a knot on one side of the head.
She wore a girdle tied at the side, and had on sandals like the men.
Mrs. Loy wished to touch her, but she shrunk back in alarm. Whether
these details be quite correct or not, the circumstance of a lady of
rank having visited Mrs. Loy is so far interesting as it denotes a
considerable degree of curiosity on the lady's part, together with the
power of gratifying it, which, in a country where the women are strictly
secluded, perhaps would not be allowed.
22d of October.--Ookooma and Jeeroo came to the Observatory to-day,
together with a number of the most respectable of the natives; they were
desirous of seeing the reflected images of the sun in the artificial
horizon through the telescope of the sextant. As this was placed on a
stand there was no difficulty in satisfying their curiosity, for they
had only to place their eye to the tube, the angle having been
previously arranged. Many of them were amused by the changes of colour
in the reflected images by means of the different shades; others were
more struck with the apparent motion of the two suns, which is very
perceptible when a high magnifying power is used; a few endeavoured to
understand the meaning of what they saw, but with the exception of
Jeeroo, I think they had no conception of its cause. Jeeroo appeared to
have some notion of astronomy; his idea of eclipses was more accurate
than could have been expected. From him Mr. Clifford got the names of
the days and months, and the various points of information respecting
Time, which will be found in the Vocabulary. Whenever we were actually
taking observations, the natives invariably remained at a considerable
distance. They had been told that the least motion disturbed the surface
of the quicksilver, and prevented our taking observations. They had much
patience, and sometimes sat quite still and silent for several hours,
till invited to come forward to look at the instruments. When Ookooma
and Jeeroo came to us, we observed that they were in great distress, and
upon our asking the cause, the former explained that Captain Maxwell
during his ride this morning had fallen down, or rather that his horse,
which was too weak for his weight, had fallen with him, and that his
finger was broken: "Tayin ma tawrittee, Tayin no eebee ootee" (the
Tayin's horse fell, Tayin's finger broke). A Loo-choo doctor, he said,
had gone on board, who would soon cure it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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