In 1867, however, these old ships and ancient systems were but just passing their meridian, and for a brief time might continue to live on their reputation. They were beautiful vessels in outline, and repaid in appearance all the care which the seamen naturally lavishes on his home. One could well feel proud of them; the more so that they had close behind them a good fighting record. It was to one such, the _Iroquois_, which had followed Farragut from New Orleans to Vicksburg, that I reported on the second day of that then new year. She was destined to China and Japan, the dream of years to me; but, better still, there was chalked out for her an extensive trip, "from Dan to Beersheba," as a British officer enviously commented in my hearing. We were to go by the West Indies to Rio de Janeiro, thence by the Cape of Good Hope to Madagascar, to Aden at the mouth of the Red Sea, to Muscat at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, and so by India and Siam to our first port in Chinese waters, Hong Kong. The time, too, was apposite, for Japan had not yet entered upon the path of modernization which she has since pursued with such revolutionary progress. Some eight or ten years ago there lunched with me a young Japanese naval officer, who I understand has occupied a position of distinguished responsibility during the recent war with Russia. I chanced to ask him if he had ever seen a two-sworded man. He replied, Never. He belonged to the samurai class, who once wore them; but in actual life they have disappeared. When the _Iroquois_ reached Japan, and throughout her stay, two-sworded men were as thick almost as blackberries. To European prepossessions it was illuminating to see half a dozen riding down a street, hatless, crown of the head shaved, with a short pigtail at the back tied tight near the skull and then brought stiffly forward close to the scalp; their figures gowned, the handles of the two swords projecting closely together from the left side of their garments, and the feet resting in stirrups of slipper form, which my memory says were of straw-work; but of that I am less sure. This equipment was completed by a painted fan stuck in the belt, and at times an opened paper umbrella. I have been passenger in the same boat with some of these warriors, accoutred as above, and using their fans as required, while engaged in animated conversation with the courtesy and smiling affability characteristic of all classes in Japan. Such, in outward seeming, then was the as yet raw material, out of which have been evolved the heroic soldiery who have recently astonished the world by the practical development they have given to modern military ideas; then as unlike the troops which now are, except in courage, as the ancient Japanese war-junk is to the present battle-ship. I was in Japan at the arrival of their first iron-clad, purchased in the United States, and doubtless long since consigned to the scrap-heap; but of her hereafter.