Brigadier-General Barnes of Springfield, Mass., happened to be the general in charge of the Volunteer Department. His headquarters were at Willard’s Hotel. I called on him and made known to him my object, that I felt as a naturalized citizen of the United States, it was my bounden duty to offer my services as a volunteer courier to carry despatches between Washington and the nearest Federal camp for at least six months, simply to show my loyalty and patriotism to my adopted country, and that I would furnish my own equipments. He said that he remembered me well, having met me in the Yale Library in New Haven, in 1853, on a visit to his son, William Barnes, who was in the college at the time I was, and who afterwards became a prominent lawyer in San Francisco. General Barnes asked what business I was engaged in. I told him that since my graduation in 1854 I had been in China and had recently returned with an order to purchase machinery for a machine shop ordered by Viceroy and Generalissimo Tsang Kwoh Fan. I told him the machinery was being made to order in Fitchburg, Mass., under the supervision of an American mechanical engineer, and as it would take at least six months before the same could be completed, I was anxious to offer my services to the government in the meantime as an evidence of my loyalty and patriotism to my adopted country. He was quite interested and pleased with what I said. “Well, my young friend,” said he, “I thank you very much for your offer, but since you are charged with a responsible trust to execute for the Chinese government, you had better return to Fitchburg to attend to it. We have plenty of men to serve, both as couriers and as fighting men to go to the front.” Against this peremptory decision, I could urge nothing further, but I felt that I had at least fulfilled my duty to my adopted country. CHAPTER XV MY SECOND RETURN TO CHINA The machinery was not finished till the early spring of 1865. It was shipped direct from New York to Shanghai, China; while it was doubling the Cape of Good Hope on its way to the East, I took passage in another direction, back to China. I wanted to encircle the globe once in my life, and this was my opportunity. I could say after that, that I had circumnavigated the globe. So I planned to go back by way of San Francisco. In order to do that, I had to take into consideration the fact that the Union Pacific from Chicago to San Francisco via Omaha was not completed, nor was any steamship line subsidized by the United States government to cross the Pacific from San Francisco to any seaport, either in Japan or China at the time. On that account I was obliged to take a circuitous route, by taking a coast steamer from New York to Panama, cross the Isthmus, and from there take passage in another coast steamer up the Mexican coast to San Francisco, Cal.