The Japan expedition. Japan and around the world: An account of three visits to the Japanese empire, with sketches of Madeira, St. Helena, cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, Ceylon, Singapore, China, and Loo-ChooSpalding, J. W. (J. Willett)
History
The Japan expedition. Japan and around the world: An account of three visits to the Japanese empire, with sketches of Madeira, St. Helena, cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, Ceylon, Singapore, China, and Loo-Choo
Spalding, J. W. (J. Willett)
Japan -- Description and travel; Voyages and travels
But the Macedonian having gotten back from Manilla, the time had
arrived when Opperbevelhebber Perry was to leave in the mail-steamer.
This interesting event took place on the 11th of September, one day
after the date of the great naval-battle of his Hyperion brother on
Lake Erie, and one before the battle of North Point, and three before
the allied armies landed in the Crimea. Previous to this important
epoch, the _American_ (_!_) merchants at Canton addressed him an
epistle as characteristic as the speech of the
“—— men of Coventry,
Who came down to see
Her gracious majesty!”
This _bijou_ of toadyism had this for a superscription:—
His Excellency Commodore MATTHEW C. PERRY,
_Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces U. S., in the East India,
China, and Japan Seas, and late Envoy to Japan, &c., &c., &c._
They first acknowledged the promptitude with which he extended
protection to their interests, so much needed, during his command in
those seas.
“Protection.” Commodore Perry arrived in the waters in the vicinity of
Canton, on the 7th of April, 1853, and on the 27th of the same month
he ran up to Shanghae, and after a short stay there, he bundled off
with all the ships he could to the island of Loo-Choo, where he lay
inert from the 26th of May to the 2d day of July; and did not return to
China until August. The gentlemen who much do congregate on the rialto
of Canton, address “His Excellency,” concerning the magnitude of the
interests, which requires protection, and the storeship Supply, like
the other ships, not being required until the next visit to Japan, she
is sent up to lay off the hongs. This tub to the mercantile whale,
satisfied for a time, but when the period arrived for the return to
Japan, luckily for “His Excellency,” the merchants suggested the
charter of a miserable little English steamer, and he not regarding
it his duty to inform the opium gentry, that the carronades of the
Supply would afford more protection than the penny-whistle battery of
the jolly-boat steamer, gladly withdrew the needed storeship, and
chartered the Queen. The puny craft when started in Hong Kong harbor,
was amusing. A Chinaman on one wheel-house with a bamboo-pole, prized
the wheel over the “centre,” and four or five men being required at her
“starting-bar,” when they got her going they did not like to stop her,
and she spun about the harbor like a chicken, _minus_ his head. The
arms of her wheels being wood, before getting over to Macao she broke
off several. Her pop-guns, only two of which were aside, had perhaps
never been “scaled,”
“And like gun well aimed, at duck or plover,
Bear wide the mark and kick the owner over.”
As Hon. Humphrey Marshall said, in speaking of the protection afforded
by the American opperbevelhebber:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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