The Californian, 1880, Vol. 2
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| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from The Californian, 1880, Vol. 2: A Western Monthly Magazine It was near nine o´clock, on one of the sunniest, brightest mornings that ever transformed the Yokohama Bay ripples into diamonds or fringed Fuji-yama´s robe of snow with purest gold. We were going to interview Daibutz, the great bronze Mogul of the Buddhist gods. We had heard much of Daibutz. Every Japanned American we met wanted to know if we had seen him, and every other one confided to us religiously that we ought to see him; but for three days previously an anti-Buddhist weather-clerk had dampened our enthusiasm, taken the starch out of our plans, and imprisoned us with floods of "moist, unpleasant" rain. On this Sunday morning, however, all was serene, from the meteorological outlook to the tempers of those concerned; and, blue skies eliminating blue spirits, we cheerfully prepared for departure - we embracing Doctor and Mrs. Eldridge, patron saints of Americans in Yokohama, and a party of American ladies and navy officers, recipients of their hospitality. A dozen jinrikishas waited before the door, and two dozen coolie biped steeds lounged picturesquely and otherwise in waiting. A word as to these phenomenal conveyances, since this journey, like all others in Japan, depended solely on them. They are to Japan both street-cars and carriages, and are as curious a style of vehicle as civilized people can well imagine. They are simply huge perambulators, in which grown folk are trundled about pretty much as babies are at home, only the delectable and dilatory nurse-girls are replaced in Japan by small, muscular, bow-legged, and scantily clad coolies. You employ an oriental tandem of one, two, or three of these coolies at a time, according to your weight, the distance to be traveled, and the roads. The Japanese, who are as a race small and slender, frequently ride two, and even three, in one jinrikisha, and, when they do, the general "baby-wagon" air makes it strongly suggestive of huge twins or monster triplets. American dignity, however, airing itself abroad, rises superior to Japanese economy, and your globe-trotter invariably makes the jinrikisha game a game of solitaire; consequently, they are not the most sociable things in the world, particularly in view of the fact that, the law requiring them to travel in single file to avoid collisions, conversational indulgence is attainable only by means of a speaking trumpet or a peripatetic telephone. The coolies are a curious class. They seem so like animals, with their bare legs, feet, and heads, their dogged indifference to the weather, going bare-footed and bare-legged in the snow storms, and their monkey-like chattering in voices which are always unnaturally hoarse or shrill, that it makes you almost uncomfortable to think that they, too, are of flesh and blood, and may possibly have souls - curious foreign souls, to be sure - to be saved. They have an odd habit of going along quietly enough when they have a single vehicle in charge; but when a long line of them are traveling together, and the first one comes to a bridge, a rut, or any obstruction, large or small, in the road, some heathenish sounding word is passed along the line, and bellowed, groaned, hooted, and howled to the end, making the wildest succession of noises ever heard outside of a boiler factory or of a Methodist camp-meeting. But they never kick and never shy, nor do they explode or run away. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
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