Sherard Osborn

“ Those poor girls in the tea-houses, the women in the temples, the attendants in the public gardens, the ranks of the Bikuni, have all to be filled up from the middle and lower classes. They may become famous in Japanese history, for Japanese history recognises its Aspasias, as Greece and Egypt did of old. They may, by their wit or beauty, win the hearts of wealthy men, who will take them for wives, and thus rescue them from their wretched lot. But in Japan, as in Europe, there is a wide, wide difference between the high and low of womankind, though equally gentle, though equally lovely. ”

“ The fir-tree waves from the mountain crest overhead, the cedar overshadows the road, and the bamboo throws out its graceful plumes in the dell below. Asia and Europe have thus in this favoured land each contributed their share to make it rich in products conducive to the happiness of man—and man has done much; his industry gladdens us on every side, and as the soil is fertile, the valley may be said to be one great garden dotted with villages and neat cottages, whilst everywhere we see proofs of the redundancy of human life thronged into the space. ”

“ A poet, who had not been fourteen hours in the cold, and whose body was not racked by constant gymnastic exertion to preserve his bones from fracture, might have given a beautiful description of the lifting of a fierce sky at about half-past one in the morning, and a disagreeable glimpse through snow-storm and squall of a bold and precipitous coast not many miles off, and ahead of us. I cannot undertake to do so, for I remember feeling far from poetical, as, with a jerk and a roll, the "Pioneer," under fore and aft canvas, came to the wind. ”

“ The reception of the Japanese envoys at Rome was not a jot more magnificent than the grand tournay held by the Emperor Nobananga at Miaco to receive some present sent him by a Pope. We there read how he caused a vast space to be levelled, three times as large as the great square of Lisbon; how it was set round with the tents and pavilions of all his princes and barons; how it was filled with men in rich liveries; how the good priests could not find words to extol sufficiently the gorgeous richness of the velvets and brocades, the tapestries; the long lines of gentlemen bravely attired ”

“ Monotony, as I again repeat, was the only disagreeable part of our wintering at Griffith's Island. Some men amongst us seemed in their temperament to be much better able to endure this monotony than others: and others who had no source of amusement—such as reading, writing, or drawing—were much to be pitied. Nothing struck one more than the strong tendency to talk of home, and England: it became quite a disease. We, for the most part, spoke as if all the most affectionate husbands, dutiful sons, and attached brothers, had found their way into the Arctic expeditions. ”

“ A face of classical beauty, according to Japanese notions, combined with great modesty of expression, black hair turned up and ornamented with long gold pins and scarlet crape flowers, an outer robe of the most costly silk, embroidered in gold and confined at the waist by a scarf, upon which the highest female art has been expended in ornament, and tied in a large bow behind, the ends flowing over a long train formed by seven or eight silk petticoats, each longer and richer than the other. A sailor may pry no farther into the mysteries of female finery! ”

“ Why, therefore, in the name of charity, consign those who are dear to us, as relatives, friends, or countrymen, to sudden death in the dark waters of Lancaster Sound or Baffin's Bay. No one who knew the men of that gallant squadron would so libel the leader, or his officers, as to suppose them to have turned back when at the threshold of their labours: if he does so, he does them foul injustice. And against such I appeal, in the name of that humanity which was never invoked in vain in a Christian land.
Give the lost ones the benefit of the doubt, if there is one on your minds. ”

“ The Japanese of to-day are just the same people first seen by Pinto and praised by Xavier. The very cut of their garments is unchanged, they shave the tops of their heads and brush up their back hair as in the sixteenth century, and although their curiosity and skill are as great as when they imitated the petronels of their Portuguese visitors and Toledo blades of the Spaniards, yet they are in all other respects that same people of the isles of the day-dawn who repelled Kublai-khan’s fleets and armies, and preferred heathen independence to the Christian vassalage of the Church of Rome. ”

“ Rome welcomed them with the greatest pomp; first marched his Holiness’ life-guards in rich and costly habits; then the Switzers; then the attendants of the cardinals glittering in gold and carnation silks. How one envies the fair sex—the sensation which visions of such bravery must occasion. The princes and nobility with kettle-drums beating a rare symphony preceded the Japanese envoys curiously attired, after their manner, in garments embroidered with birds and flowers, they each had two swords—it was remarked—and that the hilts and scabbards were rich with pearls and diamonds. ”

“ There, with one's friend, the mutual recognition of Nature's beauties and congratulations, at being there to witness it, richly rewarded us for our isolation from the world of our fellow-men; and general enthusiasm had its full sway as, from the heights of Griffith's Island, we looked down on our squadron, whose masts alone pierced the broad white expanse over Barrow's Strait, and threw long shadows across the floe. ”

“ A man in the garb of a Japanese sailor, leads a large monkey which climbs up a pole, and seats itself on the summit, and to the delight of the villagers fans itself à la Japonaise. The mountebank climbs on top of a pile of tea-cups, and stands on one foot on the summit of fragile crockery; the clown chaffs, and excites ridicule, and the peep-showman vaunts his marvels, and beseeches the patronage of your distinguished self. ”

“ For some time after the sun had ceased to visit our heavens, the southern side of the horizon, for a few hours at noon, was strongly illumined, the sky being shaded, from deep and rosy red through all the most delicate tints of pink and blue, until, in the north, a cold bluish-black scowled angrily over the pale mountains, who, in widowed loneliness, had drawn their cowls of snow around, and, uncheered by the roseate kiss of the bridegroom sun, seemed to mourn over the silence and darkness at their feet. ”

“ Imagine yourself, dear reader, on the edge of a lofty table-land, which, dipping suddenly at your feet, sloped again to the sea of ice, at a distance of some 500 feet below; fancy a vast plain of ice and snow, diversified by tiers of broken-up ice and snow-wreaths, which, glistening on the one side, reflected back the moonlight with an exceeding brilliancy, whilst the strong shadow on the farther side of the masses threw them out in strong relief ”

“ The other anxiety of this enlightened prince and the progressionist party was, how to bring about the change without giving rise to tumult and rebellion within their borders from squabbles and differences with foreigners along the sea-board, which, fanned by one functionary and another, would lead Japan into the same sad state embroglio as China had been so cursed with ever since she had swerved from the great Confucian maxim: “Happy those who never depart from the wisdom of their ancestors.” ”

“ The sun, sweeping along the heavens opposite, at a very low altitude, gilded as it rose the snowy crests of the mountains of Disco, and served to show, more grim and picturesque, the naturally dark face of the "Black Land of Lively." From thence round to the east, in the far horizon, swept the shores of Greenland, its glaciers, peaks, and headlands, all tortured by mirage into a thousand fantastic shapes, as if Dame Nature had risen from her couch in frolicsome mood. ”