Farmers of Forty Centuries | Page 8

the southward around the point, after turning northward into the
deep bay, similar conditions prevailed, and at ten o'clock we stood off
Uraga where Commodore Perry anchored on July 8th, 1853, bearing to
the Shogun President Fillmore's letter which opened the doors of Japan
to the commerce of the world and, it is to be hoped brought to her
people, with their habits of frugality and industry so indelibly fixed by

centuries of inheritance, better opportunities for development along
those higher lines destined to make life still more worth living.
As the Tosa Maru drew alongside the pier at Yokohama it was raining
hard and this had attired an army after the manner of Robinson Crusoe,
dressed as seen in Fig. 1, ready to carry you and yours to the Customs
house and beyond for one, two, three or five cents. Strong was the
contrast when the journey was reversed and we descended the gang
plank at Seattle, where no one sought the opportunity of moving
baggage.
Through the kindness of Captain Harrison of the Tosa Maru in calling
an interpreter by wireless to meet the steamer, it was possible to utilize
the entire interval of stop in Yokohama to the best advantage in the
fields and gardens spread over the eighteen miles of plain extending to
Tokyo, traversed by both electric tram and railway lines, each running
many trains making frequent stops; so that this wonderfully fertile and
highly tilled district could be readily and easily reached at almost any
point.
We had left home in a memorable storm of snow, sleet and rain which
cut out of service telegraph and telephone lines over a large part of the
United States; we had sighted the Aleutian Islands, seeing and feeling
nothing on the way which could suggest a warm soil and green fields,
hence our surprise was great to find the jinricksha men with bare feet
and legs naked to the thighs, and greater still when we found, before we
were outside the city limits, that the electric tram was running between
fields and gardens green with wheat, barley, onions, carrots, cabbage
and other vegetables. We were rushing through the Orient with
everything outside the car so strange and different from home that the
shock came like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky.
In the car every man except myself and one other was smoking tobacco
and that other was inhaling camphor through an ivory mouthpiece
resembling a cigar holder closed at the end. Several women, tiring of
sitting foreign style, slipped off--I cannot say out of--their shoes and sat
facing the windows, with toes crossed behind them on the seat. The
streets were muddy from the rain and everybody Japanese was on
rainy-day wooden shoes, the soles carried three to four inches above
the ground by two cross blocks, in the manner seen in Fig. 2. A mother,
with baby on her back and a daughter of sixteen years came into the car.

Notwithstanding her high shoes the mother had dipped one toe into the
mud. Seated, she slipped her foot off. Without evident instructions the
pretty black-eyed, glossy-haired, red-lipped lass, with cheeks made
rosy, picked up the shoe, withdrew a piece of white tissue paper from
the great pocket in her sleeve, deftly cleaned the otherwise spotless
white cloth sock and then the shoe, threw the paper on the floor, looked
to see that her fingers were not soiled, then set the shoe at her mother's
foot, which found its place without effort or glance.
Everything here was strange and the scenes shifted with the speed of
the wildest dream. Now it was driving piles for the foundation of a
bridge. A tripod of poles was erected above the pile and from it hung a
pulley. Over the pulley passed a rope from the driving weight and from
its end at the pulley ten cords extended to the ground. In a circle at the
foot of the tripod stood ten agile Japanese women. They were the
hoisting engine. They chanted in perfect rhythm, hauled and stepped,
dropped the weight and hoisted again, making up for heavier hammer
and higher drop by more blows per minute. When we reached Shanghai
we saw the pile driver being worked from above. Fourteen Chinese
men stood upon a raised staging, each with a separate cord passing
direct from the hand to the weight below. A concerted, half-musical
chant, modulated to relieve monotony, kept all hands together. What
did the operation of this machine cost? Thirteen cents, gold, per man
per day, which covered fuel and lubricant, both automatically served.
Two additional men managed the piles, two directed the hammer,
eighteen manned the outfit. Two dollars and thirty-four cents per day
covered fuel, superintendence and repairs. There was almost no capital