The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

We had an excellent lunch, of pig, fowls, and yams, all boiled on the spot in the hot springs. I saw a live pig chased by some Maori children into a hot spring, and it was boiled in a moment.

In this region I rode over soil which was exactly like dust-shot; the whole ground apparently consisting of ore. We visited the White Terraces, where, if you wrote your name in pencil upon the cliffs, the silicate would preserve the legend as if it were raised or embroidered. Some of the signatures had been there for years. I have since heard that the place was destroyed by volcanic eruption.

We witnessed the weird and magnificent war dances of the Maoris. Never have I seen finer specimens of humanity than these men. When, after leaping simultaneously into the air, they all came to the ground together, the impact sounded like the report of a gun. A party of the Chiefs came to pay a ceremonial visit to the Duke. It struck me that they looked hungry, and I said so. They want cheering up, I said. I went to forage for them. I took a huge silver bowl, and filled it with chicken, whisky, lobster, beef, champagne, biscuits and everything else I could find, and presented it to them. You never saw warriors more delighted. They ate the whole, using their fingers, and were greatly cheered.

It was in New Zealand that I had an interesting conversation with a cannibal – or rather, an ex-cannibal. I asked him if he ever craved for human flesh, and he said no, not now – unless he happened to see a plump woman. In that case, he said he lusted for the flesh of the ball of the thumb, which (he gave me to understand) was the prime delicacy.

Some of the half-caste women were of great beauty. Their savage blood endowed them with something of the untamed, implacable aspect of their ancestry. I heard of one such woman, who, outwardly attuned to every tenet of white civilisation, and received everywhere in white society, suddenly reverted. A native rebellion breaking out, she rejoined her tribe and slew a missionary with her meri– the native chief's badge of office. She cut off the top of the missionary's skull, and used it thereafter as a drinking-vessel. Poor lady, she was (I heard) eventually captured and was executed.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CRUISE OF H.M.S. GALATEA (Continued)

II. MY TWO FAITHFUL SERVANTS

They came to me first in the Galatea, so that their story may fitly be related in this place. Tom Fat the China boy came to me at Kowloon. He was brought to me by his uncle, who desired to dispose of his nephew, for a consideration. The consideration was £5. Lest I should be accused of Chinese slavery – and anything is possible in these days – I should explain that the fiver was not the price of Tom Fat, but was in the nature of a delicate compliment paid to his uncle. Tom was a free boy; he was entered in the ship's books as my servant, at so much wages per month. Not that he valued his wages particularly; he had wider views. He was an invaluable servant, clever, orderly, indefatigable and devoted. I attired him in gorgeous silks, and he bore my crest with perfect unassuming dignity. He kept my purse, and expended my money with prudence, even with generosity. When I wanted money, Tom Fat had plenty of ready cash. I sometimes wondered how it was that he always seemed to be provided with a margin, for I was not conscious of practising economy. The fact was, I was careless in those days, and kept no accounts. It was not until he had been in my service for some years, that I discovered the secret of his wealth. It was simple enough. He was in the habit of forging cheques. Altogether, he forged cheques for nearly twelve hundred pounds. How much of that amount he kept for himself I never knew; but it is certain that a great deal of it he spent upon me. Nor do I know why he did not ask for a cheque instead of forging it. Apparently it was a point of honour with Tom not to ask for money. When I asked him if he wanted a cheque to defray expenses, he usually replied cheerfully that he had no need of it. Certainly he acquired a reputation for economy by these means.

His methods were subtle. He was well aware that I kept no private account book of my own, and that my bankers did not enter the names of payees in my pass-book, but only the numbers of the cheques cashed, and also that the bank returned cashed cheques from time to time. On these occasions, Tom, finding pass-book and cashed cheques among my papers, would abstract both the counterfoils and the cheques which he had forged, knowing that as I should not take the trouble to compare the numbers of the cheques with the numbers in the pass-book, I should not notice that some cheques were missing. He was always careful to arrange that the last counterfoil filled up – at which one naturally looks – should be that of my cheque and not that of his; and he never drew large sums, varying his amounts between £5 and £20, except on one occasion, when he forged a cheque for £50. The Oriental mind is inscrutable; but whether or no Tom considered that he was robbing me; whether, if he considered that he was robbing me, he believed he was justified in so doing; he took the most sedulous care that no one else should enjoy that privilege.

Tom was universally popular. I took him everywhere with me. In his way, he was a sportsman. One day, hunting with the Duke of Beaufort's hounds, I mounted him on a skewbald pony. We came to a nasty slippery place, a bad take-off, a wall to jump, and the road beyond. Tom's pony took it safely. A big, hard-riding guardsman who was coming up behind us, not liking the look of the place, shouted to me, "Is it all right?"

"That hideous Chinaman has just done it!" I shouted back. Not to be outdone by a Chinaman, the guardsman rode at the fence, his horse went down, and he got a dreadful toss. When he got up, he was furiously angry with me.

When Tom had been with me for some years, he came to me and said, "Master, you never give me leave! You give others leave but not me leave. I want leave."

The request was reasonable enough, and I sent Tom to my house in town, there to amuse himself for a week. At the end of the week he did not return. He was reported missing. I advertised for him, offering a reward. The next day he was arrested at the Criterion Restaurant, being one of a party of thirteen (of whom twelve were ladies) to whom Tom was about to play the host.

It turned out that during his week in town, my faithful servant had spent £70. He had also raised money at one of my clubs.

"Lord Charles want twenty-five pounds," he said to the porter, who took him to the cashier.

"His lordship must give me his I.O.U.," says the cashier.

"What thing that?" says Tom.

The cashier explained.

"All-light," says the man of resource, and promptly forged my I.O.U. for thirty-five pounds.

"You said twenty-five," remarked the cashier.

"I tink Lord Charles like little more," Tom replied.

Of course, the cashier sent me the document. When I investigated Tom's transactions, I found a few of his forged cheques in the bank, and I could hardly tell the difference between my signature and his forgeries. The cheque-books were compared with the pass-book, and counterfoils were found to be missing. I took legal action against him, and he was sentenced to five years. Shortly afterwards, when I was in Scotland, I received a letter from the hapless Tom, saying he was dying, and asking me to come and see him. I went at once. I found him in the infirmary, a dying man indeed, with his face to the wall. A Chinaman dies at will. He simply lies down and dies; but by the same token, he can continue to live. So I determined to rouse him. I hailed him in a loud and cheerful voice.

"Tom! Cheer up, Tom! What's the matter? You're not ill. Rouse up."

"Me die, master," said Tom.

"Not you," I said. "Come! Cheer up, and I'll try to get you out of this."

And sure enough, he turned back, became quite well, and I secured his release after he had served a short term. I found him a place in China, sent him East, and never saw him again. When I went to China subsequently, I failed to find him. After his interval of Western service, China took him and swallowed him up. And that was the end of Tom Fat.

He was in my service when, upon the return voyage to Australia of the Galatea, we touched at Mauritius. In that strange island I came across a youthful negro savage. I learned his history from his master, an amiable French gentleman. Punch, as I named him, had been brought to Mauritius by a British cruiser. The warship had chased a slaver, whose crew jettisoned the slaves. They were fettered in chains and hove over the side. When the British seamen boarded the vessel they found her holds empty, except for the odour. In a dark corner was stowed a bundle of rags, into which a bluejacket thrust his cutlass. The rags sprang to life with a yell, and there was Punch with a wound in his thigh, of which he carried the scar to his end.

It occurred to me that Punch would serve me for a groom, and I said so to his master.

"Tiens!" said that gentleman pleasantly. "You shall have him for five shilling."

"Done!" said I, and paid him the money. He did not think I was serious; but he made no bones about ridding himself of his garden-boy.

Punch was the most hideous savage I have ever viewed. He was black as a boot; even his lips were black; his face was seamed with the cicatrices which were the totem marks of his tribe, whatever that may have been; and his countenance was exactly like the countenance of a bull-dog. The scars wrinkled his cheeks, like a bull-dog's jowl. He was densely stupid, and wild of temper. He attacked one of the men on board with his teeth. But he was utterly fearless, and although he knew nothing about horses, he was never afraid of them. He was apparently constructed of india-rubber. Nothing hurt him. When I drove a tandem, it was his duty as tiger to spring up behind as we started. But as my horses started at speed, Punch had not always time to run from their heads to the back of the vehicle. I have known him catch a spoke of the wheel and be whirled into the air, and the wheel to pass over him, without harming him in the least.

At a race meeting in Australia, Punch begged for a mount, and I borrowed a horse, which galloped away down the course, Punch clinging to him with arms and legs exactly like a monkey. He took two big fences like a bird; but at the third, the horse breasted it, fell backwards and rolled over upon his rider. I thought he was killed, but he wasn't. He was not even damaged.

When I went on half-pay, I placed Punch in the stables. The women servants took a fancy to him; but Punch, whatever he may have thought of the women, had no love for the head groom, in whose arm he made his teeth meet. So I found him a billet in a hairdresser's shop, which bore the legend, "Hairbrushing by machinery." Punch was the machinery. I saw him at it, turning a wheel in the window. I never saw him again, and know not what became of him.

CHAPTER IX

THE CRUISE OF H.M.S. GALATEA (Continued)

III. TAHITI AND THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

We arrived at Tahiti in June, 1869. Here is the most lovely climate in the world. The inhabitants never seemed to do any work, with the single exception of carrying bananas. In this exercise they were extraordinarily expert, bearing enormous weights upon the shoulders, the skin of which becomes hard like leather. I considered myself to be fairly strong; but when I tried to carry one of the masses of bananas under which the natives march swiftly all day long, up hill and down, I found that I was able to carry it only for a short distance, and with difficulty, on level ground. The people were perfectly delightful. We went ashore and lived among them; and it was then that I understood how it was that the men of the Bounty mutinied. The fact was that those discontented mariners could not bear to leave islands so delectable. I do not of course, desire to justify their very reprehensible conduct. All I say is that I can understand the strength of its motive. It was simply the desire to remain in an earthly paradise which inspired the men of the Bounty when they left Otaheite in April, 1789, to set Captain Bligh adrift in an open boat, with the nineteen men who stayed by him, and a small stock of provisions. The captain and his men made an astonishing voyage of nearly 4000 miles, and fetched up at the island of Timor, south of the Malaccas, in the following June. Some of the mutineers were subsequently brought to justice in the year 1792. Six of them were condemned and three were executed. In 1814 it was discovered that ten among the mutineers had colonised Pitcairn Island.

We in the Galatea stayed at Tahiti as long as we possibly could, and enjoyed every moment of the time. One of our amusements was to float down a narrow and swift stream and shoot the waterfall. At a point some little distance from the coast, the stream ran deep and rapid between banks which were about three feet apart. The natives, boys and girls, used to drop into the stream and let themselves be carried down feet foremost to a waterfall, which descended some 40 or 50 feet in a wide pool; and it occurred to me that what they could do, I could accomplish. I watched these intrepid children very carefully, and I observed that they always came to the surface some distance away from the fall. In spite of some dissuasion, I determined to attempt the enterprise. I floated down the stream feet foremost, shot the fall, and the moment I reached the foot of it I struck out under water. I was amazed to find that the water was just like air, or an enormous cauldron of soda water, buoying one up, and I came to the surface without the slightest difficulty. Afterwards I went down head first. The only thing to remember was not to come up under the fall itself. Shooting the waterfall became a popular amusement.

Another of our diversions was surf-playing. This enchanting exercise is performed with the aid of a long board shaped like a wedge. The swimmer takes his board, pushes it before him over the breakers, while he dives through them, then turns, and, leaning on the board, rides back on the crest of the surf. The speed, whatever it may be, feels like sixty miles an hour. It is one of the most exhilarating pastimes in the world.

I remember that we all went to church on Sunday. During the service, the Queen of Tahiti suddenly clapped her hands, whereupon the clergyman desisted from his ministrations, while her Majesty distributed tobacco among the congregation. When it was well alight the Queen again clapped her hands, and the clergyman went on with the service.

We left Tahiti with profound regret, receiving and giving many presents on parting. From Tahiti we proceeded to the Sandwich Islands, where I met many old friends, made during my sojourn four years previously. The American population had quite forgiven and forgotten my boyish freak, which had so agitated them at the time. Our old friend Queen Emma, whom we had taken to Panama on her way to England to see the Queen, had returned. I went to call upon her, driving tandem, as already related. Turning in at the gate, I took the corner too sharply, the wheels locked, and the buggy capsized. In the meantime the Queen, having heard the jingling of the Canadian sleigh bells attached to the harness, came out to find her visitor sitting on the grass at her feet. The horses galloped on and wrecked the vehicle and also themselves. Altogether it was a very expensive drive.

CHAPTER X

THE CRUISE OF H.M.S. GALATEA

IV. OLD JAPAN

NOTE

When Lord Charles Beresford visited Nippon (from the Chinese Jih Pun, the place or rising of the sun, changed by English pronunciation to Japan), it was the old Japan that he saw; the Japan of centuries of isolation, inviolate save for the intrusion of the Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century, and the little wedge of Dutch traders. It had been the Japan of the Mikado, who was as a god; of the Tycoon, his temporal representative, who, like a man walking the tight-rope above a wood of transfixing swords, maintained a delicate equipoise of power among the feudal seigneuralty, the great Daimios, each lord of his domain and master of life and death over thousands of retainers. It was the Japan of the Samurai, the two-sworded rufflers; of the Ronins, the masterless men, the outlaws, who roved the country in bands, patriotic, ferocious and pitiless. It was still the Japan in which the common people, men and women and maidens, walked naked and unashamed; in which the warriors went to battle clad in armour wrought of tortoise-shell and silk, girt with swords and carrying bows and arrows; in which the life of a barbarian foreigner was never safe from hour to hour, so that he must be guarded by the two-sworded Yaconins, the Government officers, who, knowing the hatred of the Government towards their charges, seldom drew sword in their defence until it was just one blood-stained second too late; in which a fault in honour was instantly expiated by hara-kiri, the fatal cross-cut upon the belly, performed in the public eye, which was justly offended if the incision were so clumsily executed that the entrails protruded. Such, at least, is the ceremonial theory. In practice, the dagger is driven in below the ribs, drawn horizontally across the belly, and up the other side; an operation requiring inconceivable courage.

It is the land of tea-houses and temples, of running footmen and palanquins; where houses and string and handkerchiefs are made of paper; where the people wash themselves every day and their clothes never; where the oldest profession in the world is counted honourable service, and the pictures of courtesans adorn the temples in which the bonzes intone prayers in the midst of games and dances: where the writing is done from top to bottom, from right to left, and keys are turned from left to right, and carpenters draw their planes towards them, and the houses are built from the roof downwards, and horses are mounted on the off-side, and ladies black their teeth. It was a land of immense processional pageants: the processions of the high Daimios, who once a year quitted their ancestral homes with a great train to dwell in Yedo, the capital of the Tycoon, for six months; and returned again, leaving as hostages for their loyalty their wives and children for another six months. The two-sworded Samurai march in front, crying "Shitanirio!" and all the spectators drop upon their knees and hide behind their legs while the long procession ambles by, spearmen and banners and baggage-carriers and palanquins; the norimons, which are the palanquins of the notable, and the cangos, which are the palanquins of the humble.

When the foreigner rode abroad in state, he was attended by the Ward-guards, who marched in front, striking the earth at every step with their long staves whereon loose iron rings were strung, so that their jingling warned the populace to make way.

At night, festivals were celebrated by immense processions filling the streets, in which everyone carried a lighted lantern swaying upon the end of a flexible bamboo, and the lanterns were painted with bats and dragons, and the people wore horrible masks, distended with the monstrous rictus of the devil-gods. In the Yoshiwara, where the women, painted and gilded, sashed and bedecked, sit in a double row, each with her price placarded upon her knee, there were the great priapic processions, concerning which the English works upon Japan preserve a shocked reticence.