Footnote
1 An extinct volcano rising behind the city.
CHAPTER II
Arrival in San Francisco — Hoisting the Royal Standard — The King is generously Entertained — Visits the Legislature — "The Colossus of the Pacific" — A Chinese Banquet — The King, Elated, Requires Minister to Wear Diplomatic Uniform — The Valet Gets Drunk.
AS the "City of Sydney" moved up the Bay of San Francisco the next morning, her ambitious captain urged his Majesty to permit him to hoist the royal standard. The Chamberlain and I suggested to the King that a modest introduction to San Francisco would befit the entrance of the monarch of a midget kingdom into the domain of a great republic. But he had been received with extraordinary display on a visit to this place six years before, and it had increased his appetite for public honours. The valet, Robert, therefore extracted the royal standard from its canvas covering, and it was quickly floating from the main truck. This was soon detected by the commandant of the federal forts, and salutes of twenty-one guns were at once discharged. The rain fell heavily as the vessel reached her dock, so the King's friends in the city, instead of driving him through the streets in an open conveyance, took him in a closed carriage to the Palace Hotel. The weather had displayed the same disrespect for him that it did for George IV, who landed in a severe storm at Leith, upon which a loyal Scotchman exclaimed, "Your Majesty, I am positively ashamed of the Almighty for letting the rain wet your Majesty's person."
The King was a generous host at home; many residents of San Francisco had been his guests at breakfasts and dinners, with attractive settings of tropical vines, flowers, and plants, and he met, therefore, a warm welcome. Nor did it detract from their interest in him that he was a Crowned Head. He was also a "coloured man," unusually dark for a Polynesian, and several of his features suggested negro inheritance. But the generous citizens of both sexes smothered antipathies, if they had any, and, rising to the occasion, cordially declared that black was white.
General Upton, a soldier of the Civil War, said, after he had conversed with the King, that his knowledge of military manœuvres and strategy was most creditable, and, no doubt, exceeded that of most of the militia officers of the United States. The King visited the Legislative Assembly of the State at Sacramento, and at a dinner given to him in that place he heard the "thrilling eloquence" of several American orators. Among these was one who in fervid eloquence described the importance of the Hawaiian kingdom in the rising commerce of the Pacific Ocean, and predicted the final union of the inhabitants of all Oceanica and Polynesia under one rule, and, he shouted, "it will be that of King Kalakaua, the Colossus of the Pacific." The King was therefore suddenly conscious of a call to a high destiny, although he was quite uncertain as to the term "Colossus," and this consciousness was not lessened by the speech of the Governor of the State, who gave free play to his capacity for patriotic prophecy.
On the King's return to San Francisco he attended a banquet given to him by the Consul-General of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of China, in the Hang Fen Lou restaurant. It was said to be the costliest dinner ever given by the Chinese in America. Twenty tables were covered with heavy embroidered crimson satin, with fringes of gold bullion and silver stars; heavy silk scrolls hung from the ceiling, upon which were inscribed words from the wise sayings of Confucius; American, Hawaiian, and Chinese flags were intertwined on pillars; the Consul, in a gorgeous costume of silk, sat with the King on his right hand. On receiving his Majesty at the door he had ignored the delicate and artistic pump-handle hand-shaking of Christendom, and, placing the closed fist of one of his own hands in the palm of the other, shook them together with the enthusiasm demanded by the rank of the guest. The dishes served were the pride of China: bird' s-nest soup, white snow fingers, imperial fish brains, preserved bird's eggs, shark's fins, fish maw, tender bamboo shoots, stewed duck with Teintsin sauce, chicken with Satow dressing, turtle stew, melon and many other kinds of seeds, sweetmeats, pear-wine, and many bonnes bouches unknown to Parisian restaurants. Chopsticks were laid beside the guests' plates, but forks were also furnished, as a liberal concession to the crude habits of Western civilisation.
The Consul toasted the King, and, as the spokesman for all Chinamen, thanked him for the just treatment they had received in his kingdom; there was but one place in Christendom, beyond the lines of the British Empire, in which all Chinese immigrants could live without fear of unjust assault; it was, he said, in the King's dominions. And when this "pagan" King rose to reply, he stood on American soil at the time when the descendants of the Puritans at the capital of the nation were passing a law which deliberately violated their treaty with China, and just before that august tribunal, the Supreme Court of the United States, decided that the obligations of a treaty might be violated by an Act of Congress.1
At the close of the banquet, which was the tribute of men of the largest nation of the world to the fairness and justice in the administration of law in the kingdom of Hawaii, I said to the King,—"You may be a pagan king, and I the Minister of a pagan king; but our first important experience in a foreign land is the gratitude, expressed in this grand banquet, to your government for its justice; and it is done on the soil of a nation that deliberately does injustice to the Chinese."
Although we were only at the beginning of our journey, I noticed that my royal master's mind was expanding. The fervid words of the orators in Sacramento, and foolish praise of visitors, opening to him a vision of himself as "the Colossus of the Pacific," he began to realise his possibilities as the coming man "that shalt be king hereafter" of the countless islands of Oceanica. He therefore commanded-for a king's request is always a command-that a uniform be made for his Minister of State. Instead of a cocked hat and pair of old boots, which his predecessors had adopted as the courtly uniform at no very distant period, there suddenly appeared, from the miscellaneous luggage, cloths on which were delicately worked, with wire of gold bullion, imitations of the beautiful leaf and flower of the taro plant (Calladium esculentum) together with the fine leaf of the koa, a Hawaiian tree. This costly material had been embroidered in England on the orders of a former king, but had never been used. A tailor quickly made for me a rich diplomatic uniform, the design of which was especially admired in every court visited by the King and his suite. To this was added a sword and a cocked hat.
The party was now equipped for a tour,—either royal or incognito, and while an American democrat is bashful at first in the gorgeous trappings of a court official, the instinct of his race, when in pursuit of either business or pleasure, quickly adjusts him to the dress of a savage or to that of an archangel.
The King, with his great size and dignified presence, was an imposing person in his military dress, to which was added some insignia of military orders given to him by European sovereigns on the exchange of treaties. To obtain more of these was, in truth, one of the objects of his tour. The Chamberlain, with the rank of Colonel on his Majesty's staff, appeared in the uniform of that rank, and, being of the same size of the King, the two, when standing together, towering above other persons, gave to the Hawaiians the credit of producing a race of unusually large men.
The King wished that there should be some suggestion of Hawaiian costumes in his suite, but throughout his pagan possessions there had been but two extremes of fashion: one presenting the wearer clad in decorative tattoo, "only that and nothing more;" while the other bedecked the chiefs with rare and magnificent feather cloaks, made from the minute and delicately coloured feathers of tiny birds, with a gloss and richness that no art could rival. But the wearing of these cloaks over a European military or diplomatic uniform would be incongruous. How he finally preserved a suggestion of Hawaiian fashion in the dress of his suite will be related hereafter.
The day after our arrival in San Francisco, Robert, his Majesty's valet, got drunk. In spite of the alacrity with which he had accepted the position, he scorned his humble office; menial services were iron in his soul. He informed str
angers and lookers-on that he was the King's private secretary, or that he held the office of "Keeper of the Royal Standard," which, he said in confidence, was one of much honour in Hawaii. Being tempted by strangers with invitations to the bar of the hotel, he became hopelessly drunk, and on one occasion walked through the corridors wearing, by mistake, the King's silk hat instead of his own. The suite insisted on his dismissal, but the King, upon the valet's earnest promise of reformation, declined to accede to the demand.
Footnote
1 See 136 United States Supreme Court Reports.
CHAPTER III
Departure for Japan — Logs on the Ocean — Washington's Birthday — Losing a Day — Slapping a King in the Face — Attempts to Instruct the King in Political Science — The Conflict of Races in Hawaii — Failure of Educational Effort.
ON the 8th of February, 1881, the King, with his suite, embarked for Japan on the steamer "Oceanic," Captain Metcalf. The royal standard was at the main truck; the federal batteries of the port gave a royal salute of twenty-one guns; and we were quickly on the breast of the great "Tranquil Sea," so viciously untranquil in its seasons. We entered the warm winds of the Pacific anticyclone, which distribute tropical warmth over the western coast of the American continent from Alaska to Lower California, and in a vast sweep finally touch and cool the Hawaiian Islands, making them a sub-tropical group, relieved from excessive heat. On the third day after leaving port we passed a huge floating pine log. It had left its home in the forests of Oregon, coursed down the Columbia River, struck out into the waste of waters, and in solitude was searching for a landing somewhere in Oceanica. Many such timbers, after making their automatic voyages of three thousand miles, find their last harbour among the coral reefs of the Pacific Islands. Traces of the United States ship of war "Levant," which, it is believed, foundered in the North Pacific, without a survivor to tell its story, were found by the casting of one of her masts upon the beach of Hawaii.
Our course toward Japan was unbroken by islands; no vessel crossed our path on this lightly travelled ocean; it was a boundless solitude waiting for Asia to rise and vex it with a challenge to the commercial marine of America.
To avoid the cold head winds of the northern latitude, the steamer's course was laid to the south, so that on the sixth day out she was within six hundred miles of the Hawaiian group.
Without a pause for rest or repair, the propeller, with its monotonous rumble, drove us for many days "down to the baths of the western stars," until the 22d of February, a day noted for two events,—the anniversary of the birthday of George Washington and the loss of a day from our calendar. On crossing the 181st meridian of longitude, navigators, in order to maintain correct time, drop a day from their reckoning when moving westward, and add a day when going eastward. When the captain declared that the 22d of February would be officially dropped from the log-book in the interests of navigation, and therefore the celebration of the anniversary would be jointly lost, the passengers, members of several races, declared, and the King attested it with his royal assent, that the lost day had been picked up from the sea and should be celebrated. Thus Americans, Englishmen, Japanese, Chinese, and Hawaiians forgot their racial lines for an hour, and, as members of a universal nation, gave tribute to the man who laid the warp upon which the woof of American history has since been and is still being woven.
The King, whose islands were discovered by Captain Cook at the time Washington was dislodging the British from Rhode Island, during the Revolutionary War, and the Count d'Estaing was refusing to fight the British fleet, made a response to a toast, in which he spoke of the far-reaching labours of the great leader in building a nation which within fifty years from the time of his death reached out beyond the continent and made his own little islands an independent kingdom. A Japanese student, returning home from America, said that when Washington was surveying in the woods the sites of future commonwealths, Japan had an old civilisation; but that when the Japanese reconstructed their ancient political system they sought wisdom in the books which taught the principles of government in America, and the name of Washington was written across every page.
While these men of incongruous races were thus lauding the Father of our country on the far Pacific sea, one might imagine the old hero, seated on his Colonial porch at Mount Vern on, looking down at the Potomac at his feet, his vision of American Empire limited by the Ohio River. If, then, an angel had whispered in his ear that within but threescore years his work would reach islands in the Pacific Ocean, of which he had hardly heard, and would be, moreover, the guide for men who were reconstructing an Asiatic empire of thirty million souls of which he knew nothing, he would have called these whisperings the vagaries of a dream, and, turning in his courtly way to his wife, have said, "Madam, I am becoming childish."
The next day a westerly gale struck the vessel. As she fell off in her course, for a moment, into the trough of the sea, the King happened to step out of the saloon. He lost his hold as she lurched, and Royalty rolled into the lee scuppers. He had hardly reached his feet before a hoary-headed and insolent wave sprang over the weather taffrail and-let it be said in whispers-struck his Majesty flatly in the face; then, with the howl of a demon, jumped overboard, and in some cave of the winds where cyclones are kept on tap boasted to his riotous companions that he had slapped a king in the face.
My associates in the Cabinet, especially Mr. H. A. P. Carter, who was a man of much force of character, had asked me to instruct the King, during the idle hours of our journey, in the principles and practice of good government, but recommended that it be done so cautiously that our royal master would not be offended or suspect that he was placed under tuition; that is, as my colleagues suggested, he should be treated as the hunter treats a wild animal, by approaching him from the leeward, so that the royal game would not be startled by the smell of offensive instruction. The King and his predecessors and their subjects had voluntarily, and without trained reflection, of which they were incapable, accepted the forms of Anglo-Saxon institutions, of the nature of which they had no clear idea. The white subjects of these native monarchs also accepted the rule of the native kings so long as it did not imperil liberty or property. There remained, however, the irrepressible conflict between Hawaiian traditions and habits and Anglo-Saxon traditions and habits. So long as the native rulers could be persuaded to govern along the general lines of the latter, the conflict would hardly be apparent, though in the political evolution it was inevitable that it should finally take aggressive form and close the native dynasty. The members of the King's Cabinet were also his personal friends, and they earnestly desired that he should avoid repeating the serious political mistakes already made, and that his reign might be a long and useful one.
I therefore approached the royal mind, in our idle hours, with much caution. I commented on the wickedness of men in the wanton destruction of royal lives; with an appearance of indifference I named many of the monarchs who had been strangled, beheaded, poisoned, or dethroned because they were in somebody's way. In his own palace were original portraits of Louis Philippe and Napoleon III, presented by those sovereigns to the King's predecessors. Using these as a text, I recited the blunders which had overturned their dynasties, but I drew no morals, or what the preachers call "applications." He calmly replied, however, that the most of the monarchs who suffered were very stupid, and if he had been in their places he would have avoided their errors. Inasmuch as through his own error, committed several months previous to the beginning of this journey, his own throne rocked near to overturning, I confidentially informed my colleagues by letter that if there was a royal road to learning, our pupil had not found it, and my attempts to introduce wisdom into his spiritual system by hypodermic injections had failed. But he so closely resembled the majority of monarchs as they are described by historians, and was so simply human in his thoughts and projects, that he would be indeed an audacious person who could honestly censure him. Nor can we wonder at the blunders of kings w
hen so many of their wisest counsellors honestly lead them astray. Ships have the advantage over kings that they are warned by fixed lighthouses and bell-buoys, while kings find in the warnings of many advisers false lights, and whistling-buoys that have drifted away from their true anchorage. As I knew that I should never be the adviser of any other monarch, I plied him with the maxims and aphorisms of statesmen; but my royal master usually fell off into a quiet nap, leaving me only the consolation of doing a duty which I supposed, however, would be without profit.
In these efforts to fertilise the royal mind the Chamberlain adroitly aided by taking the part of the chorus in the Greek drama; he made judicious responses with an appearance of indifference; repeating often some story of a king's dethronement with the comment, "Risky business; risky business! "When our royal master flung directly in our faces the maxim of British statesmen that "the King can do no wrong," and reinforced it by a quotation from an eminent orator in Parliament, that "the King can do no wrong, even if he breaks the seventh commandment," I discovered that he did not understand the political distribution of power by which this maxim could be approved. I remarked with studied indifference that subjects never disciplined their monarchs with rods or probations, but rudely knocked them out when they committed gross mistakes. To this he replied that kings were justified in resorting to stratagems to suppress agitators; and he believed that some of his own subjects should be banished for opposing his will. My royal school was a failure, and my majestic pupil learned nothing.
CHAPTER IV
The Bay of Yedo — Fusyama — Saluted by Foreign Warships — The King Becomes the Guest of the Japanese Emperor — Lands to the Music of His Own National Anthem — The Secret of Our Reception — Lessons in Etiquette — Japanese and New England Bells.
Around the World with a King Page 4