impending danger of
the Japanese is excessive imitative progress, which is not certain to
be exactly the right thing for them. They have reached a point where it
is worth while to examine the claim of new things with much care before
adopting them. We have very high authority to examine all things for
goodness sake, before committing ourselves to hold them fast. We had
to take aboard eighteen hundred tons of coal at Nagasaki. A fleet of
arks with thirty tons of Japanese coal approached and gathered around
the ship, which has sixteen places to throw coal into the bunkers. So
the coal business was carried on by from twelve to fifteen gangs, each
of about ten men and twenty women! The latter were sturdy creatures,
modestly attired in rough jackets and skirts. There were not far from
thirty bamboo baskets to the gang. One man stood at the porthole, and
each second emptied a coal basket, using both hands, and throwing it
back into the barge with one hand, the same swing of the arm used to
catch the next basket hurled to him with a quick, quiet fling. There
were three men of a gang next the ship, the third one standing in the
barge, served with baskets by two strings of women. At the end of the
string furthest from the ship the coal was shoveled into the baskets
by four men, and there were two who lifted and whirled them to the
women. The numbers and order of the laborers varied a little at times
from this relation, yet very little, but frequently a lump of coal was
passed without using a basket. The work of coaling was carried on all
night, and about thirty-six hours of labor put in for a day. There was
a great deal of talking among the laborers during the few moments of
taking places, and some of it in tones of high excitement, but once
the human machine started there was silence, and then the scratching
of the shovels in the coal, and the crash of the coal thrown far
into the ship were heard. It is, from the American contemplation,
shocking for women to do such work, but they did their share with
unflinching assiduity, and without visible distress. When the night
work was going on they were evidently fatigued, and at each change
that allowed a brief spell of waiting, they were stretched out on the
planks of the boats, the greater number still, but some of the younger
ones talking and laughing. There did not seem to be much flirtation,
nothing like as much as when both sexes of Europeans are engaged in
the same wheat or bar