esent
functions of our officials corresponded to those of the French _juges
d'instruction_; and, having to elicit the truth from a low class of
Orientals, they dealt with them after the fashion which alone they
would recognize as serious. The witnesses began, of course, by lying
in the most transparent manner, but under judicious--or
judicial--pressure a story was pieced together which in main outline
probably corresponded with the truth; for in it three or four of them
independently agreed. Two days out from Callao the coolies had risen
against the whites, and after a short fight overpowered them. Of the
crew, two jumped overboard; the rest submitted. A boat was then
lowered, and the men in the water were killed; after which the others
were tied together, made fast to an anchor, and so thrown into the
sea, the mate, who had fought desperately, having first been mutilated
by cutting off his ears. The captain and a Chinese steward were saved;
the former to handle the ship, to which the coolies were unequal, and
he was bidden to take her to China. I do not find in my contemporary
letters the impression which remains on my mind, that they estimated
his general observance of this order by the vague knowledge that China
lay towards the evening sun. The history of that strange voyage would
be interesting, but was scarcely recoverable in detail from the class
of witnesses. It would be by no means certain that the master of a
coastwise trader could navigate accurately; and, while he would always
be sure of death if he brought the vessel within reach of China, it is
not apparent why he should take her to the remote north in which the
furs showed her to have been. I have never heard whether, as the
evidence ran, he and the steward escaped alive, abandoning the
ship.[14] He had disappeared when the Japanese found her drifting
helplessly under her ignorant occupants.

While in Hakodate, I availed myself of the opportunity to visit a
great lake and a volcano, not extinct, but not immediately active.
They are distant about fifteen miles from the town, a position in
which I see such a sheet of water on the maps of to-day. This was a
long ride in the then state of the roads, after the autumn rains, and
with nightly freeze sufficient continually to fix the moisture, and
then to renew the dampness towards the noonday thaw. Transport was
not by wheel, but by pack-animals; and as these marched in companies
of a half-dozen or so, in single