There Passepartout beheld beautiful fir and cedar groves, sacred
gates of a singular architecture, bridges half hid in the midst
of bamboos and reeds, temples shaded by immense cedar-trees,
holy retreats where were sheltered Buddhist priests and sectaries
of Confucius, and interminable streets, where a perfect harvest of
rose-tinted and red-cheeked children, who looked as if they had been
cut out of Japanese screens, and who were playing in the midst
of short-legged poodles and yellowish cats, might have been gathered.

The streets were crowded with people. Priests were passing
in processions, beating their dreary tambourines; police and
custom-house officers with pointed hats encrusted with lac and
carrying two sabres hung to their waists; soldiers, clad in blue
cotton with white stripes, and bearing guns; the Mikado's guards,
enveloped in silken doubles, hauberks and coats of mail;
and numbers of military folk of all ranks--for the military
profession is as much respected in Japan as it is despised
in China--went hither and thither in groups and pairs.
Passepartout saw, too, begging friars, long-robed pilgrims,
and simple civilians, with their warped and jet-black hair,
big heads, long busts, slender legs, short stature, and complexions
varying from copper-colour to a dead white, but never yellow,
like the Chinese, from whom the Japanese widely differ.
He did not fail to observe the curious equipages--carriages and palanquins,
barrows supplied with sails, and litters made of bamboo; nor the women--
whom he thought not especially handsome--who took little steps with their
little feet, whereon they wore canvas shoes, straw sandals, and clogs
of worked wood, and who displayed tight-looking eyes, flat chests,
teeth fashionably blackened, and gowns crossed with silken scarfs,
tied in an enormous knot behind an ornament which the modern
Parisian ladies seem to have borrowed from the dames of Japan.

Passepartout wandered for several hours in the midst of this motley crowd,
looking in at the windows of the rich and curious shops, the jewellery
establishments glittering with quaint Japanese ornaments, the restaurants
decked with streamers and banners, the tea-houses, where the odorous beverage
was being drunk with saki, a liquor concocted from the fermentation of rice,
and the comfortable smoking-houses, where they were puffing, not opium,
which is almost unknown in Japan, but a very fine, stringy tobacco.
He went on till he found himself in the fields, in the midst of vast
rice plantations. There he saw dazzling camellias expanding themselves,
with flowers which were giving forth their last colours and perfumes,
not on bushes, but on trees, and within bamboo enclosures, cherry, plum,
and apple trees, which the Japanese cultivate rather for their blossoms
than their fruit, and which queerly-fashioned, grinning scarecrows
protected from the sparrows, pigeons, ravens, and other voracious birds.
On the branches of the cedars were perched large eagles; amid the foliage
of the weeping willows were herons, solemnly standing on one leg;
and on every hand were crows, ducks, hawks, wild birds, and a
multitude of cranes, which the Japanese consider sacred,
and which to their minds symbolise long life and prosperity.

As he was strolling along, Passepartout espied some violets among the shrubs.

"Good!" said he; "I'll have some supper."

But, on smelling them, he found that they were odourless.

"No chance there," thought he.

The worthy fellow had certainly taken good care to eat as
hearty a breakfast as possible before leaving the Carnatic;
but, as he had been walking about all day, the demands of hunger
were becoming importunate. He observed that the butchers stalls
contained neither mutton, goat, nor pork; and, knowing also that
it is a sacrilege to kill cattle, which are preserved solely for farming,
he made up his mind that meat was far from plentiful in Yokohama--
nor was he mistaken; and, in default of butcher's meat,
he could have wished for a quarter of wild boar or deer,
a partridge, or some quails, some game or fish, which, with rice,
the Japanese eat almost exclusively. But he found it necessary
to keep up a stout heart, and to postpone the meal he craved till
the following morning. Night came, and Passepartout re-entered
the native quarter, where he wandered through the streets,
lit by vari-coloured lanterns, looking on at the dancers,
who were executing skilful steps and boundings, and the astrologers
who stood in the open air with their telescopes. Then he came
to the harbour, which was lit up by the resin torches of the fishermen,
who were fishing from their boats.

The streets at last became quiet, and the patrol, the officers
of which, in their splendid costumes, and surrounded by their suites,
Passepartout thought seemed like ambassadors, succeeded the bustling crowd.
Each time a company passed, Passepartout chuckled, and said to himself:
"Good! another Japanese embassy departing for Europe!"




Chapter XXIII

IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT'S NOSE BECOMES OUTRAGEOUSLY LONG


The next morning poor, jaded, famished Passepartout said to
himself that he must get something to eat at all hazards, and the
sooner he did so the better. He might, indeed, sell his watch;
but he would have starved first. Now or never he must use the
strong, if not melodious voice which nature had bestowed upon him.
He knew several French and English songs, and resolved to try them


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