Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/124

 most beautiful and accomplished daughters of the Golden State. When appointed to this important office, which is diplomatic as well as consular, he was scarcely of age, and it was looked upon by Americans in China as a family affair, but during his long service he has won the respect and esteem of his own countrymen as well as of the Chinese officials.

In Japan Mr. Seward was received by the Micado with all the honors accorded to the Duke of Edinburgh, son of Queen Victoria, last year. This was only accomplished after long negotiations on the part of our Minister to Japan, Mr. DeLong. Since the arrival of the party in Shanghai, this city, which is more American than any other ace in China, has been unusually gay with halls and dinner parties. In their visit to Peking, they were accompanied by Admiral Rodgers and a large escort of marines from the United States war ships on this station. A full band of music from the flag ship Colorado enlivened the march, and the festive array of gold lace and blue jackets put the visit on a semi-official footing. Their route was eight hundred miles by steam up the Yellow Sea to Tientsin, thence eighty miles by donkeys, mule litters, and Chinese carts to the capital. The weather was very cold, and the party suffered many discomforts, for this part of China is only accessible to travelers during the summer months; in winter it is frozen up as solid as Canada. The common people in the crowded cities and villages through which they passed doubtless thought it was a cortege bearing tribute to their mighty Emperor, the “Son of Heaven,” from some tribe of western barbarians.

At the capital the party was most hospitably entertained at the American and Russian legations, the English, of course, holding aloof, from that jealousy of American influence in this country, which one sees everywhere in China. Prince Kung, the representative of royalty and Prime Minister of the Celestial Empire, declined to receive Mr. Seward at the Foreign Office, on the ground of illness, and when it was proposed to call at his private residence, he replied that his house was too small and mean to receive so great a personage, but the proposal was so flattering to him that he should “engrave it on his heart and write it on his bones.” Such extravagant expressions are merely the conventional forms of Chinese etiquette