Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/286

 Passepartout had, it is true, one resource; it was to make himself known at the French or English Consular Agent's established at Yokohama; but he hated to tell his story, so intimately connected with that of his master, and before coming to that, he wished to exhaust all other chances.

Then, having gone through the European quarter of the city, without chance having served him in anything, he entered the Japanese quarter, decided, if it was necessary, to push on to Yeddo.

This native portion of Yokohama is called Benten, from the name of a goddess of the sea, worshiped in the neighboring islands. There were to be seen splendid avenues of firs and cedars; the sacred gates of a strange architecture; bridges half hid in the midst of bamboos and reeds; temples sheltered under the immense and melancholy shade of aged cedars, retreats in the depths of which vegetated the priests of Buddhism and the sectaries of the religion of Confucius; interminable streets in which could have been gathered a whole crop of children, rose-tinted and red-cheeked, good little people who might have been cut out of some native screen, and who were playing in the midst of short-legged poodles, and yellowish, tailless cats, very indolent, and very affectionate.

In the streets there was a constant swarm, going and coming incessantly; priests passing in procession, beating their monotonous tambourines; patrolmen, custom house or police officers, with pointed hats incrusted with lace, and carrying two sabers in their belts; soldiers dressed in blue cotton, with white stripes, and armed with percussion muskets; guards of the Mikado, enveloped in their silken doublets, with hauberk and coat of mail, and a number of other military men of all ranks—for in Japan the profession of a soldier is as much esteemed as it is despised in China. Then, mendicant friars, pilgrims in long robes, simple civilians, with their glossy and jet-black hair, large heads, long bust, slender legs, short stature, and complexions from the dark shades of copper to dead white, but never yellow like that of the Chinese, from whom the Japanese differ essentially. Finally, between the carriages, the palanquins, the horses, the porters, the curtained wheelbarrows, and bamboo litters, were seen moving some homely women, with tightly-drawn eyes, sunken chests, and teeth blackened according to the