The dress of the Loo-Chooans consists of a loose gown reaching to the knees, with large sleeves, made of a species of grass-cloth, of their own manufacture, and confined at the waist with a wide sash, pendent from which they wear a tobacco-pouch and small pipe. After the interchange of salutations, the pipe is always produced. On their feet, which are generally bare, they wear a coarse straw sandal, secured by a strap passing through next to the great toe, and one around the instep. Like the Japanese, the better classes carry a fan; but only the high officers wear a hat, made of crape, the first class yellow, and the second red—more particularly as a badge of authority. Their hair is brushed up all around the head, and its ends secured in a knot on the summit of the head, transfixed by silver or brass pins.
[Illustration: _LITH. OF SARONY & Co. NEW YORK._ LOO CHOO.]
We knew that Loo-Choo had been visited in 1846 by a French missionary, Forcade, who had subsequently left, but were rather surprised on anchoring abreast of a tall and singular formation, called in the surveys of the “Alceste and Lyra,” “Capstan rock,” but which more nearly resembles a large old barn, with dark thatched roof, and huge projecting eaves—to see flying from its summit the English flag. We afterward ascertained that it was a flag giving protection to Dr. Bettelheim, a converted Hungarian Jew, who had married an English lady, and had been sent by an English naval mission society, some seven years before, as a missionary to Loo-Choo. He did not appear to be a man whose disposition and temperament were calculated to afford him success in his labors, although he had persevered in his study of their language until he could preach to the natives in it, and had occupied his lonely position for years, with no other Christian faces than those of his wife and three children. The Loo-Chooans had tried every way to get rid of him; they had addressed, through the Chinese, to the English minister, Lord Palmerston, remonstrances against the mission, which invariably closed with the petition that he would remove Bettelheim. They may not have known Vattel, but they urged with much energy his doctrine, that a missionary should leave a country when his presence was not agreeable to its people. But the Dr. held his ground, though he was made to undergo some rather rough treatment. Himself, by his professional skill in the healing art, and his wife, during the prevalence of the smallpox, had been very attentive to the people, which caused the authorities to become quite jealous. They were followed and hooted at in the streets, and finally, Mrs. B. during a walk, was forcibly separated from her husband, and himself beaten. The British war-steamer “Sphynx” happened to pay a visit to Napa not long afterward, when the authorities made ample apology for the offence, and promised better things in future. They removed his servants, or constantly changed them. They erected spy-houses opposite the gate of his residence, which were constantly attended. If he preached to a crowd in the street, or market-place, at a signal from the Japanese police on the island, his auditors all ran away. If he distributed tracts in their language at night, the next morning, the police brought them back to him, carefully tied up.
