Among the places visited was the steam factory. There, under the direction of Dutch engineers, Japanese workmen were actively employed in the manufacture of machinery. In an adjoining dock a small steamer was having placed in her engines, that had been thus made and turned out; while in the harbour lay moored a steamer, the _Scotland_, manned entirely by Japanese officers and sailors. The town of Nagasaki was clean and tidy; very different in these respects from that whence we had arrived. There appeared to be at least some agreeable aspects of domestic life, inasmuch as men and women were seen partaking of their meals together; the people were polite and civil to us foreigners, and to myself, personally, the proprietors of a shop which I entered to purchase various articles were so civil as to take me through several parts of their dwelling-house, then into a neatly arranged garden attached thereto, and in parting to beg my acceptance of a packet of their tea, I having presented to some of the younger members a few new silver coins, to be made by them into studs. All the while we were being carefully watched by officials, though we were ignorant of the fact. [How little at that time did we anticipate the amazing strides Japan was to take during the succeeding five-and-thirty years!]
Arrived at Hong-Kong, my stay of a few days there was made the more pleasant by the receipt of orders to proceed to England by the first available opportunity, added to hospitable civility by friends whose acquaintance I had made while stationed there the previous year. Preparations for continuing my journey were speedily made; on November 15 I was on board the P. and O. steamer _Emeu_, from over the stern of which, without a tinge of regret, I waved what I hoped, and proved to be a final adieu to China.
Our journey was thence along the same track, but in a reverse direction to that over which I had passed twenty months previous. Arrived at Galle, we had, as before, to tranship, this time to the _Simla_, by which we traversed the Indian Ocean. The season of the year permitting us to “explore” some of the sights of Aden, we took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the brief delay of our ship at the anchorage. Driving through the narrow cut in the hard lava rock,--that had in distant time formed the wall of an active volcano,--we were at the cantonments, situated in the ancient crater; thence to the reservoirs, originally erected _in_ the face of perpendicular rock, their design and construction due to Persian engineers, dating from A.D. 600. Our drive was next through a narrow gorge, opening towards the south, admitting the only breeze that can directly reach cantonments. From its outer limit a view was obtained of the open sea, and of the small island upon which, according to Arab tradition, Cain was forced to reside after his murder of Abel. Continuing our excursion, we arrived at the fortification known as “The Turkish Wall,” that protects and defends the isthmus connecting “the rock” with the mainland. The shops on the beach were visited, and purchases made at some of them; among such purchases, ostrich feathers, here so common as to be used to decorate the heads of donkeys driven by Arab boys.