Page 245 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

226 A Twentieth-Century Outlook.

past. The signs of its coming, though un-
noted, were visible soon after the century-
reached its half-way stage, as was also its
great correlative, equally unappreciated then,
though obvious enough now, the stirring of
the nations of Oriental civilization. It is a
curious reminiscence of my own that when in
Yokohama, Japan, in 1868, I was asked to
translate a Spanish letter from Honolulu,
relative to a ship-load of Japanese coolies to
be imported into Hawaii. I knew the person
engaged to go as physician to the ship, and,
unless my memory greatly deceives me, he
sailed in this employment while I was still in
the port. Similarly, when my service on the
station was ended, I went from Yokohama to
Hong-kong, prior to returning home by way
of Suez. Among my fellow-passengers was
an ex-Confederate naval officer, whose busi-
ness was to negotiate for an immigration of
—
Chinese into, I think, the Southern States
in momentary despair, perhaps, of black labor
— but certainly into the United States. We
all know what has come in our own country
of undertakings which then had attracted little
attention.