CHAPTER XVIII.
THE IMPERIAL GARDENS.
The next morning Nicholas proceeded on his mission, and, as the courtsof the palace were crowded with soldiers and mandarins of various ranks,in waiting to receive the great lords of state, who were that day tohave audience with the Emperor, he managed to pass through the crowdwithout being once challenged. With but little difficulty, he found thedoor mentioned by Ki, and passing through by means of the key, heentered a narrow lane between two walls. Near the inner wall stood themulberry-tree, up which he clambered quickly, for he knew not who mightenter the passage. When, by means of one of the branches, he had gainedthe top of the wall, his eyes drank in a new pleasure. There, before,beneath were the magnificent gardens of the inner palace, and so charmedwere his senses that for a minute it seemed as if the penalty of deathwere but a small price for the vision. The enclosed grounds were of manymiles extent, and so varied in their arrangement, that they might haveserved for a model of the empire itself. There was something of mostthings natural and artificial in China: towering mountains cut intoterraces and planted with trees of rarity and beauty; fertile valleyslaid out in orange groves and intermingled with murmuring rivulets;then bridges of tinted marble, wrought to resemble flying dragons, whoseeyes and scales were fashioned from colored metals, flew across smalllakes of clear, transparent water, in which, as a paradise of their own,gamboled shoals of gold and silver fish, which at that time had not beenbrought to Europe; then orchards of fruit trees, making the morning airredolent with the mingled scents of rare specimens of pears, apples,peaches, citrons, apricots, muscadine grapes, pomegranates, and oranges.The sides of the main canal, from which the dripping rivulets sprang,were embossed with cypress and mulberry-trees, whose feet seemed plantedin a sprinkled fringe of water melons. On this canal, with its awning ofyellow silk and golden fringe, floated the gilded japanned pleasurebarge of the ladies.
For a time the boy's head swam with a new sensation. Such, thought he,must have been the garden of that Emperor whose jealousy of the powersof the cruel winter over his summer beauties caused him to waste therevenue of a kingdom and the industry of a whole people in creating agarden of artificial flowers, forgetting that the annual decay was alonethe cause of the ever-living freshness and perfume of nature.
Then the sweet scents and beauteous sight tired Nicholas, for he thoughtof the suffering, starving people. Surely it should not be possible forsuch a paradise to exist in the midst of so much treason androtten-heartedness, and then the bold sea boy thought of his own roughlife, and became disgusted with himself for dwelling upon so muchsensuousness, for he knew that the empire had never smiled and prosperedwith a happy, peaceable and well-fed people, except when the Emperor hadset the example of temperance and labor; and, moreover, that luxury andindolence had ever preceded the downfall of dynasties; and then by farmore interesting became the cotton, the tallow and the mulberry-treesthat Heaven had bestowed upon the land of China for the support of itshundreds of millions, and which had no vocation in such a garden ofluxury.
As it must be interesting to my young readers, I will give a descriptionof these singularly valuable trees. The seed of the cotton shrub is sownby the husbandmen on the same day that they get in the harvest. When therain has moistened the earth the shrub thrusts itself forward to aheight of about two feet, and in the month of August gives forth ayellow or a red flower, which fades into a pod, which on the fortiethday after the appearance of the flower divides itself into three parts,each containing a wrapping of pure white cotton, similar in size to theball of the silk-worm. At this period, the husbandmen fasten the ball tothe pod, leaving it till the following year, when the fibres of thecotton become so securely fastened to the seeds, that the husbandman iscompelled to separate them by means of two thin rollers, one of wood andthe other of iron, placed so close to each other, that in passing thecotton between them, the naked seed is exuded from behind. The cottonis then carded and ready to be converted into calico, an employment thatgives food to many thousands of people.
Of equal value and more curious is the tallow-tree, which lights thewhole of the empire. While the leaves and long stalks of this plantcause it to resemble the aspen and the birch, its trunk and branchesresemble in shape, height, and size the cherry-tree. From the grey bark,spring long elastic branches, the leaves of which grow but from themiddle to the end, where they finish in a tuft, where the fruit grows ina hard brown husk of triangular form. The husk generally contains threekernels, covered with a thin substance resembling white tallow. When thehusk begins to open and fall away, the fruit gradually appears. Eachkernel contains another of the size of a hemp seed, which from itsoleaginous nature is converted into oil.
To make the tallow, the shell and kernel are beaten together in boilingwater till the surface becomes covered with fat, which when cold,condenses; then, by adding fair proportions of linseed oil and wax togive consistency, they have produced the material which, when shapedaround a wick of hollow reed, produces the candles in use in China. Thusdoes nature and the ingenuity of the people create from thisextraordinary tree a double means of lighting the empire.
As for the mulberry-tree, it is so well known that I need but tell you,that after rice, the Chinese consider its culture as a sacred duty, anddeservedly so, for by feeding the silk-worm, it not only clothes thepeople, but silk, being in immense demand over the known world, is theprimary means of giving them employment; indeed the mulberry-tree is an"institution," and of such ancient date, that even in four thousandyears old China, which contains the oldest records in the world, thereis no authentic record of its discovery. There is a legend, however,"that, till the days of Ti-Long, the wife of the Emperor Hoang-ti, thepeople were savages, and used the skins of animals for clothing, but herfar-sighted majesty noticed that as the people were many, and theanimals few, they would soon become short of garments, when, like theparent of invention, she was pushed to a discovery that worms might bemade the greatest manufacturers of her empire;" and that there is sometruth in this fable seems likely, as, from the earliest times, theEmpress of China has had a portion of the grounds of the palace plantedas a mulberry grove, where, at certain periods of the year, she goes instate, to show her interest in the silk manufacture, by gathering threemulberry leaves, and unwinding a quantity of silk. Lastly, I may tellyou, that the most learned men and the greatest ministers have devoted agreat portion of their lives to teach the people "how to bring up andfeed silk worms, so as to obtain the greatest quantity and best qualityof silk."
Is it not unjust that the race of worms should have been so longdespised, when, for thousands of years, one of their representatives hasbeen at the base of the prosperity of the largest, most populated, andlongest-enduring empire since the foundation of the world?