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Updated: May 22, 2025
The picturesque harbor, full of sampans and junks, the gay streets, full of color and movement, the thousand unfamiliar sights and sounds, held no interest for the Honorable Percival. His whole attention was focused upon the jinrikishas that constantly arrived and departed at the entrance below.
Two nights later, the Bishop was reclining on the long chair on his verandah, while overhead the heavy punkah fans swayed to and fro, stirring the moist, warm air. Out in the harbour the lights gleamed fitfully, the lanterns on the bobbing sampans contrasting with the steadier beams of the big ships anchored in the roadway.
After a walk of another hour they reached the Dyak house, and the whole population of the place followed them to the shore. They were filled with wonder and admiration at the sight of the Blanchita, and went off to her in their sampans.
In due time we arrived in the roadstead of Yokohama not so very long ago a small fishing village, but now an important city and made fast to our buoy. Instantly the ship was surrounded by sampans, and the occupants, not a few of whom were Chinese, swarmed aboard, eager to find buyers for the fruit, sake, and other articles which they had for sale.
I cried eagerly. "I suppose we can't stop to watch them?" "Not when on Her Majesty's service, Herrick," he said, with a smile, and we glided rapidly on, till the houses, which had long been growing scattered, finally disappeared, and we were following the windings of the river in company with a few small junks and sampans, which seemed bound for one of the cities higher up the great waterway.
A brisk trade with the shore was carried on, and sampans from far up the river came laden with fruit, fish, and rice; some brought poultry, and green sugar-cane for eating; others cocoa-nuts, and quaint articles for barter.
As they neared the dock, crowds of bobbing sampans, with square, painted eyes so that they might see where they were going came out and surrounded them. A miserable emotion overcame him. They were his junks he understood them. They were his sampans, with their square, painted eyes eyes that the foreigners pointed to and laughed at! He understood them all they were all his!
Though the Malays refrained from attack so long as the occupants of the station kept within their lines, any attempt at quitting the fort at once drew fire. Consequently the supplies within had to suffice, and middy and ensign thought gloomily of the past, when sampans brought daily an abundance of delicious fruit, when flowers were abundant, and fish in plenty was supplied.
They were Sea Dyaks in this region; and the name seems to have come down from a former era in the history of the island, for at the present time they have little or no connection with a sea-faring life, and their sampans are mainly if not entirely used on the rivers. But formerly they built large war-boats, or bankongs, some of which were seventy feet long. These craft did not go to sea.
The boatmen seem honest-hearted fellows; at noon they invite me to participate in their frugal meal of rice and turnips. Passing sampans are greeted by the crew of our boat with the intelligence that a Fankwae is aboard; the news being invariably conveyed with a droll "ha-ha!" and received with the same.
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