LAURENCE OLIPHANT.

OLIPHANT, LAURENCE, an English traveller and diplomatist; born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1829; died at Twickenham, England, December 23, 1888. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, and was admitted to the bar. In 1852 he travelled in Southern Russia. He succeeded in entering the fortified port of Sebastopol, of which he gave the earliest account in his "Russian Shores of the Black Sea" (1855). In 1855 he became private secretary to Lord Elgin, Governor-General of Canada, travelled in British America and the United States, and published "Minnesota and the Far West" (1855). In 1857 he accompanied Lord Elgin to China and Japan, and wrote a valuable "Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan" (1860). In 1861 he retired from the diplomatic service. From 1865 to 1867 he was a member of Parliament. He was afterward made Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Canada. During the latter years of his life he resided in Palestine. Among his miscellaneous writings are "Transcaucasian Campaign of Omar Pasha" (1856); "Piccadilly, a Fragment of Contemporaneous Biography" (1870); "The Land of Gilead" (1882); "Tracts and Travesties, Social and Political" (1882); "Altiora Peto, a Novel" (1883); "Episodes in a Life of Adventure" (1887); "Haifa, or Life in Modern Palestine" (1887); and "Scientific Religion" (1888). His life and that of his first wife, Alice Oliphant, has been written by Mrs. Margaret Oliphant (1891).

THE ATTACK ON THE BRITISH LEGATION IN JAPAN

IN 1861.

(From "Episodes in a Life of Adventure.")

IN October, 1860, Mr. de Norman, First Secretary of Legation in Japan, who was temporarily attached to Lord Elgin's second special embassy to China, was barbarously tortured and murdered at Pekin; and early in the following year I was sent out to succeed him. Sir Rutherford Alcock, who had been appointed minister to Japan under the treaty which we made with that country in 1858, when I was acting secretary to the special

mission, had applied for two years' leave; and thus the prospect was opened to me of acting as chargé d'affaires at Yedo for that period. It was one which my former brief experience in that interesting and comparatively unknown country rendered extremely tempting; and early in June I reached Shanghai, on my way to Yokohama. I was extremely sorry to find that I had just missed Sir Rutherford, who had left Shanghai only a fortnight before for Nagasaki, from which town he intended to travel overland to Yedo-a most interesting journey of at least a month, through an entirely unknown country; an experience which, in view of my future residence in it, would have been valuable in many ways. There was nothing left for it but to go, on the first opportunity, by sea; and towards the end of the month I reached Yokohama, from which port I lost no time in pushing on to Yedo. Here I found the legation established in a temple at the entrance to the city, in one of its principal suburbs, called Sinagawa. It was separated from the sea by a high-road, and on entering the large gateway, an avenue, about three hundred yards long, led to a second gateway, behind which stood the temple buildings. In the outside court were the servants' offices and stables, in which stood always, saddled and bridled, like those of the knights of Branksome Hall, the horses of our mounted Japanese body-guard, without whose escort no member of the legation could at that time take a ride abroad. Besides these, there was a foot-guard, partly composed of soldiers of the tycoon, or temporal emperor, as he was then called, and partly by retainers of the daimios, or feudatory chiefs of the country- the whole amounting to one hundred and fifty men. These guards were placed here by the government for our protection, although some of us at the time thought that the precaution was altogether exaggerated and unnecessary, and that their constant presence was intended rather as a measure of surveillance over our movements. To what extent this latter motive operated it is impossible to conjecture, but the sequel showed that the appehensions of the government for our safety were by no means unfounded. I had been accompanied from England by Mr. Reginald Russell, who had been appointed attaché, and it was with no little curiosity that we rode up the avenue to what was to be our future home.

Two or three members of the legation were waiting to receive us, and showed us over the quaint construction which had been appropriated by the Japanese government to the use of the

first foreign minister who had ever resided in their capital. Part of the building was still used for ecclesiastical purposes, and haunted by priests; but our quarters were roomy and comfortable, the interior economy being susceptible of modification in the number, size, and arrangement of the rooms by the simple expedient of moving the partition-walls, which consisted of paper-screens running in grooves. The ease with which these could be burst through, as it afterwards proved, afforded equal facilities of escape and attack. One felt rather as if one were living in a bandbox; and there was an air of flimsiness about the whole construction by no means calculated to inspire a sense of security in a capital of over two millions of people, a large proportion of whom, we were given to understand, were thirsting for our lives. Fortunately for our peace of mind, we did not realize this at the time, and were taken up rather by the quaintness and novelty of our new abode, and the picturesqueness of its surroundings. We congratulated ourselves upon the charming garden and grounds, comprising probably two or three acres, abundantly furnished with magnificent wide-spreading trees, and innumerable shrubs and plants which were new to us; while small ponds and tiny islands contributed a feature which is generally to be found in the landscape-gardening in which the Japanese are so proficient. Sir Rutherford Alcock was not expected to arrive for a week, and I occupied the time in establishing myself in my new quarters, and in exploring the neighborhood on horseback.

On these occasions we were always accompanied by an escort of twenty or thirty horsemen, or yaconins, as they are called, mounted on wiry ponies, shod with straw shoes, and with a marked tendency to being vicious and unmanageable. These exploratory rides were a great source of delight and interest to me, for although I had been in the country before, my visit had only lasted a fortnight; and my time had been exclusively devoted to official work, and the examination of the city of Yedo itself, so that I had seen nothing whatever of the surrounding country. Now we scampered across it, to the great consternation of our escort, who found great difficulty in keeping up with us so much so that, upon more than one occasion, only two or three of the original number succeeded in reaching home with us. I had determined, moreover, upon making an entomological collection for the British Museum, and set the juvenile part of the population of the villages through which I