yy Gornell University Library Sthaca, New York CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE GIFT OF CHARLES WILLIAM WASON CLASS OF 1876 1918 inion One Way Round the World MS Ae (ieee Eee Kees eh GEE =y) A GEISHA One Way Round the World: By Delight Sweetser: With IMustrations from Photographs Indianapolis The Bobbs-eMMerrill Company CopyRgIGHT 1898, BY THE BowEN-MERRILL Co. PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. Tomy Father and Mother and all others whose companionship made of this journey a delightful memory TABLE OF CONTENTS I Car Window Reflections 3 II On the Pathless Pacific 5 Ili The Islands of the Pacific . IV In Yokohama « . « 1 © ss # © «@ # Vv Japanese Customs and Beliefs . . .... . VI Tokio and Elsewhere . .... . « © © VII The Mikado’s Birthday . . . . 2 « «© © @ VIII Japan’s Glorious Mountains . . . . ... » IX Oddsiand:Ends' «& « # & & ¢ 6 a @ 2 © @ x In Palace, Temple and Theater . . 2. 2 « « XI 7 In Old Shanghai . . . . «. «© + © © @ © @ XII A Week in Wen Chow, China... ... » 17 30 39 57 71 83 93 102 112 , Table of Contents XIII Inthe China Sea. . 2 1 1 ewe ee ow ee EIQ XIV In:Ganton, 464s) a eee we eG es oe TRO ; XV From Hong-Kong to Singapore . . . . « « «© «© «+ + 134 XVI The Land of Gems and Flowers . . . «6 «© «© «© «© «© 145 XVII What we Saw in India . ha Ree Rw Hw @ @ w 160 XVUI A Glimpse of the Ganges . . «1 ew 6 ee ee oe «192 XIX Benares, the Holy City of India . 2... 6 ee « « « 184 XX A Wise Man of India . . ©. 1. 1 1 6 6 + 6 w wo + 192 XXI Agraandits Taj Mahal . . . . . . «1 « «© « « «200 XXII A Modern Prince of India. . . . 2. 1 ee we 213 XXIII In Egypt... oe ee oe © ee oe 6 229 XXIV In the Shadow of the Pyramids . . . 2. «© 6 6 © © 4 245 XXV Due West Again . . 2 6 s+ 6 6 6 6 © oe wo oo 2 258 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A GEISHA Frontispiece Fizst GLIMPSE OF THH PARADISE OF THE PACIFIC 16 THE GARDEN OF THE ARLINGTON, HONOLULU 20 On THE Lava BED 28 Miss MoonsHInez, Miss PERFUME AND Miss CHERRY BLOSSOM 30 JAPANESE JUNKS 32 A JAPANESE LADY IN HER JINRIKISHA 3L TEMPLE ENTRANCH AT NIKKO 40 JAPANESE GIRLS 44 THe MonkeEYs AT NIKKO 46 4Nn APPROVED JAPANESE MACKINTOSH 54 Foust IN CHRYSANTHEMUMS 56 THE Pacopa at NIKKO 60 A GARDEN IN ToKyo 70 Drum AND SAMISEN PLAYERS 18 TAKING CARE OF THE BABY 80 SacrED DANCERS AT NARA 82 JAPANESE WORKMEN 84 A TEMPLE 86 A Sien In Toxyo 90 THE ENTRANCE OF A THEATER 94 A THEATER STREET 98 A SHANGHAI CAB 102 CuinmsE ACTORS 106 A CHINESE FamMILy oF WEALTH 110 CHINESE CorFins AWAITING BuRIAL 112 CHINESE JUNK, SHOWING THE EYE, 122 Sampans AT CANTON 126 AN ORIENTAL CosTUME 18 Illustrations By JINRIKISHA IN SINGAPORE WoMAN OF CEYLON A “JontLy” Boat SNAKE CHARMER AND JUGGLER A SINGHALESE GROUP: NATIVE BungaLows NEAR KANDY THE TEMPLE OF THE TooTH An ELEPHANT AT WORK Grant BAMBOO Devin DANCERS OF CEYLON On THE Way TO DARJEELING BRAHMIN WORSHIPING On THE BANKS OF THE GANGES AT BENARES A LirtLe TamMin BripE Hoy MAN oF BENARES Aw ASCETIC Burnine GHAT AT BENARES PAVILION aT LuckNow BuLuock Cart, Lucknow Domes OF THE PEARL Mosqusn, AGRA PrerceD MARBLE SCREENS AT AGRA ARCHES IN THE PEARL Mosque THe Tas MAHAL THE Fort at DeLat Tomss In OLD DELHI A ZENANA CarT Sars “BACKSHEESH, Leppy!”’ DAHABEAHS ON THE NILE Carro, From THE CrTaDEL A Farr CarrEnEe SuEZ CANAL OnE or LaNnpDsEER’s Lions 142 144 146 148 150 152 154 156 158 162 178 186 188 190 192 194 196 198 206 210 212 ZSEREBERRSE One Way Round the World I Car Window Reflections “¢T~ AST or west, home’s best,’’ so they say and so it is, and I find a little rust of regret on the fine edge of my enthusiasm to think that my path back to Floosierdom lies over some forty thousand odd miles and around the globe. Like the old lady who said she was glad to get back but sorry to return, I am glad to start but sorry to go. However, I have started for Indiana, if by a truly roundabout way. Rapid transit threatens to make all the world alike, in a century or two, and I call myself fortunate to see the lands of fans and rat tails before Madame Chrysanthemum rides the bicycle or Mr. Ah Sin introduces the trolley party. What a varied and often brilliant series of pictures my car window has framed for me on my long journey overland. Corn! Corn! Corn! in Kansas, enough to feed the world one would think, stretching away in wav- ing golden fields to meet the blue horizon. Wide, tree- less stretches of tableland in Colorado, a sky every whit as blue as Italy’s, clear and cloudless, with a fringe of misty mountains. A veritable garden of Eden in the Salt Lake Valley, reclaimed from the desert by the thrifty Mormons. Nevada—sage brush, sand and desolation ; I One Way Round the World a sombre veneer for the shining metals that lie hidden in its bosom. And then California, introduced by the wild, wooded slopes of the Sierra Nevada, by magnifi- cent peaks and deep cut canons; afterward, gay and smiling and flowery, a delight to the eye. Seeing is believing the beauty of mountain scenery. Neither an author’s pen nor an artist’s brush can more than suggest the vivid reality. Stories in dialect and descriptions of scenery were ever unpardonable to me, and let the man who never sees mountains live a joy- ous life in the plains, undisturbed by being told about them. An hour’s stroll in the shops of Colorado Springs is a good object lesson in what to avoid, a striking illus- tration of what ugly things money will buy. An air of untidiness and worse pervades the place and it is out of doors that one must look for the beauty that has made it famous. The Garden of the Gods is a really beautiful spot, with a wealth of color and an astonishing number of odd-shaped rocks, astonishingly named. I made the same discovery in Colorado Springs that M. Alphonse Daudet did in London—that it is silent! There is great activity in the streets, too; but it is withal noiseless and dreamy and restful. Perhaps the fine air that blows off mountain slopes is responsible for the impression. Everything is done there under the auspices of Pike’s Peak. At every turn one’s eye rests on that grand old mountain. There is something singularly masculine about its gaunt slopes and massive peak, just as some of the more delicate of the Alpine peaks suggest fem- ininity. The Rockies can never be rivals of the Alps 2 Car Window Reflections unless it is in the actual and uninteresting number of feet that they tower above sea level. In this more southerly latitude the snow line is too high, the valleys too broad, the whole surrounding plateau too elevated to give that magnificent effect of height and grandeur so often seen in Switzerland. Yet there is a great charm of color, of hazy atmosphere, of light and shade. The ride from Colorado Springs to Glenwood is a marvelous one, crowned by one of the greatest feats of American engi- neering, the tunnel of the Hagerman pass, a two-mile tunnel that cost a million and a half dollars to build. After a toilsome climb of hours behind two puffing, straining engines, the train pierces the mountains, crosses the ‘‘divide’’ and literally coasts down to Glenwood with- out an ounce of steam, falling five thousand feet in sixty- five miles. The names of the little mountain settle- ments, by courtesy called towns, have a mellow Colorado flavor— Rifle, Cellar, Parachute, Peachblow, Frying Pan, etc. If I might be permitted to coin a phrase for our lan- guage, I would suggest ‘‘the tame and cottony East.’’ There might be some difficulty in defining its bounda- ries, as the San Francisco man goes ‘‘East’’ to Salt Lake, and some New Yorkers go West to Buffalo. However that may be, the effrontery of the individual who called the West wild and woolly has long rankled in my soul. If we are wild, is he not tame? If we are woolly, why is he not cottony? Yet there is no denying that the West is very ragged; very Oshkosh, as it were. A Rocky Mountain town is a ‘‘specimen’’ not to be © 3 One Way Round the World found elsewhere, well set in cheerless surroundings. A side track, a saloon, a general store, a dozen shanties, a painted house that belongs to the nabob of the settle- ment, a dispirited tree or two, an unlimited background and sideground and foreground of sage brush and sand —of such is the far western town. Perhaps there is no more fruitful field for the study of ‘‘types’’ than the overland train. The young and the old, the intellectual and the ignorant, he who has been rich, or is, or will be, all fraternize surprisingly. A little company of souls whose lives are tangent at one point, who eat, drink, and are merry together and whose paths lie in as many directions as the wind’s. The Pullman palace cars are not all the name sug- gests. Perhaps the pioneer, who crossed in ’58, when Denver was seven days by stage from Quincy, Illinois, would not be so captious a critic, but the majority of end-of-the-century travelers are aptto agree with the man who said he hated to pay such a high price for insomnia. At night the sleeper accumulates such a load of dust and cinders that an early morning riser, if a man, is apt to be mistaken for the porter. He, however, has a. fair chance of rectifying the mistake, but when the new- woman porter arrives, the women passengers may have to resort to badges for distinction. Why a man, who has about half the number of gar- ments to put on that a woman has, should be allotted double the space for a dressing and washing room, is a question that might be referred to the sphinx—or Mr. 4 Car Window Reflections Pullman. The fact that a man is, sometimes, twice as big as a woman, isn’t consoling in the least, and as a last straw, man is given a smoking room beside. It has always seemed amusing to me that it is in the United States, where woman has the greatest privileges and the most enviable position, that she howls the loudest for her rights, but this affatre de Pullman is enough to engender rebellion in the meekest heart. Among the passengers leaving Colorado Springs was a jolly party of four, easily known as southerners by their accent. I amused myself by surmising the rela- tions of the quartet and their probable destination, for they had a vast amount of impedimenta in the way of guns and rods. Two of them I disposed of as husband and wife, the other two as brother and sister, the sister being, according to suchreckoning, a jolly old maid. The only ray of consolation that came to me afterward was that I had rightly guessed that the party was going bear hunting in the Rockies, for the jolly old maid told me that she and her husband were taking their ‘‘second wedding trip,’’ to celebrate the birth of their first grand- child, and that she was the mother of ten children, five boys and five girls. Really, I think that was the most ponderous misfit that I ever devised. As in the old days all roads led to Rome, so all Cali- fornia roads apparently lead to San Francisco. San Francisco itself, with its slanting streets, hand- some buildings, beautiful views and flowery gardens has a great charm. It is known all over the state as 5 One Way Round the World ‘the city,’? and often referred to ambiguously as ‘‘down below.’? The expression was probably coined by some tenderfoot who had been slid up and down some of its amazing hills on the cable cars. Necessity is truly the mother of invention and it is in San Francisco that the cable system was introduced and in San Francisco that it is most nearly perfected. Even under such difficul- ties as the hills offer, the cars run very smoothly. The inclines are so steep that it is something of a novelty to ride in a cable car without feeling that you are in im- mediate danger of dislocating most anything. In San Francisco, the upper ten most appropriately live on Nob Hill, away up at the tip top of California street. It is an imposing site for fine mansions. They tower majestically over the city in the day time and twinkle with starry lights at night. Almost all of these buildings are of wood, the danger of earthquakes being always in people’s minds. We have seen the stock sights of the city, Sutro Heights, and Baths, the Seal Rocks, Cliff House, etc., but the most of San Francisco and California must be left for another time. A peep at Chinatown was inter- esting, and we can some day compare it with a real China town. The red and yellow and purple and blue little folks, with their odd, little, one-sided pig-tails, were the most entertaining. A delicious little Celes- tial, yellow and almond-eyed, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, gave my finger a tight squeeze, just as an American baby would have done. a . . . . e ° . 6 Car Window Reflections Kathryn Kidder is at the Baldwin in Madame Sans- Géne. The play is pleasing but not to be compared with the French production. Miss Kidder’s conception of the character of Madame Sans-Géne, the washer- woman who becomes the duchess, has little of the ex- quisite delicacy and pathos with which Réjane’s shines. The audience was fashionable, but we had a very bad case of the man who laughs in the wrong place, just behind us. Of the individuals we long to miss, he heads the list. Among my traveling companions going over to Oak- land one day were two strikingly beautiful girls, who linger in my memory. One was plainly of the people, brilliant in complexion, innocent in expression, fault- less in form and feature. The other, chic, refined, elegant, had a beautiful, intelligent face, with a faint, fascinating frown across her perfect brow. My eyes were irresistibly drawn to one or the other of those be- witching faces. They have an association of native sons in this state, sons born on the soil, and I wondered if these were native daughters. One might sigh to be a Californian if all were such. I was reminded that three women, all famous for their wit and intellect, were once asked if they would rather be brilliant or beautiful and they all replied unhesitatingly, ‘‘Beauti- ful.’’ ‘ There is food for further reflections. Il On the Pathless Pacific T four p. mM. on September twenty-first, the good a ship ‘‘City of Peking’? steamed through the Golden Gate for still another of her long voyages on the pathless Pacific. The hosts of preparations that each one of us represented were all finished, the last good-bye had been waved, the broad sea lay before us and we were left to practice the art, as Artemus Ward put it, of ‘keeping inside your berth and outside your dinner.”’ There is something very dramatic about the sailing of a great ocean vessel, something almost sad, a picture that frames itself in memory but eludes the pen when one tries to put it into words. As the moment of our departure draws near, a contagious excitement fills the air. All the passengers are warned to make haste to come on board and the visitors warned to land by a pig-tailed Celestial, who vigorously hammers a deafen- ing gong. There is a tremendous bustle among the people on the dock, The crowd of friends who come to wave box voyage repeat for the hundredth time to ‘‘be sure and write’’; many eyes glisten suspiciously, jokes on seasickness flourish, belated baggage arrives in rumbling wagons, the officers shout orders. At the 8 On the Pathless Pacific stern a group of departing missionaries are singing hymns with their friends while a group of Chinamen at the bow exchange pleasantries with their countrymen on the dock. \Vhen the last gang plank is pulled off, we glide out into the bay followed by a shower of bits of yellow paper that float like butterflies in the air. They are the Chinese prayers for a good voyage and, to a person with a grain of superstition, they are a cheer- ful omen. I have turned my tortoise shell comb on my own country, and it is pleasant to have even Chi- nese good wishes for a safe return. So many possible perils lie before the stanchest ship as she follows her course across the lonely ocean. Today we are a thou- sand miles from anywhere and only one sail has been sighted, the faintest ghost of a sail far off on the horizon. Besides our own throbbing engines and the life that the ship bears with her, nothing suggests the existence of man. We leave behind us a broad path of foaming blue, but even before we lose sight of it in the distance the water has settled back into its old calm and forgotten us. Human life belongs to the soil. Old ocean fosters us only because ship builders have outwitted him. By the way, if any one desires to earn the title of ‘‘professional cheer- upodist,’’ let him spend his time writing steamer letters to his friends. Letters always gladden the heart of a wanderer from home and those received just as the homeland is fading away are perhaps the most grateful of all. The City of Peking is no longer a frisky girl. She began her career some twenty-two years ago and now 9 One Way Round the World pursues her course as sedately as wind and weather per- mit. The sea has been very smooth, and few of the passengers have fallen victims to that most real and most unromantic of all afflictions—seasickness. Oh, the nothingness of nothing to do! The mild excite- ment of shuffle board and quoits wears itself out and walking the deck becomes a duty. One’s head becomes a perfect sieve so far as catching ideas is concerned. Flying fish can’t divert one for days at a time, and even the novel sight of seeing a pair of fine horses take a con- stitutional on the deck loses zest. The days are so nearly alike that I can’t decide whether I got aboard yesterday or have been on forever. I have heard of a man who wasn’t lazy, but a great lover of physical and mental calm. He must have liked the ocean. Yet it is a ‘‘sweet doing nothing’’—dolce far niente—atter all, and we have made many friends and shall see the City of Peking sail on for Hong-Kong without us with regret. We have the usual gist of notables aboard. Baron Nissi, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotenti- ary (!) of Japan to Russia, is returning, it is said, to take a position in the cabinet. He gained particular distinction for himself by his skillful management of Japanese affairs in Russia during the late war. The baron is a quiet, unassuming, courteous gentleman, hardly the man you would select as one who had hob- nobbed with the czar of all the Russias. He is fond of whist and plays a good game. Another interesting person is Mr. Frederick Yates, the English artist who has had many portraits in th= 10 On the Pathless Pacific Salon and Royal Academy. He talks most entertain- ingly of art and artists, indeed of. anything, and fur- nishes much fun for the little folks with his song of the Royal Wild Beast Show. Mr. Yates’ first commission when he returns to London will be the portrait of Sir Henry Irving. He has made several sketches of young ladies aboard and a notable one of Topsy, genial Cap- tain Smith’s favorite dog. Topsy is a character. She is devoted to the captain but is not to be beguiled by soft blandishments from any one else and most often does not deign to turn her head when spoken to. Evidently Topsy has wearied of attention. When her majesty desires, however, she trots up to me, taps me on the knee, and when I take her up she tucks her nose in my sleeve and goes to sleep. -Lieutenant Autran of the Spanish navy and Lieuten- ant Mahan and Ensign Taylor, U.S. N., are going out to join their ships, and en route make most agreeable traveling companions. At the captain’s table there are two round-the-worlders besides ourselves, Mr. Pettengill and Mr. Miller, of Cleveland, who stop, as we do, at the Hawaiian Islands to see Kilauea.” We have, beside, jolly Mr. Main, English and entertaining, who says that when he puts his hat on his head it covers all his family. Dinner table talk flits over topics grave and gay, wise and otherwise. Nobody could be dull within ten leagues of Captain Smith, for nobody spins a yarn better or laughs more heartily. It isn’t unusual for me to run up against a bit of my own ignorance, something that every- body knows, with much the same feeling that one finds II One Way Round the World a stone wall at the end of a lane, and I seem to have a rare field for it in nautical matters. One day the ball of conversation rolled to the subject of war ships and their immense weight. The discussion developed a question for your wise friend. He may know Archi- medes’ principle and how he discovered it, but again he may not. What is the principle of a ship’s floating? Does an ironclad, for instance, weigh more or less than its displacement? It seems almost incredible to a per- son who knows nothing about it, that a heavy man-of- war displaces its weight of water, but the captain tells me that every vessel large or small displaces exactly its own weight, and that ship builders calculate to a nicety the weight of everything it is to carry, down to the in- struments and crew, and construct the ship accordingly. John Chinaman is a puzzle. They tell a story of a missionary who spent some months learning three or four hundred intricate Chinese characters and then when he got out to China he found he had learned them up- side down. Chinese characteristics seem very much up- side down too, as we study them, and yet we should have a care in passing judgment. I think people are apt to underestimate the intelligence of the Chinese, and the way initiated Americans are accustomed to speak of them and to them is a bit shocking to uninitiated ears. It is easy to fall into the error of thinking, because a person does something that seems to you foolish, that he necessarily is foolish. That the Chinaman—begging his pardon, for he prefers the correct word Chinese— does things in a different way from what we do, is too 12 On the Pathless Pacific true, but that this is an evidence of his folly is not so easy to prove. Once a Chinaman saw a young English woman play- ing a lively game of tennis and inquired how much she was paid for it. When he was told that she received nothing for the exertion he wouldn’t believe it. It all depends on the point of view. Fortunately, though a somewhat conscientious sightseer, I don’t feel under ob- ligations to decide great questions one way or the other, so I still enjoy life a good deal. Ah Sing and Ah Sang are a perennial feast of amuse- ment for me. They are so different, yet so curiously alike, and the syllables play leap frog off the end of their tongues in such an entertaining way. One would think that after having twisted their tongues around Chinese, they could pronounce anything, but they speak English with a very marked accent. Our steward is Ah Choo! The Wise One calls him Sneeze, because that is so much easier to remember. Ah Choo is a jewel. Even if he does speak English upside down, he is a faithful servant with a happy fac- ulty for anticipating one’s wants and remembering where he has seen things. Then there is little Ah You, thin as to frame and thin as to pig-tail, who always misunderstands before he understands you, and who works rapidly and incessantly from morning till night. Sometimes I see him squatting on the floor in the most uncomfortable attitude possible, washing the cups and saucers. He carefully tucks the end of his queue into his pocket to keep it out of his way. One day he came 1S One Way Round the World along the deck with a cigarette between his lips. There was a booming breeze and I wondered how he was go- ing to light it. “What did he do but lift his wide sleeve, stiek his head well into it and emerge a moment later with a glowing tip on the cigarette and a halo of smoke wreaths around his celestial pate. Forward, we have a small Chinatown, where the Chinamen sit on the deck smoking and playing domi- noes and chattering like magpies. Like the Indians, they have a superstition about being photographed, and skurry away when the camera appears. The second day out we heard that a Chinaman in the steerage had died. He came on board in the last stages of consumption, and it seems he didn’t expect to live to reach China for he had paid in San Francisco the $30 that the company charges for carrying a dead body into port. This is not at all unusual, for every China- man believes that unless he is buried in Chinese soil and his friends and family burn incense and say prayers over his grave he can not be happy in the future life. He expresses it something like this: ‘“Suppose wantchee go topside, after kill, then wantchee family make chin- chin joss at grave. Suppose no take bones, no makee grave, no speakee chin-chin joss, then not belong top- side at all after kill; belong hellee.’’? So the steamship companies sign a contract when they take a Chinaman to America that they will bring him or his bones back to China. One day I dropped into one of the long wicker steamer chairs for a chat with the ship’s surgeon. When 14 On the Pathless Pacific a man dies on board, the body is embalmed by the sur- geon, put in a coffin and hoisted into one of the life boats. Part of the $30 goes to the surgeon and the Chinamen understand that he has something to gain by their death, so they are very distrustful of him and re- fuse to take any of his medicine. “Once,’’ he said, ‘‘T offered a man who was dangerously ill some brandy and ginger. He refused to take it, saying there was poison in it. To convince him, I drank the glass my- self and offered to get more for him. He wouldn’t take it, however, and died a couple of hours later.’’ The Chinese have very peculiar methods of treating the sick. Sometimes they pinch the skin and pull it out as far as possible from the body, or sometimes they run needles in the flesh. Again, they put red powder that looks like brick dust in the nostrils. This heroic treatment, the surgeon says, often exhausts a sick man, and he dies very soon after it. Moon waits on the captain’s table. I believe he spells it Mun, but Moon suits him better. Moon wears along white gown and looks as if he had just been washed and ironed. He slides noiselessly around on his felt-soled shoes; dignified, alert, watchful, indis- pensable. Last night we reached Honolulu. A glorious moon shone between the fleecy clouds and turned the sea to molten silver. It was past midnight but many of the passengers were on deck to catch that first, familiar, grateful glimpse of land. ‘fhe lights of Honolulu a5 “One Way Round the World seemed to twinkle a welcome to us, as we sped along sending flaming rockets high into the air as a signal to the pilot to come and steer us safely through the coral reefs. The pilot once aboard, we were soon along side the dock, safely landed in the ‘Paradise of the Pacific.”’ 16 FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE ‘PARADISE OF THE PACIFIC” I The Islands of the Pacific HEREVER the wind of fortune blows people of V V many nationalities together there arises a mass of incongruities. It is so in Honolulu. If one selects a half-dozen street corners in the city, they may suggest a half-dozen different countries, for people and colonies of all nations are there. The races, too, are very much intermingled, and it would take an expert mathemati- cian to calculate the fractions of blood sometimes repre- sented in one person. © V Japanese Customs and Beliefs HERE is a Japanese proverb: ‘‘Nikko no mi nai uchi wa, ‘Kekko’ to ui nal’? ‘‘Do not use the word magnificent till you have seen Nikko!’’ I didn’t translate it myself but have it upon Ito’s authority. You can not imagine the strange Babes-in-the-Wood sensa- tion of being dependent on another person for every word that you wish to speak or understand. I have learned ‘‘Ohayo,”’ pronounced ‘‘Ohio’’ which means good morning, and there, with the addition of ‘‘Ikura,’’ how much, and ‘‘Sayonara,’’ good-bye, my vocabulary rests for the present. It is true that I have learned to count quite glibly up to a hundred, but as I have never yet understood a number when attached to yen and sen, dollars and cents, they haven’t been valuable. Japanese names of places seem to be as slippery as their favorite eels and it is only by a strenuous effort that the arrange- ment of the syllables is persuaded to stay by me. Tokyo and Kyoto, for instance, are the same syllables in different order, and there are many more intricate resemblances. The mere mention of some of our mistakes is a signal for hilarity. In Tokyo we called upon Mr. Montono, Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to whom 39 One Way Round the World we had a letter of introduction some two or three yards long. Before we left I narrowly escaped calling that august gentleman Mr. Kimono, a kimono being the long, locse outer garment that Japanese men and women wear. Ito mixes up with Nikko, Myanoshita is warranted unrememberable, and so onad infinitum. I credit myself with the discovery that some of our American slang has come to us from Japan. Our ex- pression ‘‘all hunky dory’’ might easily be a corruption of Honchodori, Yokohama’s swagger business street, and when we call a man a great gun we are probably comparing him to the illustrious shoguns of this country. Chuzenji we remember by ‘‘choose N. G.,’’ and that reminds me that it was Chuzenji and Nikko that I began to talk about. The province of Nikko is famous for its temples and the glorious tints of its autumn foliage, and as the tints are just now in full brilliancy, we hurried north from Yokohama, stopping only a day in Tokyo, that we might see them at their best. Truly one would have to reserve magnificent and a good many superlative adjec- tives beside, to describe them. Yesterday we went to Chuzenji, a day’s ride in jinrikishas, and for miles along these beautiful valleys the mountains are one blaze of gorgeous color. I don’t think that Jack Frost dips his brush in his paint box any more lavishly than in our own Indiana, but we haven’t the mountain slopes to unfurl his banners on. It was an enchanting day, a perfect riot of color and sunshine. When’ we rode in under the trees the branches laced themselves above 40 TEMPLE ENTRANCE AT NIKKO Japanese Customs and Beliefs our heads like a gay-hued parasol, and when we came suddenly upon a long vista, as we did many times, we could see the mountains in carnival array for miles, dotted with foaming, splashing mountain torrents. The road is a steep, rocky, mountain path, badly washed by the late disastrous floods, and it remains a marvel to me how my runners ever got me up and down it alive. There were three of them to each jinrik- isha and they pushed me up places that I could scarce- ly have dragged myself alone. They tug and strain and pull uncomplainingly, singing a monotonous, meaning- less chant, and of course they are muscular and hard- ened to it, but one has only to look at them, dripping with perspiration and panting for breath when they stop for a short rest, to see that they do desperately hard work. The poor fellows have only rice to eat, which isn’t sustaining enough for such violent exertion, and they rarely live to be more than forty years old, usually dying of heart disease. Occasionally my sympathy would be too great and I’d get out and walk, but the climb was so fatiguing that I’d soon have to get in again. These coolies are only paid forty cents, gold, a day, but you may be sure we sent them on their way rejoicing with a liberal fee. We lunched at Chuzenji, on the bank of a lovely lake that is hemmed in on all sides by the same frost-fres- coed mountains which reflect their colors in metallic glints in the clear water. After lunch we visited an- other of the innumerable temples of the district, and saw the sacred mountain, the Mecca of Japanese pil- 41 One Way Round the World grims, with its grand old head in a silvery, cloud. The ride up had been rough enough but the ride down was worse. Every step of the coolies meant a more or less vicious jolt for me, and last night as I rubbed my ach- ing muscles, I didn’t know which I felt sorriest for, my worn out runners or myself! Yet somebody dared to call jinrikisha riding the poetry of locomotion! How fortunate it is that the beauties and pleasures of travel- ing remain in the memory and the discomforts are so easily forgotten. I shall remember the day as enchant- ing, a little journey into fairyland, and the weariness is already gone. It is our good fortune to be in Nikko for a special festival, and we have seen a number of the royal princes and princesses. This morning we saw a procession go over the sacred bridge of red lacquer over which only royalty is allowed to pass. I noticed that the coolies who were carrying the palanquins as well as other at- tendants were allowed to pass over the bridge, and I asked Ito if they did not consider it a great honor to have crossed it. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘They do not care,’’ he said. ‘‘Why should they? We, in Japan, do not care for things that are not for us. If this or that is for the gods, well, let it be so. It is only Americans who wish much to do what they must not.’’ I accepted the estimate of my countrymen meekly for I had been thinking, not three minutes before, that I should like to go across the bridge. ‘*Why?’’ as Ito said. They are having the celebration here—celebration is 42 Japanese Customs and Beliefs hardly the word, for it is more like a funeral to the Japanese—because they are bringing back the teeth and Buddha bone (Adam’s apple) of two of the royal princes, who died in Formosa during the war, to de- posit them in a temple here among the mausoleums of the shoguns. The processions have been circuses for for us, however. Such costumes, such people, such music! Pitti Sings and Kokos and Peep Boos in real life, even a shade more whimsical than they were in the tuneful ‘‘Mikado.’’ Indeed, I think I should have to live here a long time before I could realize that these active little people are anything more than large editions of the Japanese dolls with which we are familiar. The children are exact fac-similes of them. The women are not so beautiful nor even so pretty as many hysterical books on Japan would lead one to believe, but they are cunning and charming. Their hair is a marvel. It is greased to make it as black and as straight as possible, and then it is arranged in elaborate puffs and coils, a style that seems particularly suited to Jap- anese features. Oddly enough, the little women are prettiest when they are rouged and powdered. The rice powder gives a creamy matte appearance to their smooth skins, and a touch of carmine accentuates the curves of their pretty lips. Just underneath the lower lip they often have a flake of gold leaf. Perhaps it is because there is no pretense at naturalness, that the rouge is not offensive as with us. They are frankly painted and it suits them. The grown-up princesses in the procession were dressed 43 One Way Round the World in European toilettes fresh from Paris and sadly unbe- coming to them, but the little girls wore rich costumes of flowered crepe and their satiny hair was arranged in marvelous wheels. Their skins were smoothly pow- dered and their lips brightly tinted, and altogether they “were as dainty little maidens as one could wish to see. I’m afraid though, that with those wheels and loops and puffs of hair to take care of, they don’t have as good times as our own little girls. The last of the deposed shoguns is still living, and his son, who is now a member of parliament, was one of the party—a stout, uninteresting individual in badly fitting European clothes. It is to be hoped that the re- action against European dress will continue to react and that the Japanese will not persist in wearing a costume in which they are so insignificant, instead of their own graceful style. The temples of Nikko describe themselves better in photographs than I could hope to describe them in words. In architecture they are like nothing I have seen, wonderfully elaborate and yet stamped with a cer- tain sobriety that is noticeable in Japanese taste, which makes their decorations elegant instead of gaudy. The interiors of the temples are one mass of lacquer and color and gold so skillfully combined and relieved that the effect is perfect. The difference in architecture enables one to distin- guish the Shinto from the Buddhist temples, but to dis- tinguish the religion is another pair of sleeves, as the French say. Shintoism and Buddhism once became so 44 JAPANESE GIRLS Japanese Customs and Beliefs badly mixed up in Japan that it took an emperor’s edict to ‘‘purify’’ and separate them. Now the Shinto tem- ples are severely plain, with only a round mirror and strips of white paper at the altar, emblems of self-ex- amination and purity of life. The reputed divine an- cestress of the Mikado, Ten Sho Dai Jin (great goddess of the celestial effulgence!) is the chief deity. Three commandments were issued in 1872 as a basis of this made-over Shinto and national religion. 1. Thou shalt honor the gods and love thy country. 2. Thou shalt clearly understand the principles of heaven and the duty of man. 3. Thou shalt revere the emperor as thy sovereign and obey the will of his court. Whether these mixed up people ever untangled their beliefs I do not know, but I suspect that they did not, for in spite of the purification, Buddhism remains the more powerful religion. The Buddhist temples are very ornate and contain much beautiful work in metals and carved wood. ‘The images of Buddha are guarded by a stork and lotus, and often the image is seated on a lotus flower. As the exquisitely pure and fragrant lotus grows out of the mud of the pond, so, they think, the human mind should rise above earthly conditions into the pure region of spiritual life. Theirs seems to be a beautiful religion in theory but not in practice, and many of their texts are so profound that they make me laugh. Here’s one of them: ‘‘Naught is everywhere and always, and is full of illusion.” Who would not 45 One Way Round the World long for a dreamless Nirvana if given much of that kind of spiritual food? Of course we went to the tomb of Ieyasu, in Nikko, a climb of 7,631 steps—that is, I didn’t count them, but I’m sure there were no fewer. All of these temples are at the tip top of a steep hill, and unless one’s religious convictions are unusually strong, one is apt to grumble a good deal before the last one is crossed off the list. Jeyasu was a much revered shogun warrior, the Napo- leon of Japan, whose spirit is still thought to roam over the earth, I believe, for a sacred horse is kept in a sacred stable in the temple yard, so that he may have it handy when he needs it. We bought the sacred horse some sacred beans which he gobbled up as unceremoriiously as any unsanctified horse would have done, and nickered for more. Three carved monkeys on a panel of this sacred stable illustrate a Japanese maxim. One holds his ears, another covers his eyes and the third holds his hands over his lips, for the proverb runs, ‘‘Hear not too much, see not too much, speak not too much.” Just in front of the stable there is a tall tree which Ieyasu is said to have carried around in a flower pot when he was on earth. On the opposite side of the court we threw an offering to a weird little priestess in flowing white garments who rose wearily and danced a sacred dance, gracefully waving a fan and some tinkling bells—not to amuse or edify us, if you please, but the spirit of the departed Ieyasu. And the trees. If I haven’t told you of the evergreens till now, it is not that I have forgotten them. Would 46 THE MONKEYS AT NIKKO Japanese Customs and Beliefs that I could put a window in my letter and let you see for yourselves the regal groves of lofty cryptomerias that cluster round the temples and rise majestically be- yond them in slopes of dark, rich green. There is a stateliness and beauty about them that is indescribable, and in sunshine or in shade they are one long feast of loveliness to the eyes. The groves could spare the tem- ples, but the temples could illy spare the groves. The climate of Nikko is even more tearful than that of the rest of Japan, and all growing things spring up in rank luxuriance. Everything is beautifully green. A hundred feathery mosses cling to the damp walls, and embroider fanciful designs on the carved stone lanterns. It is a wonderfully effective setting for this rare handi- work of man, a glory of art and nature that is a sermon. 47 VI Tokyo and Elsewhere \ K JHILE I am waiting for a half-past seven dinner that is a good hour behind my appetite, I'll chat with my Indiana friends and enliven the delay. It is too bad that writing when one is traveling can not always be done when one is fresh, and before a sharp impres- sion on the retina of the mind has been dimmed by an- other and still another. My inspirations are never over lustrous, but I trust this is one of those comfortable cor- respondences where my readers will sift out the ideas, if there are any, and pardon the slip when there are none, so that I may go zigzagging from one topic to another with as little regard for order as Japanese fields have when they go zigzagging over the landscape. We came away from lovely Nikko, leaving several waterfalls unvisited. We might have entertained our- selves there indefinitely, visiting the beautiful glens of the neighborhood, but, as the Wise One says, the water falls in Japan much the same as it does in America, and it is the people we want to see. We reveled again in the toy railway that runs from Nikko to Tokyo, and made merry over the teacups. Tea! Tea! Tea! I’m sure we have drank enough to float a ship already. 48 Tokyo and Elsewhere When you enter your compartment in the train, you find the inevitable tea table with a kettle of boiling water and a supply of tea ready to be served to the passen- gers. The Japanese decoction tastes more like stewed grass than anything else and is served without milk or sugar, so we sugar lovers have to draw on our supply of bonbons to sweeten it. Every time I taste it, 1 vow that I'll never be led into that same indiscretion again, but the next time I am sure to be beguiled by the one- armed little teapot and the little handleless cups and the smiling little handmaiden who offers it, and take another dose. You see that the word ‘little’? is apt to be very much overworked in telling of Japan. Everything is diminutive, almost nothing grand or great. You seem to be looking at the place through the wrong end of an opera glass. It has all the charm of a miniature. The territory between Nikko and Yokohama is one great garden, stretching away in unfamiliar, irregular fields of rice and taro and lotus, with occasional clumps of tea bushes and groves of fantastic pines and feathery bamboo; all cultivated by hand with primitive agri- cultural implements. Men and women work in the delds, bareheaded and barefooted always, some of them coming perilously near being barefooted all over. One only needs to travel to learn that the term propriety is entirely relative. You must readjust your opera glasses on that subject, too. We are here in the cold season, when the most clothing is worn, yet we see men work- ing in the blacksmith shops in the open street in the costume of Adam before the fall, and men and women 4 49 One Way Round the World bathing unconcernedly scarcely six feet away from the passersby. They see absolutely no impropriety in that, yet are wonderfully shocked at some customs introduced by Europeans, dancing, for instance. It is a queer world, is it not? Even in this cold weather, when we are wearing our warmest clothing, our coolies sometimes wear only a thin cotton jacket. I have seen them shaking with cold be- fore starting, but they are soon perspiring in streams when they get to work. Another time I shall tell you about what these and other laborers are paid. Just a few things more about the country and we’ll arrive at Tokyo, : The country houses are picturesque little buildings with wonderfully heavy thatched roofs, often two feet thick, that sometimes have a festive little garden grow- ing along the ridge. They have the same paper screens and clean mats, even though the whole family and the farm animals as well are living under the same roof. No wonder one is in danger of being bamboozled in a country where bamboo is used for everything; furni- ture, water pipes, fences, buckets, weather boarding, laths, canes, baskets, umbrella ribs, lanterns, twine, roofing, nails—and now I’ve just begun! When it is young the shoots are eaten as we eat asparagus, and the tough fullgrown poles are turned into everything from ‘delicate carving to the heavy supports of dwellings. The rice fields are very curious to us, too. Rice will only grow in water, so the fields have to lie in the lowlands where they can be flooded and the workers stand up to 50 Tokyo and Elsewhere their knees in slimy mud. It is first sown in seed and then transplanted to the water fields, a tedious, weary process. When the shoots are young and low the water is plainly seen, but when the grain is ready for cutting it has grown tall and thick, and does not look unlike our wheat fields at home. Never in my life have I been in a place where one’s slightest wants presented such enormous difficulties and where there is such a superb indifference to the flight of time. Yokohama seemed strange to us at first, but I regard it as the acme of civilization since I have been to Tokyo. For one-thing, we were very unfortunate about our guide. Our treasure, Ito, was taken very ill when we had barely gotten through congratulating our- selves on having him, and had to go to a hospital in Tokyo, leaving us to the tender mercies of Matsu. Matsu meant well, I think, but it was utterly impossi- ble either to get anything into his head or out of it and we exchanged him as politely and as soon as possible for Suzuki, who is delightful, bright and willing, speaking English very well, and we pray nothing will prevent his accompanying us as far as Nagasaki, where we sail for Shanghai. Matsu was with us all the time we were in Tokyo, and oh, what circuses we had in that never-ending, be- wildering city, trying to find out where we were going and what we were seeing. Once we were uncertain whether we had arrived at the houses of parliament or a wall paper factory. IfI lived there forever I should 51 One Way Round the World not try to get that maze of a map in my mind. I shouldn’t have room for anything else. Imagine a one- storied city of a million and a half souls, plentifully in- terspersed with gardens and parks, moats within moats and even wide fields that suggest the open country, and think what magnificent distances it could afford. The streets are wide and laid out like a spider web, and the ‘man power carriage’’ (literal translation of jinrikisha) is the only way of riding, so you may count on one, two, three hours traveling from the time you leave your hotel till you get to the place you are going to visit. Nothing about Tokyo suggests a city except the tram- cars in the main street, into which you wouldn’t ven- ture. It is always through a quaint, never-ending vil- lage that you seem to be going, with the same little shops and unreadable signs and strange little people clumping along on their clogs or standing in groups smil- ingly chattering a queer unknown tongue until they catch sight of yourself, and then they all stop what they are doing, even the babies, and stare at the wonderful spec- tacle that you yourself present. It never ceases to amuse me that I am much more of a curiosity to them than they areto me. One afternoon we went out to Asakusa, a big public park, where we were followed around all the time by at least two hundred round-eyed, astonished Japs, who stared at me in frank, childish amazement, and evidently commented wonderingly on my clothes. lf _ I stopped for a moment, they crowded around so close that I could hardly move on ‘again. One little girl looked at me earnestly for several minutes and then ran 52 Tokyo and Elsewhere away as fast as she could. In a minute she returned leading a still smaller child by the hand and showed me to him, with explanations. Some of the children were afraid and scampered away as fast as they could if I turned in their direction. Everywhere the mothers ran to get their children to see us and sometimes the babies screamed with fright. Paterfamilias does not attract so much attention, for a few Japanese men wear European clothes, and many of them are already wearing grotesque passé derby hats and every conceivable monstrosity in the way of caps. But the hats and dresses of the Wise One and myself are a wonderful sight forthem. Some jeweled trimming on an old velvet cape of mine which, by the way, hails from Indianapolis, seems to please them immensely and they often walk up, eye it admir- ingly, and rub it gently and turn it over chattering - among themselves. I imagine they think they are real jewels and take me for at least a rajah’s daughter. In the tea houses they ask me, through our interpreter, how much it cost, and invariably give vent to round oh’s of astonishment when I tell them the rather modest sum I paid for it. Iam told that the Japanese mean it asa compliment when they ask you what a thing costs or what your income is, for that shows a personal interest in your affairs. It is pleasant to be in a land where one’s old clothes-are so appreciated. It seems to me that nowhere is there so much im- portance attached to dress as in America, and in the cramped space allotted me for logic, I have been try- ing to find a reason for it. In Europe and here in the 33 One Way Round the World Orient so many charming and refined people, trav- elers from all lands of the globe, are, according to our standards, badly dressed—in materials and making in- ferior to what our middle class consider necessary for their position. Their attitude might be described as indifferent. I have opined, that in America, though we admit it reluctantly, where we have no aristocracy, the standard of position is largely that of money, and so there is a greater effort made to dress elegantly than in parts of the world where classes are more clearly de- fined. The Japanese give us an example in their lack of ostentation, freedom from the capricious rule of fashion, and simplicity of housekeeping and social life. However, though I observe and deduce, I’m true to American traditions. The trouble is that I shall have a gaping hole where a pocketbook ought to be when I get back to Paris and furbelows, if I continue to be be- guiled by these tempting things in the Orient. Japan is bad enough and China, Siam, Ceylon and India are yet to be weathered. Everything is incredibly cheap. The Japanese do not know how to work badly. ‘‘The gods see inside,’’ says the workman as he carefully fin- ishes his piece of pottery or lacquer work, and as labor is so pitifully cheap, you can buy a thousand of their dainty fashionings, perfect in design and workmanship, for a few sen in the shops. Even the guide book says: ‘¢Any one who has money in his purse should not fail to visit the fascinating shops of Kyoto.’? In Yoko- hama I bought a wadded red silk crépe dressing sacque lined with silk and beautifully and elaborately embroid- 54 AN APPROVED JAPANESE MACKINTOSH Tokyo and Elsewhere ered with chrysanthemums for three dollars, gold. That is only an instance of the prices. Probably if I had been a more clever bargainer I might have had the dressing sacque for two dollars and fifty cents. These merchants sell for what they can get. They gauge your desire for the article to a nicety. As Sarah Jeannette Duncan says, ‘‘They anticipate your ideas even when you haven’t any.’’ Then you must do a deal of polite haggling if you wish to get the article at anywhere near a reasona- ble price, that is, a reasonable profit for the merchant, and no matter what you finally pay you are uncomforta- bly sure that the beady-eyed little heathen has got the better of you. We saw Tokyo in all its moods while we were there. In bright sunshine, when it was gay and cheery, then gray and slashed with rain drops, with the pebbly streets a sea of mud and full of big oiled paper umbrellas held closely over shuffling figures in gray kimonos and high clogs suggesting a lot of toadstools out on a lark. Oc- casionally, we would pass a little man who looked as if he had jumped into a haystack by mistake, but he was only wearing an approved Japanese mackintosh made of rice straw. We did our duty as conscientious sight-seers, visiting the chrysanthemum show, Ueno Park, the Shiba tem- ples and bazaar, the government printing office, the ar- senal gardens and all the rest. The chrysanthemum show was a grievous disappointment to all of us. We had expected specimens of rare and beautiful blossoms, 55 One Way Round the World but had to content ourselves with curious figures formed of the growing plants twisted into shape; ingenious, certainly, but stiff and ugly. There were scenes from the theater, many gruesome ones of executions, tea houses with geisha dancers, waterfalls, tidal waves and earthquakes, all fashioned of blossoms after the people’s own peculiar ideas. The figure I liked best was a like- ness of Japan’s famous actor, Dan-juro. The show was not in a big building but in a lot of little booths, along a hilly street, into which two cents admittance was paid. The figures were arranged on circular plat- forms that slowly revolved, giving two separate scenes for your investment. i As at Asakasu, we found ourselves the center of at- traction, more of a show than the chrysanthemums. And just here let me set down our undying gratitude to dear, lively Mrs. Nishigawa, our table companion on the Doric, and our good friend, who so kindly steered us through the shoals of royal etiquette and made our stay in Tokyo doubly pleasant. Mrs. Nishigawa is an Englishwoman who married a Japanese and thas lived for years in Tokyo, where she has a charming little English home in the heart of Japandom, and where we met her interesting family. She knows everyone and has evidently captivated everyone as she did us by her wit and grace. It was she who taught her Majesty the Empress, English, so she knows all about the royal family, and is well acquainted with all the chamberlains and equerries and what not dignitaries that mix them- selves up in my democratic mind. 56 Pada 4 we Ce Na at ee r ; nee FUJI IN CHRYSANTHEMUMS VII The Mikado’s Birthday T was due to Mrs. Nishigawa that we had tickets for the legation tent for the review on the emperor’s birthday. This was November third. Early in the morn- ing we were off from the hotel. It had threatened rain the night before but the morning came clear, frosty and cloudless. The streets were gay with flags, a big red disc on a white ground, and as we drew near the parade ground we were jostled by a lively, bustling, holiday crowd, all eager for a glimpse of the Mikado. Finally we came out on the great open field, where infantry and artillery and cavalry were already grouping themselves for the review, and scurried across to the tent next to the one decorated with the conventional chrysanthemum, which was reserved for the emperor. While we were awaiting his arrival we had plenty to divert us. Never have I seen so much brilliancy in the way of medals and gold lace and embroidery. As we sat there the military and naval attachés of the different legations appeared in resplendent uniforms, then the ministers and their suites in court costumes, then many Japanese officers and generals. The Corean minister and his suite wore curious costumes of blue and green change- able silk adorned with a square set just between the 57 One Way Round the World shoulders, embroidered with storks. On their heads they wore a device that looked more like a fly trap than anything else American, and around their waists they had a wondrous jeweled belt that was about the diame- ter of a barrel hoop. The Chinese minister came along as I was standing beside Mrs. Nishigawa and stopped to pay his respects. He had a beautiful robe of rich brocaded silk and a little black cap with a red knob, and as he walked away Mrs. Nishigawa murmured, ‘Do you know I never can help wishing for one of those robes for a drapery.’’ The rest of the representatives wore uniforms of one sort or another. I most admired the naval attaché of the Spanish legation, a beautiful combination of red and blue and black embroidered with silver fleur-de-lis, and crowned with a jaunty hat of black and silver on which there trembled a bunch of snow white cock’s plumes. Pardon me for speaking of the attaché as if he were only a uniform, a clothes horse, as Carlyle says, on which clothes are hung. Of the man I know nothing, as I didn’t happen to meet him, but he had a dissipated, d/asé face, a type only too common among the foreigners in the East. There was a great deal of hand-shaking and bowing and cigarette-smoking among this glittering little coterie, and a hum of conversation in all languages, much of it being sadly butchered. Suddenly a silence fell upon all. There was a distant sound of bugles, then the swelling notes of the national hymn, then a dashing line of carriages that sped across the field toward us. Two or three of them passed us and stopped just beyond the 58 The Mikado’s Birthday next tent. There was a whisper ‘‘Not yet! Not yet!” Then with a dash of outriders, the, standard bearer of the royal sixteen-petaled chrysanthemum appeared, and just behind him, in a gorgeous carriage of state, sat the Dragon Eye, divine descendant of the Sun Goddess, the Mikado himself! : He is an emperor whom one can justly praise; inter- ‘esting not only for what he represents, but for what he is, a man whose short life-time has seen almost miracu- lous changes in his country, changes for which his broad mind is largely responsible. He is the idol of his people and they blindly follow where he leads. Dur- ing the war he went to Hiroshima, where he could have the first despatches from the scene of action, and lived like the commonest soldier, refusing fire and anything but the plainest food, sitting all day on a rough wooden chair, consulting with his advisers. When urged to take better care of himself he replied: ‘‘Should not I too make sacrifices when my children are suffering ?’’ The empress also seems to be a rarely lovely character. She is widely charitable from her personal fortune, and while the emperor was at Hiroshima, she and the ladies of her court busied themselves preparing lint and ban- dages and visiting the wounded and dying. She also gave artificial limbs to all who had to have limbs am- putated, to the Japanese and to the Chinese captives alike. Mrs. Nishigawa told me that years ago she had Miss Strickland’s ‘‘Lives of England’s Queens’’ trans- lated into Japanese for her majesty; that it seemed to make a profound impression on her, and that she be- 59 One Way Round the World lieved it had greatly influenced her life. The Japanese believe their emperor to have descended in unbroken line from the sun goddess who came down to earth some thousands of years ago, and no more than a gen- eration back the Mikado was kept in a sacred palace in * Tokyo, guarded by moats, and looked upon as a divin- ity. It was thought by the people that to look upon his face meant death. What a remarkable change there has been, then, that this monarch of the present day should review his troops, equipped with European arms, he himself dressed in a uniform of European style, with his people all around him. There is always a double influence in a great review for me, exhilarating and the reverse. The music and the banners and the rhythmic beat of the troops are all inspiring, but I always think, with a shiver, of the wicked work those fields of shining spears could do, and of the bloody cause they really represent. It is a grim necessity that calls for all that brilliancy and that . mechanical precision. There were six thousand men out that day, and after riding around the field accompanied by his generals, the Mikado reviewed the troops, again got into his carriage, and, with another flourish, outriders and standard bear- ers and the gorgeous carriage were off, as they had come. I was disappointed not to see our Minister Dun at the review. He does not often go and was not there this year. Had he been present he would have been a conspicuous member of that beplumed and bedecked company, conspicuous for the lack of galloon and gold 60 THE PAGODA AT NIKKO The Mikado’s Birthday lace, for the United States prescribes for a court cos- tume the conventional black evening dress. That night we went to the ball. Minister Dun was there, by the way, and danced in the cotillon with a lit- tle Japanese woman not even so high as his heart. He is tond of a joke, and when I told him that he danced like a fairy he asked me what it was that I wanted him to do for me. The grand ball was given at the Hotel Imperial, where we were stopping, so we were saved any awkward de- mand for evening cloaks and hoods which are not apt to be found in round-the-world trunks, As it was, the Wise One and I donned our prettiest evening frocks, which carried us through quite complacently. The ball was given by the Count Okuma, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Countess Okuma, in honor of the em- peror’s birthday. I don’t know how we came to be honored with invitations, for they were not to be had for the asking. Probably it was that four or five yards of letter that we hadto Mr. Montono. At any rate, the invitations came, written in French, asking that Monsieur, Madame and Mademoiselle Sweetser would do the Count and Countess Okuma the honor of passing the evening of November third with them, and announcing in small letters at the bottom that ‘‘L. L. A. A. J. J. les princes et les princesses, would honor the function with their pres- ence!’’ It was quite an imposing document, I assure you, and for a time I was uncertain whether I would rather keep the invitation or go to the ball, for we were 61 One Way Round the World asked to present it on entering. It is just so with my Japanese passport. That passport is a work of art and I long for it as asouvenir. A footnote in English states expressly that unless it is returned I can never have an- other, but I have a mind to take the risk and keep it. When we descended the stairs at the Imperial we passed through the brilliantly lighted vestibule, which was hazy with cigarette smoke and crowded with men, into the corridor. There we made a low bow to the count and countess and the line that stood receiving and followed the procession into the ball-room. There were two thousand guests, so you may imagine there was no time for a téte-a-téte. JI had only a glimpse of the count and countess on entering. The count was an intelligent looking little man, and his wife a sweet- faced woman who looked weary and indifferent. She wore a white satin ball dress with a long train which did not suit her as her own graceful costume would have done. Some beautiful jewels blazed on her corsage, and on her head she wore a ‘‘ta ra ra’’ of diamonds, as Mr. O’Flannigan said. The evening was one long feast of novelties to me, and though it isn’t courteous to criticise one’s enter- tainment, I couldn’t help being amused at many things. A trip to the supper room was in the nature of a battle, and victory belonged to the strong. My first escort succeeded after some skirmishing in bringing me a bis- cuit and some cold salmon, with nothing for himself. A little later another captured some champagne and some sliced ham. There was an elegant and elaborate : 62 The Mikado’s Birthday lunch served, if you could only get to it, and by dint of skillful combinations I finally fared very well. Some of the Japanese men made very comical mistakes try- ing to eat our food, and the rows of dear little Japanese girls looked woefully ill at ease sitting on the very edges of their chairs, sometimes two on a chair and evidently afraid of falling off. My dance program included “Einglich, Australian, Portuguese, Italian, American and Spanish gallants and the conversations did some international gymnastics to which I am quite unaccustomed. It was great fun! The princes and princesses came and went, sitting for a little while at the end-of the ball room while the cotillon was danced. They were ushered in and out by the national hymn and ate supper in a special room re- served for them. The young princesses were very pretty in beautiful Parisian toilettes and lovely jewels. That night I dreamed of a storm of red snowflakes against a pure white sky. They were the discs on the national flag that had danced in my eyes all day. ° We came away from Tokyo at dusk when there was'a faint yellow glow still left in the sky and a few dim stars peeping out. The streets were full of swift-flying fire- flies, the lanterns the riksha men were swinging as they scurried along like little imps of darkness in the shadowy light. Along the moat the gnarled old pine trees stood out black against the sky bending toward one another. at all sorts of tipsy angles. It was a fascinating Tokyo 63 One Way Round the World that we were leaving so regretfully. The twilight glamour had never been more potent. There is no tell- ing to what length my sentimental mood might have gone, but just before I got to the station I caught sight of a last comical English sign, English as she is Japped, of which there is a rare collection in Tokyo—'‘ Whatever goods sent into all directions,’’ it said, and I laughed. One day we went down to’ Kamakura to see a big bronze statue of Dai Butsu or Buddha, said by the guide book to stand alone as a Japanese work of art, no other giving such an impression of majesty or so truly sym- bolizing the central idea of Buddhism—the intellectual calm which comes of perfected knowledge and the sub- jugation of all passion! The Kamakura Buddha’s di- mensions are forty-nine feet as to height and ninety-seven as to circumference, and I am sorry to say I thought him pudgy and uninteresting instead of intellectual, and was most disappointed because they wouldn’t let me climb up and sit on his thumb, as they used to let peo- ple do, to be photographed. I suspect the guide book scribe of having copied his enthusiasm from somewhere else and I was more impressed by the wording of a notice to visitors put up by the bishop of the diocese. I wish I had copied it so that I might give it to you ex- actly, for it was a model of dignity, but I can only give you the idea. The grounds as well as the statue have .been the victims of senseless vandalism committed by tourists, and the notice begs that the reader, whether 64 The Mikado’s Birthday Mohammedan or Buddhist, Jew or Gentile, of whatever creed, or tongue, or race, will remember that he treads upon ground hallowed by the true worship of ages and forbear from insult, On our way to Kamakura we stopped to see a temple, and at the foot of the long flight of steps which always leads to a shrine we stopped to examine a lotus bed, so lovely in the summer, now in the sere and _ yellow leaf, and filled with great brown seed pods instead of blos- soms. As we stood for a moment we heard a shrill sound of voices, and looking beyond, we saw a long line of little folk walking two abreast and winding to- ward us like a great serpent. It was a village school, the guide said, all boys, and they were singing at the very top of their lungs a spirited song, commemorating Japanese victories in the late war, first one division tak- ing it up then the second answering, while the little fel- lows walked along swinging their arms and evidently enjoying the noise. They were very poorly dressed and the sight of our party nearly spread a panic of fun in the ranks, but they rallied when admonished by the teachers and wound along out of sight shouting more vigorously than ever on what I by courtesy call their song. They were long out of sight before out of sound, and all that day I would find myself smiling as I thought of those lusty little patriots and their howl for the father- land. I needed a reserve of smiles, too, for the day was rather depressing. The glamour on Japan seemed to be getting thin in spots. We rode all afternoon through the villages. The people were the dirtiest and 2 65 One Way Round the World most-repulsive that I have seen, though the district is prosperous and it is in their little huts that much of the fine Japanese silk is spun and woven. The Japanese use a great deal of hot water for bathing, but none of it by any accident ever seems to get on the children’s faces. A visit to a district school that day left us no appetite for tiffin. Tiffin is the accepted word for lunch, and ‘‘to tiffin,’’ ‘‘to have tiffened,’’ ‘‘tiffened”’ is a verb in good standing. That was rather a notable tiffin, too, for when we had been at the hotel for a few minutes our guide came and whispered to us, evidently impressed by the solemnity of the occasion, that we would be seated in the dining room at the table next to Mr. Henry Payne Whitney and Mrs. Whitney, née Gertrude Vanderbilt. They are a very prepossessing young couple, both good looking, conspicuous only for good taste and good manners, and apparently very fond of one another. Perhaps someone would like to know what Mrs. Whitney wore, so I'll tell. A dark blue gown trimmed with a Persian em- broidery on corn colored broadcloth. Her collar had corn colored ribbon slipped under a turn-over collar of dark blue and tied in the back with a big bow of many loops and ends, and she wore a toque trimmed with blue corn flowers. She has a brilliant complexion and dark eyes and the toilette was very becoming to her. I contrast the looks of Americans very favorably with those of other nations, particularly the Japanese, per- haps because I have my share of the colossal conceit with which I once heard our nation twitted. The young 66 The Mikado’s Birthday Japanese women are very often pretty. They are dainty little things, always with beautifully molded hands and arms, and often pretty features and complexions, to which their stiff, shiny, elaborately dressed hair gives a final quaint touch, but some of the men are the ugliest monkeys I ever saw, who support the Darwinian theory to a truly marvelous extent. Good Mr. Darwin would have revelled in ‘‘T told you so’s’’ over here. However, I wouldn’t for anything be ill-natured in my criticism of them and I have all admiration for their pluck and progressiveness—a courteous, cheery, industrious race who support their 40,000,000 inhabitants in a territory about the size of our California and who ask favors of no one. With many great evils in their social life there is much good and long may they wave. I had heard before coming to Japan that it was chang- ing rapidly, and supposed, without knowing, that it was because so many foreigners were coming in. Not a bit of it! In Tokyo, for instance, there are only about two hundred and fifty foreign residents all told, and the one store where European ribbons and laces and articles of dress can be bought would hardly grace a cross-roads. It is kept by a fat old Jap who doesn’t speak a word of English and who sucks his breath through his teeth so loud that you can hear him across the street, and who bows his nose to the counter every other minute. Suck- ing the breath is a bit of politeness that takes the place of our handshaking and you are everywhere received with a prolonged S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s, accompanied by a grand kotow. It is the Japanese themselves who are 67 One Way Round the World so progressive and so eager to take up with the new. Everywhere, even in the little mountain hamlets, we see electric lights, and that is only one of a hundred evidences that the old, easy-going, gracious Japan is doomed and civilization is at its heels. It is my theory that the ideal traveler should be equipped, as to hand baggage, with a valise—not op- pressively new, but of distinguished, well worn appear- ance—and an umbrella. Yet in spite of this firm con- viction, I am usually provided in one way or another with about everything but a bird cage. By great strat- egy I managed to make my escape from Indiana with only a camera beside the ideal valise and umbrella. Pride goeth before a fall, and it came in Tokyo. Iam now traveling with a pine tree! Not only have I a pine tree, but considerable landscape connected with it, a plat of ground and a moss grown rock, and I bought it all for fifty sen at the Shiba bazaar. My pine tree has great twisted roots that stand up well from the ground and run well into it, a sturdy veteran of the forest, and its gnarled branches have braved the blasts of many winters. It bends out protectingly over the moss grown rock, just as the pine trees along the em- peror’s moat reach down longingly toward the water. Its needles are fresh green and altogether it is as bonny a little tree as there is in Nippon. I say ‘‘little’’ be- cause my pine tree is only six inches high, and the plat of ground is five by seven inches, and the moss grown 68 The Mikado’s Birthday rock is about as big as a pigeon’s egg. Seriously, the little tree that stands on the table as I write, is one of the wonders of Japan, and I have given you its exact dimensions. The talent of these people for producing things in miniature is unique in the world. With in- finite skill and patience they train the little shoots, giv- ing them just a little earth, a little water, a little light, and twisting the branches into fanciful curves, just as they do the large trees, then, when after years of care they have produced a perfect miniature of a gnarled old tree, you may buy it in the flower market of the bazaar for twenty-five cents of our money! Iam told that the Japanese, up to the time that the country was opened to the foreigners, seemed to make no connection in their minds between the time they had spent upon an article and the sum they asked for it. Their price de- pended solely on the excellence of the result. They have largely outgrown that, as tourists know, but the marvelous little trees may still be bought for a song, though they are the result of a world of time and patience. At the bazaar we saw cherry trees eight or ten inches high, heavy with pink blossoms, shapely little maples hardly a foot high in as gay autumnal foliage as any tree of the forest, pine trees two or three feet tall, twisted and bent with the weight of a hundred years, little orange and persimmon trees bearing fruit about the size of a hickory nut, baskets of blooming chrysanthemums whose longest stalks reared their flowery heads four inches. We haven’t enjoyed anything more in Japan than these gardens in a nutshell, and in the very first one I fell victim to my pine tree, I thought I would keep it to 69 One Way Round the World enjoy only while I was in Tokyo, and give it away when T left, but this evening when we started to return to Yokohama I felt quite unequal to leaving it behind. Even the Wise One counseled that it be brought along. If I grow any more attached to it, you may imagine me en route for America with my pinelet and landscape in one hand and my ideal baggage in the other. qo A GARDEN IN TOKYO VIII Japan’s Glorious Mountains E went from Yokohama by rail and tramway and riksha, toa lovely place up inthe mountains called Myanoshita, where the scenery and the peasants suggest Switzerland at every turn. Indeed, there is no place in the country where we have been that the scenery is not beautiful and the people quaint and picturesque. The tramway took us eight miles through a long wind- ing village street, sometimes varied by avenues of bend- ing pines, and when we got to the end, Odiwara, it was dark. A crowd of coolies were waiting for us, each riksha decorated with a bulbous paper lantern, and af- ter tea at the tea house we climbed into the rikshas and started for Myanoshita, leaving the tea house girls bent double with polite bows and smiling ‘‘Sayonaras.”” We rode for several hours up the mountains before we saw the gleaming lights of the Fuji Ya Hotel. It was a strange experience for us, even in Japan, the black darkness, the half naked coolies, the swaying lights, the eerie shadows of passers-by, all armed like ourselves with big paper lanterns. The cool night breeze was invigorating, and there was a song of mountain torrents in the air. The great black slopes rose so straight qt One Way Round the World around us that we had to throw back our heads to see the stars. The Fuji Ya is a fine hotel with fine hot baths straight from boiling springs. The excursions that can be made in the neighborhood are legion. One day we went up to the Ojigoku pass and had a grand view of Fuji, just as the sun was sinking to the horizon. We started in a riksha over a road that was fiendishly rough for the first mile or two but it afterward grew better and we rode with more comfort. As we mounted above the timber line, we had a vista of gaunt treeless peaks that shone like silver in the sunlight. In spite of the metallic glint, they had a velvety, changeable tone which we discovered was given by waving fields of a sort of pampas grass that grows clear up to the summits. After we left the rikshas we dragged ourselves up the rockiest, steepest mountain path that we’ve yet met—three full miles at an angle of at least forty degrees. One of the big gulches, known as the Big Hell, was full of a sulphur formation and sulphurous steam was rising in clouds from fissures in the rock. High up toward the summit, we crossed a comparatively level spot where our guide warned us to follow exactly in his footsteps, and then ‘went ahead, striking the ground with his staff to make sure it would bear his weight. The hollow crust re- sounded like a drum, leaving us in unpleasant uncer- tainty how far we should drop if it caved in. It is in this place that several too venturesome travelers have lost their lives. I have not yet felt an earthquake shock in this country, so talented in that line, and though ] 72 Japan’s Glorious Mountains have had my head filled with enough gruesome tales of them to make me wake up o’ nights with the shivers, I have really been wishing that Mother Earth would favor us with an experience. However, when I was walking across that slippery hollow apology for terra firma, the thought of those gigantic mountains swaying on their foundations, with little myself trying to stick to them, gave me such a start that I hoped that the interesting earthquake shock would be indefinitely postponed. A little later we crawled along the edge of a spongy cliff, where my bamboo staff sunk three or four inches in the vari-colored earth at every step, climbed a last short in- cline, and then glorious Fujiyama burst upon our view. We had seemed at the tip top of loneliness, but there stretched its lofty, silent slopes far above us, away into cloudland. The sun was not shining directly on it and there was a soft haze in the atmosphere that made the lower part of the cone a purplish shadow, and through which the upper diadem of snow shone dimly. A range of lower mountains hid the base of Fuji from our view, but just above them, bordering the purple shadows of the cone, lay bank after bank of fleecy clouds shining white and tipped with pinkish gold where the sun reached them, melting into delicate grays beyond his beams. Peerless Fujiyama! No wonder her country- men adore and worship her. We haven’t half appreci- ated her as yet. You will know that I was at least en- thusiastic, when I tell you that I arose at 5 o’clock next morning to climb another mountain to see the Fuji in the opal tints of dawn. 73 One Way Round the World We came down the mountain at a great pace that evening after our toilsome climb of the afternoon. It is such work to go up, up, up, as an old St. Nicholas used to say, but it is such fun to go down, down, down. It had grown quite dark by the time we got back to the riksha men, and we whirled down the path at break- neck speed, shut in by the mountains which were turned into black walls, silhouetted in jagged lines against the sky as if laid on by some giant brush dipped in sepia. An occasional glowing eye, high up in the wall, told us of the charcoal burners at work, and we passed the twinkling lights of the Gold Fish tea-house. We arrived with a flourish at the Fuji Ya, weary and jolted, and I was massaged by a weird, bald-headed, blind little creature who is still another of the curiosi- ties of Japan. Massage is very popular here and the calling is reserved solely for the blind. In the evening you can hear them going along the street blowing a plaintive whistle that warns the people of their approach. My funny little old woman, a widow, I judge, from her shaven head, came into the room feeling her way and sat down Japanese fashion on the floor while she waited for me. When she began I let her pound me and snap my fingers and screw my ears as much as she liked, while I made mental notes of the process. It was sooth- ing and not too vigorous and left me feeling quite re- freshed, though I had had a couple of hard climbs that day. I paid the little old lady ten cents of our money with two and a half cents additional for ‘‘sake’’ money, and she went on her way well pleased. Sake, pro- 74 Japan’s Glorious Mountains nounced sahkay, is the favorite liquor of the Japanese, distilled from rice and usually served hot in the same tiny handleless cups as tea, It has a pleasant taste, not unlike sherry. They call a ‘‘tip’’ ‘‘sake-money,’’ just as the French and Germans say ‘‘pourboire’’ and ‘‘trink- geld.”’ Shidzuoka. We have come here by train and sedan chair from Myanoshita and are lodged in a real Japanese inn, the “Daito Kwan.’’ It is real fun, too, for one evening, and I am sitting on the floor in the absence of chairs, writing beside an artistic lamp that I long to carry away with me. The lower frame is blackened oak and the shade is a hexagonal affair of light strips of wood with paper pasted between the strips. The room is a model of neatness, cleanliness and order, with matting floors and paper screen walls and smooth wooden ceiling. The bed consists of a couple of heavy comforts laid on the floor, andonitliesa sleeping kimono, adorned with storks and dragons. I shall dispense with the pillow, which is a block of wood that looks like a section of a T rail, for I’m sure I’d wake with every muscle in my neck protesting against the outrage. In one corner of the room is a pretty washstand, with a little flat metal bowl, tiny mirror and bouquet of chrysanthemums, though the washstand is an innovation, for formerly prince and peasant alike washed in a public room. They have here a room which the Mikado once occu- pied, sacred and never occupied since. Over my head 75 One Way Round the World hangs a motto in Chinese characters which Suzuki copied and translated for me. ‘‘Behold Fujiyama, oh Honorable One,’’ it says, for Fuji may be seen from the veranda; in the next room there is a wish for long life and prosperity for the occupant. The depressions for the fingers in my screens, which take the place of knobs, are of bronze daintily modeled, and decorated with the irrepressible mountain. Fuji and the bay were lovely as we passed them this afternoon. The mountain had that same low-lying cloud across her slopes leaving the cone clear and cloud- less and we saw her in all the changing tints of sunset and twilight. The sky across the bay was shell pink, against which the gray mountains stood out in divine harmony. It was almost Lake Leman, if the quaint fisher folk along the shore had been a little more mod- ern and a little more Swiss. We dined in the foreign annex of this Japanese estab- lishment in what is supposed to be foreign style. If the Mikado is first in rank in this country, there is no doubt but that the butter is second. It and an antique un- washed teapot were old friends, I am sure, and there were other shortcomings too numerous to mention. In fact, I’m afraid we won’t appreciate the cuisine of the Daito Kwan till we get something worse. There is a racket going on around me now that bodes ill for sleep. These Japanese have absolutely no nerves, and no amount of nerve-wrenching clatter disturbs them. In some places we have noticed that the wheels of the rikshas were allowed to slip about an inch on the axle, 76 Japan’s Glorious Mountains making an irritating, clapping noise, and when we asked why they were made so we were informed, forsooth, that it was so they would make noise enough for people to hear them and get out of the way. These paper walls carry every sound in the building, and outside there is a vigorous picking of samisens, to which some girls are singing. The samisen is a popular musical instrument, played universally, though it is supposed to have been brought from Manila about 1700. It is a graceful instrument, not unlike the banjo, and while far removed from what we call melodious, it has a nig- gery twang that one grows to like. If there is any be- ginning or end to the strains they play upon it they disguise themselves effectually and the music seems to be a series of disconnected minor tones played without any regard for time or tune. The singing is a wonder! It always reminds me of a remark an Englishman once made to an uncle of mine. The story has a spice of impropriety in it, but it passes on its merit. This Englishman was traveling in Amer- ica and was sitting in the smoking room of a Pullman car when my uncle entered. He had a banjo in his hand, and they fell into a conversation on banjos and darkey dialect songs, on which my uncle found the En- glishman much better informed than himself. Finally he asked him if he played the banjo and sang. ‘‘Yaas,”’ drawled the Englishman, ‘‘I do sing a bit. Not that I have much voice, y’ know, but people will stand some d—d bad singing, if you can only pick a banjo a little.”’ The same is apparently true of the samisen, for the ve One Way Round the World Japanese endure a great deal of that kind of singing. The samisen one might grow to crave but the cater- wauling, never! Their songs are a series of rasping squeaks with many sudden flights from D flat to G sharp and back to most anywhere. It is with difficulty that we can accept their melodies solemnly, and the rendi- tion of some of our airs by native bands is excruciating. Foreign music is the swagger thing just now, and they will have it, but the tuning of instruments is a detail that they neglect. Shidzuoka is noted for its delicate basket work, a marvel of beauty, and for the residence of the last of the shoguns, where the old man lives in lonely exile, never receiving anyone or going off of his estate. We admired the baskets and looked down on the residence from one of the templed hills. Fortunately, too, we didn’t let our Tokyo experience satisfy us but went again to a chrysanthemum show. It was an exquisite collec- tion with none of the stiffness of the Tokyo figures, but aisle after aisle of regal blossoms either growing straight or trained in ingenious shapes, offering a wealth of glow- ing color, a real corner of the garden of Eden where chrysanthemums bloomed. There were all colors and sizes and shapes, jinrikishas, Fujis, bridges, lanterns, bells, even a bicycle, but I liked best the great frowsly Paderewskian ones of which there was a large and beau- tiful collection. Kiku is the Japanese word for chrys- anthemum, a word I wish we might adopt instead of our lumbering chrysanthemum so often misspelled and mispronounced. ‘The seasons here are one round of 78 DRUM AND SAMISEN PLAYERS Japan’s Glorious Mountains blossoms, each lingering to welcome the next. In the spring the whole land is bright with clouds of pink cherry blossoms. Then come waves of purple wisteria and in summer the creamy lotus lifts its stately head above the ponds. In the fall the autumn leaves vie with the gorgeous decorative chrysanthemums in vivid coloring and even in the winter there are plum blossoms at Christmas time. At Nagoya we revelled in the finest cloisonné ware that we have seen, and dutifully visited more temples, but I am sorry to say the thing that lingers clearest in my memory about that interesting place is the large col- lection of ridiculous superannuated wooden high wheels that seem to have found refuge there. We, ourselves, were great curiosities in Nagoya, and one small, solemn, round-eyed Jap ran all the way from the station to the hotel beside my jinriksha, exactly as our boys follow the clown in the circus parade, except that he took the matter very seriously and was evidently filled with awe and amazement. But the bicycles! They were made of old carriage wheels, I think, and were always mounted by Japs, usually wearing their clogs and invariably staring at us. They would come up behind us rattling like drays and steering a course of wild semicircles down the street that made us anxious for the life and limb of everybody in the street, ourselves included. No debonair rider of a crack safety ever gave a more reckless exhibition of the art of staying on. 79 One Way Round the World Anyone who wrote about Japan would do it a seri- ous injustice if he left out a paragraph on babies. Babies are everywhere in evidence, particularly the street babies, surely the most cunning, captivating little folks in the world, when the dirt isn’t so thick it is nau- seating. In a country where they wear white for mourning, and put foot notes at the top of the page, and use paper towels and napkins and handkerchiefs, but do their bundles up in cloth, where vehicles turn to the left instead of the right, and the lock is in the jamb in- stead of the door, and they build the roofs of the houses on the ground before they begin the walls—in short where everything is topsy turvy—it isn’t surprising that babies are carried on their mothers’ backs instead of in their arms. Dressed in wadded kimonos just like their elders, except that they combine a few more colors of the rain- bow, these roly poly little bundles of humanity are tied to the back of the mother or to a brother or sister, some- times not much larger than themselves, by a long band of cloth wound twice around them and knotted at the belt of the person carrying them. There they hang contentedly to all appearances, for they rarely cry, gaz- ing with wondering eyes at this queer world they’ve come to, or sleeping soundly with their poor little heads rolled back or over to one side so far that it seems as if their necks would break. If they utter any protest the mother begins a jarring step that bounces the baby up and down in a way that would make an American baby how] like a Comanche but which they accept as sooth- ing. It seems they are endowed with that blessed lack 80 wv TAKING CARE OF THE BABY Japan’s Glorious Mountains of nerves that their parents have, for they are astonish- ingly good. When they are beginning to walk they seem to be always entertaining themselves, and have a business-like air that sits very charmingly on them, Perhaps they are really a good deal older than they look, for the race is small. Even the smallest children have their heads shaved, occasionally all over, but more often with a tiny tuft left just above the forehead, or over the ear, or at the nape of the neck, for seed, as one witty observer sug- gests. Some of the babies have a round spot shaved on the crown and beyond this a circle of their fine baby hair stands out like a smoky halo. The older children have straight black wiry hair, cut in many fanciful de- signs according to the taste of their parents. Some- times they have the round bare spot on the crown, with another oblong clearing just above the forehead. The girls begin to do up their hair as soon as there are wisps long enough to moor a couple of false puffs and anchor them with a hairpin. They cut the hair in front in a two-storied bang that hangs over the ears with lambre- quin effect. The pretty ‘‘geisha,’’ or dancing girls, the sirens of the tea houses, do their hair in the most remarkable towers of shiny puffs decorated with many fancy hair pins, a style that makes the artificial little women look more artificial than ever. They powder their faces till they are chalk white, sometimes intentionally leaving patches of their yellowish skin untouched. One night at the theater I noticed a geisha who had three very 6 81 One Way Round the World pointed triangles on the nape of her pretty neck, painted, I supposed, in yellow, but I discovered that they were patches of her natural skin left unpowdered. I can’t imagine how they manage to ‘‘draw the line”’ so neatly, for very often a band is left along the forehead next to the hair, as well. You can notice the same thing in the picture of the sacred dancers. The geishas’ costumes are of the richest silks and crepes, exquisitely colored and combined, and though they wear no jewels, their toilettes often represent a small fortune. SACRED DANCERS AT NARA IX Odds and Ends HE position of woman is much inferior to that of T man. She is sweet, gentle and obedient under many and peculiar trials, and is almost the slave of her husband. Miss Isabella Bird wittily remarks that what Japan needs to correct the evils of social life is, not to elevate the women, but to suppress the men. Another author who wrote a boqk on the customs of the country, which was translated into Japanese with a commentary, says they patted him on the back for many of his ob- servations, but their wrath exploded when they reached his comments on the position of women. ‘The sub- ordination of women to men,”’ so runs the critical com- mentary, ‘‘is an extremely correct custom. To think the contrary is to harbor European prejudice. For the man to take precedence over the woman is the grand law of heaven and earth. To ignore this and talk of the contrary as barbarous is absurd.’’ As the writer says, “it does not fall to every one’s lot to be anathematized by half a dozen Japanese literary popes—and that, too, merely for taking the part of the ladies.’’ The Japanese do not feel complimented either in private or public by praise of their women, their flowers or their art. It is of their progress, enterprise, business successes that they ‘wish to hear. It is probable that they are so sensitive 83 One Way Round the Worid as to the position of woman, because they realize that it is the weak place in the grand march of progress of which they are so justly proud, and not being able to defend it they are easily touched by criticism. There is a little book called ‘*The Japanese Bride’’ written by Rey. Naomi Tamura, published in Harper’s familiar Black and White series, which I read some time ago, but failed to discover in it the’elements of the tremen- dous sensation it created over here. The book showed that the position of Japanese women is in many ways deplorable, for they not only occupy an inferior posi- tion, but, as a rule, receive no inheritance from their parents, and may be divorced, and separated from their children also, for the most trivial causes, at the caprice of the husband. Divorce is very common, but fortu- nately a law is soon to be passed which is intended to remedy the abuse. The Rey. Tamura was accused, not of misrepresenting the state of affairs, but of telling too much about it, and he was expelled from the native presbytery of Tokyo. His loyal church followed him, however, and has been more prosperous than before. “If the book had been written in Japanese for the natives,’’ said his accusers, ‘‘with the intention of point- ing out their defects to them, it would havé been bad enough, but to hold up the faults of his countrymen to the gaze of foreigners was shameful and unworthy of a clergyman.’’ The Rev. Tamura is a brilliant man, a graduate of Princeton and the Auburn Theological Seminary, and is well known in America where he has many friends, and any foreigner who reads his book 84 NAWHYOM ASANVdVe Odds and Ends will be likely to acquit him of any disloyal intention in writing it. Another book of the legion of books on Japan, one that I have found most interesting, is Mr. W. E. Curtis’ well-named ‘‘Yankees of the East.’’ It is written in a very attractive style and contains a mine of information well sugar-coated. Mr. Curtis did not spend a great deal of time in this country, yet his book is considered remarkably accurate by people who have lived here for years. In his opening chapter he urges ‘‘every man, woman and child of twelve years old and upward, who has the time and money, to visit the land of flowers and fans before its original picturesqueness is entirely overcast with the commonplace and colorless customs of modern civilization.”’ Mr. Curtis’ chapter on ‘‘The Missionary Problem and Christianity from a Buddhist Standpoint’’ is par- ticularly fair and helpful to any one interested in the great question of religion. The work of the missionaries is very often strongly condemned, usually most strongly by people who have not investigated the subject at all. Even an unpreju- diced observer, who believes that the Christian religion is best because it is the most elevating, is apt to decide superficially that the gate of paradise is much wider than our good ministers say and that it might be better to let these millions of people go happily to their Budd- hist and Shinto places of peace whether they be called nirvana or heaven, undisturbed by the doubts and ques- tions a new religion brings. 85 One Way Round the World It is very difficult to reconcile religions when one takes the big world for a field. The differences of doctrine in the Christian church our missionaries find difficult to explain. ‘*Why,’’ say the Japanese, ‘‘you do not even agree among yourselves about your belief.”’ This difference causes so much friction that mission- aries of all denominations work largely together, and it is not unlikely that some time a single church will be established which will be known as the National Chris- tian Church of Japan just as England has her Church of England. As I say, a superficial observer might think that the labors of our missionaries in the field, the lives and the money spent, are riot at all compensated or warranted by the results. Their work is too often sneered at by their own countrymen. But among those in a position to judge, the opinion is unanimous that the missionary in- fluence has been a wonderful factor for good in the de- velopment of the new Japan. The work has always becn encouraged and every courtesy shown by the high- est officials of the empire, some of whom are Christians, and there are many flourishing native churches. The seed has surely been sown. When some one laughingly remarked to a prominent man, not himself a Christian, that our principal exports to Japan were kerosene and missionaries, he thoughtfully replied, ‘*Yes, and both have brought us light, light for the eyes and light for the soul.’’ There is no Sunday in the Buddhist or Shinto relig- ions, though they have some regularly recurring feast 86 A TEMPLE Odds and Ends days that are observed. My conscience is rather elas- tic, and I don’t know that I should have remembered to go to chureh in Kyoto if the Wise One had not one fine morning reminded me that it was Sunday and taken me along with her. There were only a few worship- ers, but we had a good Presbyterian service and sermon that carried us back home and made the Kyoto streets seem stranger than ever as we rode back to the Ya-ami. Another whiff of Indiana was in Osaka with Mr. and Mrs. B. C. Haworth. The guests besides ourselves were Dr. A. D. Hail, Miss Thompson and Miss Mc- Guire, all missionary workers in various fields, and they entertained us with many accounts of their experi- ence, some lively and amusing. The conversation was sparkling and the dinner—well, we had been exist- ing at the Osaka Hotel and felt like the small boy who said he had swallowed a hole, and that dinner seemed to us the most delicious we ever tasted. Altogether it was a red-letter evening. At the temples and shrines the worshipers write their prayers on a little slip of paper, then chew it into a wad and throw it at the big image of the god from whom they ask a boon. If the soft wad sticks they take it as an omen that the prayer will be granted, but if it falls they reason that they’d better pray again. It is hard for even the most dignified of gods to look im- posing when irregularly covered with paper wads, and some of them are comical indeed. Sometimes the prayers are tied around the wooden supports of the images, and at one of the temples of Kwannon, the thousand-handed 87 One Way Round the World goddess of mercy, we saw a wall hung full of illustrated prayers painted on wooden blocks and others tied to the latticed screens. Few of the waiters in the hotels understand English, and for convenience the dishes on the bill of fare are numbered both in English and Japanese numerals. You point to a number, the waiter looks at the corres- ponding one in Japanese and brings what you want. If you have learned to count ‘‘ichi, ni, san, shi,’’ etc., you may add ‘‘ban,”’? number, which, of course, comes after the numeral instead of before it in this land of reverses, and you’ll have a pleased waiter and the satisfaction of speaking a little Japanese. Over here the family name comes first, the given of Buddha name next, and Mr., Mrs. or Miss last. The names of the girls are very fanciful and pretty. The empress’ poetical name is ‘‘Springtime.’? Kiku, meaning chrysanthemum, is a favorite. One day I asked Suzuki, our guide, the name of his little girl, and he said it was ‘‘Ren,’’? and that Ren meant brick. ‘¢ ‘Brick,’ ’’? I said in astonishment, for here was certain- ly aviolent contrast to ‘‘Cherry Blossom,’’ ‘*Bamboo,”’ ‘“Silver,’’ ‘‘Mounlight,”’ ‘*Perfume’’ and so on. ‘*Why do you calla girl ‘Brick’ ?”” Suzuki is a good guide and he has saved us a world of annoyance and bother, but his English is occasionally very lame, quite paralytic in fact, and that was a notable instance of it. I gathered that he named the little girl Brick in consideration of the many admirable qualities of the brick, solidity, strength, immunity from destruction by fire’ and useful- 88 Odds and Ends ness. ‘‘Beside,’’ he said, ‘‘she was born near a brick- yard.”? Iam not sure whether this was an exceptional example, or whether, like our Indians, they sometimes name children from some circumstance, or event oc- curring at their birth or in their childhood. One of the striking things in the instruction in the public schools is the cultivation of the spirit of patriot- ism. Of course, the late war has aroused all that was latent and a great wave of patriotism has swept over the land amounting almost to frenzy sometimes, yet it has ‘always been a part of the Japanese education to culti- vate a love of country. It is a great pity that there is not a more direct effort in that line in our own country where there is such a great need of assimilating our mixed population, and that our school boys and girls are not given object lessons in patriotism along with their arithmetic. In many of the small villages along the railway we have seen a procession of half the in- habitants out with banners and drums to welcome home a single private who had returned from his military service. The Jap apparently has a great deal of misplaced confidence in his knowledge of English, and the results of a literal translation of the Japanese idiom into our language are intensely amusing. ‘‘Wine, beer and other,’’ says one sign. ‘‘Patent shoes for iron bed,’’ says another, meaning castors, I suppose. Here is another set that I can vouch for as being act- ually inuse. ‘Cigars, cigaretts, or A Ney (any) Kind.” ‘‘Fresh Ox Milk.’? ‘‘Here one does dinner, and sup- per, coffee, tea.”’ 89 One Way Round the World This is an advertisement for fragrant Kozan wine: “Tf health be not steady, heart is not active. Were heart active, the deeds may be done. Among the means to preserve health, the best way is to take in Kozan wine, which is sold by us, because it is to assist digestion and increase blood. Those who want the steady health should drink Kozan wine. This wine is agreeable even to the females and children who can not drink any spirit because it is sweet. On other words, this pleases mouth, and therefore it is very convenient medicine for nourishing.’’ And finally, a letter which Professor Chamberlain gives in ‘Things Japanese.”’ “Tokyo, JAPAN. “Dear Sir, ‘*New year very happy. I salute prudently for your all. I had been several districts since July of last year. Now, here my head is mingled up with several admi- rations by the first voyage to abroad; but anyhow I feel very lionizing, interesting, profitable for experiment, by sailing about there and here. Though I exercised English diligently, yet I am very clumsiness for transla- tion, dialogue, composition, elocution and all other. It is a great shamefulness, really, but I don’t abandon English henceforth. I swear to learn it perseveringly even if in the lucubration. ° ‘Tendering you my sympathy joy of your decoration, Tam, Yours affectionally, “OM. L.”’ go A SIGN IN TOKYO Odds and Ends It is all very well to laugh at these efforts, but I won- der if we should have as good luck in turning English into Japanese. In Kyoto one day we were much amused at the sign of a practical life insurance company put up just outside the crematory. Suzuki first convulsed us by the way he sang it, chanting through his nose in a queer, dron- ing fashion, just as all the Japanese read the Chinese characters that are used to print their language. In the train or in the stations it isn’t unusual to see a line of half a dozen men singing the news to themselves, oblivious of one another. The list of the Chinese char- acters is endless and one must havea knowledge of three thousand, to correspond to our alphabet, and for print- ing a newspaper, for instance, at least five thousand are necessary; for the classics, ten, twenty, thirty thousand are required. The Japanese alphabet, which is printed beside the Chinese characters for the benefit of the ig- norant, has forty-eight letters. It seems that the chil- dren are taught to sing the intricate Chinese characters and they can not understand them unless they speak them. Having the habit as children they keep it when’ grown and continue to sing. The thrifty insurance company warns the reader that a cheery face and a healthy body are easily turned to a poor skeleton. People wither like the leaves of the forest and perish like the frail flower that trembles on the brink and is finally pushed into the abyss. Nobody knows what the future will be, and riches take wings. Finally, insure with this particular life insurance com- Ol One Way Round the World pany and you will do a noble work in providing for your desolate family. The Japanese refer to ne’er-do-wells and people who do not amount to anything, as ‘‘cold rice.’’ In bargaining with a Jap shopkeeper, if you wish to > get a reduction you must not tell him jel that you are poor, but that you are rich. His reasoning is that if you are rich you are a prudent person Ft who has saved his money by careful buying, and he makes the reduction. The Japanese women ‘toe in’’ instead of out. Curly hair is con- NS sidered very ugly. Some comparisons with the Jap- 28 anese are to the credit of the Chinese. Merchants in contracting with the Japanese require a bond with a heavy JAPANESE VISITING forfeit, but they consider the China- eee man’s ‘‘Can do”’ as good as his bond. Railway fares in Japan are graded to the purse of the traveler. First class, three sen a mile, second class, two sen, third class, one sen; a sen being one-half cent HS | SAS TR of our money. The Japanese are so polite that their language, though rich in words, affords absolutely none for cursing and swearing. It took a breezy American to remark that though he admired that trait, he preferred his own land where they ‘‘kiss and cuss.’’ Kissing as well as pro- fanity is unknown in Japan. 92 xX In Palace, Temple, and Theater T NARA, we wandered happily along the lovely avenues arched over with fine old trees and guard- ed by rows of moss-covered lanterns, where the deer roam, timidly begging for the little cakes that are sold at the wayside booths and looking at us with great as- tonishment in their gentle eyes. They also recognized us as strangers. There is a wilderness of the graceful lanterns, row after row and vista after vista of them. Decidedly you mustn’t omit Nara, and be sure to stop as we did at the Chrysanthemum Dewdrop, a quaint, delightful Japanese inn, so artistic and romantic that you will be a base ingrate if you complain of so sordid a circumstance as food. It was at Nara that we saw the painfully small holes cut in the pillars of the temples through which the faithful followers of Buddha manage to squirm, and it was also at Nara that we saw the sacred dance. It was given by some odd painted maidens, dressed in flowing robes of red and white, with their hair, which was elaborately decorated with wreaths of artifi- cial flowers and metal pins, hanging down their backs. They waved bunches of tinkling bells while a couple of priests clapped some wooden blocks together and played a melancholy flute, and an older woman sat on her.heels 93 One Way Round the World and picked the koto. After the dance was finished the girls displayed a very worldly interest in my famous vel- vet cape, and making an extra ‘‘offering’’ we took their pictures. As we came at night into Osaka, the city, with its many rivers and canals reflecting the lights in long shin- ing lances on the dark water, seemed to me an Oriental Venice, but the daylight showed it to be bustling and commercial, more like Rotterdam than the Bride of the Sea. It is an interminable distance from the station to the hotel, but I always enjoy the night rides thoroughly, with the narrow streets, the dark little latticed houses, the decorative glowing lanterns, the mysterious pedes- trians, the flying rikshas, the open shops. In Osaka we called on our kind Japanese friend, Mr. Asai. Mrs. Asai is a dear little Japanese woman who does not speak a word of English, but she smiled and served us tea, sitting on the floor and holding a sweet Japanese baby who eyed us wonderingly but wasn’t afraid of us. The house was a gem of simplicity and neatness, very little but matting and screens and delicately carved wood, an improvement in some ways over our elaborate style of furnishing. I suppose along with other nerve-wearing customs of hurry and enterprise which the Japanese men seem destined to gradually adopt, the Japanese women will change their simple method of housekeep- ing. Mr. Asai showed us all over the house, not from garret to cellar for there was neither, but through all the rooms and the pretty garden as well. He says that he remembers with what interest he studied the establish- 94 Lt i tat i THE ENTRANCE OF A THEATER In Palace, Temple, and Theater ments of many courteous Americans, and that he is very glad to give those who care for it a glimpse of Japanese home life. Mr. Asai has fitted up an American room, just as we have our Oriental rooms, with grate and car- pet and window curtains, which seem oddly out of place in the house, but are, of course, a source of great pride and satisfaction to him. Not in a volume could I tell you of all the fascina- tions of Kyoto. ‘Tokyo people like eat,’’ explains Suzuki. ‘No care much for kimono. Kyoto people like very much beauti- ful fine kimono, not so much eat.”? And it is true that we saw the gayest, prettiest costumes in Kyoto. There is a great rivalry between these two imperial cities, the Eastern and Western capitals, as they are called, and it appears that the point of dispute is the ladies’ kimonos, instead of the size of their feet. Kyoto people feel much chagrined that the Mikado has taken up his permanent residence in Tokyo, and that the great palace in Kyoto is almost always closed. We visited two of the Mikado’s palaces, both interesting, though the second was much more ornate than the first, The first stands in a great wooded park which once contained the residences of the nobles, since destroyed, I think, by fire. The history of these places is one long string of fires and floods and earthquakes, and it becomes a matter of wonder that anything is left. The guide-book, too, tells of vandal- ism which reigned at the opening-up of Japan, begin- ning with Commodore Perry’s visit, during which a os One Way Round the World great many fine antiquities were destroyed in a sense- less spirit of ‘‘progress.”’ At the first palace, we en- tered at the Gate of the August Kitchen, and were shown around by: a couple of distinguished looking Japs, in silk kimonos and peculiar wide pleated trous- ers, a good deal like our divided skirts, which are the conyentional dress for visiting the habitation of the sacred Mikado, ‘‘de rigeur’’ in fact. European dress is allowed and Suzuki was out in coat and trousers. In the palaces I noticed in the Japanese a feeling of rever- ence. They talk at the top of their voices in the tem- ples, and walk around examining everything with care- less curiosity, but in the palaces they lowered their voices, and trod with a solemn, reverential air in the apartments the Mikado had occupied. In one room we saw a throne—of matting, of course—with two lac- quered stools on which the insignia of the Mikado’s rank, the jewel and sword, are placed. The hangings were of white silk with bold black figures, and were tied with bands of red and black, decorated with birds and butterflies. In one corner of the room was a square of cement, where night and morning earth is placed so that the Mikado may worship his ancestors on the soil, without descending to the ground, In another hall was another throne, the ‘‘Cool and Pure’’ hall it was called, but ‘‘Cold and Draughty’’ would be better. In all that palace there is no provision for fire or any- thing that we call comfort, and for all I know, the de- scendant of the Sun Goddess shivers over a few coals in his hibachi, or fire pot, warming his pulse and rub- 96 In Palace, Temple, and Theater bing his hands just like the common people. The throne in this room was a beautiful chair'with a back shaped like the torii, or gates that always stand in front of the temples. At the Nijo palace, which used to be a part of the Nijo castle, now destroyed, we saw the most splendid apartments we have seen anywhere. The great Shogun Jeyasu lived there for a time and the suites of apart- ments, though somewhat dimmed by time, are still a blaze of golden glory. The screens are all covered with gold leaf and decorated by the ‘‘old masters’’ in the bold fanciful designs that we are learning to appreciate if not to admire. The ceilings, and indeed all the de- tails, down to the small metal finishes, are marvels of delicate work. The whole has an effect of stately grandeur. The designs on the screens have the huge gnarled branches of the imperial pine, many of them life size, figures of herons and eagles, cherry trees in blossom, the kingly peony, chrysanthemums, tigers, bamboo, cats—all the designs dear to the Japanese heart, except Fuji. If Fuji was there it escaped me. How I should like to slip into those wide, silent halls some Halloween at midnight, when fairies dance and spirits waken, and see if the moonlight beams wouldn’t reveal a shadowy shogun in all his old time pomp and magnificence, glistening with jewels, and surrounded by his prostrate vassals the daimyos—all the by-gone glitter and splendor the tarnished walls have seen, and of which they are a melancholy monument, Japan has seen marvelous changes and I’m told that 7 97 One Way Round the World many of the sons of samurai, the warrior class next in rank to the daimyos, are now riksha runners. One day I asked Suzuki if people looked down on the riksha men, because they do such menial work. ‘‘Do you, for instance??? I said. Suzuki shrugged his shoulders in a style that would have done credit to a Frenchman, and replied: ‘‘Ino look down on riksha man. Maybe I pull riksha myself tomorrow.’’ The new temples at Kyoto are grand, indescribably rich in carving and gold and lacquer. The palaces at- tached have more of the gilded, grotesquely-decorated screens. Asnearly as I can understand and express it in a few words, the Japanese idea of art is not to rep- resent things as they are, for may we not enjoy them so in nature, but to convey an original idea by distorting ’ the subject. A trip to Lake Biwa is a charming excursion from Kyoto and affords the very novel experience of going on a canal through three tunnels in the mountains, one of them several miles long. It is a wonderful trip.- Never, before Charon rows me across the river Styx, do I expect to feel as creepy as I did in that frail rock- ing little craft, creaking and groaning along that dark vaulted passage, with only the light of a dim lantern to pierce the eternal gloom, or the flaring ghostly torch of a passing boat to cast uncanny reflections on the damp walls. ‘You mustn’t forget to think of an earthquake when you are inside,’’ some one had told me, ‘for that is half the excitement.’’ I didn’t forget, and again I wished the interesting shock indefinitely postponed. 98 LAAYLS YALVAHL V A a : 4 H| In Palace, Temple, and Theater There is an awesome feeling in piercing the heart of a great mountain, an oppressive sense of the stupendous weight that hangs over one’s head, apparently about as securely suspended as Damocles’ sword. I, for one, and the rest of the family for two, breathed a sigh of relief when we found ourselves again in warm daylight in the same old world instead of a lower region to which that black, silent passage seemed surely to lead. The theaters in Kyoto are unique and we were for- tunate to be there at the time of the Maple festival, when we had the opportunity of seeing many of the famous geishas. The plays and dances are very odd and in- comprehensible, and of course everything is managed just as we do not manage it, but the scenery is made very pretty with paper blossoms and twinkling lights, and the costumes are elegant. Atthe theater they check clogs instead of hats, and the people sit on the floor in little square compartments, drinking sake and smoking, with an occasional glance at the performance. Men and women both smoke a peculiar pipe, made of bamboo tipped with metal, which has a bowl about the size of a baby’s thimble and only allows two or three good whiffs. It is in Kyoto, as I told you, that fascinations never end. It is the most Japanese, the most interesting of all. I£ your interest in the sights flags, there are always the enticing shops, and one is apt to fall among shop- keepers when starting out with the most praiseworthy intention to visit the temples. If it isn’t satsuma ware it is embroidery, or cloisonné, or bronzes, perhaps por- 99 One Way Round the World celain, silks, ivory carvings, curios, bamboo ware, any- thing and everything that is beguiling. We lived most pleasantly at the Ya Ami, a big ram- bling hotel, beautifully situated on what is known as the Eastern Hill of the quaint city. One sunny morning we came sorrowfully away, followed by a last violent s-s-s-s-s from our faithful little waiter. Leaving the Ya Ami was very melancholy indeed, and the Osaka Hotel only deepened the gloom. It was the changing beauty of the Inland Sea that consoled us. On board the ‘*Yokohama-Maru.”’ We sailed away from Kobe on the ‘*Yokohama-Maru”’ for Shanghai. The Wise One thinks it is high time that we were leaving Japan when the head of the family expresses a desire to take a couple of little Japanese maidens home with him. It was Thanksgiving day and we came out to the ‘““Yokohama-Maru’’ in an open sampan, in a dismal downpour of rain, and ate Thanksgiving dinner on board, thankful that we hadn’t been drowned and that we could eat. The last part of the voyage-has been fearfully rough. The ship is lying in the trough of the sea and we seem to be traveling faster sideways than we are ahead, in a series of horrid wriggly rolls. The favored few who have been able to appear at the table have with diffi- culty kept themselves on their chairs, and the cook has with even greater difficulty kept the food on the stove. T barely manage to stick to my chair and my subject. 100 In Palace, Temple, and Theater Such weather is very bad for the disposition, very apt to make one want the earth. : We left Japan so regretfully. Irub my eyes and look at the broad Yellow Sea with the feeling that I have waked from a bright colored dream, too soon past. Come one and all to Japan when you would leave hurry and worry behind and dream the days away in lovely mountain districts or in the busy, crowded, curious cities among a kindly, smiling people, never too hurried to be polite or to render a service and always alive to the beautiful in nature and in art. There are flaws, there always are, and it may be they would grow more apparent with time, but if you have a grain of leniency in your nature, you will forgive them all when you are holidaying, and agree with me that Japan is charming and not overrated, as some people say. To-night I went up on the bridge to have a good view of the phosphorus in the water. I had heard of its won- drous glow in these eastern seas, but I could not have imagined anything so strangely beautiful. From the vessel to the horizon the sea is one sheet of gleaming, dancing lights that tip the crest of every wave and glow in a strange bluish fire where the foaming water dashes back from our cleaving prow. It is a veritable fairy- land where all the sea sprites must hold high carnival. Beyond lies China, the unknown. 101 XI In Old Shanghai HE ‘‘*Yokohama-Maru”’ slipped over the bar inte T the Yang-ste-Kiang with only six inches of water to spare. We had been afraid we would miss the tide, though Captain Swain had promised to send us up to Shanghai on a tug if we did. ‘You don’t dare make it any closer than that, do you?’’ I said to one of the officers. ‘‘That is very close indeed,’’ he replied, ‘‘and the ship will hardly answer the rudder, but I’ll tell you a secret. I think we would risk it with even a shade less when Mrs. Swain is in Shanghai.”’ The ‘*Yokohama-Maru’s’’ officers are so agreeable that we left her with regret, even after that terrific shak- ing up that she gave us. I parted sorrowfully with the captain’s pup, a lively, bright-eyed little fellow, with teeth like needles and a pup’s characteristic inclination to chew everything he can find. I spent a good deal of time on his neglected education, trying to teach him to bring me a handkerchief, but he looks upon life as a joke and was loath to accept responsibilities. The broad Yang-ste-Kiang is yellow and muddy like the Yellow Sea. Shanghai, with its smoking stacks and foreign-looking buildings, has nothing Chinese about it from a distance, and if it were not for the pic- 102 avo IWHONVHS V In Old Shanghat turesque river craft on the Yang-ste, junks and sampans with a big round eye on each side of the prow, you might think you were coming into Chicago. The crowd at the dock would dispel that illusion. They do the least with the most noise of any crowd I ever saw. The process of landing is like a true Irish debate, everybody talking and nobody listening. The men wear roomy garments of blue denim and tie their little felt caps on with their queues. One of them is apt to offer you a ride on a ‘“‘licensed wheelbarrow.’’ The wheelbarrow is a favorite mode of locomotion among the lower classes, and they spin along the Bund side by side with the more aristocratic rikshas and carriages. They have a big wheel, on which the weight rests, are pushed by a man, of course, and are divided in the middle by a little railing. It isn’t unusual to see a family riding on one side with a pig strapped on the other—a heavy load for one coolie, and he walks with a queer tottering gait that is painful as he balances the lumbering barrow. Sometimes they are very unevenly loaded and must be very hard to manage. The rikshas have swelled and the lanterns have shrunk. In fact, we are in a new, totally strange country, and must focus all over again—excuse the photographer’s term—in religions, traditions, race, customs and cos- tumes. I’m surprised to find the Chinese men so much> more attractive than the Japanese. They are a much finer race physically, much more intelligent looking and their dress is both more comfortable and more pictur- esque. There is a crudeness of coloring in things Chi- 103 : One Way Round the World nese, but among the well-to-do the rich brocaded fur- lined garments of the men and the elaborate embroidered head dresses and jackets and trousers of the women are very beautiful. We all liked Shanghai. It is gay and cosmopolitan, a curious mixture of the familiar and the strange. Along the Bund, the street facing the harbor, are the concessions made by the Chinese government to the different nations, and you may see every flag from the tri-color to the Union Jack floating in the breeze. There is no general city government, and each conces- sion has a post-office and is guarded by policemen of its own nationality. The most picturesque figures of the street are the po- licemen of the English quarter, the tall, dark-skinned, fierce-looking Sikhs from India, of whom the Chiu-se stand in wholesome awe. They wear a dark uniform, but their heads are enveloped in a huge red or vari-col- ored turban as big asa keg. We stayed long enough to become familiar with the streets and to fall victims to the brocade and the silver dealers in the Honan and Nanking roads. All the streets in the city are called roads. The silver, too, is crudely chiseled compared with Japanese work, but it is very curious and pretty. One of my purchases was an odd big silver lock that I had seen the children wearing. It was attached to a hoop that hung around the neck, and I learned that the hoop was locked so as to keep away the evil spirits. Sometimes they put earrings in the boys’ ears to make the evil spirits think they are girls. Girls are not worth their attention it seems. The Chinese brocades are 104 In Old Shanghai ravishing, rich heavy silks that stand alone and to be bought for a half or a third of what we pay for them at home. Fur, too, is tempting, for it is very cheap, par- ticularly a fine quality of fleecy Angora. The ‘‘tailors’’ who waylay you at the Astor House will make anything from street dresses to party capes and do it very well. They always come to the hotel to bring samples and fit you, and they will copy anything you give them exactly. One day [ had occasion to look my tailor up at his place of business. Never shall I forget the dirty little hole in the wall that was his establishment, and I marvel that anything white ever came out of it. It is always so in China, and if you are pleased with results you should by no means inquire into the causes. One night we went to see some opium smokers in what I suppose-would correspond to a café in France. The process was new tome. We went into a dimly- lighted room where men were lying on divans either busy preparing their pipes and smoking them or dream- ing the hours away in lazy content. There was a pun- gent, disagreeable odor in the air, the smell of the opium. It is a pasty, dark substance that comes in lit- tle porcelain pots, and the smoker very carefully melts and rolls a bit of it into a pill which he finally sticks on a peculiar flute-like pipe by means of a long pin and smokes it over a small lamp. ‘‘Hop’’ they call it. ‘‘No good for me,’’ said one man we were watching, who knew a little English and was quite talkative. After we left the opium smokers we went to a Chinese theater, where I saw all the devils and hobgoblins of my 105 One Way Round the World imagination, in the flesh. The house was full of well- dressed men and women, chatting and smoking, and im- mediately on our arrival a courteous attendant offered us each a steaming wet cloth to wash our faces with. We declined with thanks and turned our attention to the play. The orchestra furnished a crash of shivering dis- cords that never for one instant ceased, and there seemed to be plenty of action in the plot. Time is money and money is silver, and as silver is depreciated in China it may account for the depreciation of time. Skits and curtain raisers last about six weeks over here, and they go to their plays by the year. In this particular one the make-up of the principal characters would have fright- ened a small child into fits. One of the ogres had his face painted in blue and white stripes, like the tennis flannels that used to be popular, and his glassy eyes rolled around in a way to make you shudder. There were some really clever acrobats who jumped about in curves rivaling the twists of the Chinese characters. They were bare to the waist and elicited the greatest applause by springing high in the air and falling to the bare floor, alighting on their shoulders with a thud that it seemed would break every bone in their bodies. They were finely built, muscular fellows, and I suspect that they have discovered the secret of turning into India rubber. Another day we went over to the Chinese Shanghai, the old part within the walls. They say that it is one of the worst cities in China, and I breathe a prayer that it may be so. I can not imagine a place more liberally 106 SYOLOV ASANIHO In Old Shanghai and thoroughly frescoed with filth. There is no deny= ing that many of the Chinese are dirty, foully dirty. There is some excuse for it, though, for the struggle for existence with them is pitiful. Ten silver cents a day; five cents of our money—so many cash they call it—is a princely income to many of them.’ All their dealings are in cash, the copper coins with holes in them that they string and wear around their necks. At the pres- ent rate of exchange you get a thousand odd cash for a silver dollar. In the interior, bank notes are unknown, and if you haven’t Mexican dollars, you can carry a bar of silver and break off pieces as you want them. You may even pay your hotel bill with bricks of tea dust. The inconvenience of these methods ee t appeal at all to the Chinese mind. The streets of the native city in Shanghai are narrow and dark and tortuous, a maze through which you couldn’t possibly find your way without a guide. Ona rainy day the water would drip from both eaves on your umbrella. A narrow sedan chair can be carried through them, but it is a squeeze that discommodes the entire street, and the coolies have to go to a corner to turn around. The houses crowd so close together that ‘‘they leave for the eye’s comfort only a bare streak of blue,”’ and there must be many places which the sun’s rays never find. The shops are curious as ever, and I was relieved to find the carpenters sawing away from their toes once more. We were interested, too, in the many fanciful green jade ornaments, a favorite with the Chi- nese. 107 One Way Round the World We visited a joss house, burnt some joss sticks and offered up a string of silver paper prayers, by putting it in an oven built for that purpose. The Chinese idea is that anything which is burned is converted into air and reaches the gods. At their funerals they carry any quantity of eatables in the procession. The gods are supposed to feast on the odors, and the mourners regale themselves with what is left. In one procession I saw at least a dozen roast pigs, each one swung over the shoulders of two coolies, and tray after tray of cakes and other eatables. I mustn’t leave the subject of the old city before I tell you about the smells. It would be a sad injustice to the most. striking features to leave them out. They are far too vivid, though, to do justice to in black and white. Yet we are told they are hardly noticeable now compared with what they are in summer! You may have lived a happy, untroubled life in which you have never had to classify smells, but you would come to it in China. There are smells and smells. Some smells are bad, but you feel that they may be good for you. Some are hopelessly bad. This is the kind that flourishes in the Flowery Kingdom! Take the extreme opposite of the odors of Araby; condense them; and you will have an approximate of the foul stench that assails your nostrils as you walk in Chinese streets. The subject gets to be a joke with travelers. If we didn’t laugh about it we would surely weep. I remember that a friend who has made this trip wrote me that he was trying to lay his hand on a Chinese guide- 108 In Old Shanghai book that he had seen advertised somewhere, and that he would try to get it intime to reach me at Shanghai. “If I do not,”’ he said, ‘‘I shall have to leave you to tackle the smells unaided.’’? The guide-book failed to appear in the Shanghai mail, and his vigorous expres- sion of my fate comes back to me with full force. The smells are awful. There is no guide-book for China, at least none that we have been able to find, and we shall be at the mercy of guides for information. Shanghai is set down on the globe trotter’s itinerary as a place where there is nothing to see. That must mean that there is nothing which can not be seen in other places, for there is so much that is novel and interesting. I shall remember it as the place where we first saw the poor, tortured lit- tle feet of the Chinese women. The custom is much more prevalent than I had supposed, and it is really unusual here to see a woman whose feet have not been bound. Their feet differ a good deal in size, but the soles of some of the smallest shoes are actually not more than two and a half or three inches long. When they are as small as that the women can hardly stand alone and have to be helped when they walk. What a singular custom it is. There is something repulsive about it, too, as well as painful, something hoof-like and animal about the stumps enclosed in the little pointed embroidered shoes. The women are really crippled for life, and once done the mischief can not be reme- died even if they wanted to remedy it. There is a hor- rible fascination about the tiny misshapen feet, and for 109 One Way Round the World the first few days, whenever I saw a woman hobbling along, I would always find my eyes riveted on her feet, wandering just how they have been distorted and what the real shape of the foot was. In Wen Chow (this is anticipating, but I’ll tell you about it now) a pretty young Chinese girl showed us her foot, something that they very rarely do, so I can describe it to you just as it is. It was a shocking sight, and not one that one would want to see twice. The foot-binding is one of the time-honored customs of the country in many provinces and in that way inter- esting. An appeal was once made to the emperor to forbid it, but he replied that it was a custom of his peo- ple with which he could not interfere. Truly fashion is more mighty than emperors. One of its vagaries was the style of extremely pointed toes which has just had its rise and fallin our own enlightened country. They were as far removed as they well could be from the natural shape of the -part of the human form divine which they were intended to cover. Nga Chiae pulled off her tiny embroidered shoe, then slipped off a kind of cotton stocking, shaped like the shoe. Then she deftly unwound the bandages that had bound the foot and kept it from development. You would have hardly recognized the member as a foot.. When it was small and pliant, the small toes had been turned directly under the sole leaving only the great toe free, and it is the great toe that fits in the point of the shoe. The heel is abnormally developed and stands out from the front part of the foot like the heel of a 110 HLTVEM 4O ATINVA ASANIHO V “In Old Shanghai heavy boot. Above the little shoe where the instep is free there was an ugly knot that looked almost as big as my fist. I suppose that lump rises up because the body is thrown so far out of equilibrium. When the girl stands, her full weight rests on the heel and the narrow pointed foot and great toe, under which the other toes are bent. What a wicked, wicked thing it seems to deform and distort a child’s healthy little foot until it becomes a hideous monstrosity like that. The little girls cry for two years with the pain. Yet the Chinese retort that their fashion of compressing the feet is no stranger than ours of compressing the waist, and is not nearly so harmful to the health. ‘‘Chacun a son gout,’ as a Frenchman would say. Xi A Week in Wen Chow, China T was the ‘*Poo Chi’’ that carried us from Shanghai | to Wen Chow, for a visit with Dr. and Mrs. Hogg, our good English friends of the ‘‘Doric.’’ ‘*Poo Chi’”’ means everlasting affluence, I believe, and there is an affluence of good will and good cheer aboard her that makes her well named. Captain Froberg is a tall, handsome fellow, as genial as he is good looking, one of nature’s noblemen. He is a Swede; the first engin- eer is a Scotchman, the first officer is an Englishman and the second officer is an American. They tell me that nearly all engineers are Scotch, and Mr. MacGregor says that if you stick your head in any engine room and sing out, ‘‘Hello, Mac!’’ you are sure to get an answer. Mr. MacGregor was the fourth passenger, a wonderfully well informed Scot who, I am sure, could tell me a great deal more about the United States of America than I could tell him. These sailors spin the most entertaining yarns, whether they are sitting on the capstan or at the dinner table, and Miss Landlubber is picking up a pocket dictionary full of nautical terms and a volume of good stories. For instance, a ‘‘wind jammer’’ is a sailing vessel, and on the stories I wouldn’t venture t> Legin. T12 CHINESE COFFINS AWAITING BURIAL A Week in Wen Chow, China One doesn’t have to go far inland to see the real China, practically unchanged, and Wen Chow forty miles up the Ou river has little that is jarring in the way of modern improvements. The trip down from Shanghai is delightful, and I don’t know why Wen Chow shouldn’t be on the good books of sightseers as well as out-of-the-way Canton. The ‘Poo Chi’’ threaded her way among the islands just off the coast, and in many places the scenery is as lovely as in Japan’s Inland Sea. The water, though, is yellow and thick with mud, and the sails of the junks, with an eye for harmony, are a rich tobacco brown. The mountain sides are checkered with fields and striped with rows upon rows of tombs. China is one great graveyard and the Chinaman’s first duty is to worship at the tomb of his ancestors. In the angles of the old battlemented wall around Wen Chow we saw numerous coffins con- taining bodies, which were put there, we were told, un- til the relatives of the deceased could get enough money to bury them with the ceremony they desired. The few days spent with Dr. and Mrs. Hogg and Mr. and Mrs. Seothill in their pretty homes at Wen Chow, are never to be forgotten—days to mark with a white stone, as Du Maurier says. The lives of these . cultured, charming people, who have given up home and country to perform a labor of love among the de- graded and suffering Chinese, are an inspiration to the most thoughtless. It is an atmosphere of which one breathes deeply as one does of a cool, bracing wind. Our stay was one round of tiffins and dinners and 8 113 One Way Round the World pleasure excursions. Wen Chow hadn’t been so gay for a year, they said. One morning we went far up the river on a house boat, carried by an obliging tide that turned around in the afternoon and brought us back again. The captain was host that day, the weather per- fect, the tiffin irreproachable and embellished by some of Li Hung Chang’s champagne, at least some that was ordered for the ‘‘Poo Chi’’ when the viceroy’s suite made a trip on her. We landed at several of the Chi- nese villages along the banks, where I attracted as much attention as one of Barnum’s freaks. The women ex- amined my gloves wonderingly, and when I took them off were lost in admiration of my fair, soft hands—fair and soft compared with theirs. The Chinese women, as well asthe Japanese, admire a fair skin, and as nature never supplies them with one they use powder liberally. That day they even turned up my dress skirt to examine the lining and the underskirts. The houses of the villages were squalid and dirty—no more, however, than I have seen in other parts of the world. We had a lively time finding our way back from one place to the landing, though it was in full view all the time. The narrow paths skirt the rice fields, in which the water is very wet, and the fields are laid out with about the same regular- ity as the patches in a crazy quilt. Insome places buf- faloes were drawing a primitive plow made of a bent piece of wood; not our bison that we call buffalo, but a queer scant-haired animal that is much more like it- self than anything else that I can think of. Their coat, or lack of it, made me think of a Mexican hairless dog. 114 A Week in Wen Chow, China Buffalo milk, by the way, is the only kind to be had in Wen Chow, and it and the butter made from it are rich and good. The streets of the city were narrow and smelly and crowded and noisy, though full of life and interest, and after a morning or an afternoon in them we would step into the restful flowery ‘‘compound’’ with a sigh of re- lief. Compound is the odd name given to the walled enclosure in which foreigners live. One day we called at the house of a rich merchant Where we made the ac- quaintance of the whole family and were shown all over the house, a palatial one for China. The dog and the baby were afraid of us, and though they became some- what reassured, they eyed us with trepidation to the last. Tea was served in cups with lids, and some delicious sweet cakes made of small oily seeds. The cup must be taken with both hands—it would be a gross breach of etiquette to take it with one, and it is also aw fazt to extract the tea between the lid and the cup without tak- ing the lid off. There is a suggestion for 5 o’clock tea enthusiasts along with the three-cornered cup and sou- venir spoon inflictions. Not that I object to the bever- age that cheers but not inebriates, but to the impossible cups and spoons. Another time we received a call from a Chinese mother and daughter. They were elegantly gowned, I should say jacketed and trousered, and I wish you could see their calling cards, a style to delight an anarchist, flam- ing red with big black characters. The ladies arrived and were carried away in sedan chairs, swung by two 115 One Way Round the World poles on the shoulders of coolies. We often rode in them ourselves, but I always preferred to walk. They crowd the streets so badly and make it very uncomfort- able for the pigs, poor things, for they have to get out of the way too, and do so hate todo so. I’ve seen many a porker assisted squealing on his way, and once I had a dog fight right under my chair. The Chinese remarks that filled the air must have been intense to a degree, but fortunately, I didn’t know them from quotations from the Bible. The Chinese have not the innate cour- tesy of the Japanese, and it is just as well sometimes not to know what they say. One evening just at dusk we saw a bride dress for the marriage ceremony which was to take place several miles in the country. When we went into the room she was dressed in a long robe of green and black, and over this the wedding garment was slipped. It was a gorgeous affair of red and gold, andon her head they put a heavy head-dress of what looked like our artificial flowers. They were carved out of wood, however, painted and gilded. The bridegroom’s gift to the bride is a hairpin, which she wears at the wedding. Her trousseau is car- ried ahead of her in red wooden boxes. Red is the color for weddings and white is the color for mourning. The bride was a sweet-faced, very young girl. When she came out of the house to get into the chair she had a square of red cloth thrown over her head and head- dress. The head-dress is enormous, so it had a most grotesque effect. 116 A Week in Wen Chow, China The bride’s parents do not appear at all at the wed- ding, but are supposed to stay at home and weep. The poor little lonely bride, who is often to be married to a man she has scarcely seen, gets into a gorgeously deco- rated sedan chair, a box-like affair that must be far from comfortable, and the door is locked and not opened until the bridegroom unlocks it at his father’s house. Sometimes in the hot summer weather the head-dress is so heavy and the veil so stifling that the girl faints in the chair. The chair we saw was decorated with many ‘candles placed so recklessly near the inflammable deco- rations that I felt anxious for our little bride’s safety. The marriage procession is as elaborate as the means of the parties will allow. There are Iantern bearers and musicians who wear red jackets and carry big fans. There are usually brides- maids, except that they are not maids but middle-aged women, and the resplendent chair is carried by four ragged coolies very much out at the elbows. Nothing is ever done quietly in China, and there is a vast amount of shouting and arguing done before the procession is finally off. The ear-splitting music either accompanies the din or drowns it altogether, and the fire-crackers crack merrily. At the marriage there is feasting for several days. We came away from Wen Chow with a tremendous snapping of the fire-crackers which hung in long strings in the ‘*compound’’ and at the dock and were carried in front of us through the streets—not in our honor, I must explain, but in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Heywood, who, 117 One Way Round the World after five years of good missionary service at Wen Chow, have been called to the field in Ning Po, and came away with us. There was a crowd of natives at the dock to see them off, and the tears in many eyes were a touch- ing tribute to the love and esteem in which Mr. and Mrs. Heywood were held. ‘‘Good-bye, heart of the river,’’ said little Frank Hey- wood in Chinese, for he chatters Chinese with his amah faster than he can English with his mother. ‘‘Good-bye, heart of the river!’’ He was looking at the island, with its two sentinel pagodas. “‘Good-bye, heart of the river,’’ said I, as I answered the signals of the little group of fluttering handkerchiefs on the docks till they grew so small that they looked like butterflies dancing in the sunlight. ‘‘Good-bye, Wen Chow!’’ I had left a part of my heart there in good keeping. 118 XI In the China Sea E are on board the ‘‘Rohilla,’’ bound for Hong- Kong. She is a stanch vessel of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company plying be- tween Shanghai and Bombay, and affords another of the swift transitions of which the Orient is full. Just as we were becoming accustomed to the Celestial, with his yellow skin, almond eyes and garments of rich brocades, we find ourselves among dark-skinned, red-turbaned East Indians—nor is that all. The crew of the ‘‘Ro- hilla’’ is a curious mixture of nationalities. Not a pig- tail in sight. The captain, chief officers and stewards are conventional Englishmen, the waiters are a mixed Portuguese and Indian blood called Goanese, the stokers are Punjaubers from the Punjaub district in India, the sailors are picked up around Bombay, and the coal trim- mers are thick-lipped Africans from Zanzibar. I said not a pig-tail in sight, but there is one, belong- ing to a passenger, Tong Saey Chee, who is going with his family to Hong-Kong. Tong is what is known as the compredor of a big Russian tea house. A compre- dor is a middle man between the native producers and the foreign buyers, and it is he who gets the biggest “‘squeeze.’’ Tong is evidently very wealthy, and his 1Ig One Way Round the World family wear the most elegant clothes we have seen. They are dressed in Chinese fashion, but the wife has enormous sparkling solitaires in her ears and the little girls have big stones with strings of pearls hung from them. The son isa sturdy, fine-looking boy, and his father tells me he is only eight years old. The feet of one of the little girls are so small that her amah has to help her when she walks. She wears the elaborate em- broidered band around her head and her hair is all drawn to one side just over the ear and braided in one braid that is finished with a long heavy crimson silk tassel. She is a friendly little thing—they all are—but I can only talk with the father, who knows a little pidgin English. All grammar abandon, ye who learn pidgin. I’m afraid I haven’t yet mastered the subject, but I can give you a few examples of it. Pidgin is supposed to be a corruption of the word business, though I think that de- rivation rather a strain on one’s credulity. In the first place, a means of communication was necessary between foreigners and the Chinese, and besides, the dialects of the different provinces in China are so dissimilar that though the written language is the same the people can not understand one another. A man from Ning Po can not understand a man from Wen Chow, yet they are not a day’s steamer-ride apart. If you ask a Shanghai boy on the boat to buy something for you in Ning Po he will say, ‘‘No can buy, no sabe speak.”’’ This pidgin language that has sprung up is used be- tween English and Chinese and oddly enough between 120 In the China Sea the Chinese themselves when they can not understand one another in their own language. It seems to be a simplified English, with superfluous words weeded out and the most prominent words put in the most prominent place. Some of the funniest expressions are said to be a literal translation of the Chinese idiom. John calls a side wheel steamer an ‘‘outside walkee’’ and a stern wheel an ‘‘inside walkee.”’ ‘‘Piecee”’ is a favorite word. The first officer of the ‘Doric’? was known as the first piecee mate. When we went up the Ou from Wen Chow we told the boy who served as master of ceremonies that we wanted to go to where three piecee river came together. You give an order something like this: ‘‘John, go topside and tell one piecee gentleman I want see him.’’ Top- side is up on deck or upstairs. When there is a no in the sentence it usually comes first and a Chinese will always answer yes to a question whether he means yes or no. ‘Can do,”’ or ‘‘No can do,’’ says the tailor. ‘‘Have got,’’ or ‘‘No have got.” ‘‘My no sabe.’? When you are calling and want to know if a gentleman is in—‘‘Boy! Master have got?’ ‘*Yes,’’ he will answer, ‘‘Master no have got.”’ Chop chop is fast and chin chin is a word that means a sort of congratulation or greeting. Chow is food and chit is a card or bill. Sabe is to know or understand. ‘‘Boy! No wantchee wait, wantchee go chop chop to hotel.”? The food at the hotel is known even among Europeans as the chow, and you are told by people who are circling in the opposite direction from yourself what 121 One Way Round the World you may expect in the way of chow further on. There is a certain hotel where the chow is notoriously bad, but which is always full, because it is the best in the place. ‘*What can you expect?’ said a Californian. “Jf I had such a cinch as that I’d feed my guests on rosin.’’ Squeeze is the expressive word for a commis- sion, and every Chinese in the empire except the last one squeezes somebody beneath him in rank or position. There are always big painted eyes in the prow of a boat. ‘‘No have got eye, no can see, no can see no can sabe,’’ reasons the sailor, and he really believes it. It is a good joss, good luck, for a small vessel to cross the bow of a large one, and that superstition gives the captains of the steamers no end of trouble and annoy- ance. The man’in the small boat thinks that the evil spirits which are ever following him will swarm to the large one when he crosses its bow. Chinese boys do not climb trees because they are afraid of the evil spirits of the air. Hong-Kong, meaning good harbor, is as beautiful as it is good. I shall never forget it as I saw it first one bright morning. The ‘‘Rohilla’”? came into port at night, so we did not stand on deck watching the gray “ line of land rise and widen into hills and valleys and plains and the microscopic buildings grow to the size of human habitations as we probably would have done in day-time. Instead, we stepped out on deck in the morning to find ourselves lying in water as blue as a sapphire, surrounded by stately ships, with Hong-Kong 122 CHINESE JUNK, SHOWING THE EYE In the China Sea rising in terraces in front of us away up to the Peak, over which there hung a filmy cloud. The city made me think of a honeycomb, for the houses are all built with rows of stone verandas with arched openings which give exactly that effect at a distance. Now that I know Hong-Kong well and have sauntered often in its busy, picturesque streets and along the leafy, fresh green paths that line the hillside, I’ve grown to think it one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The view from the Peak over the harbor and sea is enchanting. You are hauled up there by a remarkable tramway which slants at an angle that I would not venture to guess at. The car is not raised at one end as such cars usually are, and as you hang on for dear life you are allowed to feel the full force of gravity, principally in the back of your neck, Oddly enough, as you look out of the windows you have the impression that you your- self are on a level and that Hong-Kong and the Peak are sliding into the sea. It is a singular illusion. One Sunday night we walked down at dusk. Lights were beginning to twinkle in the harbor and a great yel- low moon hung in the sky just above the horizon. The bells were ringing in the cathedral. The city looked gray and peaceful, and it seemed like Sunday to us for the first time since we left America. At night the hundreds of lights in the harbor are so starry that you might think a bit of the sky had fallen down to earth. The island of Hong-Kong is entirely a British posses- sion, and the real name of the city is Victoria. There is a bronze statue of the queen in one of the ‘squares, 123 One Way Round the World and I’m told that the Chinese all think she is as black as the statue is. Of society there is plenty. Girls who like to cut a wide swath ought to come out to China, for they will have enough flattery and attention to turn their heads, Susceptible bachelors have a hard time of it, for the girls are all popular. It may be that after a while that worm in the bud, satiety, will creep in and rob Hong- Kong of some of its charm, but for a time it is fascina- ting and there are certainly many charming people who sojourn here. They do not call it ‘‘home,’’ I ob- serve. Home is England, or the States, or France, or Italy, or Spain—never Hong-Kong. The men-of-war and cruisers that are often in port do much to make it lively. The U. S. S. ‘*Machias’’ has been here, and goes to-morrow to Canton. She has been dubbed ‘‘the matchbox’? on account of her diminutive proportions, but she made a big noise with her salute to an admiral, a commodore, and the port the morning she arrived, and the papers complimented her on the rapidity with which the guns were fired. One day we took tiffin with Admiral Monasterio of the Mexican navy on board the ‘‘Zaragoza,’’ and came away with buttons and hat bands to our heart’s content, beside the recollections of an unusually pleasant after- noon. The fad for collections grows and nothing seems to escape. We are beset by stamp dealers on every hand, and the value that those valueless bits of paper have grown to have is marvelous. Everybody goes to Canton, and you can hear almost 124 In the China Sea. as many different opinions of it as there are people to give them. ‘Don’t go! Horrible! Fascinating! In- teresting! One day is more than you want! You can’t see the place in a week!’’ and so on. As usual, the best way is to go and see for one’s self. To describe it is quite another thing. One reads of the teeming millions in China and of the crowded cities, but noth- ing can paint the reality. Canton is seven or eight hours’ ride from Hong-Kong by boat up the Pearl river. It is a very yellowish pearl that the river resem- bles, if any, and around Canton the water has the ap- pearance and consistency of rich and creamy julienne soup. It is a pretty ride, between the low green banks of the broad river, while beyond lies the line of gaunt hills with which China seems to be everywhere guarded. The river sights are varied and interesting. There are the familiar junks and sampans of Shanghai and Hong- Kong, and beside, an odd little boat shaped like a pointed slipper, which skates around over the water like a water bug, leaving the same straight trail behind it. They travel wonderfully fast. Another curious craft is a large unwieldy passenger boat, patronized ex- clusively by Chinese and run by coolie power. There is a sort of treadmill in the stern, and you can see the naked coolies straining every muscle as they laboriously push the wheel. 125 XIV In Canton HE river life at Canton is a wonder. The number of souls who are born and live and marry and die on board the little sampans that jam the river is not known, but it is estimated in the hundreds of thousands. There is a social barrier—if I may use so dignified a term in connection with such a degraded lot of human beings—between the land and the river people, and they do not associate or intermarry. The sampans are only as long as a good sized row boat, and how families live on them is a mystery. Once I saw a little Chinese girl with a baby on her back fall into the water, and when she and the baby had been pulled on board, ap- parently no worse for their ducking, she was slapped for her carelessness. One of the night sights of Canton is the gorgeously decorated ‘flower boats,’? where Chinese mandarins and the gilded youth go for amusement. The boats are flat-bottomed and give space for a good sized room which is decorated brilliantly with red and tinsel hang- ings and cushions. After the trip down the dark river ‘from the hotel in a sampan with weird lights and crafts looming suddenly before one, the flower boats seem blazing with light and color. They are anchored side 126 SAMPANS AT CANTON In Canton by side and you can walk for a long distance on them if you have a care not to fall between. There is plenty of Chinese music and many gayly dressed Chinese men and women. Some of them are smoking opium, some tobacco, many drinking, but there is no disorder and they’seem to take their larks rather seriously. We were escorted thither by ‘‘Susan,’’ one of the characters of Canton. She was a poor little waif in whom some mis- sionaries took an interest, and she developed great busi- ness ability, so great that she now owns several sampans and is much respected. A small urchin who displayed great executive ability in assisting us from one boat to another was pointed out as one of Susan’s sons. Ah Cum, Sr., and Ah Cum, Jr., were our guides and piloted us skillfully through the maze of streets of the city. All the foreigners in Canton live on the island of Shameen, which is only reached by bridges and is guarded by detachments of soldiers in flowing red jack- ets decorated with black hieroglyphics. The Chinese, by the way, consider fighting degrading and have no respect for their soldiers. At night the gates of the bridges are all locked and no-one is allowed to pass. This is done for the safety of the foreigners, and at times they have been in great danger there. ‘‘Foreign devils,’’ the Chinese call us, and the great mass of them do not know that a white man exists. Some of them have become enlightened, our late notable guest, Li Hung Chang, for instance, but what a very little could a thousand Li Hung Changs do in a lifetime to move 127 One Way Round the World the dead weight of superstition, prejudice and ignorance that hangs over four hundred millions of people! But Canton! Can you imagine miles upon miles of narrow, dark, dirty streets, winding and _ tortuous, where the dismal gray walls almost press against one another, so closely are they crowded? Well, adorn the walls with a quantity of multi-colored bills, then im- agine a perfect shower of mysterious long, narrow sign- boards hanging in the air, through which few rays of sunlight manage to creep. Crowd and jam these pas- sageways with pig-tailed men and moon-faced women and roly poly youngsters with goblin ears on their caps, add dogs, and chickens, and pigs, and smells to the collection, and you’ll have an idea of Canton. I don’t think there is a street more than eight feet wide in the city. They are paved with slippery, damp flagstones that have a habit of tipping up treacherously at one end when one steps on the other. Horses are almost un- known, I should say altogether unknown if I hadn’t seen one official, evidently of highest importance, riding a poor little scrub of a white pony who looked as if he had seen much better days. Loads are all carried on coolies’ shoulders, balanced and hanging from a bamboo pole. It is a marvel to everyone how the sedan chairs are ever forced through the crowds. The whole day there is one series of shouts and execrations from your coolies, and at night they ring in your ears in your dreams. They seemed to me to shout ‘‘So long!”’ but no doubt that was a mistake. If a man who is in the way doesn’t make haste to get out they do not hesitate 128 In Canton to assist him, and that not gently. One’s nerves are apt to be worn to a raveling over the many narrow es- capes from collisions and falls. Sometimes the passage of the chairs will block the street for a long distance. I say so much about this that you may have an idea of that first and most lasting impression of the crowded population. The beauty of living isn’t studied in China. I remember I wrote feelingly of smells in my last let- ter. Cologne is said to have seventy smells and none of them cologne, but I don’t think seven thousand would cover the large and flourishing family of them in Canton. Kind Mr. da Cruz, the Portuguese proprietor of the Shameen hotel, thoughtfully provided us with a bottle of Wood Violets, for which we at various times blessed his name. The smells of the streets are bad enough, but the worst stenches come from the foul canals, of which there are many, filled with unmentionable abom- inations and reeking with filth. There are high lights in this truly Rembrandtish pict- ure, for in spite of its drawbacks I managed to report Canton as ‘‘well worth seeing.’’ The streets are a pan- orama that is always unfolding, curious and interesting and varied. The shops are open and are usually lighted from the street, badly lighted goes without saying. There is the quarter of the fan dealers, the silk mer- chants, the shoemakers, the jade and the firecracker sellers, the pawnbrokers, the second-hand stores and: many gambling establishments, for the Chinese are in- veterate gamblers. Mixed in with these are the shops where eatables are sold. The vegetables look inviting 9 129 One Way Round the World enough and they have a fashion of arranging their wares in patterns which gives an air of neatness to the place but I couldn’t possibly describe to you the messes of hideousness that are sold and eaten. Their greasy cakes are fried in grease that seems to have been in use since the time of Confucius. The fowls and animals in the meat markets are cleaned, and dried in conventional patterns by means of small sticks that push them out flat, then they are hung up by the tail, if they had one in life, or by a leg if they hadn’t. We saw cats and dogs galore and many a string of flattened rats. I suppose you can have rat cutlets in the restaurants, and I know I took the precaution to order neither hash nor sausage at the hotel. We tried the Canton preserved ginger, though, and found it very good. The beautifully embroidered Canton crepe shawls, that the Wise One says used to be the acme of elegance when she was a girl, are to be found in quantities in the silk shops. I managed to escape without one, though’ the fascination of buying was strong upon me, but, away from the temptation, I am now sure that I would much rather have something more modish with the cachet of Paris. There is an art in buying as there is in every- thing else, and at the last one is apt to feel that he has bought everything he did not want and nothing that he did. The beautifully embroidered Chinese garments have been a continual pitfall for us. When it is cold the people put on successive layers of clothes and some of the babies are so bundled up that I’m sure they couldn’t touch the back of their necks with their hands. 130 In Canton The children are cunning little youngsters and all as like as two peas. Indeed, for that matter, so are their elders. It has always been a matter of surprise to me how people manage to be so different, with two eyes and a nose and a mouth. The Chinese don’t seem to succeed as well as we. It is with the greatest difficulty that I remember a face, for there is always that same expanse of yellow countenance, lighted by the same beady black eyes, with the same dangling queue. I be- lieve there is a difference but it is hard to detect. The Eurasians, as the mixed Chinese and European blood are called, have a fascination forme. There is a fine look- ing young fellow whom I often see in the Hong-Kong hotel. He wears the Chinese costume, and from under his round black cap, with the red button on top, there descends a queue, but his skin is scarcely yellowish and his features and profile are absolutely Gibsonesque. A few of the Chinese wear spectacles, and they are always great circles of tortoise shell and glass that make their wearers look like owls. And have I told you that a soaring poet once referred to the Chinese women’s feet as ‘‘golden lilies !”’ The regulation sights of Canton are less interesting than the streets, but they afford a grateful rest from the eternal hubbub in the streets and are worthy of mention. No doubt they are worthy of study, too, and it has been observed that the longer a person lives out there the less he is inclined to give positive information on China and the Chinese. I’m told that in the interior many of the Chinese do not know that there has been a war with 131 One Way Round the World Japan. Trade can not be carried inland because of the pirates that infest the navigable rivers and the natives tear up a railroad track as a ‘‘bad joss.”’ Pirates are always beheaded when convicted, and there is often an opportunity, for those who want it, to witness one of their grisly executions. Visitors are al- ways taken to the execution ground in Canton. It is a long narrow strip of land near by a pottery, and when we saw it it was filled with clay jars that were drying in the sun. We did not have the experience of some of our friends who were ushered without warning into the place to find a dozen headless bodies and as many heads lying around on the ground. The men kneel in a line with arms folded and heads bowed awaiting their turn. Meanwhile they can watch the execution of those who come before them! I suppose they suffer very little in anticipation, however, for they are stoics and have ab- solutely no nerves. There are diabolical tortures, too, compared with which the execution is humane—crosses to which victims are fastened and cut in pieces, cages in which they can not get out of a cramped position and are left to die. Prisoners are taken around with a heavy board fastened around their necks, and at the court of justice one of our party saw a prisoner unmercifully flogged with a bamboo stick. ‘‘Bamboo chow chow,”’ it is facetiously called. It may be that these modes of punishment are suited to the race and act wholesomely for the suppression of crime, but they are horrible. A pleasant place to raise one’s spirits, after such sights, is the Viceroy’s garden, where Chinese capitalists 132 In Canton and Americans can afford the rather modest sum that entertainment costs. The czar of Russia, who was then the czarovitch, lunched there when he was in Can- ton. It is a pretty garden-with green clumps of bamboo and banana plants and beautiful bushes of the decora- tive scarlet poinsettia which grows luxuriantly here. There is a little lake in it and the effect is very sum- mery and lovely. Other places that visitors see are the Five Storied and the Flower Pagodas. In another place there are 503 gilded images of Buddhist saints, including Marco Polo, who looks very foolish in a soft felt hat. All the saints have very long bulbous ears to show that they lived to an honorable old age. The vaults where the rich lie in state before they are buried are interesting places. They are gay with lan- terns and flowers and at a sort of shrine before the coffin there is a cup of tea and refreshments for the dead per- son. At one side there is a washbowl. The coffins are huge affairs made of logs and are said to be very expensive. One of them, a lacquered one, in which a Viceroy’s wife lies, is said to have cost $6,000. She died from fright during the bombardment of Foo Chow. At another place there is a primitive water clock in which the flight of time is registered by the dropping of water. All sight-seeing is unsatisfactory for it is dangerous to stop long enough to-let a crowd gather around you. 133 XV From Hong-Kong to Singapore ONG-KONG was interesting to the last, and we came away with pleasantest memories of it. I like best to close my eyes and see the city as it looked at night from the bay. One evening when we were over at Kow Loon, just opposite Hong-Kong, we saw our old friend, the ‘‘Doric,’’ which we had left in Yoko- hama, coming steaming up the stream. She was not expected until the next morning; in fact, she had broken the record from Shanghai to Hong-Kong, making the trip in fifty hours and some minutes. We hurried back to our launch, and steaming out to her, we climbed on board hardly five minutes after her engines stopped beat- ing. I always find myself choosing words which apply to human beings when I’m talking of ships, for there is something so very human about their mechanical life. Their build carries out the idea, too, for they are tall and short, slender and stout, bustling and stately, just as people are. The Doric and her crew were decidedly old friends, but there was a crowd of strange passengers aboard who didn’t seem to belong there at all and with whom I was inclined to find fault. It had grown dark and we leaned against the rail looking down at the jam of sampans below us pressing 134 From Hong-Kong to Singapore against the ship’s dark side, filled with anxious-faced Celestials who were shouting their fare to the Chinese passengers on board and on the alert for a customer. They all carried glowing lanterns, decorated with red characters. Beyond, the black water stretched away from us, and looking around we found we were hemmed in by a trail of starry lights which began at Kow Loon, were carried across the stream by the lights of the vessels and finished in a burst of scintillating fire in Hong-Kong itself. Up and down the hillside the lights hung in twinkling strands. It was as pretty as a carnival in Venice. Another memorable evening was the evening of the governor’s ball. It was given by the governor of the colony at Government House, a beautiful mansion, and all Hong-Kong’s four hundred were there. The ball was the prettiest I’ve ever seen. The ball-room itself is imposing and the gowns of the women were beauti- ful; but the unusual and distinctive touch was the scar- let coats of the English officers. Every other man, at least, was in dress uniform, and the coats, though rather ludicrous as to cut, when examined singly, are brilliant in combined effect. We sailed from Hong-Kong for Singapore on the Sunda, an intermediate steamer of the Peninsular and Oriental line. The intermediate steamers do not carry the mail but make about the same time that the mail steamers do, and are quite as comfortable. The first- class passengers were mostly English officers on their way home or in charge of the troops we had on board, 135 One Way Round the World and very agreeable gentlemen they were. Big Captain Sterling, aide-de-camp to the governor of Hong-Kong, whose acquaintance I made at the ball and renewed on the Sunda, is six feet four and three-quarters tall. As he walked along the decks he was in danger of knock- ing the life-boats overboard with his head. His pro- portions paled, however, beside those of a Singapore man whose height is six feet nine. I didn’t see him, but he is well-known there, and his height is vouched for. The Sunda gave us plenty of impressions of Tommy Atkins. Tommy Atkins, you know, is the name given to every British soldier. He got it from a blank form which was once sent through all the army to be filled out by the soldiers. A specimen one was made out and it began, ‘‘I, Thomas Atkins, do solemnly swear, etc.’’ So the name was coined and it has stuck to the soldiers ever since. There is more than one evidence of old England’s sagacity in the far East. It begins with the safe path- way she has so wisely established from one end of her dominions to the other, starting with Gibraltar and end- ing at Hong-Kong. Her dominant influence is shown in the fact that you can speak English all the way around the globe, while in the East any other European language is rarely heard and almost unknown. All of her mer- chant vessels are prepared to carry troops on short no- tice, and England will never be caught napping. There were accommodations for a thousand men on the Sunda. In the harbor at Singapore there was a vessel floating 136 From Hong-Kong to Singapore the Spanish flag. It was the old Atlantic liner Alaska, now turned into a transport ship carrying troops to Ma- nila. We looked at her through a telescope and could see the soldiers swarming on her decks as thick as flies. She was carrying three thousand men, with proper ac- commodations for about a thousand, and she was in quarantine, having measles, smallpox and typhoid fever aboard. Her flag was always flying at half-mast, alas! for there were frequent deaths. It is the opinion out here that Spain is making her “last kick’? for her colonies. Every ship has brought younger and younger recruits, and these last are mere boys. The news from Manila is as horrifying as that from Cuba, and executions go on merrily at the rate of three or four a day. A well-known young Hong-Kong doctor was shot there a week or two ago for conspiracy in the rebellion, and two hours before the execution he was married to the girl he loved. There are two sides to the question of Spain’s giving up her colonies, and one doesn’t know where to place one’s sympathies. My remarks on Tommy Atkins seem to have died an early death as well as some of the patriots, and I think I'll not return to the subject, for my most vivid recollections of his presence are an irritating bugle that blew at all hours of the day and night and an unsavory odor of onions that was very often wafted over to us from his side of the ship and nearly sent us to the rail. He wasn’t al- lowed to go on shore at Singapore, poor fellow, for he’s apt to enjoy himself so much that he forgets to come back to the ship at all. 137 One Way Round the World Would you enjoy just here a story of an old Scotch- man which is not ‘‘al% propos?’’ One evening the canny old gentleman was spending the evening with a party of convivial friends and about 9 o’clock he arose and began walking around solemnly to each of the party and saying good-night. ‘‘Why, Sandy!’’ they cried, ‘‘you’re not going, are you?”’? ‘‘No,”’ said he, ‘‘but I tho’t I’d say gudenight while I still ken ye.”’ Even the bad sailors made the journey from Hong- Kong to Singapore without quiver or qualm. But such January weather! I suppose we shouldn’t look for frost in the neighborhood of the equator, but I haven’t a Spartan spirit, and I like to grumble about the heat. We sat on deck all day with awnings to shelter us from the burning tropical sun while drops of perspiration trickled down behind our ears and along our spinal col- umns. We tried to get in the path of the faint, hot breeze and lay in our steamer chairs watching the glassy water lazily dimpling instead of rippling—too lifeless to do anything but breathe. Down in the dining salon the punkahs made the air endurable, but the .cabins were stifling. In the evenings the moon was so fine that there was rarely any of the evening left and sometimes some of the morning gone before we could make up our minds to go to bed. The punkah is a sort of long fan hung above the tables, and swung by a servant, which is much used in the East. The native of Singapore considers a bit of drapery, a brilliant turban and a silver ring around his ankle, and it may be his toe, ample costume for a hot climate. 138 AN ORIENTAL COSTUME From Hong-Kong to Singapore Perhaps he’s right. The heat is intense and yet this is the season of the year by courtesy called winter. The thermometer is not so high, but the humidity of the air makes the heat very oppressive. It rains almost every day of the year, and between sun and shower the most unwilling plant must grow and flourish. The bunga- lows, as the houses are called, stand in bowers of green. Even grim poverty is relieved by the lavish hand of na- ture, who weaves her garlands of verdure as carefully around the huts of the poor as the homes of the rich. The native is a fortunate fellow. Like a true child of the tropics, he is lazy and shiftless, but discontent can not be counted among his faults. Pater familias has no harassing thoughts of Easter bonnets to torment him, neither does he need to take much thought for the rai- ment of himself or his family. A scrap of cloth without stitch or seam is all that is required for the older ones, and the little boys and girls omit costumes altogether. Fruits and nourishing nuts are to be had for the seeking, and there is always some warm and sufficiently comfort- able place to lay his head. What wonder that he works only when he is driven to it. The business of the place is almost entirely in the hands of the Chinese, but in the stream of humanity that swirls and eddies and then flows on through the strait almost every nation of the globe is represented. The resident community, too, is very cosmopolitan and includes almost all the nations of the East. There are Singhalese and Javanese, Indians, Chinese, Klings from the Madras coast, Japanese, men from Borneo, wild, for 139 One Way Round the World all I know, New Zealanders, Burmese, Siamese, all castes of Hindoos, Chetties, and many more. The inter- marriage of the races and the mixture of blood adds to the confusion of the new-comers, and J’m sure it would be a long time before I could recognize them all readily. Their color varies from a yellowish cinnamon to ebony. The familiar riksha is one of the means of locomotion, but the favorite is a queer little bus called a gharry, drawn by a diminutive pony who is as tough as a pine knot and trots along with his heavy load at a brisk pace. Raffle’s Hotel, named for the illustrious Raffle who founded the colony, is a lovely place with wide, cool verandas and many windowed rooms which look out on a luxuriant green garden filled with flowering shrubs and decorative palms. The Botanical Garden, too, is a place which everybody goes to see. It is a rarely lovely garden but a bit disappointing to me because it looked in many places much like our parks at home, and I had expected something strange. The jungle with its wilderness of wild creeping things is much more beau- tiful. Tigers still roam there. They swim over from the mainland to the island and occasionally the Sultan of Johore gives a tiger hunt which is of great interest to- sportsmen. It is said that a native is eaten by a tiger on an average every day in the year, but that is probably an exaggeration. The Chetties are interesting: figures of Singapore streets. They come from India and are a rich and in- fluential caste of money-lenders. There was a time when their word was as good as their bond, ard in case 140 From Hong-Kong to Singapore of a failure the obligations of one were met by the oth- ers, but in the last few years some losses have been too heavy for them and they have lost the prestige they had. They are tall, dark, powerful fellows, scantily clothed in white. They shave their heads and around their necks they wear a massive ornament of pure gold. On their foreheads between their eyes they put a sticky sub- stance which dries in a hard, round white wafer. I’m always thinking what capital ghosts they would make on a dark night, with only wafer, teeth, eyeballs and winding sheet in evidence. It was our good fortune to see a procession which takes place annually when the god of silver is taken out for an airing and worshiped with many barbaric rites. We drove in a gharry from the hotel to the native part of the city where there isa Hindoo temple. The streets were full of picturesque figures in gay-hued clothes, bent on‘ merry-making, apparently, more than worship, as holiday crowds are apt to be. We thought the Indian women with their lips and noses and ears pierced with silver and gold ornaments the most interesting, There were not many of them and the crowd was made up principally of men and children. Very few women are seen in the streets of Singapore, for the people have the Oriental idea of secluding them. I am speak- ing of the Oriental population, of course. There isa large English population, and some parts of the city are as English as England. The little brown youngsters were a never-failing source 141 One Way Round the World of amusement to us and the head of the family used up a roll of film on snap-shots. At the end of the street where we entered we could see a gorgeous tinsel arch that seemed to be resting on the shoulders of a man, but he was so closely surrounded by the crowd that we could not get near enough to see him. If we stopped for a moment they crowded around us, and knowing that both cholera and small-pox were prevalent in Singapore, we didn’t care to rub elbows with them. The man was evidently dancing, for the arch swayed and spun around and there was a jingling of bells. Afterward in the temple we saw a procession of dancers carrying the same gaudy arches and whirling in their frenzied dance. It was our first glimpse of barbarism, a revolting picture at which we gazed spell- bound. The men were bare to the waist and their mouths and noses and ears were thrust through with long silver pins which were wet with blood. Their arms and chests and backs were literally full of shorter silver pins which had been thrust so deep into the skin that they stuck and hung there like a bristling coat of mail. The men were staggering and half fainting from exhaustion and some were supported by a couple of at- tendants who prevented them from falling as they tot- tered on in frenzied gyrations. The worshipers in the tawdry temple gazed at them unconcernedly. Our gharry man brought us some of ‘the sticky, whitish paste so that we might put a wafer on our foreheads. It was decidedly gray with dirt and we rather reluctant- ly adorned ourselves to oblige him. He didn’t know 142 BY JINRIKISHA IN SINGAPORE From Hong-Kong to Singapore enough English to explain the significance of it, but I afterward learned that the Hindoo decorates himself with the paste after his daily devotional ablutions and the style of adornment indicates his caste. There are hundreds of these castes in India and their complicated distinctions have presented the greatest difficulty to the authorities who are trying to stamp out the plague in Bombay. There would be riot instantly if the laws of caste were disregarded. News of the plague’s ravages reaches us every day, and we shall probably have to change our route in India and avoid the stricken city. There would be no great danger in going through Bombay, for the deaths from the plague are almost without exception confined to the natives, but all of the ports as far as Malta in the Med- iterranean are quarantined against Bombay, and, as we should have endless difficulties on that account, it will be better to avoid it altogether. Just a word about Penang, the most indescribable and the loveliest of all places we have seen. Other places have been tropical and beautiful but it is in Penang that nature’s glories are most happily grouped and massed. There is a wealth of verdure and a wealth of bloom that carpets the rich red soil in won- drous harmony of colors, and above it all rise grove after grove of regal plumy cocoanut palms that wave so far above one’s head that they seem to brush the blue sky. It is unsafe to call any place the most beautiful in the world, for you are sure to see something later that you 143 One Way Round the World like better and have to retract your rhapsodies, but I am tempted when I tell you of Penang. We were delightfully entertained there by Mr. Jago, who has a lovely home and an interesting collection of rare orchids and ferns. The feathery fareleyensa, an exotic fern suggesting our maidenhair, grows to perfec- tion in Mr. Jago’s conservatories, in heavy clusters of richly shaded, exquisitely tinted green. The orchids too are wonderful, those rich radiant blossoms that seem the flower children of Mystery and Fascination. Per- haps, as Crawford thinks, they are like the soul. It was in Penang that I had my first and last taste of a durian. The durian has a prickly green surface and looks like a huge chestnut burr. It smells, as some- body wittily said, like low tide. The taste is fearful. Imagine, if you can, a combined flavor of garlic, kero- sene, asafetida and axle grease, and you have the aroma and the flavor of it. Yet people cultivate a taste for it and call it delicious. The mangosteen is another fruit of the Malay Peninsula, and it is truly delicious. The hard purplish outer shell is broken away, leaving a white center that is sweet, with a delicate touch of acidity, and hasa flavor fit for the gods. However, I would change one this minute for a good rosy-cheeked Indiana apple. I think it was Byron whose fancy was so airy and capricious that he never could love a woman after he saw her eat. It is a pity that eating is so popular, but in traveling, as elsewhere, one’s comfort and happiness hinge on the first principles of good things to eat and good beds to sleep on. 144 NOTAAO AO NVWOM XVI The Land of Gems and Flowers Pa Ceylon! Sunny land of flowers and fra- grance, majestic forests and sparkling gems. She herself is like a radiant jewel lying on the bosom of the pulsing sea. From this poetic flight you will observe that I have been duly impressed by the charms which writers have tried in vain to describe and of which poets have vainly sung. Who can find adjectives that glow as color does, or verbs that smell sweet of spice, or nouns that burn like tropical skies? It is consoling to remember that we all have our limitations. As the composer of the immortal Boom-de-ay feelingly sang. “ Shakespeare could write a play-ay But he never saw the day-ay That he could write Ta ra ra Boom-de-ay.” Perhaps James Lane Allen could paint as faithful a word picture of the jungle as he has of Kentucky woods and make one feel the quiver of heat in the tremulous air as he does the sharp touch of frost. I think of no other writer whose books are so full of atmosphere, as we might say of a painting. 10 145 One Way Round the World Colombo is citified and fantastic, with as near an ap- proach to bustle as the lazy Oriental is capable of pro- ducing. We were pleasantly introduced by being car- ried ashore ina ‘‘jolly’’ boat, and tarried awhile in the custom-house before going to the Grand Oriental. Calls and customs are inflictions from which the traveler to the ends of the earth probably does not escape. The Grand Oriental is a big, busy hotel that suggests the Grand at Yokohama, and has the same misceilaneous collection of foreigners under its roof. It has a cosy, wide veranda fitted up with wicker chairs and tables, where people sit and drink and smoke, watching the passers-by in the street or bargaining with the insistent vendors of lace and jewelry and pudgy ebony and ivory elephants, who swarm around like flies. Colombo is supposed to be a great market for gems, particularly sapphires, but to begin with, they are badly set and then the best of everything is picked up by the expert European and American buyers. The dealers are a set of the most artistic liars that I have ever met. I thought the unprincipled scallawags who keep the little shops along the Tiber in Rome the most perfect specimens of their kind in existence, but I hadn’t been to Ceylon. The streets are lined with little jewelry shops all displaying very much the same line of wares, and I’ve never heard of any one who succeeded in walk- ing along the sidewalk without being pulled into some of them. The dealers have no hesitation about selling for what they can get, and they unblushingly accept a half or a quarter or a fifth of the price that they ask for 146 A “JOLLY” BOAT The Land of Gems and Flowers an article. There may be some reliable men among them, but I fear Diogenes would get out his lantern. If you are a judge, well and good, for the dealer soon finds that out and bargains accordingly, but if you are unin- formed, as most people are, beware! asked a resident of Colombo whether there was a shop where a person who was not a judge of stones could be sure of being asked a reasonable price and he replied, ‘I’m afraid not.’? Moonstones are plentiful and cheap; there are also many cat’s-eyes that have the elusive charm of the opal, rings upon rings of sapphires and pearls and ru- bies, set principally in gypsy fashion. For the lovers of the curious there are many quaint bits of old Singha- lese jewelry, combs and rings and necklaces. I have in my mind an odd barbaric ring set with all the jewels of Ceylon, and a unique necklace of strings of seed pearls separated by carnelian balls overlaid with a delicate net- work of gold. Gambling is said to be as great a curse to the Sing- halese as to the Chinese. Sometimes you see the cool- ies squatting beside their rikshas, watching something very intently. They have put a couple of silver coins on the shafts of the vehicle and are waiting to see on which a fly will alight first. The dealer has the same spirit. He will toss, if youlike, for a jewel for which he asks ten rupees. ‘‘Master toss, twenty rupees or noth- ing.”’ The streets are filled with the same motley crowd as in Singapore, though there are few Chinese. There are a good many Moors in Colombo, They wear queer 147 One Way Round the World variegated silk hats, woven like straw, that look like inverted waste paper baskets, and a long white coat that appears to be an evolution of the Prince Albert. There are many families from Southern India, darker and more barbaric than the regular-featured, intelligent-looking Singhalese. The Kling laborers are figures that would make Indianapolitans open their eyes if set down in Washington street. As in Singapore, they consider a bit of drapery and a brilliant turban ample, costume for a hot climate and a general absence of superfluity in clothing is noticeable. The Tamils make up for the deficiency by a quantity of nose and ear ornaments, bracelets and anklets. Isend a picture of a little Tamil bride, ten years old. The piece just above the neck- lace with the three hanging amulets shows that she is a married woman. Her father is a very rich man and her ornaments are all gold. Her dress is silk but with the Oriental disregard of detail her skirt is tied on with a piece of jute string. The Tamil women cut great pieces out of the lobes of their ears and weight them down with heavy ornaments. The Singhalese girls are very pretty. They have large, soft eyes, good features and round, shapely fig- ures. They wear odd little low-necked white jackets usually trimmed with crocheted lace, a fashion that I fancy was introduced by the Dutch, a bright-colored skirt and few ornaments. Both men and women have a look of refinement and intelligence. The Singhalese men are very womanish in appearance. They have long curling black hair that is shiny with cocoanut oil 148 SNAKE CHARMER AND JUGGLER The Land of Gems and Flowers > and is done up in a knot at the back of their heads just as awoman’s is. At the top of the head they wear a circular tortoise-shell comb. Of garments they have few. The real native costume is a yard or two of cloth; in the cities some of the men wear European coats but usually they have none. Large checks are still in vogue in Ceylon, worn skirt fashion and fastened on by a leather belt. We used to entertain ourselves at the G. O. H., as the Grand Oriental is always called, by watching the per- formance of an Indian magician, who sits in front of the veranda. He has a vicious cobra that hisses and rears its flat head threateningly, and he plays a weird tune on a peculiar musical instrument which apparently charms the snake. As soon as a little crowd of idlers has gathered around him the magician shuts the cobra up in a basket and begins his performance. His tricks are not elaborate, but they are very skillfully done, quite enough so to be entertaining. The man squats on the ground not more than six or eight feet from his au- dience, and having no accessories in the way of lights and curtains, he has to be very expert todeceive. He does the mango trick, making the mango shrub grow from the seed in a few moments, very well indeed. It remained a mystery to all of us. However, the seed does its growing under a square of cloth, and that takes the edge off of a supernatural flavor that it might other- wise have. The tales of the miraculous performances of the far-famed East Indian jugglers are not well au- thenticated. 149 One Way Round the World The residence part of Colombo is almost as lovely as that of Penang, and it has the same low red-roofed bun- galows, surrounded by the same flowery gardens over- hung by groves of the same graceful cocoanut palms. The native part of the city is dirty, with rows of squalid one-roomed houses, in which sometimes two or three families seem to be living. As a whole the place is disgusting, but that doesn’t prevent one from coming occasionally upon very charming bits of life that delight snapshotters and are worthy of a frame and a place on a great gallery’s walls—perhaps a dark Tamil beauty standing in an attitude of easy grace in a doorway and showing her white teeth in a smile, perhaps a handsome mother walking with an even swinging step and carry- ing a brown baby who sits astride her hip and wears some silver bracelets and anklets and a silver chain around his fat little waist for all his adornments, perhaps a shapely brown little boy with a red cap and bright eyes. The streets are full of top-heavy carts drawn by little bullocks who look ridiculously disproportionate to the vehicle and who are driven by a rope tied through their nostrils. They are slow but sure and are really not so heavily loaded as they appear. The carts have a high hooded rush cover that protects from the sun and rain and is, of course, very light. The passenger vehi- cles are little wagons called hackeries, also drawn by diminutive bullocks, and advancing at a rate well suited to the Singhalese temperament. 1 should have nervous prostration if 1 had to ride in them a mile; fortunately 150 A SINGHALESE GROUP The Land of Gems and Flowers there are jinrikishas and stout English horses for the stranger within the gates. One evening we went for a drive along the Galle Face road. That distressing name seems to have been given to it because there is a peninsula beyond called Point de Galle. The place is heavenly. I use the world advisedly. The road skirts the sea and there is something singularly majestic and grand about the ocean there, as it rolls up on the glassy wet beach in curling, foaming, thundering white waves. It was sun- set. There had just fallen one of those beating tropical rains that wash the sky clean and leave it clear and blue as a sapphire. The air was sweet and fresh, and the damp road, red when it is dry, was a rich maroon. To the right lay a level stretch of vivid green, dotted with the gay hued figures of natives and fringed at the hori- zon with palms. Toward the west the sea and sky were one blaze of burnished metallic opal tints. It seems as if wind and weather had the same impulsive disposition as the children of the tropics. Sun and shower follow one another in quick succession, and the rain is fierce while it lasts. The glory was quickly gone. The fiery tints melted Into gray and the shadowy ships sailed away into the dusk. That is what we all have—the glory of the skies. Perhaps it is the universal message. A punster would surely make material of the fact that Buddha’s left eye-tooth rests in Kandy. I don’t know the tooth’s history, that is its early history, 151 One Way Round the World whether it was extracted in life or whether it was deco- rously presented after the great teacher’s death. I must whisper, too, that the sacred tooth which is thought worthy of a temple to enshrine it and is an object of veneration to 400,000,000 people, is the subject of many an irreverent jest among unbelievers. It was lately exhibited in honor of some Siamese prince or other and somebody who saw it pronounced it the tooth of an alligator, If it corresponds with a foot-print of Buddha that I paid a few coppers to see, it should be about that size. The Dalada Maligana or temple of the Sacred Tooth is in Kandy, and it is to Kandy we go from Colombo. The ride up into the mountains is an interesting and beautiful one. The slopes are covered with a strange and lovely vegetation and the types of natives are end- less. Even the animals are curious, the little hump- backed bullocks and particularly the ugly gray buffaloes. Sometimes in a marshy place you will see what seem to bea lot of gray rocks along the surface of the water, but when you see some of the rocks move you discover that they are the noses and faces of a herd of buffaloes that have placidly waded as far as possible into the water both to keep cool and to avoid switching flies. Some writer on Ceylon referred tc these animals as “the mud caressing buffalo,’’ but in my mind I do not connect mud with caresses. The little bullocks, which are not amphibious, have their hides fancifully decorated with stripes and circles and scallops, the scars of cruel 152 NATIVE BUNGALOWS NEAR KANDY The Land of Gems and Flowers cuts that are made with a sharp knife when the bul- lock is young. Kandy itself is delightful. The air is much cooler than in Colombo and the town encircles a pretty artifi- cial lake made for the last Kandyan king and intended for his own private use. This district has a history of bloodshed, horrible cruelty and long warfare with Por- tuguese, Dutch and English invaders, but it is at last peaceably in the hands of the English and the last Kandyan king has been gathered to his forefathers. Photographs will tell you the story of Kandy’s loveli- ness. My instinct for photographs is becoming so de- veloped that I find myself drawing a line around every- thing I see and imagining it on a plate. A drive around the lake takes one past many cozy bungalows with deep pillared verandas and luxuriant gardens. Many of them are filled with bushes of poinsettia, flamboyant, as it is well named out here. Its gorgeous wheels of scar- let and gold are a favorite resting place for the gauzy winged flies and brilliant butterflies. By moonlight the bold frondsof the palms stand out in black relief against the sky. I look in vain for my old friends among the stars. They are either so changed in position that I can’t recognize them or they have disappeared altogether beneath the rim of the horizon. One drawback to tropical loveliness is the large number of venomous creatures that live in the jungles. We have become ac- customed to the lively little lizards that play tag on our bedroom walls and the giant beetles that bump clumsily around the room. Fortunately we haven’t had any en- 153 One Way Round the World counters with scorpions or centipedes, though they say that in some places you have to take care to shake your shoes in the morning before putting them on. ‘‘They say,’’ however, is a sad prevaricator. Another draw- back is the weekly return of our wrecked washing. The garments are washed by men who batter them against a rock until they are a delicate pearl gray and return them in tatters. The Temple of the Tooth may be visited many times and always with fresh interest. It is not a beautiful place but very curious. The tooth, so a legend runs, was formerly at Danta-poora, near Calcutta. Many at- tempts were made by the Brahmins to destroy it by fire but it always reappeared folded in a lotus blossom. Elephants trod upon it, but it rose from the earth in a lotus of silver and gold. It was cast into sewers and the sewers were immediately transformed into beauti- ful lakes. Finally it was carried to Ceylon in the dusky tresses of an Indian princess and here it has remained ever since. Once a year, in August, there is a grand procession called the ‘‘Perahara,’’ when the tooth is taken from the tempie and carried through the streets on an elephant’s back. It is rarely shown to anyone, but has been seen on the occasion of a visit of royalty. At that time the Kandyan chiefs appear in their robes of state. The robe of state in Kandy is a very compli- cated affair, indeed, and it is said there are a hundred and fifty yards of silk in it. Most of it is gathered in a great wad under the belt, and the Kandyan chief in full regalia must be a comical object. His mien is dignified 154 THE TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH The Land of Gems and Flowers but the little white ruffles around his ankles are not. Opposite the temple is a bell-shaped shrine, called a dagoba. These dagobas vary in size from small metal ones studded with jewels, which envelop relics, to build- ings of gigantic size. The temple itself is enclosed by a wall and a moat filled with water in which the sacred tortoises are swimming, Entering a small quadrangle one goes up a flight of steps into a sort of an anteroom to the inner shrine. Along the way there are some highly colored Egyptian-like frescoes that represent the torments in store for sinners —those who pluck the leaves of the sacred bo tree, those of a lower caste who insult those of a higher, and so on through a list of evil doing. The sight in the anteroom is a memorable one, First you are conscious only of a terrific tomtoming that is fairly splitting your ears. Tomtoms are native drums much liked by the noise-loving Oriental, and the drum- mers in the temple whack them vigorously. The room is crowded with reverent worshipers wearing many rich colored fabrics, and occasionally a brown shaven priest draped in yellow passes by. The air is heavy with the fragrance of flowers which are being sold from booths at either side of the room, This is the pretty offering that the devout Buddhist offers at the shrine of the tooth. Only the corolla of the flower is used and bushels of them are piled up in fragrant confusion. They are renewed every morning so they are fresh and dewy. The fragrant plumiera with pure creamy petals #5 One Way Round the World and yellow heart, the jasmine and the oleander are favorites. Passing through a doorway which has elephant’s tusks on either side, and mounting a steep staircase you come to another door elaborately inlaid with silver and ivory. Passing through this door you are in the shrine. Inside an iron cage is a silver dagoba hung with jeweled ornaments, given by the last Kandyan king, who built the temple. Inside the Jarge dagoba are seven smaller ones studded with precious stones, and under the last one rests the sacred tooth in the heart of a golden lotus. It is all very barbaric and curious, and it is surprising to find in the library a priest who has been to England and speaks English admirably. He showed us some books written on narrow strips of palm leaf pierced with a hole at either end and tied between covers of massive silver. They are written with a stylus in the classic Pali language, and the priest wrote my name for me on a bit of palm leaf, in Singhalese characters. The palm is as useful as the bamboo and there is one variety, the Talipot, that is said to have Sor uses. It furnishes sun- shades and rain coats, tents, fans, paper, and so on. There is a stud of forty fine elephants kept by the temple for the Perahara procession. They are not as interesting as the big, sagacious fellows that one sees at work. These huge but gentle beasts do all kinds of heavy work, obeying a word from their masters though they could crush them with one blow. One morning we saw an elephant which was rolling a big log up a hill. We stopped to watch him and he brought it out 156 AN ELEPHANT AT WORK. The Land of Gems and Flowers into the road, put it down, and at his master’s suggestion came over and made a profound salaam to us. In the elephant corrals, as the catching of elephants is called, when they are not killed the tame elephants help to drive the wild elephants into an enclosure and after- ward help to tame them. The jungles are full of leop- ards, tigers, elephants and monkeys, and all kinds of reptiles. The prettiest drive from Kandy is to the Peradeniya Garden. The road is one long vista of green and bloom, and by the roadside are the mud huts of the natives, thatched with palm leaves. There is a legend that the palm tree can not live far from the sea nor from the sound of human voices. The natives tempt me to use again that overworked word picturesque. I like best the bright-eyed, brown little boys with their ready smile and gleaming rows of even, white teeth. They are Palmer Cox’s brownies in the flesh. The cunning small children wear no clothing at all. Fortunately they are black. In the distance they caper like animated silhouettes and near by a stretch of, the imagination turns them into little bronzes. The men’s lips and teeth are blood red from chewing the betel nut. The women are very often seen carrying a round earthen water jar which rests on the hips. They all seem careless and contented. Din- ger is growing at the door.and work is irksome. The spice trees of the beautiful Peradeniya Garden are perhaps the most interesting. It is novel to walk about picking up little bunches of green cloves that have just fallen from the tree, or nibbling at a green nutmeg 157 One Way Round the World or chewing a stick of fresh cut juicy cinnamon. The cinnamon odor carries farthest, and when it is being gathered the perfume is wafted miles and miles out to sea. You can pick a bit of cinchona bark from the tree or amuse yourself touching the sensitive plant that carpets the ground in many places. It is covered with starry, purplish blossoms and droops pathetically at the slightest touch. The India rubber is a stately tree with wonderful snaky roots that stand out of the ground and if bruised exude a whitish rubber. I bought a solid ball of the strings wound tight upon one another which bounces finely. The spreading banyan tree flourishes and sends its arms to the ground for support. A beau- tiful fan palm is known as the traveler’s palm, because it holds about a quart of pure water at the base of each of its spreading leaves. The cocoa bushes are filled with the dark red cocoa pods. There is a curious can- dle tree with long green pods that look like candles hanging directly from the bark of the tree instead of from the branches. The jak fruit, big and green, but with the flavor of a potato, grows the same way. The giant clump of bamboos is wonderful. This ambitious member of the grass family has stalks that are nine inches in diameter and a hundred feet high. In the rainy season if you hang your hat on a stalk of bamboo at night, you’ll have to have a ladder to reach it in the morning. The Mahawelliganga is a river that almost encircles the garden. Indian and Singhalese names leave noth- "ing to be desired. In fact one would be satisfied with 158 GIANT BAMBOO The Land of Gems and Flowers less. This is a list of simple ones. Anuradhapura, Pollonarua, Henaratgoda, Nawalapitiya, Rambukkana, Kadugannawa. Newara-Eliya, humanely shortened to ‘‘Nuralia’’ in pronunciation, is a mountain resort far above Kandy which is popular with Europeans, but is too much like our own mountain scenery to be well worth visiting. All the way from Kandy to Newara-Eliya the moun- tains are almost entirely covered with tea fields. It is the tea which is now being so widely advertised in the States, by the government, I’m told, for the benefit of the planters. Formerly all this tea land was in coffee, but a blight destroyed all the bushes. We saw the en- tire process of preparing tea for the market. It is a simple one of picking the tender leaves from the low tea bushes and rolling and drying them artificially. At last the leaves are sifted and sorted and sealed in lead foil ready for shipment. We leave for Calcutta by the Chusan, in spite of ominous reports of the plague and the danger of quar- antine, The disease is still confined to Bombay and the danger of contagion is very slight. 159 XVI What We Saw in India \ K JE were leaning idly against the rail of the Chusan as she lay in the harbor at Colombo. ‘‘Hop-o-die! Hop-o-die!”’ called a row of black indi- viduals who were sitting on their heels on a rude raft made of three logs of wood lashed together. They sat at equal distances from one another, as neatly arranged as peas in a pod, and each one paddled with a split sec- tion of a bamboo pole in lieu of an oar. ‘‘Hlop-o-die! Hop-o-die!’’ they called, looking anx- iously at the people along the rail and evidently on the alert for something. The Chusan was supposed to sail at 10 A. M. from Colombo, and there had been a vast hustle and bustle and confusion in the Grand Oriental Hotel to get her passengers off by that time.. The very pulse of the port hotel is the arrival and departure of the ocean steamers. When they are in port everything is full of life and movement. Even the punkahs feel the current and flap vigorously. Then when the ships sail away again carrying their passengers on with them, or the passen- gers have departed for the sights in the interior, the hotel settles down into a calm which by contrast is des- olate, to be revived in a short season by a new regiment 160 What We Saw in India of globe trotters. One of the pleasantest features of the long journey around the globe is the meeting and re- meeting of fellow-travelers who have been a steamer ahead of you or perhaps a steamer behind, and who finally cross your path again. But, as I was saying, the Chusan’s passengers, after a deal of fuss and tribulation, arrived on board in peace and in a perspiration, at 10 o’clock. A last tempting bit of freight must have been at the bottom of it, for we didn’t sail until 4 Pp. M. and were left to entertain ourselves, meanwhile, with the venders of moonstones and coarse hand-made lace, who clambered on board. Bargaining with the Oriental is an affair of time and patience and my disposition is be- ing ruined by their methods. Besides, I ama jaded shopper by this time and it requires something rare or unusual to hold my attention. It was much more enter- taining to lean against the rail and watch the craft that pressed against the ship’s dark side. There were big cargo boats alongside, filled with boxes and bales that the dark-skinned coolies were hoisting on board. Then came the smaller passenger boats and a curious craft called an outrigger canoe or catamaran. The boat isa narrow coffin-shaped affair that stands high out of the water, and would instantly topple over if it were not held upright by a floating bar of wood that is fastened to the side of the canoe by a couple of arching arms. They look very ticklish and I should be afraid to wink one eye without the other if I were a passenger. ‘‘Hop-o-die! Hop-o-die!’’ called the black urchins. II 161 One Way Round the World ‘What are they saying?’’ said I to my neighbor, who shall be known as the Gentleman from Madras. ‘Don’t you recognize your mother tongue?”’ he re- plied. ‘‘They want you to throw a coin and they are saying, ‘Have a dive! Havea dive!’’’ Before we had time to find a small silver piece and throw it into the water the remarkable quintet arose from their sitting position and stood like a row of crows on their shaky raft. Their costume was microscopic and their expres- sion one of deep solemnity. At a signal they began clicking their elbows sharply against their bare sides, marking time by the resounding slaps, and suddenly, without a word of warning, they burst into song. ‘Ta- ra-ra Boom-de-ay!’’ they howled, as solemn as owls, slapping themselves vigorously first on one side and then the other, and singing as if their lives depended on it, a garbled version of Lottie Collins’s chef-d’a@uvre. You may travel around the globe from pole to pole and I’m sure you'll find nothing more comical than the fervent rendition of ‘‘Ta-ra-ra’”’? which those imps of darkness give. We were convulsed with laughter, and a shower of silver bits began to fall over the Chusan’s side. As soon as a coin struck the water there was a lunge from the raft, five bodies darted through the air and in a tan- gle of brown legs the whole party disappeared under the water. In a moment they were up again and one of them would triumphantly display the shining silver coin. They are clever divers and will even dive under the ship for a consideration. - - The devil dancers of Ceylon are a curious institution. 162 DEVIL DANCERS OF CEYLON What We Saw in India When anyone of means is very ill he sends for the devil dancers. They dress themselves in the most hair-rais- ing costumes and dance around the dwelling, beating tom-toms and gongs. At a critical point in an illness such a racket usually causes a man to rally or kills him outright and the devil dancers have the reputation of effecting most wonderful cures. Probably the idea is the same as with the Chinese, that the noise frightens away the evil spirits that are flocking around to take the man’s life. We had a large and flourishing collection of Anglo- Indian babies on board the Chusan, pink-and-white wholesome-looking youngsters who were born in India and had been home to England for a visit. They-trotted around the deck, followed by their Indian ‘‘ayahs,’’ as their nurses are called, and made life alternately delight- ful and miserable for the passengers. I talked often with the Gentleman from Madras. He was one of those cordial Britons who has lived for years in the East and is distinctly more agreeable than his countrymen at home. The Gentleman from Madras had India and its history at his tongue’s end and was ever ready to tell some of his interesting experiences, per- haps of an exciting tiger hunt, perhaps of an audience with a rajah. He knew Col. Olcott, Annie Besant and Madame Blavatsky very well. ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” he said of the latter. Col. Olcott, the apostle of theosophy, lives near Madras and his home is the Mecca of theosophists. I remember him very well, as I crossed the Atlantic with him several years ago, a big, 163 One Way Round the World genial man with snowy hair and beard which made him look like Kris Kringle, and I regret that our stay in Madras was too short to allow us to call and renew ac- quaintance with him. On all the long eastern coast of India there is no nat- ural harbor, and the artificial one at Madras was made at tremendous cost, a million tons of concrete blocks being used. At one time it was almost destroyed by a cyclone and the storm’s fury can still he seen in the row of slanting undermined blocks that lie outside the new and firm walls. The surf is usually strong inside the harbor, and as there are no docks, the landing of pas- sengers and freight is often tedious and even dangerous. The instability of human affairs is never more graph- ically realized than when one stands uncertainly on the lowest step of a ship ladder ready to get into a pitching, rocking small boat which first rises alluringly quite with- in reach of your foot and then sinks suddenly to a dizzy depth below it. We were fortunate in having a com- paratively calm day, and as soon as our big ship sailed within the encircling arms of the harbor walls the native boats began to put out from the shore. The boats are high, open craft made of thin planks stitched with co- coanut fiber. They make me think of a section of a foot-ball. They were manned bya double dozen of rowers who pulled long oars made of a straight bar of wood with a round wafer attached to the end, which did duty as a blade. Madras from a distance is imposing, the graceful domes of the law courts rising clear and beautiful against 164 What We Saw in India the sky. A closer inspection of Blacktown and White- town, as the native and European quarters are called, reveals little that is beautiful and much that is repulsive and dirty. The only charm is the brilliant, slow-mov- ing, panorama of the streets. The Oriental saunters and idles, never jostling, never hurrying. If time flies he bids it godspeed, and goes on his way leisurely. In Madras we rode on an electric car line, the only one in India, I believe. Its swift flight seems curiously out of place in the lazy streets, but at least it outwits the burning sun and furnishes a refreshing breeze. The bullocks are even smaller than in Ceylon, and how the fat passengers squeeze into the little carts is a mystery. The little bullocks very often have one horn painted red and one green and they wear strings of beads around their necks. The religion of a Mussulman or Hindu does not permit him to take the life of an animal, but it doesn’t prevent him from abusing one. The bul- locks are meek, docile-looking creatures, but they are unmercifully thumped and whacked and pounded by the drivers, while their poor little tails are twisted into cork- screws. Perhaps they are like the wily mule and their mild mien gives no hint of their latent determination. In one place we saw a great crowd assembled in an open square evidently waiting to see some one who was to come out of the temple near by. We thought of stopping and afterwards regretted that we did not, for we learned that the crowd was waiting to see Swami Vive Kananda, a noted Brahmin preacher whom the Wise One had met in Chicago. It was he who repre- 165 One Way Round the World sented the Brahmo Somaj religion in the Parliament of Religions. The last place to look for Madras plaids is in Madras. We spent a quite unwarranted length of time looking for some of the rich colored cotton fabrics which we call Madras plaids. Perhaps they are made in Manchester. It is a fact that a large number of gay blankets and plaids are woven in Manchester for the Indian trade. Even fabrics have their ups and downs. There is denim that used to shine in overalls, now enthroned as a high art textile. A band of the cleverest jugglers that we have seen entertained us on board the steamer. They did dozens of the cleverest and most mysterious tricks, but by far the most remarkable was what is known as the basket trick. A woman is tied in a net and pushed into a bas- ket which seems hardly large enough to contain her body. The basket stands on the deck surrounded by a ring of people and there is no chance of changing it in any way or substituting another one for it. After the cover is put on the man calls to the woman and a muffled voice from the basket answers. Then he takes a murder- ous looking long knife and thrusts it right and left through the basket, apparently in every direction, rapidly and fiercely. There are shudders and ohs and ahs from the mystified spectators. After a little while the cover is lifted and the woman gets out, free from the net which had been tied in stout knots around her, and unharmed. She is apparently wedged so tight in the basket that she has to be helped to free her head. It is a most wonderful 166 What We Saw in India illusion. The basket must be deceptive in size and yet there it is right under your eyes and not six feet away. How the woman ever manages to escape being pierced by the knife is marvelous. It goes clear through the basket and sticks out on the other side. ‘There must be room for her to move and avoid it, and yet the basket doesn’t shake and the knife is thrust through and through . in quick succession. It is easy to understand how these adept jugglers get the reputation of having miraculous powers. The Hooghly is one of the shower of streams that form the delta of the Ganges. You may spell it with variations, Hooghly, Hugli, Hoogli, Hughli, and defy any one to prove that your spelling is wrong. Hindus- tani coquets with the alphabet. There are half a dozen ways of spelling every Indian name, and this or that authority is sure to clash with your own ideas of the way the thing should be done. Probably the confusion arose when the Hindustani names first began to be used in English. It is likely that they were carelessly spelled as they sounded, without any rule of pronunciation. Jeypore, for instance, is, I believe, properly spelled Jaipur, but Jeypore is much more familiar. As we neared Calcutta the question of the day’s run and the pool thereon, which always furnishes a certain stir and excitement on board, was laid aside for the more engrossing topic of taking on a pilot. Here was a new field for speculation into which we all rushed eagerly. A pilot on shore is a commonplace individual enough, but when he comes on board a ship he is the 167 One Way Round the World hero of the hour. It was past midnight when we sighted a ghostly brig that was signalling to us with a flaring torch. We ran as near her as it was safe to do and our panting engines stopped, leaving us rocking like a cradle on the swelling waves. In a few moments we saw com- ing toward us a very speck of yellow light, a will o’ the wisp that danced on the crest of a wave and then swiftly disappeared. The sea was glittering and glassy, and the powerful out-running tide pulled and tugged at the ship’s side. Presently we could see that the yellow light was in a staunch little boat, and we watched its rowers fight inch by inch for their way as they came toward us. The water swished and curled and sucked, but the boat held its ground and gained steadily. At last it was along- side and the much heralded pilot clambered on board. The Hooghly is a shifting, treacherous stream, and its pilots are as skillful as any in the world. The Ganges is lower this year than it has been for thirty-three years, and the quicksands are more than usually dangerous. As we went up the river the men stood by the boats ready to lower them at an instant’s warning. On our way we saw the masts of the City of Canterbury stick- ing out of the water. She sank a few weeks ago. The passengers were rescued, but lost all of theirluggage. She was a fine, big ship, and the sight of the tips of her masts above the water, combined with the fact that the men on your own vessel are standing by the life boats, is apt to make you feel, as we used to say at boarding school, ‘‘vivid along your backbone.’’ We wound and twisted with the channel, almost 168 What We Saw in India tying loops in our course, and when the dangerous part Was passed we steamed steadily up the stream between green banks of plumy cocoanut palms and tangled jun- gle, where the sportsmen tell you there is rare tiger shooting. Near the city are the ruins of the palace of the last king of Oude and many dismantled mansions in what was once the fashionable part of town. At the dock we crawled down a particularly long, particularly slippery and particularly tilted gang-plank, in imminent danger of having our heads bumped by the trunks which the coolies were carrying down on their heads, and climbed into the least disreputable of a dis- reputable row of gharries that were waiting there. The gharry is a ramshackle box of a carriage, drawn by two lean horses, steered by a lean driver and fur- nished with irritating sliding side doors that insist upon sliding in the direction that you do not want them to, whichever that may be. We watched our baggage piled in a shaky pyramid on another gharry, not without misgivings, and afterward made a note of another dodge adopted by the fertile heathen for extracting money, for the baggage might just as well have gone with us. ‘‘At last we are on shore!’’ said the Wise One, as we rattled away, and we leaned back and sighed two sighs of relief. The Wise One’s sighs of relief and my own are a continual source of edification tome. ‘At last we are on shore!’’ we exclaim rapturously at the end of a sea voyage. ‘‘At last we are at sea!’’ we cry exultantly after a journey overland. 169 One Way Round the World There was formerly a shrine to the dread goddess Kali on the site of Calcutta, and from it the city is named. Kali is a hideous divinity, gory and blood- thirsty, who wears a necklace of human skulls. She sends pestilence and scourge and famine and is only appeased by blood. In former times human sacrifices were frequently made to her and even in late years, in time of famine and distress, human heads decked with flowers have been found before her shrines. Calcutta, the city, is only of passing interest. It is neither flesh, nor fowl nor good red herring. Some one not inaptly called it the city of palaces and defective drains. Luxury walks side by side with misery. I came to India hampered with very little knowledge of its history but I remembered the shivers that the Third Reader tale of the ‘‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ used to give me and I looked up the spot. It is now covered by a modern and handsome post-office and the place is marked by a stone pavement about fifteen feet square, which lies in an entrance court. On an arched gateway is an inscription which tells that the stones near by mark the size and situation of the dungeon in the old fort known in history as the ‘‘Black Hole of Calcutta.” Government House is a noble mansion that stands in the usual well-groomed English garden. There the Viceroy of India lives in regal state during the short winter months, and in summer the whole government machinery is moved to Simla, in the hills. The Vic- eroy receives about $100,000 a year for his services and is appointed for five years. 170 What We Saw in India Beyond the garden of Government House is the beau- tiful Maidan, Calcutta’s pride and joy. It is a hand- some wide, open green, hardly a park, crossed by drives and foot paths and dotted with fine shade trees. In the evening it is filled with fashionable people in smart turn- outs with Indian servants in gorgeous livery. I liked it rather better at midday when the trees threw an inviting shade and the occasional brilliant figures of the natives stood out on the green sward like brilliant flowers. Very often we would see a faithful Mohammedan bowing low at his prayers with his face turned toward Mecca. It is the month of Ramizan and Mohammedans eat nothing from sunrise to sunset. It rather spoils the effect of their piety to know that they eat all night. The beauti- ful Chowringhi Road with its row of handsome clubs and dwellings, and its museum building faces the Maidan. The business houses of the East are as different from our own as they well could be. Sometimes they stand in decorous rows as they do at home, especially in the large cities, but very often you will drive to the banker’s or the druggist’s or the photographer’s, enter a gateway by a shady drive and find a flower garden in front of the home-like building. i7t XVI A Glimpse of the Ganges \ K 7E have had rather a surfeit of zoological and bo- tanical gardens and have grown painfully un- enthusiastic over rare fauna and flora, but we were still charmed by the gardens in Calcutta. In the zoological garden there are some splendid tigers, huge, tawny, beautifully striped fellows, and all the animals were fine specimens of their kind. The birds, too, were rarely beautiful; dainty little songsters in coats of many colors, gorgeous birds of paradise, with all the tints of sunset in their wings, exquisite gray cockatoos with soft pinkish breasts and creamy white crests, flaming parrots, resplendent peacocks, with blue-green glisten- ing throats—all the feathered beauties of the tropics. The Botanical Garden is beautifully laid out and filled with glassy pools that reflect the rich foliage of bamboos and palms and plantains on their banks. The glory of the garden is a wonderful banyan that is a for- est in itself, It is a hundred and twenty-five years old, and the main‘ trunk has a circumference of fifty feet, five and a half feet from the ground. At the crown this grand old giant has a circumference of nine hundred and twenty feet. Its wide spreading branches are up- 172 A Glimpse of the Ganges held by no less than three hundred and seventy-eight aerial roots. Some of them have grown as thick as the trunks of a large tree. The banyan’s branches spread widely, and as they grow send down at intervals tufts of hairy strands that finally reach the ground and take root, eventually supporting the branch as it grows longer. The banyan at Calcutta is monarch of them all, the largest in the world, and from a distance it is a great mound of verdure. When one is underneath it is a fairy bower of green through which the sunlight falls in quivering flakes of gold. The garden is filled with creepers that run riot on the ground and climb the trees and festoon the branches—-a mass of purple and yellow bloom. We drove back to Calcutta along the river and crossed the pontoon bridge. A busy stream of humanity eddies on the entrances and flows over that bridge from morn- ing until night and far into the night. Up and down the banks of the river in either direction are row after row of stone steps, or ghats as they are called, which lead down to the water and on which swarms of people are bathing. They are scantily clad, or not clad at all, and the light reflects itself on their shining skin as it does on a polished bronze. The mysteries of life and death are there. Not far from the bridge cheek by jowl with the bathing ghats is the burning ghat where bodies are cremated and the ashes thrown into the Sacred river. The Hindu has a peculiar idea of sacred- ness and will call water sacred that is polluted by the filth of a sewer. 78 One Way Round the World There is a wonderful beauty about fire, a splendor that flashes into existence and glows and flames and purifies and vanishes whence it came.