secj^^o ooPY, I8Q9. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap.. Copyright M, : Shelf_._?l^'| UNITED STATES OF AMER i a? VIERICA. AMERICA IN THE EAST WORKS OF The Mikado's Empire, CoREA THE Hermit Nation. Japanese Fairy World. Japan : in History, Folk-Lore, and Art. The Religions of Japan. Matthew Calbraith Perry. TowNSEND Harris. The Romance of Discovery. The Romance of American Colonization. The Romance of Conquest. America in the East. America in the East A GLANCE AT Our History, Prospects, Problems, and Duties in the Pacific Ocean BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS u FORMERLY OF THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF JAPAN, AUTHOR OF ** THE mikado's EMPIRE," " COREA THE HERMIT NATION," ETC. \ NEW YORK A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY 1899 ^K t'1 M ^^^ (rl Copyright J iSgg By a. S. Barnes and Co. *«j?t*-.. !■., rS'Bri^f:: a •^EGSiveo. mntberstts'^rcss John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. ? V* I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE BOOK TO THE Memory of my Honored Friend JOHN LEAVITT STEVENS MINISTER OF THE UNITED STATES TO HAWAII, WHO, BELIEVING THAT THE LIVES AND PROPERTY OF AMERICAN CITI- ZENS ABROAD OUGHT TO BE AS WELL PROTECTED AS IF THEY WERE AT HOME, ACTED ACCORDING TO HIS FAITH PREFACE Called to face new duties, from which they do not propose to flinch, the American people want facts for guidance. History gives the surest ground for prophecy. I have tried to look our problems in the face, and to show our past in the Pacific. Four years' residence in the Far East, from 1870 to 1874, nourished and increased an interest in the Asian peoples, which I may call hereditary, because it sprang from a Hne of seafaring ancestors, English and American. When the events of the wonderful and the pivotal year of 1898 had altered the trend of our national history. The Outlook Company wished me to represent their enterprising journal in the Philippines. Fascinating as was the call, my home duties would not allow me to accept, but to the next request for service, I was glad to be able to say " I can and I will." So I wrote seven papers for " The Outlook ** Vlll Preface showing what Americans, under God, have done and can do in lands in or bordering on the Pacific. If, then, this record of the enter- prise of our fellow-countrymen before Dewey should stimulate patriotism, arouse honest pride in the continuousness of American work and service in Asia, or point the way to pres- ent and future duty, the credit is due to the editors and publishers of "The Outlook." On his own part the author returns thanks both for the suggestion and the permission to reprint the papers in a little book. To Messrs. Harper and Brothers, whose honors and confidence I have enjoyed since my return from Japan in 1874, I return hearty thanks for their permission to reprint from " Harper's Monthly Magazine *' the article on " Our Navy in Asiatic Waters." With fresh matter incorporated, these studies, obser- vations, and forecasts are herewith sent forth in a revised and more attractive form. W. E. G. Ithaca, April az, 1899. CONTENTS Chapter Page I. The Signal Gun at Manila .... i II. What is our Problem ? 8 III. The War a Revelation 15 IV. Can we govern the Philippines? ... 25 V. The Ancient Tropic World .... 30 VI. The Tropics in Modern Days ... 37 VII. Can the White Man live in the Tropics ? 45 VIII. The Anglo-Saxons join Hands ... 53 IX. The Chinese Empire 58 X. Causes of Chinese Decay 65 ^ XL Our Pioneer Countrymen in China . . 71 XII. American Leaven in the Chinese Mass 8z XIII. The Old Japan of Hermit Days ... 92 XIV. The Coming of the Americans . . . 101 XV. The Missionary Story 109 XVI. Literature, Science, and Diplomacy . 114 XVII. The Americans in Korea 122 XVIII. Hawaii our New Possession 125 XIX. Our New Fellow-citizens 133 XX. Orientals and Occidentals in Hawaii . 143 XXI. Our Flag in the Waters of China and Japan 153 XXII. The Advent of American Power in the Pacific 160 X Contents Chapter Page XXIII. Glynn, Perry, and Harris .... 164 XXIV. Gallant Actions of Foote and Tatt- nall in China 171 XXV. McDouGAL in the "Wyoming" at Shimonoseki 178 XXVI. Our Little War with one Gun . . 188 XXVII. A Brush with Formosa Savages . . 192 XXVIII. The Korean Expedition 195 XXIX. The Historic Movement towards the Pacific 203 XXX. Trade and Markets in Asia . . . 211 XXXI. Our Friendship with Russia . . . 216 XXXII. American Enterprise in the Pacific . 219 XXXIII. Precedents and Resources .... 226 XXXIV. Our Imperative Need 231 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS First Engine on the Seoul-Chemulpo Railway Frontispiece Townsend Harris, First Minister to Japan To face page 14 The Crown Prince of Korea, 1899 . . ,, >j28 Three Korean Boys ,, >» 38 Union Church, Yokohama ,, >> 50 Japanese Legation in Seoul ,, >> 60 High School and Students, Fukui, Japan ,, „ 76 Native Congregational Church, Tokio, Japan ,, >> 9^^ The Japanese Railway Engineer, Ishikawa ,, ,> 104 Dr. Whitney, Hospital Staff, and Nurses, Tokio ,, >> 116 Metropolitan Police, Korea .... ,, >» 124 John L. Stevens, U. S. Minister to Hawaii, 1893 ,, ,, 14a Consulate of Japan in Seoul . . . . ,, >> 158 McDougal's Ship, the "Wyoming" . . ,, ,, 182 The Double-ender Monocacy .... ,, >> i8a Captain Homer Blake . . . . . . „ >» 196 North Gate, Capital of Korea .... ,, ,,208 Russian Legation in Seoul ,, >> 218 Independence Arch in Seoul . . . . ,, ,,226 America in the East CHAPTER I THE SIGNAL GUN AT MANILA FOR the people of the United States, the oceanic event of May i, 1898, changed their view of the world. It made the Far East a Near West. Heretofore they had looked at the Chinas, the Indies, and the Pacific spice-world, eastward, as if through and beyond Europe. On that day perspective became prospect. Now they turn to see the whole Pacific through their western windows and at their own doors. Hereafter we study for ourselves the Asiatic lands and waters, glad, however, to profit by that older ex- perience of Europe which for us may have in it " prophetic strain." What to the world at large is the meaning of that sound heard at Cavite, May 1, 1898 ? Boom of bell or ring of rifled cannon may mean nothing of itself, but some shots have America in the East been "heard round the world." Lexington and Manila have a concord of significance that foreshadows change. What, to us Amer- icans, is the sequel of the opening of Gridley's guns on the " Olympia" ? In what state of mind do they find us ? What is the prophecy of our action ? The Japanese of Tokio tell us that during the lapsing centuries the great bell at Shiba has been to the people timepiece, barometer, and guide. Its note, muffled or clear, an- nounced the hours, but changed to the ear according to conditions of weather. The interpretation varied also to the soul. In youth it inspired hope, at man's estate cheer, in old age warning. Are we, as a nation, in childhood, at man^s estate, or in old age ? Do we listen to cheer or discouragement? Shall we see in the course of events, as compelled by the firing of that shot, the hand of man, or of God ? Are we to go forward or backward ? Shall we hold the Philippine archipelago, give it back to the Spaniards, or, refusing responsi- bilities, trade it oflF to some other Power ? Are we to cling to the Utopia of isolation, or The Signal Gun at Manila yield to the necessity of national expansion ? Does possession of distant islands mean fare- well to the alleged traditions of the fathers ? Does girding to new duties, facing of vexing problems, and prolonged hard work in the distant Pacific mean " imperialism " ? Or does it show faith in God and in democratic institutions ? These are questions which confront us, whether we like to face them or not. That we are not fully prepared to give answer makes no difference. Neither time, nor tide, nor God Almighty waits for man. Provi- dence got ahead of us, and gave the signal before we were ready. Nevertheless, we pray, as of old, " Lead us not into temptation." That is, do not bring us into difficulty, or where we may do wrong, fail, or leave un- done, "But deliver us from evil." That is, having got into the difficulty, or even, if so be, the wrong, lead us out, set us free, make us victor, or help us to bear by giving grace sufficient. But, in any event, show us what we ought to do and give us courage to do it. Yet Dewey's was not the first American signal gun in the Far East. On the yth of 3 America in the East July, 1853, Perry's flagship "Susquehanna/' the foremost of a peaceful armada, dropped anchor off the Yokohama bluffs in Yedo Bay. His sunset gun tolled the knell of old Japan, and began the raising of the curtain on a new panorama of history. Though the Commo- dore did not know it, there was already within the country a political earthquake just ready for upheaval. Mighty energies, in operation during three half-centuries, were ready for consolidation. These were soon to confront the potencies from without, of which the American Perry was herald and leader. Should both make impact only for mutual destruction, or create a new resultant of forces ? The answer to-day is clear. A new nation, leavened with Christianity, girded with modern weapons of war and engines for the victories of peace, with her face to the future and every nerve quivering with the delight and enthusiasm of progress, stands ready to share with the Anglo-Saxon peoples the supremacy of the Pacific. So in the Philippines, latent energies long gathering in force came to explosion even before the appearance of the American Com- 4 The Signal Gun at Manila modore. The significance of this revolt of natives has hardly yet been understood in America. Even before the arrival of one American soldier on land, the Spanish system crumbled and fell. Will the forces from within and without clash to ruin, or coalesce as one ? Can any one hold back the impetus of the American people, or suppress the ex- pansive force and sure trend of our commerce ? Already we are the greatest traders with the Philippines, next to the British, while with China and Japan our traffic shows a steady increase. On the one hand is the certain enlargement of our hopes and ambitions, with the control of a mighty share of the trade of China and the densely populated lands adjoining and archi- pelagoes of the Pacific. On the other is the yearning of long-oppressed islanders for good government and for life worth living. Are we to have on the soil of the Philippines a permanent collision, or a new parallelogram of forces ? Better overrate than underrate the Fihpinos. They are not all barbarians. Lack of discrimination in dealing with Orien- tals is fatal to all success in government. 5 America in the East How does Dewey's victory make alignment with other events, such as use of the magnetic needle on shipboard, Columbus's discovery, the application of steam to navigation, the opening of China, Japan, and Korea, the steady movement of Americans westward? Shall we answer such questions in the inter- ests of selfish ease, or of a lust for conquest, a thirst for imperialism, with a view only to the immediate balancing of income and expense? Or shall our heredity, unsought opportunity which seems providential invita- tion, history, religion, convictions of duty, faith in God, in democracy, and in ourselves, have also a voice ? Whatever the ultimate disposition of the Philippines may be — and we cannot well see at present how they can come other than under American rule — it is evident that the moral problem equals in importance the political. The American people will never hold colonies in the Spanish, French, or the abandoned Dutch or British style. Slavery is over. Forced labor of natives can no longer be, for we are mostly of the " Anglo-Saxon " breed ; our political morals recognize that 6 The Signal Gun at Manila revolutions do not go backward. Bad history- does not repeat itself, when a better conscience rules. The Philippines, if under the Ameri- can flag, will never be a mere " plantation " or " possession " to be worked only for the profit of the conquerors. American accept- ance means a sacred trust in the interests of civilization, and the education and elevation of the natives, whatever their creed, color, or previous condition, to the status of intelhgent freemen. It is impossible to consider the problem as political only. Ours must be at least the newer English way ; and better, if possible. The American flag over the Philip- pines must, will, be a " symbol of light and law." CHAPTER II WHAT IS OUR PROBLEM? WHAT is the problem ? Let us look first at ourselves and our moral and political resources. To help us in this, history gives guideboards pointing to the future. Here is a nation, true child of the Reformation, and the heir of the Dutch revolt against Spain and of the centuries of British liberty. Its soil was won by revolution, or, more exactly, by resisting revolution from without. In the necessary war which secured union of States, it was led by a man who, as an English subject, had been a thorough believer in a right interpre- tation of the doctrine of national expansion, and who, as an American, held to the doctrine even more firmly. Washington was con- vinced that the French had no right where they had fixed themselves — that is, on ground now covered by Ohio and Pennsyl- vania. Was he a jingo ? He, with our 8 what is Our Problem ? fathers who claimed to be good Englishmen, was more obedient to the spirit of English law and freedom than were King George and his advisers. Having won in their contest, Americans began, with the assistance of their hardy pioneers, to wrest the lands between the Mississippi and the Pacific from the red hunters and fishermen who refused to im- prove it, and from the absentee landlords — France and Spain. Our people obtained by- arms, diplomacy, and purchase the territory which is now ours, holding the northwestern Pacific coast through vigilance against British claims and by actual settlement. They held to the dictum of Hideyoshi of Japan, that " the earth is the earth's earth." Although in this world there is, or can be, rarely such a thing as absolute righteousness in any act of statecraft, they tried to act as honorably and as justly as they could. They have made Hawaii part of the United States, with the same motives. Now that, without any expectation or previous desire, or by taking any means except those in obedience to the laws of nations, even of necessity — the same that drove the Beggars of the Sea to capture 9 America in the East Brill — they have obtained Manila and virtu- ally the Philippine archipelago, can the momentum of over a century be stopped? Ought it to be checked? Supposing that, through arms and diplo- macy, the ownership of the whole archipelago has become vested in the United States, and our flag is hoisted over it, from the Bashee Islands to Tawee-Tawee, the problem is one which promises to tax our resources and test ouV ability to rule alien races. It is to gov- ern eight or ten millions of people of many ethnic §tocks, though mostly of the Malay race, speaking forty different languages. Un- less we do not know the character or temper of Americans, the problem includes also the education and moral elevation of the Filipinos and the sharing with them of our privileges. No wonder we need counsel before action. There ought to be at once formed a Colonial Association to study the whole field, past, present, and future. Yet it is absurd to wait until theory and practice are perfect before we grapple with the task. Experience is the best teacher. These new Philippians, perhaps yet to be- lO what is Our Problem ? come fellow-citizens, as even men once slaves have become, are scattered over hundreds of islands, though the larger members of the group are not as many as the fingers of one's hands. The archipelago lies between the Japanese and the Dutch possessions. The islands look like a great breakwater to Indo- China, which is now held by the French. Commercially, they form the gateway to China. They are on the direct road to India and close to Australia. Can Great Britain afford to allow these islands, adjoining her possessions in North Borneo, and not far away from the Australian Republics, to pass into the hands of a hostile power ? How will France and Germany enjoy the sight of the American flag so near the possessions of Annam, and so tantalizingly far away from any longed-for yet unobtained German colony ? Do the Dutch take alarm ? Will they have to tax them- selves to build more ironclads in order to guard against further American ambition ? Does Japan fear or welcome us ? What diffi- culties we can conjure up ! At home, even greater searchings of heart go on. Can our system of government take II America in the East in the idea and actuality of colonial adminis- tration^ and this at the ends of the earth ? What do v/e know of the natives ? Are they improvable ? After three hundred years of Spanish failure, will we succeed? Can we take hope from the great breeders of revolt ? The Spaniards have left the Philippines in the state of a tree which, naturally fruitful, has by neglect become a great worms* nest, in which swarms of crawling, devouring, and fat- tened creatures have woven a horrid web over leaf and branch, destroying all beauty and fruit, and threatening the very life of the tree. Can we make true reformation ? Can we edu- cate and lift up ? Can we digest this mass of barbarism ? Have we not had enough of sav- agery, ignorance, and low types of humanity within our own States ? Shall we be obliged to fight our way and subdue the natives, even if Spain yields them to us ? Tremen- dous will then be the difficulties of maintain- ing navy and garrison, of keeping order and administering government. Can we pay our expenses ? Can we ever hope to give such people American citizenship? In comparison with this central problem of the Philippines, 12 What is Our Problem? the question of holding or governing other islands in the same part of the earth, such as the Ladrones and the Carolines, is small and subordinate. Yet let us beware of magnifying difficulties even to caricature and fright. It may help us to remember that this is the era of the expos- ure of shams. We are learning the difference between the painted lath and the iron, be- tween the canvas fort and masonry, between mercenaries with fans and umbrellas and dis- ciplined patriots holding rifles. When, in 1856, Townsend Harris arrived at Hong- Kong, on the steam frigate " San Jacinto,'' a Chinaman brought on deck for sale a " wild cat." Even the epauletted sons of Mars and Neptune stood off nervously as the New York merchant-diplomatist boldly proceeded to unwind the defensive coils of twine and rope which paralyzed the creature. Even slight knowledge of zoology enabled him to see difference between panthers and pussies. A prolonged unwrapping, as of a mummy, revealed an ordinary roof-scrambler and back- yard vocalist, only too happy to have her arti- ficial spots sponged off, and, when able, to 13 America in the East stand up, lap milk, and purr. So, in like manner, in 1894, the colossal Chinese tiger, daubed out on paper, was shown by a little Japanese army to be a sham. Again, Dewey's guns showed Spain in the Far East to be only a painted Power. The once world-dominators of East and West, China and Spain, are now the " broken-backed tigers" of Korean proverb. 14 TowNSEND Harris, New York, il First Minister to Japan. CHAPTER III THE WAR A REVELATION DIFFICULT as the problem is, the Im- aginary obstacles conjured up by some of our editors, politicians, and nervous people, who do not seem to know what Americans in the Pacific have done and can do, remind one of the canvas-dragons in a Chinese procession, or the majority report of Joshua's spies in Canaan. They ought to scare no true Anglo-Saxon who reads his ancestral his- tory, nor any man who takes Christianity seriously, nor any statesman who knows the American people outside of academies and sanctums. Personally, I find myself unable to see the reality of the so-called impossibilities, or to feel the dreadful ness of the risks involved. To say nothing of what British and Dutch have accomplished, see what even Russians and Asiatics can achieve : Three centuries IS America in the East ago the Russians crossed the Ural Mountains on their march to the Sea of Japan. Mus- covites are able to civilize, in their way, the nomads of Central Asia and to make of Siberia a second Russia. They did this within the period between Raleigh and Mc- Kinley. The Chinese have been able in less time to absorb the Manchus, " the wild and horsey Tartars " of the North, and show to the world that the men whom European monks thought came up directly out of Tar- tarus are " the most improvable race in Asia." The Japanese have illustrated the self-regen- erative power of even a hermit nation. If we, the descendants in ideas, law, traditions, and largely in blood, of the British, cannot do what they have done, then I confess to sur- prise and confusion. But what they have done we can do. Once, after a snow-storm in the mountains of inland Japan, I wished to push on through a path which my servant and companions said could not be traversed, for it was covered with snow too deep for either sandals or snow-shoes. " Impossible, impossible ! " they cried ; but just then a Japanese travelling pedler emerged from the i6 The War a Revelation banned direction, and, hearing the prophe- cies of negation, cried out, " Dekimashta ! " (I have done it). As he did it, so did I, taking dinner that same day at the end of the route. " DeWitt's Deep" still tells in Dutch waters how a plucky lawyer, using both the lead and the inductive method, could show a path even to sailors fettered by tradition. Dewey's was a signal gun. The war has been a revelation, compelling Americans to make themselves acquainted with their own pioneers, who have been abroad in the Pacific since the Revolution. It is, indeed, time for some Rip Van Winkles to wake up and look around. The American flag was carried round the world and American business was begun at Canton in China in 1784. For over a century our merchants, sailors, missionaries, diplomatists, and navy, while acquainting themselves with this part of the earth, have made our country known abroad. Dewey's fleet and achievements were not new things, nor, with all due credit to the Admiral and his able assistants, was there anything espe- cially wonderful, when we remember what 2 17 America in the East Americans, with their limited resources, in times past had already accomplished in the waters of China, Japan, Korea, and Malayasia. Dangers as great, battles as wonderful, vic- tories as signal, have been won by the might and valor of our officers and sailors. Space does not allow us, in this first paper, to tell the story in detail. Relatively, the con- quests of diplomacy have been as striking and significant as any which the Paris Com- mission of 1898 have won or are likely to win. Our missionaries have toiled and wrought, depositing the leaven, yes, hiding it, in the Oriental mass for the making of new nations. Furthermore, the United States already owns many islands on the bosom of the Pacific, and an amount of territory in this part of the world which shows that we are far from strangers in it, or that in possessing and governing the Philippines we should be attempting some- thing wholly novel. Barber, Palmyra, Pros- pect, Fanning, Christmas, Starbuck, Penrhyn, Swan, Pitt, McLeary, Hull, and Enderby islands or groups are ours, besides Pago Pago Bay in the Samoan archipelago, and Hawaii, 18 The War a Revelation with probably the Ladrone and Caroline Islands.* * After Inquiry at the State and Treasury Departments for an official list of islands in the Pacific Ocean claimed by the United States, I received the following : Treasury Department, Bureau of Navigation, Washington, D.C, February 24, 1899. Rev. William Elliot Griffis, Ithaca, N. Y. : Sir, — In compliance with the request made in your letter, dated the 20th instant, this office transmits herewith a list of certain guano islands understood to have been bonded. Respectfully yours, Eugene T. Chamberlain, Commissioner. List of Guano Islands, appertaining to the United States, bonded under the Act of August 18, 1856, as reported by the First Comptroller of the Treasury, under date of Decem- ber 22, 1885 : — Baker's or New Nantucket, Jarvis, Navassa, Rowland or Nowlands, Johnson's Islands, Barren or Starve, McKean, Phoenix, Christmas, Maiden's Islands, America Islands, Anne's, Barber's, Bauman's, Birnie's, Caroline, Clar- ence, Dangerous Islands, Dangers Rock, David's , Duke of York, Enderbury's, Farmer's, Favorite, Flint, Flint's, Frances, Frienhaven, Gardner's, Gallego, Ganges, Groninque, Hum- phrey's, Hemn's, Lideron's, Low Islands, Mackin, Mary Letitia's, Mary's, Mathew's, Nassau, Palmyros, Penhuyn's (Penrhyn?), Pescado, Phoenix, Prospect, Quiros, Rierson's, Rogewein's Islands (Roggeveen ?), Samarang Islands, Sarah Anne, Sidney's Islands, Starbuck or Hero, Staver's, Walker's, Washington or Uahuga. 19 America in the East In plotting 'and mapping out the ocean's bottom, in sounding its deeps, in finding out its tides, currents, and winds, its phenomena of air and water, in surveying submarine plateaus and valleys for future telegraph cables, in accurately locating its islands and measuring its landmarks, in gaining knowl- edge from the Arctic Ocean, in naval exploits, in punishing cannibal savages, wreckers, and pirates (in this often joining hands with their British brothers), the Americans, up to the time of the Civil War, were behind none in exploiting this great domain, this middle- earth sea of the future. If the United States were, after the manner of the sixteenth cen- tury, to claim the land first discovered by her own explorers, she would have a mighty area beyond her continental frontier, and the map of the United States of America would be en- larged so as to show a large share in the own- ership of the earth's surface. As certainly as Russia claims Siberia and Great Britain Aus- tralia, so may our Government call the whole northwestern part of Greenland, Lincoln and Grant Land, from the 78th to the 83d degree north latitude, besides the Antarctic continent, 20 The War a Revelation estimated to contain 2,000,000 square miles. United States territory. How strange does the very suggestion (as if it were a novelty) of our being a VV^orld-Power seem ! As a matter of simple fact, the United States in i860 were in closer touch with the world at large then than at any time since, until this wonder-year of 1898. Our American explorers, diplomatists, mer- chants, missionaries, educators in the Pacific have not made a failure of their delicate and difficult tasks. They have shown what American wit, grit, pluck, perseverance, and character can do at the ends of the earth, and even amidst the most unpromising circum- stances, among savages and semi-savages. With all due respect to our academic friends in the sanctum and study, we believe that the story of American triumphs in the Far East affords a surer guide for decision and action than certain recent utterances which seem to smell more of the lamp than of outdoor acquaintance with facts. Indeed, some de- liverances against expansion savor more of weariness and despair than of real insight into the problem. 21 America m the East My own study of hermit nations, the ori- gins of their blighting policy and the results of itj does not lead me to recommend a like course of action to Americans. The dangers of enlargement are undeniably great ; those of hermitage are greater. We want no na- tional foot-binding. The forced inclusion of the American people between the two oceans, or the exclusion of foreigners and those who disagree with you in opinions or religion, is suicidal. At least it seems to me to show timidity, if not cowardice, to shrink at hold- ing land or attempting government beyond our borders. It is too much like those church fathers in New England who feared for de- mocracy in church government anywhere west of the Hudson River. It savors too much of the embargoism attempted early in this century, or of the dogmatism of a certain edi- tor who twenty-five years ago in Yokohama showed me on a map of the world the regions in which Christianity could never flourish or civilization ever be propagated, or of Ben- jamin Kidd, who preaches that white men cannot live in the tropics. In reality, our own history, from Washing- 22 The War a Revelation ton, the soldier beyond the borders, and Jef- ferson, the statesman who took over the Mississippi Valley, dov/n to the recent war with Spain, which made a revelation rather than a revolution in American ideas and opin- ions, is one long romance of conquest, ex- hibiting the victories of American colonization, arms, and diplomacy. Are we now confronted v\^ith the responsi^ bility of governing and civilizing eight mil- lions of people once considered at the ends of the earth ? Yet now, in days of steam and electricity, these are but a few days distant. This call to new duties comes in a time when the potencies of science, the harnessed forces of nature, and the printing-press have reached a development undreamed of a cen- tury ago, and when we have among our peo- ple an interest and an intelligence concerning foreign countries and races which was un- known two generations ago. Now the China- man is among us. The once hermit Japanese is commonplace on our streets. The Korean is in our schools. Besides our knowledge of the Orientals, small indeed, but wonderful compared with that of our fathers, we have 23 America in the East hundreds of Americans residing in Asiatic countries ; a large proportion, perhaps an overwhelming majority, being teachers and missionaries. It is evident, then, that from the point of view of acquaintance with Asiatic people, and also of our increased equipment as to mechanical forces, we are prepared to do what our fathers could not dream of doing. 24 CHAPTER IV CAN WE GOVERN THE PHILIPPINES? BUT have we the political genius and facilities to attempt the difficult art of governing barbarous or semi-barbarous races ? Besides political talent, have we the moral reserves required for investment of character and influence? Will trade warrant the ex- pense of government ? Is it worth while ? We answer : Both the Dutch and the British have displayed an aptitude for govern- ing Asiatic peoples ; the former in a good, the latter in a better way. We are their children. What they have done we can do. Their history is our mirror. The same general elements in their civilization are in our own, and " blood is warmer than water." The Scottish and English educational method trains individuals in self-reliance, makes men both independent and co-operative, raises up self-governing nations, even while it gives the 25 America in the East lower races a chance to rise, for it helps them to do so. In India, the British people were once con- fronted with the problem of possessing and governing one of the greatest conglomerates of nations, languages, religions, and political systems to be found on earth. In reality, there was no India in any sense of political unity. The term was only a geographical ex- pression. Despite Macaulay and those insular historians who are as childish in their national conceit as are our own, no British army ever conquered India or held it. Yet, profiting by a discovery made by a Frenchman, that sepoys could be used as military allies, the British made unity in place of division, and substituted order for anarchy. By dividing and ruling, by employing native troops, by rising to the necessities of the occasion, through reform of their own civil service, and through the sober- ing influence of great responsibilities, our own kin beyond sea have been able to hold nearly a quarter of a billion of differing races and creeds loyal to the throne. In Insulinde, or Island-India, the Dutch, by political ability, wisdom, practical com- 26 Can We Govern the Philippines ? mon sense, and the correct use of the words "Allah'' and of "Kismet," rule thirty-three millions of Malays so quietly that the world in general hardly knows that there is any Insulinde. If they can do so well, why not we ? Is it conceit or the old Fourth of July spirit that gives ground for this faith ? I cannot see, as some of our editors and bishops and statesmen seem to, that Americans have not the genius or the ability or the political virtue for under- taking colonies or governing the Philippines. Somehow I have a high respect for the stamina and general qualities of our naval and regular army officers. I even believe that we have some pure public men with political ability, and that we have inherited at least a portion of the Anglo-Saxon genius for political science and practice. The nation that produced a Ward of China, a Sam Armstrong of Hamp- ton, to say nothing of the " fathers,'' oup-ht not to quail before the task of to-day. I believe in the sobering influence of re- sponsibility. All our great national crises called out able men who v^^ould else have been " village Hampdens." How differently is our 27 America in the East Fourth of July now celebrated from the same day in the fifties ! What a wonderful change in the cast of thought, in the orations and editorials, as compared with those of forty years ago ! Our national greatness, bringing increased burdens and more complex and del- icate duties, has given a more serious temper to our thought and word. It is true that men who live in academic seclusion, or along- side of mighty bosses, or who have not seen their own lines of planned reform run as they hoped, take dark vievv^s of the future, imagin- ing that the American populace is inflammable and hopelessly boss-ridden. Some will even bring up Alaska as a not particularly encour- aging example. Others will argue, from the mercantile point of view, that only civilized men make good customers, and that " barba- rians " will not buy steel rails, optical instru- ments, or editions de luxe. But we cling to the idea, having seen it often illustrated, that, in individuals, societies, and nations, great responsibilities sober and develop — in lads fresh from college, in women left orphans or widows, in maidens reduced in a day from affluence to penury, in 28 The Crown Prince of Korea, 1899, Can We Govern the Philippines ? men many, and in a Vice-President engaged one day in the lowest kind of political truck- ling and vote-buying quickly becoming one of the most honored of Presidents. History shows also what little countries, Greece, Hol- land, Japan, have done under the stress of duty and danger. We have known young statesmen in Nippon who expected to hatch the egg of new national life by warming it in the fire which they had built, even hoping within ten years to make Japan equal to Great Britain. We have seen also how the realities of responsibility cooled and humbled them, though they bated not a jot of heart or hope, but persevered even when the awful complexity of the problems was realized. In any event, we ought not to take coun- sel of our fears, but rather of our hopes. The wisdom of the discouraged is not wholesome. There are those who lose the good they might win by fearing to attempt. A great poet tells of one who " made through cowardice the great refusal." The happiness of millions and our own national safety may depend upon the courage and wisdom displayed in 1899 and 1900. 29 CHAPTER V THE ANCIENT TROPIC V/ORLD THERE is a striking difference between ancient and modern civilization. The former, though varied, was confined to only a few regions favored by nature. The latter, looked upon as the common property, or at least the possibility, of the whole race, tends to a single type. In the early world, there were many civilizations. In the future, there can be but one — the Christian. Mankind's early home and development were determined by natural causes. Only in warm river valleys, rich in water, sunshine, fertile soil, and facilities for comfort, was there anything that we can call civilization. On the rest of this planet, men roamed as nomads with flocks, were hunters and fishermen, or dwelt in caves, on piles over lakes, or on islands in the sea. Their extant memorials are now in fragments of tools or weapons 30 The Ancient Tropic World buried under the soil, in shell heaps or mounds ; for, in history, " life without letters is death." In only four places of the very ancient world did men rise to writing, the cultivation of the intellect, and the expression of their tastes, hopes, and aspirations in art, architecture, and literature. These were in the valleys of the Nile, of Mesopotamia, of the Yellow and the Yang-tse and of the Indus and Ganges Rivers, — that is, in Egypt, Assyria, India, and China. The history of primeval civiliza- tion belongs to these four countries. The Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans caught the light from the East and reflected it west- ward and northward, for the benefit of the Indo-Germanic races. The Hindus shed more or less glow upon central peninsular Asia, while China was the mother of civiliza- tion east of the Ganges. Speaking roughly, all civilization began within tropical or sub- tropical regions, and has moved northward and southward. What made the old nations acquainted with each other and attracted them to barter and exchange of ideas and products ? What first 31 America in the East started the caravan over land, and sent the daring manners to sea ? The answer, in outline, is clear. In the old days when human diet was very simple, those who rose to wealth and leisure craved variety. Merchant and mariner were tempted beyond the warm valleys and the beaten tracks to get the fruits of the equatorial island world in the Far East. For perfume, attractiveness of person, delights at the table and indulgence in hours of leisure, and for the preservation of the body as the sheath of immortality, spices were needed. Tropical products first made foreign commerce. What, for the most part, are the Arabian Nights' Entertainments but the fairy tales of traffic by land and sea? They have been gathered from India, Persia, and Egypt. In earliest Bible story, we see the Midianite merchants moving across the deserts westward, down into Egypt, the great market of the ancient world in the West. They bring balm and spicery. The smelling-bottles and vials of Chinese porcelain found in the older tombs in the Nile Valley were filled with perfume from the far Orient. When the Hebrew nomads out of Egypt consoHdated 32 The Ancient Tropic World their kingdom and built palaces and a temple in Jerusalem, they imported more than " ivory, apes, and peacocks " from tropical India. In the Song of Songs are enumerated the per- fumes, powders, and spices which come only from distant Insulinde. Chinese, Telugu, and Malay words stand on the Biblical page. Silk and spice from the Golden Chersonese and the islands adjoining compelled Greek and Roman enterprise and carried temptation into the minds of the merchants and the pockets of the wealthy. In mediaeval days, the trade with the tropics and spice lands gave Venice her prosperity. When the Portuguese discovered the Cape passage, the sceptre of commercial prosperity moved westward to Lisbon. When the Hollanders in turn plucked from the girdle of Portugal the keys of the eastern spice regions, Amsterdam became the most prosperous city in the world. When the Dutch by extortion abused their monopoly, the EngHsh formed their East India Company, and London rose to be the queen of the world^s commerce — as San Francisco is destined to become. Control of the tropics dictates the history of trade. 3 33 America in the East The tropics include between them all those points on the earth's surface over which the sun is ever vertical. They mark a great belt on the earth's surface between Cuba, Hawaii, and Formosa on the north, and Madagascar, Australia, and Paraguay on the south, about 47 degrees in width, which is studded with Micronesia and Polynesia, the West and the East Indies, the richest part of Africa, the Spice Islands, Central America, and Brazil. Cancer and Capricorn are the lines marked by the turning of the sun, or, rather, where the sun seems to turn, the names being taken from the zodiac signs in which the sun seems to be at the time. These are the most northerly and southerly bounds of earth's space in which the sun's rays fall vertically. North and south of these lines the sunshine is tempered. Within them the sun is directly overhead. The tilting or leaning of the earth upon the axis gives us, and people between the tropics and the poles, variety and extremes of weather. Within the tropics are the lands of eternal sunshine, in which weather and climate are uniform. Between Cancer and Capricorn, the conti- 34 The Ancient Tropic World nent of North America becomes attenuated, but its islands are numerous. Here South America has the bulk of its land, its largest gulf and longest watercourse. The greater area, the greatest rivers, and the most fertile lands of Africa are within the tropics. Half of India, the wonderful Malay world, the archipelago of Spice Islands, including the Philippines, the Carolines, and the Ladrones, are in this zone, and so also is nearly half of Australia. In the tropic belt, animal life is amazingly rich, prolific, powerful, and valuable to man. Here also are unmeasured areas of forest and jungle, with wood of every fibre, fruit of all sorts, the richest vegetable products, with those gums, drugs, and spices that have for ages fired the imagination and stirred the energy of explorer, mariner, merchant, and devotee of luxury and civilization. Here, too, are races of men in great variety as to ethnic stocks, language, temperament, character, and physique. The great majority show outwardly the results of long generations under the sun. They are swarthy, black, or brown. Man himself seems to thrive like a weed. Here is 35 America in the East the region of extremes in intensity of human passion, as well as of oddity in animal, marine, and vegetable forms of life. Plant, beast, and man show amazing fecundity. Here, too, on the one hand, are the things pungent, acrid, aromatic, and perfumed, growing from the earth ; while, on the other hand, we have the poisonous and the deadly in plant, beast, and man. Malaria, heat, moisture, and climatic influences, intensified, react upon the human being, making him what he is. Above him, in the air, are potencies, tornadoes and ty- phoons, to which his brother in the temperate zone is comparatively a stranger, while beneath him, frequent and terrible, are earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanoes. 36 CHAPTER VI THE TROPICS IN MODERN DAYS IGHTY indeed is now the difference in our knowledge of this world from that current in Columbus*s time. Then there was a great Sea of Darkness. The Pacific was unknown. The southern oceans and the Arctic waters existed only in myth and fable. No lines of faith, born of true science, for sure guidance over the deep, then encircled the globe with their meridians and parallels. Now the continents are unveiled. The islands are charted, the currents marked, the floor beneath the sea is measured and mapped. The law of storms is known. Distances are calculated. There are ocean lanes and streets, along which, as over a ferry, steady trafiic plies its course. The lines of many a sub- marine cable have given the world a new nervous system. What was once obstacle is now easy highway. In fact, like the feather which the eagle furnishes for the shaft that 37 America in the East brings it down, so the very elements for its own conquest have been yielded by the tropic world. As the civilization of the modern differs from that of the ancient world, so also does the modern from the ancient man. No longer confined to the warm and fertile river valleys, the civilized man pushes out into all quarters of the globe, obeying the divine command to replenish and subdue the earth. He makes of the ocean a pathway, and of the valley a highway. He uses the very resources of the tropics to overcome their deadly blight, malaria and fever. The best man will overcome the most. In those very regions once thought most deadly to the white man, and in the warm seas once unknown to him, the man from the islands of cold and cloud, the man who has been most free to hear and interpret the divine commands, has v/on his greatest triumphs. Does it rain torrents in the hot lands, where vegetation grows most rankly? It is the very tropics themselves that supply the best waterproof material. For ages the milky sap of certain plants called caoutchouc ran to 38 > O PQ Pi O W K The Tropics in Modern Days waste or was but slightly utilized. Temperate climates will produce it, but only in the tropics does it become of economic importance. Yet not until 1820 did the use of this material extend much beyond the rubbing out of pencil-marks. Then Goodyear, the Yankee PhiladelphiaUj after adding sulphur, showed its marvellous uses. He produced a substance which for elasticity, protection from damp and wet, power to endure heat and cold, and to be moulded to all forms, as well as in appli- cation to manifold uses, excels all others. Physically, it is a non-conductor, but me- chanically, it is made the most wonderful of all conductors. By it man has been enabled to surmount innumerable obstacles. To-day Great Britain alone imports twenty-five million dollars' worth of this article, which enables the white man to bear so much better than of old the drawbacks of tropical life. Look at quinine, which missionaries intro- duced to the world. By killing the bacilli which cause fever, the white man is able to live in nature's steam-bath at the equator, under the vertical sun, in tropical jungles, and to pierce and penetrate Africa and peninsular 39 America in the East Asia in every direction. In many parts of the world in which it was once considered certain death for a white man to sleep out- doors for a single night, whole armies can now be quartered. Indeed, it may be said that no region of the earth is now inaccessible. The cannibal, the coast murderer, and the man-thief must give up their game, for the chastising European, with quinine in his blood, can reach them. From being frightfully costly, it has, through wide cultivation, become ridiculously cheap. The cinchona-tree has been planted in many countries, and its derivatives are put to manifold uses on land and sea. With pith helmet, havelock, and duck suit, the white man, as soldier, traveller, trader, and mission- ary, braves the sun and his enemies. Surgical and medical wonders, once looked upon as miracles, can now be achieved by the v/ise application of drugs and medicines pro- duced only in the tropics. Our hot drinks on the table, which have done so much to diminish drunkenness, to cheer but not in- ebriate, to advance noticeably the social con- dition of woman by installing her in dignity at the head of the table — to say nothing of 40 The Tropics in Modern Days comfort and delight to thousands — are the products of the tropics. Coffee is now a necessity rather than a luxury, and over 175,0005000 worth is imported into Great Britain yearly. Tea, enriching our social life, cheering the poor, the weak, and the aged, is the gift of sub-tropical regions. The Anglo- Saxon, having first made a most disastrous failure by a political application of tea in Boston, took China's herb to India and Ceylon. Now, nine-tenths of the fifty million dollars' worth of tea imported into Great Britain comes from India and Ceylon. Cocoa, which a century ago was a curiosity, has now become in its various forms the food or drink of millions, the British alone using about forty million pounds a year. The fibres of the tropics enrich not only the northern nations, but the natives who grow them. The modern wealth of Dundee comes from the working of jute, which last century was a curiosity only, but of which Great Britain nov/ imports annually over twenty million dollars' worth. While all Europe in 1895 employed 2,500,000 bales, the Bengal spinners who manufacture, with 41 America in the East the aid of steam machinery, bags, canvas, manila paper, etc., consume 2,574,000 bales of jute fibre. Cotton was once a sub-tropical product, but is now cultivated in the temperate zone. Though its name occurs in the Hebrew Script- ures, and its home is probably in India, it was, until modern times, unknown either in America or China or Africa. In our land, the first centennial of its introduction was celebrated but a few years ago. Yet such are American energy, skill, and invention that the tropics have been almost utterly robbed of this most useful article, and the world looks to America rather than the hot lands to supply the needs of the race. Great Britain has won a vast part of her wealth from the cotton industry, while the United States follows closely in the manufactured product, and exports millions of pounds to Japan annually. DyestufFs, drugs, oils, and sweets from the tropics keep our fleets ever on the seas. In the superb volumes printed by the Govern- ment, entitled " Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign Countries during the years 1895 and 1896," we find that in the 42 The Tropics in Modern Days latter year there were imported, among other things of tropical origin, cinchona bark, cochineal, logwood and its products, camphor and gums, indigo, licorice, opium, sulphur, cocoa, coffee, jute, manila and other fibres, fruits, gutta-percha, ivory, rice, silk, spices, sponges, sugars, tea, tin, tobacco, mahogany, and other articles. These show in detail a wonderfully assorted list, and exhibit an amount of American commerce directly or indirectly with the tropics which is surprising even to one moderately familiar with the general subject of our dependence upon the earth's middle zone for comforts and necessi- ties. Nearly one-third of our total imports are from tropical regions, and the values of some of the items are enormous, such as coffee, $96,000,000 (1895) ; sugar, 181,486,867; tea, $^3^3T^9^334- (1895); tobacco, 115,225,920; india-rubber, 1 1 9, 1 64,047 ; fruits, f 1 6,026, 1 09 ; making, with other articles, a total of nearly $221,000,000. If we call the tropical belt sixty degrees wide, then we have a total value of about $250,000,000 of imports from these hot countries and islands ; or about one-third of the entire imports for 1895, — that is, 43 America in the East ^731,000^00. Our import trade is nearly one-half with Great Britain and her colonies ; but of the other half, 196,000,000, or nearly one-fourth of that half, is with tropical countries. We trade with the English-speak- ing nations and with tropical peoples to the extent of $1,300,000,000, and with the rest of the world to the extent of $53 5,000,000. Let us now look at the nation which, after the British, has been most successful in colo- nization and in achievements under a tropical sun. The Dutch budget for 1898 estimates the following to be sold in the Netherlands : Coffee, $8,640,000; cinchona, $48,800; tin, $2,680,000; and to be sold in India, opium, $6,880,000; coffee, $3,480,000. In 1895 the trade of the Dutch East Indies reached a total of $160,000,000. The trade of the Philip- pines in 1896 was estimated at $31,500,000, and in 1897, even with the war and disturb- ances, $28,876,012, of which $4,488,377 was American. The British trade with the West Indies, British Honduras, and British Guiana in 1896 was $29,500,000. 44 CHAPTER VII CAN THE WHITE MAN LIVE IN THE TROPICS ? ■R, BENJAMIN KIDD, author of "Social Evolution/' has written a suggestive little book on " The Control of the Tropics." But though we accept his in- vitation to consider the importance of the theme and the duty of the best type of man (v/hich we consider, on the whole, to be the English-speaking man) to occupy aiid control the tropics, yet we are very far from accepting his notion, which he asserts and reiterates as if it were a dogma of science. He maintains that the white man cannot live in the tropics, or be acclimated within them ; that to make the attempt is necessarily a blunder of the first magnitude, and that all experiments based upon the idea are mere idle and empty enter- prises, foredoomed to failure. I cannot so think. I believe with him that the idea of exploiting any tropical region by 45 America in the East regarding it primarily as an estate to be worked for gain must be abandoned ; that to surround the regions thus occupied^ with laws and tariffs operating in the exclusive interest of the power in possession is also folly and a retrograde principle. I believe, fur- ther, that to develop a permanently resident European caste, cut off from the conditions, political, moral, and physical, which have pro- duced the European, means degradation and failure. The tropics must be governed as a trust for civilization and with a full sense of the responsibility of such a trust involved. We must respect native systems of religion, native institutions, and political rights. Those who administer the government for us and repre- sent our civilization must be kept in direct and immediate contact with the standard of that civilization at its best. Even the acts of the government must be within the closest range of continual scrutiny of the public mind at home. The modern man, with his more complex life, is even more dependent upon the product of the tropics than were his ancient ancestors. Yet it has sometimes been supposed that the 46 Can White Men Live in Tropics ? tropics were never meant for the white man to live in or to greatly concern himself about. This region of the earth is supposed by some to be the white man's graveyard. How can Americans live in the Philippines, for example, where the thermometer stands on an average so far above the record between Florida and Maine ? Many regions in the tropics are like a steam-bathj and the heat and moisture to- gether are oppressive apparently beyond the power of the Anglo-Saxon to endure. Yet what are the facts ? The English and Dutch have for centuries lived not only with- in the tropics but along the equator. Some of the most brilliant achievements of the Anglo-Saxon are to be noted in this region. More wonderful than many a fairy romance is the story of the British conquest of India and of the making of the Queen's highway to India and China, and the government of 300,000,000 people on 2,000,000 square miles of Asiatic territory, mostly tropical. Who doubts that within a few years there will be a highway of iron built by British capital from the Cape of Good Hope to the Isthmus of Suez? In southern India, in 47 America in the East Burma and the Malay Peninsula, in Hong- Kong and Borneo and the islands of the sea, see what British energy in government, edu- cation, engineering, and irrigation has done. The British hold their own grandly in Jamaica, Guiana, and Sierra Leone. In tropical regions, hundreds of missionaries toil year after year, illustrating gloriously what wonders civilized man, with common sense and a knowledge of environment and proper precautions, can achieve and endure. Despite the climate and deadly malaria, the venom of insect, reptile, and plant, and the malice of evil men, thou- sands of men shov/ that one can spend the best working years of the average and even of a long life in the tropics. I have myself met scores and know of hundreds (including a line of seafaring ancestors) of soldiers, government officers, traders, teachers, and missionaries, who have done this very thing, and I have seen them, after decades of ser- vice, rosy, hearty, and strong. The Scudders in India, Dr. Legge in China, and Dutchmen from Java are types of achievement. More than ten millions of white men and their de- scendants are to-day settled within the tropics, 48 Can White Men Live in Tropics? laying the foundations of new and possibly greater civilizations. With the reconciliation and fusion of Oriental and Occidental factors, and of the contributions from tropic and temperate man and nature, under the one recreative force of Christianity, who doubts but that " Time's noblest offspring " is yet to come ? Nor have Americans shown themselves one bit less able to live and work in the tropics than their British kinsmen. As soon as op- portunity offered, they, too, in Africa, Asia, South America, the East and the West In- dies, in Polynesia and Micronesia, !iave gone, by ones and twos, or in little groups, for trade, and to labor for man's good in the name of the Son of Man. It was in tropic and African waters that Matthew Perry and Andrew Hull Foote demonstrated that a ship could be made more sanitary than the average house. Human health on the American mer- chant marine and the African and Asiatic squadrons of the United States navy shows that climate is no bar to enterprise or hin- drance to endeavor. We have had for a half-century hundreds of American mission- 4 49 America in the East aries working in the regions where the sun's rays are vertical. In addition to their own fertility of resources, their measures for the prevention of disease and danger and the pro- motion of comfort, and the remedies which the tropics themselves provide, is their armor of consecration and patriotism on the right hand and on the left. It is the spirit of the nations in which the Bible is most unfettered that explains their indomitable power of achievement. When the mind is sustained, the body can bear more. It is not alone the resources of civilization which enable the Englishman and the English- woman to excel all others as empire-builders. Look at those streams of Scottish and English people who every year pass through Egypt to India and the distant East. Think what nation-makers they are ! Reflect on the moral courage that sustains mothers and fathers who give up, during eight or ten of the most in- teresting years of their life, their children born in the tropics, in order that these may be trained in a more bracing moral atmosphere and hardier climate, even in the old home in the northern seas, before coming back, as most 50 z O P:S O I > H <; w >< Pi Si w Oh W H O o Can White Men Live in Tropics? of them do, to earn the Queen's shilling, or the civil service stipend, or the missionary's pittance. Cannot Americans do what British folk have done ? We are far from accepting the notion that white men cannot live in the tropics. Mr. Kidd's dogmatism here seems to rest upon tradition rather than upon thorough knowl- edge of modern conditions and possibilities. My own observations and knowledge, with pretty wide acquaintance with men who have lived and worked continuously under a ver- tical sun, lead me to take an entirely different view of the problem. As matter of fact, the modern man can, by ordering aright his diet and habits, acclimatize himself, especially if he sustains his spirit with food convenient, and draws upon the resources from the tropics themselves which nature and science have put in his hands. Furthermore, British medical journals assert, with proofs, that neither in theory nor fact is there any sound foundation for Mr. Kidd's belief. "The West Indies, which used to be called the white man's grave, now rank among the best sanatoria. The death-rate of European 51 America in the East troops in the tropics, whic4i used to be from lOO to 129 per I5OOO5 is now as lov/ as 12 per ijOOO in India. In Trinidad and Barbadoes the sickness and mortalit}^ among European soldiers are actually less than at home. It is hardly reasonable to dispute any longer the possibility of tropical acclimatization. The question has, in fact, been settled by the sol- vitur amhulando argument. What has now to be done is to study the means and condi- tions which may lead us to a complete victory over the tropical microbes, which are the real enemies to be conquered," Happy both the fact and augury that, from a sub-tropical and once hermit country opened by American diplomacy, has come forth Dr. Kitasato, the Japanese bacteriologist, who discovered and isolated the microbe which causes the bubonic plague and the bacilli of tetanus and influ- enza. 52 CHAPTER VIII THE ANGLO-SAXONS JOIN HANDS APPY also is it that in the tropics the two great " Anglo-Saxon " or Anglo- Celtic peoples understand each other better, join hands, and work shoulder to shoulder. In all that relates to the European system of politics, in Old World affairs, the Americans and British do not pull well together in the same yoke. Flitherto their differences have been rather as family squabbles, because of questions which connected themselves with European policy. But out in the broad world at large, especially during some great crisis, or when contrast of civilizations emerges, as in 1898, they are one. Then the deeps of old differences are broken up. They see themselves as friends, in a silent alliance. Let lis specify how, and when, the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes have covered the same work. American commerce in the 53- America in the East Orient was, in its initiation, modest enough. It began with carrying ginseng to China and ice and apples to India. But our ships were ever in danger. For centuries past, and until well into the experience of living men, piracy was the scourge of the Eastern seas. The Japanese of long ago have a gay record in this branch of industry, and so have the Portuguese, Malays, and mixed races. Es- pecially in our century, when the Chinese rascals — probably the worst in the world — could get small arms and cannon from Bel- gian, German, and English merchants, the whole southeastern coast of China swarmed with sea-robbers. Hong-Kong was the hot- bed of piracy and villany. Head men of pirate gangs resided there, and piratical junks anchored with impunity in the harbor. Many of these vessels sailed in companies of six or ten, each mounting a dozen guns and with crews of forty or fifty men. They were thus large enough and perfectly able to capture the finest merchant vessel afloat. Ostensibly^ they might be honest traders, which made them all the more dangerous. Indeed, in dull times, few Chinese junks could resist , „. 54 The Anglo-Saxons Join Hands doinp- a little piratical business. Finally, the English-speaking nations addressed them- selves to the task of utterly abolishing piracy. Then Americans and British joined hands, knowing no envy, and destroyed the corsairs. In jeopardy of life, for the safety of the seas, they poured out their blood alike. There stands to-day in Hong-Kong one monument to the memory of American and British sailors slain in suppressing piracy, true mar- tyrs of civilization. Our British friends have taken up with the custom of Decoration Day, and it is a touching sight, at every annual recurrence, to see marines and sailors under the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes make one procession to decorate the graves of comrades who speak the same tongue. In Korea, Japan, China, Siam, India, or the islands of the sea, this is seen. Slavery was once dominant in the tropic regions. It is still " the heart disease of Africa," though the domain of its existence is being rapidly circumscribed. It has been killed on the waters by united Anglo-Saxon effort. In all the spheres of the white man's influence in Africa, it is lessened every year. 55 America in the East When the rails from Cairo to the Cape shall have been laid, it will not long survive. The story of American co-operation with Great Britain in improving the slave trade off the earth, and especially off the ocean, is a noble one. From the time when Matthew Perry located Monrovia, and with Foote helped to lay the foundation of Liberia, but more es- pecially after the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, our navy was busy in the tropical waters of Africa in capturing slave craft and in policing the seas for the destruction of pirates. In the Dark Continent, as in the West Indies, we joined with the British in good work for all humanity. In a word, the Anglo-Saxon has his foot- hold in the tropics. He has held it during three centuries, developing its resources, in- troducing civilization and good government, gradually modifying the most hoary of the native ancient institutions, developing com- munication, building railways, lighthouses, telegraphs, submarine cables, opening the Dark Continent to light and hope, anni- hilating slavery, increasing mutual comfort, and, in a word, obeying the divine com- 56 The Anglo-Saxons Join Hands mands, for the benefit of all nations and of the race. This being their record in the past, is it not probable that the inheritors of the same race, genius, law, language, literature, and religion will work, during the centuries to come, to keep open the doors of trade, to extend civilization, and to labor for the uplift- ing of humanity ? Surely the hand of Provi- dence beckons to a great work. 57 CHAPTER IX THE CHINESE EMPIRE ETTER fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay/' wrote Alfred Ten- nyson in " Locksley Hall." The fifty years of Europe which this generation knows date from the revolutionary year of 1848. There has been reconstruction of the map, of gov- ernments, and of society. Yet scarcely less wonderful is the progress of China, Fifty years ago the only nations recognized in Tien-Hia, or All-under-Heaven, were "barbarian" and "vassal," represented in the Middle Kingdom as " bearers of trib- ute." Surrounded by inferior pupil-nations, and caring to know of none others, all the rest of the world was but as fringe and tassels to the imperial robe. It took years of diplo- matic protest before the character for " bar- barian " was expunged from treaty documents. China knew nothing of international law. The Emperor would not recognize as subjects any 58 The Chinese Empire of his people who had gone abroad. Here was a nation of agnostics, altogether too " re- ligious " or superstitious, and know-nothings in politics. Here has lain an inert mass of human society, a congeries of many tribes, fused by a hoary system into social uniformity, but, even " Within the Four Seas," speaking dia- lects which cannot be mutually understood by the common people of the different prov- inces. In point of numbers China excels all empires, having possibly 400,000,000 souls. Start a mixed procession of the human race past your door, and every fourth person would be Chinese. Geographically, the densest mass of man- kind known on earth inhabited one of the world's richest plains, through which flowed fertilizing rivers to the sea. Around this swarming hive, in lands adjoining, lived less favored peoples. Westward rose the vast plateau, dry and cold, called Tibet, the cradle- land of Asia's mighty rivers, with eight or ten milHons of souls. A series of -sandy plains called Mongolia, one-third as large as Europe, populated by about three milHons of 59 America in the East people, rolled away to the northwest. North- ward was Manchuria, out of which came the Tartars and the reigning dynasty. To-day ^YQ or six million Manchius, who have, since A. D. 1644, enforced the wearing of the queue as token of loyalty to the Peking Emperor, govern all of China's hosts. Over these grassy plains nomads roamed, and they, with the scanty townspeople, now number fewer than two millions. Southward was Indo-China, from Tong- king to Cambodia, with an area as large as Texas, in which dwelt from twenty to thirty- five millions. To the southwest were Burmah and Siam, partially under Chinese influence. There were a fev/ Chinese in the Philippines. and Malay archipelago, but none as yet in America. The Chinese name of the Loo-Choo Islands is Hanging Tassels — -pendant on the fringe of China's robe. .Formosa was claimed as part of Chinese territory, or was at least in vassalage. Over on the right was " The Little Sister of China." " The Outpost State," Korea, with its eight or ten millions of people, hang- 60 Tlie Chinese Empire ing down like the dangerous appendix vermis formis of the human economy, often caused trouble. Over out in the sea was Dai Nippon, supposed to be a member of the Chinese sys- tem, yet erratic and an unknown quantity. What held this great political system to- gether was a very ancient body of tradition. Its various applications to government, edu- cation, family and communal life, seemed like the veins, arteries, bones, and lungs of a body, necessary to its vitality. One text quoted from the classics has more than once stopped the building of a chimney, factory, or even weather-vane. Chinese education, social and ethical, was the cement which held these various nations and peoples together. It also furnished the solvent in which all hostile elements or foreign bodies were dissolved, or rather had been dissolved. For to the out- side observer, to whom the Chinese all look alike, and who does not keenly discriminate, China seemed as fixed in its forms as a min- eral mass. The Chinese Empire is threatened with disintegration. The heavings of rebellion, the mutterings of intellectual storm, the 6i demands and determinations of reformers, forbode a change, which shall be not me- chanical merely, but, as it were, chemical, as though there v/as to be transformation. In Chinese fairy lore, Wang Chih, the Rip Van Winkle who entered , the cave where the im- mortals of the mountains were playing chess, received a soporific in shape like a date-stone, which made him oblivious to hunger, thirst, and time. That was China, for centuries hi- bernating in semi-slumber. Now the date- stone seems to have fallen out of the mouth. The external and phenomenal changes are startling even the men who so long dwelt in the intellectual cave. Telegraphs are making nerves. Steamships ply along the coasts and on all the navigable waterways. American machinists, engineers, and ship-builders, with the type of steamicrs familiar in our rivers, have powerfully stimulated China's immense inland traffic and commerce. Railways are beginning to knit the country together. Fac- tories, well equipped with modern steam machinery, are starting up. Mines of ore are operated by modern methods, and coal and oil are brought to the surface and refined 62 The Chinese Empire In Western ways. Old " cash," that weighs seven pounds to a dollar's worth, is giving way to coinage. The printing-press is at work. Mathematical and scientific books are in demand. Nearly a million copies of the Bible, in whole or in portions, are sold annually, and even more in number are the tracts and booklets. The last five years seem to have begun an industrial revolution. There are differing planes of culture and grades of ability and civilization even in the Eighteen Provinces, as well as in the out- lying countries. Chinese history shows that nearly all natives of renown have come from the main central region of the Yellow and Yang-tse Rivers. This is still the centre of Chinese civilization. Out of it have sprung most of the leaders of the past. From it will doubtless arise those who are to be eminent in the making of the new and better China which we hope is coming. In North China, the majority of the people are ignorant and poor, and are not given to progress and en- lightenment. In the capital, there is apparent exception, because the able men come from elsewhere. "All roads lead to Peking." America in the East The people of southern China are less attractive in physique than their northern fellow-countrymen, but are not much more progressive. The Chinese seen in America come wholly from this quarter, and, indeed, almost exclusively from certain districts around Canton, in area not larger than Vermont. In central China, where natural resources are more abundant and communications more easy, we find also more men of ability, with open-mindedness, and with some conception of what national progress means. 64 CHAPTER X CAUSES OF CHINESE DECAY WHY has a people so favored by nature remained stationary, like a stone in a moist place, gathering the moss of ages ? China is like a great boneless giant, a masto- don without nerves. Low is the type of life where the sensory and motor nerves respond so languidly to danger at the extremities. Why has the central Flowery Land remained so many centuries apparently in a state of arrested development? The vagueness of national feeling, the general absence of patri- otism, the lack of mental initiative, the gen- eral sluggishness of the national mind, spring, we think, from Chinese vagueness of thought in regard to this universe and the Maker of it. Where pantheism reigns, there can be little worthy of the name of history, no defi- nite self-consciousness, little sense of national unity. 5 6s The facts are that the Chinese have been isolated from the world by natural barriers. On three sides, north, west, and south, are great deserts which in early days could not be traversed, or mountain ranges that were almost unsurmountable, while on the eastern front lies the great ocean, once a dead wall of inclusion. Yet, as if nature had reared no sufficient barriers, the Chinese built more and greater. The first is a brick frontier which in its dimensions has a length like that from Sandy Hook to Kansas. Over two thousand years old, the Great Wall winds like a colos- sal snake over mountains and valleys. Yet this monument of separation is only a symbol of more efficient barriers to intercourse which have been reared in the mind. In the first place, the women, half of Chinese humanity, are bound at both extremities, in head and feet. The Sons of Han never encouraged the education of the mothers of their children, and they have literally cramped their feet, dooming millions of little girls through many generations to have their toes crushed and their extremities, so beautiful as God made them, compressed into shapeless hoofs. In 66 Causes of Chinese Decay the struggle for life, in famine or disease, the daughter is foredoomed to death. They have both starved and fettered the mind, and prevented its growth. Confucius, whose boast was that he invented nothing, followed his ancestors in gazing with rever- ence upon the past, but with fear and dread upon the future. He went even further in making a nation of agnostics. The forefathers at the altars of heaven and earth worshipped God. Confucius laid down the precept, " Honor the gods, but keep them far from you." He taught morality as etiquette only, degraded religion to a merely ethical system, and thus cut the taproot of all moral growth, by preventing aspiration. The element of ; religious progress being eliminated, the mind '■ was fettered like their own botanical curi- osities. These, stinted of air, moisture, soil, ; and with roots cut, attain that limited growth which is deemed so elegant. The great mass of Chinese humanity, without vision or in- quiry, making no criticism of the past or showing any desire to change, indeed looking upon innovation as crime, have remained at a dead level. A missionary once informed me 67 America in the East that, in sixteen years of teaching many docile and estimable pupils, he could recall no in- stance of any one of them coming to ask him what this or that Scripture meant, or any instance of critical inquiry. Nevertheless, we must remember that China has had political development and variety. There has been evolution from pa- triarchal to regal government, then feudalism, and finally centralization, with frequently varying balances of power between sovereign and people, between imperialism and democ- racy. Indeed, China, locally, is the freest country in Asia. The fact that Taoism and Buddhism have taken such root and flour- ished so widely, is proof that mental initiative is not wholly lost, and that the Chinese have capacity to change, and even to adopt Chris- tianity. Furthermore, some things on which Occi- dental civilization sets great store, and which seem almost necessary to its being, are of distinctly Oriental origin, and for many centuries the Chinese had them before they were known elsewhere. These were tea, silk, paper, jade, porcelain, clocks, gunpowder, 6S Causes of Chinese Decay and much of the knowledge which^ through alchemy, has developed into chemistry. It is probable that the Egyptians, like the Greeks and Romans, and it is certain that the medissval Arabs, borrowed much from China. It is no longer a matter of opinion, but of fact, that printing, by means of mov- able types, as well as by blocks and other stereotyped forms, was known in Korea cen- turies before it was practised in Europe, the probabilities being; that the art was brought mto Europe by the Mongols, The magnetic needle was for centuries used as a guide for land travellers, but in a. d. 1122 the record was made of a Chinese fleet from Ningpo to Korea being guided by the magnetic needle. It is entirely true that upon the basis of the Chinese discoveries and applications Western men have advanced mightily. For sixteen centuries or more the Chinese have had competitive literary examination for appointment to the civil service, yet, after ages of literary daUiance and ponderous eru- dition, the average learned Chinaman is the most ignorant man of letters known on earth. The Chinese, more than any other people, 69 America in the East have suffered from routine, age-hardened con- ceit, ignorance which seems invulnerable, and an apparently hopeless lack of originality. Even the progress of Christian nations is, in the mandarin's eyes, degeneration, degradation. It is no wonder, then, that when the forlorn hope of American teachers of the. Gospel first entered China, merchants and sailors asked them incredulously whether they could move China. They answered that they could not, but that God could. What the Chinese need is life, vision. It is because their sages and mandarins say, "We see,'* while yet they are blind, that they cannot even now realize their danger. The people have no hope, and are liable to be conquered by the foreigner and lose their country. China needs a new nervous system. 70 CHAPTER XI OUR PIONEER COUNTRYMEN IN CHINA IT was a day of very small things that saw the beginnings of x\merican influence upon Ta Tsing. Our flag was first carried to China by Major Gray, of the United States First Artillery^ who was supercargo of the American ship " Empress/' which, loaded with ginseng, sailed on Washington's birthday, 1784, for Canton. There the Stars and Stripes were raised, and the men from " the Country of the Flowery Flag " began to be known. The first American firms v/ere those of Milner & Bull, and later of Talbot, Olyphant, & Co. It was through a New Yorker, Mr. Oly- phant, a member of the Bleecker Street Pres- byterian Church, and by his invitation, that the famous English missionary to China, Robert Morrison, the first Protestant mis- sionary to that country, was able to reach Canton. His name, ever fragrant and magic- like, is an honor to all English-speaking 71 America in the East nationSj and his manuscripts are to-day rev- erently treasured under glass in Hong-Kong. He arrived in the year 1807, and was given quarters with Messrs. Milner & Bull;, of Nev/ York. The East India Company was hostile to the presence of a missionary, but it was through Mr. Olyphant's influence that the London Missionary Society sent him out, and so manifest were his talents that in 1 808 the Company employed him as translator. With a single teacher, who was in constant terror of being discovered and put to death, he worked steadily for years in a godown or storehouse. This hero of learning and con- secration, almost unaided, translated the Bible into the most difficult language of the world. In the opinion of all learned men in Europe, this had been deemed utterly beyond the power of any single person. Through his exertions, with those of his colleagues, from 1 8 10 to 1836, 7515763 copies of works, re- ligious and scientific, consisting of 800,000,000 pages, were printed at Canton and other ports in the Far East, of which there were 2,075 complete Chinese Bibles, 9,970 New Testaments, and 3 1,000 separate portions of 72 Our Countrymen in China Scripture. To translate the Bible into Chinese meant the building of a railway through the Chinese intellect Talbot, Olyphant, & Co. formed but one of those princely American " hongs " or mer- chant houses before submarine-cable days, so liberal in spirit and so generous in patronage of good to China. This same firm invited out and brought on one of their ships Dr. David Abeel, from New York. It was the church of which Mr. Olyphant was a member that sent out the printing-press and type of which Mr, S. Wells Williams took charge. The first Christian school in China, established at Canton and named after Morrison, was started in 1838 by the Rev. S. R. Brown, a graduate of Yale College and son of the author of the well-known hymn, ^' I love to steal awhile away, from every cumbering care." Dr. Brown trained many Chinese young men, including Yung Wing, who afterwards was influential in having over a hundred Chinese young men brought to the United States for education, besides being a power in bringing in the new and better China that is to be. The free education, both Christian and 73 America in the East secular, which Americans have given the Chinese, through the boarding and day schools for boys and girls, medical and technical schools, through academies and colleges, forms a brilliant story. The Canton school was con- tinued by Dr. A. P. Happer, educator and translator, who lived until 1894, having com- piled and put into the vernacular scores of text-books, his monument being the Christian College in Canton. To mention even a few illustrious examples of ability, patient industry, and success is to do injustice to other noble men and women — unless this paper is taken as only a hint or meagre sketcho Dr. W. A. P. Martin, of Indi- ana, who came to Ning-po in 1850, has spent most of his time as an educator. He was called by the Government in 1869 to start and conduct the Tung-wen, a college organ- ized in Peking to train young men for the public service, especially as agents of inter- national intercourse. Under nine foreign professors and four native teachers, the one hundred and twentv students are of two sorts, those who begin with languages and those who begin with the sciences. Dr. Martin's 74 Our Countrymen in China works, potent for the making of a new China and done into Chinese, are now circulating wherever Chinese is read. His best piece of translation — Wheaton's " International Law" — has exercised a mighty influence upon the two empires whose rulers are Sons of Heaven, dwelling in Peking and Tokio. Like Verbeck, of Japan, this American has been an instructor of statesmen. In the pro- gramme of reforms set forth by the Emperor recently, which I believe will yet be carried out. Dr. Martin has been authorized to or- ganize a Chinese University, which is likely to change the key of national education and intellect. Not less brilliant as a story, nor less wonderful for good, is the modern medical history of China, as directed by American physicians. Dr. Peter Parker, a Yale graduate and Massachusetts man, while on his way to China in 1834 to establish a hospital, was influential in having organized the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society, which has done such good to the souls and bodies of men in China and Japan. Besides relieving thou- sands of suflFerers, through medicine and sur- 75 America in die East gery, during many years of toil, and in training hundreds of Chinese students to be physicians. Dr. Parker was but one pioneer of a great host from America and Europe. These have estabhshed, and given years of drudgery in, the sixty-one hospitals and forty-three dis- pensaries which were in China in 1890, and are now more numerous, and in which nearly four hundred thousand patients are treated annually. As early as February 6, 1 8 1 2, Rvc mission- aries were ordained at Salem, Massachusetts, to teach and preach in eastern Asia. From the very first, American missionaries have been gifted with the best of all gifts, that of sancti- fied common sense. Instead of being freaks and cranks, they have proved themselves men of ability and clear vision. Findinp- that missionary work does not always consist in doing exactly what one came expecting to do, they immediately put hand and mind to what was set before them. Years before Christ- ianity was tolerated by treaty, our missionaries had settled in the Straits Settlements and learned the Chinese languagCj so that, when able to enter in, they were already equipped 76 D H C/2 J O o U K O Our Countrvmen in for the work, carrying also Dr. Robert Mor- rison's translation of the Bible into Chinese. When, in 1842, the five ports were opened, they were reinforced from home, made better versions of the Bible, established schools, opened dispensaries, and printed books. Mr. David Abeel, of the Reformed Church, founded, while on a visit to England, the Society for Promoting the Female Education of the East. Besides sending scores of wo- men to teach their sisters of India and China, this Society became the prolific parent of the numerous Women's Missionary Socie- ties, both denominational and union, which have done so much good all over the world. Another pioneer was Lieutenant M. S. Cul- bertson, U. S. A., classmate at West Point with Sherman, Beauregard, and Halleck, who resigned his commission to serve the Great Captain in China, and to help put the Bible into the tongue of millions. The Bleecker Street Presbyterian Church, in New York City, sent to the newly estab- lished mission at Canton a printing-press to print books to aid in spreading the Gospel. William Williams, the father, wrote to his 77 America in the East son, S. Wells Williams, who had fixed his mind upon the career of a botanist, to go out and take charge of this press. The botanist became a printer. In China, with quick eye and wonderful inventive power, he studied the Chinese system of writing to find which of the 80,000 or more characters could be best used for printing. From that small beginning, and through the work of Mr. Gamble at Shanghai, have developed giant enterprises for the production and distribution of printed matter. Forty missionary societies are now at work in China, and all make more or less use of tract, book, and leaflet among a people who almost worship letters. The American Board press years ago had issued over 30,000,000 pages. The Metho- dist press at Fu-chau sends out over a mil- lion pages annually. The Presbyterian press of Shanghai, with its type-foundry, bindery, book depository, does printing in eight lan- guages. In the year 1889, 6,178,806 pages were sent forth. Here the great manuscript dictionaries, grammars, original works and translations into the Chinese dialects, and into Japanese, Korean, Manchiu, and Malay, which 78 Our Countrymen in China are such a credit to American scholarship, have been condensed into light and portable volumes. Billions of pages of Gospel truth, of scientific information, and of popular knowl- edge on most every conceivable department of human progress have thus been scattered broadcast all over China. Dr. Elijah Coleman Bridgman, the first American missionary sent directly from the United States to China, began in May, 1832, to publish a magazine, the " Chinese Reposi- tory," relating to the people and countries of the Far East, in order that the whole English- speaking world as well as educated Euro- peans everywhere might learn to know more about yellow and brown humanity. He was able to do this because, besides the Chinese type belonging to the East Indian Company, he had the font of type brought out from New York. Mr. S. Wells Williams, the educated pnnter in charge, became also a contributor, helping with hand and head to issue that world-renowned periodical, which for twenty years informed the world, as it had never been informed before, about the oldest of empires. Besides a Hbrary of solid volumes, 79 America in the East which have helped to bridge the gulf between alien and native. Dr. Williams wrote " The Middle Kingdom/' the best book on China, and his Tonic and Syllabic Dictionaries. The publication of each of the three was a literary event. Thus were opened those mighty quarries in which book-makers, tour- ists, writers on China, and speakers of the language have so industriously delved, so that out of their bowels have come the materials for a mighty superstructure of literature. After the " Repository " ceased, the " Chinese Recorder " was founded by Dr. L. N. Wheeler, and is still published. Neither Williams nor Martin has ever trumpeted forth the fact of imperial favor, audiences with the Emperor, or the possession of mandarin's buttons. In 1848 John V. N. Talmage (brother of the well-known living preacher in Washington) reached Amoy (whence came the tea to Boston in 1773), where the first Church for native Christians using an open Bible was erected in China. There were two believers in the Amoy region when Talmage arrived. There are now scores of churches. The story of this missionary is typical of others. 80 Our Countrymen in China The forty or fifty thousand enrolled Protest- ant church members now in China imply a Christian community of over 150,000, and with the Catholics of over a quarter of a million. Of missionary progress an expert critic on the ground wrote in 1888 : " If Christian missions [in China] advance in the next thirty-five years in the same ratio as in the past thirty-five years, there will be, at the end of that time, twenty-six millions of commiunicants and a Christian community of one hundred million people " — one-fourth ofthe Chinese nation. 81 CHAPTER XII AMERICAN LEAVEN IN THE CHINESE MASS THE printed page has been a great leavening force, permeating and lifting up the Chinese mass. To-day, besides the foreign newspapers at the treaty portSj mostly in English, there are twelve or fifteen Chris- tian journals printed in Chinese, and the vernacular daily press in the cities. The first newspapers and periodicals were missionary organs. Then came secular papers, all started with foreign capital, but soon purchased by natives and coming under their control. Typesetters, printers, and editors are Chi- nese. There are newspapers for educated families, cheap sensational weeklies, advertis- ing sheets, and even comic papers. Shanghai has already five Chinese newspapers. The dense ignorance of the masses has also been pierced by the societies like that for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowl- edge, which has had such a surprising expan- 82 American Leaven sion since the Chino- Japanese war. In one year, from November i, 1896, a total of 199,- 200 copies of books, containing 12,1675900 leaves or double pages, were issued. Dr. Young J. Allen, an American missionary, the chief author and translator, has devoted his life to this work, which seemed at first like casting good bread upon ungrateful waters. But he has lived to see what he cast forth return after many days. The chief centres of distribution are in the examination halls, where students assemble (in Nanking even to the number of twenty-four thousand, and now under the electric light). It is from among such Chinese students, enlightened by Occi- dental knowledge, translations, and by truth supplied by foreigners, that reformers like Kang (now the exile in Tokio), who brought the new ideas even to the Emperor, have come. It is impossible to tell in detail the story of Christian missions, or the wonderful results accomplished. To judge of these latter by statistics of converts is simply absurd. As some of the grandest triumphs in electricity are those of induction, so the Protestant mis- ^3 America in the East sionaries of China have, besides their churches, preaching stations, hospitals, dispensaries, schools, colleges, and printing-presses, given the Chinese object-lessons and stimulated them to thought, and^ we might almost say, created for them a public opinion. Of course these men who turn the Chinese vv^orld upside down are not liked, for innovation in the eyes of the normal Confucian is sin. Why should the mandarins or the orthodox, whose interests are all in keeping things as they are, whose only reverence is for what is past, who wish to keep China governed from the graveyard, approve or say anything in favor of Christian missionaries ? Furthermore, we must never forget the great contrast of ideals and purposes of Pro- testant and Catholic missionaries. The Roman Catholic, noble, self-denying, self-effacing, will- ing martyr as he often is, forms a commun- ity, holds his converts to the Church, but does not in any very appreciable way touch the art, literature, traditions, or ideals of the people. If his pupils are good Catholics, they may still plod on in their old ruts. But the Protestant missionary comes to reform 84 American Leaven society. He brings leaven, he makes up* heaval, he influences art, literature, tradition, ideals. He gives a new view and compels change, and change for the better. Consequently, there is to-day a "young China." There are Chinese who no longer consider that the graveyard ought to rule, or that the thoughts of dead men may not be challenged. It is the pupils of the mission- aries who, directly or indirectly, have had the courage to pierce the official hedge and bring even to the Emperor the truth. It is they who have told the Son of Heaven that unless he and his people awake to the truth of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, the nation is doomed, and that the very attempt to preserve the institutions which have caused China's retrogression and decay will hasten her downfall. In diplomacy, the American leaven has been powerful in the Chinese mass. The first Minister, the Hon. Caleb Cushing, a man of ability, tact, and power, arrived in the frigate "Brandywine." With our missionaries as sec- retaries and interpreters, he concluded the treaty of Wanghia, July 3, 1844, which was 35 America in the East so clear and detailed that until i860 it was the leading authority in settling disputes be- tween the Chinese Government and foreigners. William B. Reed came to China in the " Min- nesota/' but refused to make the ko-tow, or nine protestations, and left the country. The first instance in which the name and title of a foreign functionary were respectfully men- tioned was when the American Minister John E. Ward was reported, in the Peking "Gazette," in July, 1869, to have come to the imperial capital. He, too, refused to ko-tow; but the result of the diplomacy of 1858, which dragged the bat-like mandarins out of their stupid ignorance and childish desires for isola- tion, was the toleration of Christianity, diplo- matic residence in Peking, and freedom to travel through the country. Through these three avenues of welfare and progress, hereto- fore closed, as S. Wells Williams says, China has already " made more real advances than ever before in her history." Peking once accessible, our country has had a line of able representatives, led by Anson Burlingame. In 1868 he came to America and Europe with the Chinese Embassy. De- B>6 American Leaven spite the tart criticisms of men too eager to make money, Burlingame did good, and China's first attempt to show friendliness was a sincere one. Then American influence in China was at the flood-tide, for a new order of things was beginning and friendly advice was welcomed. These were the days when we were begging the Chinese to come over and help us in developing our country. We had not yet begun to violate our own treaties, eat our own words, and kick out the guests we had once invited. Not having any definite foreign policy. Republican or Democratic, inspired now by scholars and again by the sand-lot orators, the outrageous treaty of 1894, the eternal disgrace of the American Nation, was negotiated, and American pres- tige fell. Nevertheless, it rose again under James Ross Brown, the versatile engineer; Mr. Low, the all-round high-average Gov- ernor of California; the writer and scholar Avery, the practical and thoroughly trained and experienced Seward (nephew of America's great expansionist), the university president Angell, the well-informed journalist John Russell Young, and last, though farthest 87 America in the East from the leasts Denby, who, to the honor of our Government, actually served three terms. When the war-storm of 1894 broke out, he had the profound confidence both of China and Japan. Some day we shall see the folly of sending out to Oriental nations raw diplomatists igno- rant of the language and people among whom they live. Excellent, however, as has been the line of diplomatists of the United States in Peking, how, with such secretaries, scholars, men of affairs, masters of the Chinese lan- guage, and missionaries as S. Wells Williams, W. A. P. Martin, and Chester Holcombe in Peking, could it have been hard for even an average man to be anything else timn a pretty good envoy ? The fruitful visit of General Grant — "the typical American citizen" — and the labors of the Hon. John W. Foster in China in 1895, though unofficial, belong to this fair page of American influence in the Far East. It was an American, General Ward, who first revealed to the world the military possi- bilities of the Chinese people. It had come to be almost a settled maxim with Europeans, S8 American Leaven down to the year 1860, that the Chinese had no military capacity whatever, that they were not only timid and cowardly, but could not be organized for war. The fact that a little army of Anglo-French allies had penetrated to the capital and destroyed the Imperial summer palace seemed to demonstrate that neither Tartar nor Chinaman could be called a soldier, in the Western sense of the word. Then it was that General Frederick G. Ward, of Salem, Massachusetts, in the time of the great Tai-ping rebellion, drilled a company of ordinary natives until they became invincible heroes. After Ward's death, " Chinese " Gordon, whose murder at Khartoum has just been avenged by Kitchener, commanded this Ever-Conquering Legion and enlarged it, winning his great fame, putting down the rebellion that had caused the death of mill- ions of Chinamen, with incredible devastation of land and cities. Thus building where an American had laid the foundation, Li Hung Chang was enabled, with German aid, to put into the field the only Chinese soldiery which could stand for an hour in presence of the Japanese army of 1874. When this one 89 America in the East army corps was destroyed, China had to make peace, though the so-called Chino- Japanese war of 1894-95 was in no sense a war between two countries, but only be- tween Japan and three or four Chinese provinces. In a word, it may be within bounds to say that the American diplomatists, missionaries, teachers, physicians, engineers, and men of science have trained up the majority of the men of " New China," — that is, the only population which can be permanently relied on for the building of a new and regenerate State. " Fifty years of Europe " may indeed be better than a " cycle of Cathay." Still, it must be remembered that a Chinese cycle is exactly sixty years long, and the year, 1899, is the 36th of the 76th cycle, since the first began 2637 b. c. Although Mr. Tennyson may have meant some indefinite period, yet to the student of China the words have less force than formerly, for old China is becoming new, and " through the shadow of the globe " is ever sweeping " into a younger day." Years ago Dr. S. Wells 90 American Leaven Williams wrote his faith and prophecy, or, at least, hope, that the regeneration of China would be " accomplished like the operation of leaven in meal, without shivering the vessel." 9A CHAPTER XIII THE OLD JAPAN OF HERMIT DAYS IT is but half '^ a cycle of Cathay," or exactly thirty years, since Mutsuhito, the one hundred and twenty-third Mikado of Japan, began his reign and the era of Meiji or enlightened civilization. Within that time the hermit nation has taken a place among the world-powers. Once a sealed country, like the closed cave of Arabian story, the American Perry found the talismanic " Open Sesame." Our AH Baba made the portals unfold. Now the whole world is surprised at the wonders revealed. No one can accuse the latest delineators of Japan of a lack of appreciation. On the contrary, in their lush rhetoric and rank flat- tery, which shows ominous signs of self- deception, or of ultra-subjectiveness, rather than perception of truth or adherence to facts, there is danger of reaction. Some day 92 o 5 o H o "p K U < o < O M OS O ;z; o o w > The Old Japan of Hermit Days the Japanese may be as much underrated and scouted as they are now overpraised by some. It is very certain that, whether in- tending it or not, the average newspaper correspondent and hasty tourist, wishing to please both the Japanese themselves (who love "sugar and superlatives'*) and the Occidental admirers of "Japonism," give what, when analyzed, are caricatures of truth. They ignore both the men and the forces that have made the new Japan. Some of these literary "impressionists" seem to be so Japanese-mad in their rhapsodies as to suggest Titania before Bottom. In the name of all our inheritance, let us not cast away perspective or take a Japanese poster as the gauge and measure of reality. To understand the present, we must look at the past. Let us have a little history. Official native chronology is a very recent product, manufactured in Tokio less than thirty years ago, and much more fashionable than justifiable. It is still dangerous in Japan to write in criticism of the origin of the Mikado's house. Full-grown natives who profess to be educated, gravely write that 93 America in the East "the first emperor ascended the throne b. c. 660." Every scholar knows that the first thousand years or so of so-called Japanese " history '* is worthless. Not until about the fourth century does anything clear and firm emerge. The natives acknowledge that no writings or almanacs were in existence before the sixth century. Indeed, the more " official " a historical publication about the ancient ages is, the lower its value. Briefly sketching the national story, we see warring tribes and a population made up of Aino, Nigrito, Malay, Tartar, Korean, Chinese, and various continental elements struggling together before the dawn of written annals, in the eighth century. Out of these what is now the imperial house became para- mount. The ancient islanders had the rudi- ments of a religion, called Shinto, or the God-way, which no scholar, native or foreign, has yet demonstrated to be of indigenous origin. Buddhism, from Tibet and China through Korea, entered a. d. 552, has been the fertile mother of civilization and the perennial fountain of art, writing, literature, law, chronology, the popular religion, and 94 The Old Japan of Hermit Days manifold elements of culture. After the first rude feudalism, codes of law and the centralizing system of boards in the capital and governors in the provinces were borrowed from China. Then, through the rise of the military classes, came more elaborate feudal- ism and duarchy, — the Throne and the Camp — the Mikado in Kioto the source of honor, the Shogun or general with the sword and treasury in the east at Kamakura or Yedo. For about thirty- five years (1570 to 1605) three great men, Nogunaga, Hideyoshi, and lyeyasu appeared, and the Mikado governed through a military regent. During this period also came European traders and Port- uguese and Spanish missionaries. For a while the hermit nation was in contact with Europe, and a second great wave of influences from the West rolled in over the country. But, whether wholly because the mixture of political ambitions with the foreign religion was obnoxious, or, as is more probable, be- cause of insular feebleness and a political system which feared competition with and dangers from aliens, lyeyasu and his states- 95 America in the East men took alarm. The foreigners and their belongings were purged out by banishment, bloodshed, and cruelties unspeakable. Once more resuming the role of a hermit nation, Japan gradually elaborated a colossal system of violent exclusion and hermetical inclu- sion. One little loophole was kept open at Nagasaki. For two centuries or more, almost un- noticed and scarcely suspected, a constant infusion of leaven was poured by the Dutch- men through this vent-hole. Japan, in spite of those who think only of an absolutely sealed cave, a mummy chamber, or a Thorn- rose Castle, was in reality, not phenomenally nor in quantity, but invisibly and with tre- mendous potency, kept, as to her inquisitive scholars, in living contact with Europe. The majority of her educated men, however, remained steeped in the agnosticism of China and weltered in the ooze of pantheism, be- coming the most conceited, proud, and learnedly ignorant of all men. It is the Japan of Tokugawa days (1604- 1868) with which our fathers and ourselves have been acquainted. Who were the Japan- 96 The Old Japan of Hermit Days ese of this time^ and what was their condi- tion? It is quite certain that it was only during this period that art, literature, and the bloom of the spirit in civilization became general in the islands. In the earlier cen- turies only the soldier class (the Samurai) and the court people enjoyed comforts or culture, while wealth was never great. Neither merchants, nor indeed any of the lower classes — that is, nine-tenths of the people — had any special rights which sword- wearers were bound fully to respect. The Japanese are a very polished people, but ages of force and the sword have been the teachers of politeness. Yet, even during this modern time, popu- lation having outgrown the capacity of the soil to furnish food, and the science of agri- culture and the arts of providing sustenance having come to the fullest possible develop- ment then known, the whole nation had to enter upon a course of pinching economy. The realities are set forth finely and with sympathy in Mr. Arthur Knapp's "Feudal and Modern Japan." Some of the ways and methods of this " Crusoe of nations " in 7 97 America in the East " cheese-paring " (though the Japanese never use cheese), as revealed in the local histories, seem as comical as they are pathetic. Popu- lation stood stationary for over a century. Infanticide was very common. No de- formed child had a chance to live. Often the girl babies fared as in China. Famines were more than occasional, often devastating considerable regions. Diseases that can be truly called immoral were rampant. It would be difficult to find many families that were absolutely free from the syphilitic taint. Rarely, if ever, could one look into an audi- ence of Japanese hearers, even twenty-five years ago, without finding large numbers pockmarked. Attendance upon the morning hour at the medical missionary's dispensary revealed ghastly pictures of disease such as few civilized countries could ever show. In the Tokugawa prefects or divisions the people were fairly well off, but in the others the beggars were numerous and hideously diseased, and the lepers clamorous. Gam- blers abounded. I have myself hired for my kagOy on a wintry day, porters who had gambled away every stitch of clothing. I had 98 The Old Japan of Hermit Days to buy rice and watch them while they ate it, lest they should stake and lose it. There was a class of people, the Eta, numbering, with the Hi-nin or not-human, probably a million or more, who were never reckoned in the census, and were treated as brutes. In each of the great municipalities, forming almost a city by themselves, was a large col- ony of women reserved for immoral use. Intolerance in religion, ruffianism under the name of honor, torture in the courts, and modes of punishment in the prison quite equal to the old Spanish Inquisition, formed the rule. The phallic cult was widespread. The most shockingly obscene books, pictures, and emblems were exposed for sale in the shops, made into confectionery and crockery, carried in parades and temple festivals. The decencies of life, as understood even in China and India, to say nothing of Christendom — and we have read what philosophers and aesthetically inclined gentlemen have said in explanation and defence — were not very well understood in Japan. Nor must hermits be judged by Occidental standards, or even by themselves of a.d. 1898. Indeed, we believe 99 America in the East it to be quite true that the reason why the average woman took her bath in the middle of the street was because it would attract less attention there than where she would have less room. It is all very different now. lOO CHAPTER XIV THE COMING OF THE AMERICANS EVEN during the last century our seamen were in the waters of Nippon, for dur- ing the extinction of the Dutch Repubhc by the French, Captain Stewart carried under the Stars and Stripes the annual vessel from Batavia to Nagasaki for trade. Captain Reuben Coffin, of Nantucket, landed on the Bonin Islands in 1824. Then followed whalehunters by the thousands. An American Christian gentleman first sent relief ships to the forbidden land in the sea, to take back Japanese waifs to their homes. In 1837 the American firm of C. W. King & Co. despatched the ship " Morri- son " into Yedo Bay. Fired upon and driven away, these good Samaritans encountered the same policy of repulsion with fire and shot at Kagoshima. This Mr. C. W. King, un- discouraged, wrote the first American book on Japan. In it he uttered a prophecy lOI America in the East which we are seeing fulfilled : " America is the hope of Asia beyond the Malay peninsula [as looked at in pre-Californian days eastward through Europe], and her noblest efforts shall find a becoming theatre there." Nevertheless, from these exiles in the sea the language of Nippon was learned, and interpreters like Dr. S. Wells Williams were trained, and Japanese young men were brought to the United States and educated. Among them were Kinzo, Manjiro, who was the interpreter (in the rear tent, unknown to Perry) in the first American treaty negotia- tions, and Heco, who started the first news- paper in Japan, the forerunner of the " Hiogo News," the " Tokio Times," and the " Tokio Independent," in which Messrs. Wainwright, E. H. House, and E. W. Eastlake have won journalistic honors, if not emolument. With continued insult and determination, official Japan repelled every attempt to open trade or to receive shipwrecked natives from afar or picked up on the sea. Meanwhile Americans were being cast ashore in Japan. The Yankee whalers, finding no game on the eastern side of their continent, were com- I02 The Coming of the Americans pelled to weather Cape Horn and go north toward the polar seas, and from time to time their vessels foundered or went ashore. Not being always the best specimens of Christian civilization, our tars were treated roughly and sometimes with needless cruelty by the Jap- anese. It was from among these sailors that the first teacher of English in Japan came forth. Ronald McDonald was born at a settlement which was the true fruit of our commerce with China — Astoria, in Oregon. It soon became necessary to break down Japanese barbarism in refusing to receive their own people, and to demand justice and secure humanity in the treatment of Ameri- can sailors. With firmness, but without bloodshed. Commander Glynn, in 1848, with his little ten-gun brig, gave the insolent offi- cers at Nagasaki a lesson not speedily for- gotten. McDougal in the '' Wyoming " and Pearson in the '' Ta-Kiang " maintained the American record of valor — so confessedly medicinal and alterative to the Japanese mind — at Shimonoseki in 1863 ^^^ 1864. The Japanese themselves are now agitating the matter of erecting a great monument to 103 America in the East Commodore Perry. Having learned the temper of these Oriental insulars, this Rhode Islander actually excelled them in those elab- orate forms and etiquette which passed for morals and were made substitutes for char- acter in old Japan. Having himself selected his presents, he gave these people on the strand at Yokohama an object-lesson, show- ing them in actual operation the material forces of the West, — the railway, locomotive and train, the telegraph, electric batteries, ploughs, sewing-machines, and other tools especially the inventions of Americans. Corn- crackers and rice-hullers, after Colt's revolvers, were the most immediately popular, and some of the former are still in use in Yezo. Perry's successor, Townsend Harris, with- out a ship or a soldier, conquered by the simple might of truth, piercing the hoary system of politics built on lies, and ripping open the armor of laminated deception which the native diplomatists then gloried in. He was wrong in thinking the Japanese "the greatest liars on earth." Nevertheless, it will be a grand day to Japan when simple truth becomes the basis of ordinary business trans- 104 The Japanese Railway Engineer, Ishikawa. The Coming of the Americans actions, the staple of the newspapers, and the regulating principle in etiquette and forms of language. Japanese freely acknowledge that they never had a better friend than Townsend Harris. His honesty and friend- ship stand as a true type, as we hope, of the abiding friendship of the United States for the Mikadoes empire. At the first opportunity offered under the treaty, the American missionary-teacher en- tered into the country. Christianity had been for two centuries under ban. To the common people, the very word was a synonym with sorcery and plague. To the scholar and gentleman, it was the sign of all conceivable dangers. The multitude, driven like sheep under ofiicial compulsion, streamed through a wicket trampling on the engraved copper image of Jesus. Each gentleman had to swear, " on the true faith of a Samurai," that in his household was no believer in "the corrupt sect." The Buddhist priest was the sleuth-hound after heresy, the guardian be- tween the cradle and the grave against the feared and hated leaven which has since 1870 remade and is remaking the nation. Open- 105 America in the East ing the dispensary. Dr. Hepburn began his healing and cleansing work with the crowds of filthy and diseased humanity. What grand names are those of Simmons, Berry, Whit- ney, Harwell, Taylor, Cutter, McCartee, and others in the medical annals of Japan ! Un- able to preach, the Christian missionary be- came a teacher, and founded the very first schools of science and languages. We make no pretence of even mentioning in this paper the work done by British, French, Germans, Dutch, and others. It is an Englishman that says, " New Japan is the creation of the foreign employee," and, " No less a feat than the reform of the entire edu- cational system was chiefly the work of a handful of Americans." Waiting patiently till prejudice had been removed and the way opened, the American missionaries began the teaching of Western learning and languages, putting into the hands of young men those keys that should open the treasures of literature, science, and civiliza- tion. At Nagasaki, Guido F. Verbeck organ- ized and taught, from 1859 to 1869, a government school in which many of the men T06 The Coming of the Americans since eminent in reform and progressive gov- ernment were trained. After, in the Revolu- tion of 1868, the young men, expert with American rifles but inexperienced in foreign diplomacy and methods, had transported the Emperor and the national administration from Kioto to Tokio, they called Mr. Verbeck to be the head of the Imperial University, and their adviser in that education which they declared to be the basis of all progress. It was this quiet, forceful man who recommended, planned, and elaborated, not only the system of national education, but also the great embassy which went around the world, 1872-74, and which so turned the minds of the leading men of Japan toward Western ideas and methods of progress. Verbeck wrought out the details, and, when the list was complete, found, to his delighted surprise, that over one-half of the elect mem- bers of the embassy had been his pupils. When the Hon. David Murray was made Superintendent of Education, serving for several years, Mr. Verbeck remained the ad- viser of the Cabinet in national and local matters. It was he who influenced the Gov- 107 America in the East ernment to cease persecuting the Christians, and to end the savagery which disgraced the first years of the Restoration. For a time he was general factotum, doing the work which was afterwards distributed among ex- pert advisers, among whom were E. Peshine Smith, of Rochester, in the Foreign Office, and General George B. Williams, of Indiana, who superintended the raising of loans abroad and the carrying out of that scheme of in- ternal revenue which, like the banking laws and coinage of Japan, was borrowed from America ; Samuel M. Bryan founded the foreign postal system, personally securing signatures to postal treaties, first, with the United States and then with European Gov- ernments. Mr. Verbeck translated into the vernacular, for the Government the " Code Napoleon," Bluntschli's " Staatsrecht," and " The Thou- sand Legal Maxims,'' and for the people " The Book of Psalms " — probably the best piece of translation ever done into the verna- cular. Greatest of the aliens who wrought to build the New Japan was Guido Verbeck. io8 CHAPTER XV THE MISSIONARY STORY OUR Other missionaries, notably S. R. Brown, the author of grammars and language books, trained some of the very first young statesmen of New Japan. Dr. J. C. Hepburn, besides healing tens of thousands of poor people, made the standard dictionary on which all others have since been based, and, with helpers, completed the Bible in Japanese. Dr. J. C. Berry, the father of prison reform in Japan, also originated and was prominent in the work, which was practically carried out by Miss Richards and especially Miss Tal- cott, of training nurses. In the war of 1894 Japan had a superb hospital system, with nine hundred trained women nurses to draw upon, while China actually went to war with- out a hospital corps. Not least of all their multifarious work was the training of the natives in self-government and parliamentary procedure which hun- 109 America in the East dreds of American missionaries gave to thousands of Japanese young men, thus pre- paring the nation for representative institu- tions. The church meetings and ecclesiasti- cal conventions carried on by natives, under American oversigh formed a school of prac- tical civics also. It is, therefore, no wonder that in the Japanese Cabinet and house of Commons the number of Christian men and church officers is out of all proportion numer- ous as compared with men of other religions or of none. It was a Boston merchant, Alpheus Hardy, who educated Neesima, and American money that for the most part established the Do- shisha University in Kioto, with its halls of science and theology. American teachers by the hundreds, and university graduates as professors by the score, in the private and Government schools and the Imperial Uni- versity, have moulded the minds of young Japan. Fukuzawa, Japan's " grand old man '* and admirer of America, who will have no office, but directs a university and is " the intellectual father of one-half of the young men now in office," may almost be called a no The Missionary Story- pupil of the United States. The Normal School for men and women " has been the work of a Kentucky gentleman, M. M. Scott, A. M./' now of Honolulu. Musical education was introduced and established by Luther W. Mason, of Boston. The names of Cap- tain L. L. Janes, Professor Terry, Dr. J. C. Cutter, are but a few in the work of education. The Japanese woman, though far above the status of her sisters in China or India, had no career or vocation open to her beyond that in the house or farm. One-half of Japan was shut off from intellectual culture. The coming of missionaries, with homes and wives, gave an object-lesson which did indeed disturb the faultless and lifeless symmetry of old Japanese ideals. Yet they awoke also new hope and created new possibilities for the Japanese women. The names of Ameri- can Christian women — Hepburn, Pruyn, Crosby, Pearson, Straight, Bacon, Pierce, Buckley, Richards, Talcott, and others who have preached and lived the Christian doc- trine of the worth of woman, equally with the man the child of God, will not soon be for- III America in the East gotten. Even the most vitriolic critic and caricaturist of missionaries, writing of them as " patterns of social cleanliness and de- corum," has shown their mighty influence in purifying the Japanese home. All over the Empire to-day the brighter, the more thoughtful, the more purposeful faces of Japanese women are as different from the creations of Sir Edwin Arnold or Pierre Loti as can be imagined. The new woman in Japan, besides making a new kind of home, is creating a- sentiment against polygamy and legalized prostitution. She is forward in reform, is helping to create a Christian literature, and in manifold ways is bringing in that better day which is steadily coming. The best book on Japanese girls and women was written by an American lady, Alice M. Bacon. Of the twelve best books on Japan by writers of all nations, as listed by the English Professor, B. H. Cham- berlain, all except one in the first half-dozen are by Americans. Even, in the almost periodical reactions, the outbursts of Chauvinism, the cry of "Japan for the Japanese," the positive bla- 112 The Missionary Story tancy and maudlin sentimentalism of official emissaries who teach with authority the unique derivation of the Japanese direct from " the gods," do not and cannot conceal the reality of the good work done by the Americans. Christianity has galvanized moribund Buddh- ism into life, and compelled the priests to work for the good of the people. Gorged with Government patronage, accumulated wealth, and unchallenged power. Buddhism had ceased to grow. Its priests were sensual and selfish, even to a proverb ; but the tre- mendous assaults of Christianity and its steady advance compelled the hon'zes to searchings of heart. Now there are many things in Japanese Buddhism which were unknown thirty years ago, such as schools of science and theology, with newspapers, chari- table enterprises, ethical reform, and an entirely new atmosphere of activity. 113 CHAPTER XVI LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND DIPLOMACY FROM the decade following the appari- tion of Perry's peaceful armada, foreign influences, in law, theology, medicine, the sciences, agriculture, engineering, journalism, education, have been multifarious and ever in overwhelming force. There would have been no Japan, such as we see to-day, without the foreigner's aid. One of the first to give the Japanese a new view of the universe, as well as to introduce blasting and steam-pumping in the mines, was Raphael Pumpelly, the geologist, born at Owego, New York, and en- gaged in 1861-63 in exploration of the island of Yezo. His book " Across America and Asia" was a revelation in science, as John Lafarge's chapter in it was of that Japanese art which Fenollosa, of Salem, Massachusetts, has constrained the elect heirs to revere and pre- serve. This great island of Yezo, its mines, 114 Literature, Science, Diplomacy its coal, its geology, have been almost wholly exploited by Americans. The capital, Sap- poro, has been laid out like a city in the United States, and the railways and machinery are from the same country. With this general development, or with scientific work and progress in Japan, are associated the honored names of William P. Blake, Dr. Antisell, Horace Capron, Stuart Eldredge, Benjamin Smith Lyman, Henry Smith Munroe, Edward Sylvester Morse, C. O. Whitman, H. M. Paul, T. C. Mendenhall, Winfield Scott Chaphn, John C. Cutter, N. Willis Whitney, F. F. Jewett, Edward Warren Clark, M. N. WyckofF, William S. Clark, J. A. L. Waddell, William Wheeler, D. P. Penhallow, William P. Brooks, Cecil H. Peabody, Ulysses Treat, Dr. Leland, D. W. Ap Jones, Joseph Ury Crawford, and scores of others, who must pardon the writer for .sins of omis- sion. The whole world is indebted to the American FenoUosa for his success in per- suading the Japanese to preserve and main- tain, not only their ancient treasures, but the native ideals and principles of their art. 115 America in the East The average spectator who sees the brightly lacquered street-car moving rapidly along, by cable underneath or trolley overhead, may not take great interest in the power-house. So one sees wonderful results in Japan with- out thinking much of the " Yatoi-tojin," or hired foreigner. Certain little " folders," which one could buy in Tokio for a cent or two, giving the names and salaries of the for- eign employees, though perhaps beneath the notice of a native historian, are significant to the philosophical student who inquires into causes. Probably Bowditch's " Navigator " was the first American work put into Japanese, but whole series of our educational text-books, from Webster's Spelling-Book and Diction- ary up through all lines of science, geographi- cal, historical, intellectual, and theological science, have been bought, read, used, trans- lated, or adapted by the tens of thousands of copies. Wilson, Pinneo, Mitchell, Quack- enbos, Goodrich, Wayland, Haven, Potter, Sanders, Brown, Guyot, Murray, Gray, Morse, Hitchcock, Jarvis, Cutter, Robinson, Perry, Walker, Swinton, Carey, Woolsey, ii6 o H Pi Q Is < fa fa i-l < Literature, Science, Diplomacy Draper, to say nothing of American lights in theology and belles-lettres, are names stand- ing for single books or series, and known to thousands of the Mikado's subjects. Our political classics, the Declaration of Independ- ence, Washington's Farewell Address, and the Constitution of the United States, were early and accurately done into Japanese. Lives of Washington, Franklin, Perry, and other statesmen have been widely read. " The perseverance of Columbus, the pluck of Captain John Smith, the gentleness of Pocahontas, the endurance of the Pilgrim Fathers, the virtues of Washington, the good sense of Franklin, the sturdy manhood and integrity of Lincoln, are oft-quoted examples " in Japan, writes a Japanese. The first, and for a few years almost the only, history of the world read was that by Peter Parley, whose form of easy English had a tremendous fascination for the Japanese. Indeed, until within the past decade, it was very manifest that the English style of nearly all Japanese who wrote English had been first modelled on the style of Peter Parley, the Yankee whose penname stands for a literary clan in which 117 America in the East even Hawthorne was a kinsman. Better models and higher literature were studied, and now " the new book in New Japan '' shows most decidedly the strong influence of American methods and authors. Hundreds of natives now write English fluently and correctly. Theoretically, the national constitution of 1889 is the gift of the Emperor to his people. In reality, it is the definite evolution of forces long gathering, and taking shape and form chiefly from the environment and influence of the United States — Japan's nearest west- ern neighbor. In the '40' s, a Japanese governor, wishing to find out the rank of a certain American commander, asked a ship- wrecked American sailor, telling Jack to be- gin at the beginning and descend. He did so, and gave as the source of all authority " the people." This puzzled the Japanese officer. Now, however, it is quite easy for even Cabinet officers in Tokio to understand how the people can be first in power, for none there be, or can be, but must reckon with popular opinion, as created by the press and the widespread information and the spirit of 118 Literature, Science, Diplomacy the age. Indeed, the last Cabinet split in November, 1898, on a very small rock — the rather too previous reference in his speech, by the Minister of Education, to the possi- bility of Japan's becoming a republic. In diplomacy, Americans have been first in showing friendship, giving help and stimulus and example, to the Japanese. In naval ex- ploits, they taught needed lessons, now frankly acknowledged by those who received them. The generous work of Perry and Harris are well understood by the Japanese, who remem- ber also that our country was the first to make a postal and an extradition treaty, and also, without waiting for any precedent and without the approval of France, Holland, or Great Britain, made restitution of the Shimo- noseki indemnity of 1863, which money was expended' by Japan in educational purposes. The United States also led the way in desire and determination to revise the old treaties in the interests of righteousness, though, to our shame, it resulted that Great Britain finally won the credit which was properly due to our country. John A. Bingham, as Premier Matsugata gladly acknowledges, per- 119 America in the East sonally instructed the leaders of Japan in what to do and what to avoid. Over twenty years ago I hinted at the diffi- culty of a foreigner's writing a good history of Japan, not so much from lack of materials as from psychological differences. Yet the domain of native thought is now fairly well exploited, and almost wholly by Americans. They have opened the minds of the Japanese, and have shown us how they think and feel. Richard Hildreth, Edward H, House, Per- cival Lowell, Lafcadio Hearn, Henry T, Finck, John Lafarge, Arthur May Knapp, F. Warrington Eastlake, Alice Bacon, Edward Greey, Arthur C, Maclay, Edvv^ard S. Morse, John Luther Long, M. L. Gordon, Flora B. Harris, E. R. Scidmore, Roger Riordan, with S. R. Brown and J. C. Hepburn, George William Knox, Duane B. Simmons, J. H. Wigmore, who were makers of the tools for analysis and vision, have photographed for us the Japanese soul. Leader of all in prac- tical mastery of the Japanese mind and will, and in ability to turn the heart of the nation's statesmen whither he would, was the late Guido F. Verbeck. These men have shown I20 Literature, Science, Diplomacy us the mental traits, revealed the philosophy and literature, and thus made revelation of the background whence the native triumphs of art have sprung and the flowers of genius and enterprise have bloomed. In this power to discover and measurably to understand the mind of the Japanese, we discern one proof of the ability of Americans, as of Englishmen, to deal successfully with Asiatic peoples. 121 CHAPTER XVII THE AMERICANS IN KOREA WHAT Americans have wrought . in Japan, they have succeeded in doing also in Korea. Here for centuries the her- mit's policy had been pursued of keeping out foreigners, devastating the frontiers, and re- straining the people inside the country. Perry's peaceful opening of one hermit nation in 1854 was the model and inspiration in 1876 to Kuroda and Mori in luring Korea out of her cave by treaty instead of by blood- shed. In 1882 Commodore Shufeldt, in the United States steamer " Swatara," after pre- vious failures and great perseverance, made the first treaty of a Western nation with the Land of Morning Calm. Soon the white-clothed Koreans were seen on Broadway, President Arthur, in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, receiving on Evacuation Day these envoys with heads caged in horsehair. In June, 1884, after the riot and coup d'etat of December 4, when, 122 The Americans in Korea ^ with the hoary old weapons of assassination, some hasty reformers " moved a vote of cen- sure'* upon their enemies, the King's Min- isters, and blew a hurricane of reform for forty-eight hours, there were heads off and a battle-field. Such attempted condensation of centuries of evolution into a space of time between two sunrises failed. Then an American missionary. Dr. Henry N. Allen, demonstrated the superiority of Western surgical methods. This opened the door. Soon followed hospitals, dispensaries, day-schools, churches, the translation of the Bible into Korean, orphanages, Sunday- schools, Christian literature, newspapers and periodicals, and the dawning of a new world of ideas and the making of new men and women. The war of 1894-5 prepared the way for mighty changes. The first railway from Chemulpo to Seoul, with its iron bridges and modern equipments, and the first electric lights and street-railways in Seoul, the ex- ploitation and development of the mines, have been begun and carried out by Americans. The renovation of the capital city from the similitude of a pig-sty to one of the brightest 123 America in the East and cleanest cities in the East is the work of native officers who had experience in Washington. In a wordj the making of grammars and dictionaries for the mastery of the language, the educational system, the inception of railways, bridges, and other ma- terial enterprises, show the practical quality of the mind and character of Americans, and their ability to grapple with those new prob- lems which now confront us. 124 < « o !^ (iT u o < (- !3 o o »; CHAPTER XVIII HAWAII, OUR NEW POSSESSION UR new possessions lie nearly midway between Cuba and the Philippines, both as to latitude and longitude. In area, they are about the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined. Of the twelve islands, four are barren rocks, one is the home of lepers, seven are fertile, beautiful, and peopled. Hawaii is the half-way house betv\^een conti- nental shores. Cut by the parallels which pass through Mexico and Annam, it is rich in sub-tropical fruits and food, withal hand- somely suitable as a haven for ships and the storage of coal, which nowadays is of more value than the winds to the sailor. It seems to be very distant and to lie so far out west in the Pacific Ocean as to be semi-Asiatic or " Oriental," yet it is several hundred miles this side of the western end of our Alaskan possessions. Indeed, now that the Philip- pines have become ours, to remain under the 125 America in the East Stars and Stripes, we shall have to revise our use of the terms " East '' and " West." Hawaii has a name easily pronounced. Sen- timentally, it has long been part of America. It is now so in reality. Although Spaniards first discovered Hawaii, and some were even wrecked upon its shores, mingling by intermarriage their blood with natives, whose descendants, the Kekea, show a light skin, Caucasian facial contour, and freckled faces, yet Captain Cook's is the first European name associated with this new bit of the United States. He went out into the South Seas to observe the transit of Venus over the face of the sun, setting sail from Plymouth in the ship " Endeavour." He succeeded handsomely. He added the con- tinent of the kangaroo to Great Britain, and returned in 1771. On his second journey, to discover the supposed unknown continent Terra Australis, he left Plymouth July 13, 1772. In 1778 he got back, having lost but one man and hardly a spar, to tell of the Hawaiian Islands, which he had seen in 1778. These he named after the reputed noble in- ventor of stratified refreshments. This worthy 126 Hawaii, our New Possession fourth Earl of Sandwich, John Montague, who liked to play cards without intermis- sion, had his luncheon, of slices of bread inclosing ham, brought to him at the gaming- table. About this time our fathers were also in- terested in transits, and the elements for that of Venus over the sun's disk, on December 9, 1774, were calculated by our own Rittenhouse, of Philadelphia. The platform used by the astronomers stood in Independence Square, and from it the Declaration of Independence, when fully signed, was read to the people. It showed a new-born political star moving across the disk of history. In our generation we have seen, on July 4, 1894, the Republic of Hawaii, like lovely Venus, rising out of the sea, or a new star above the horizon. This same month of July is rich in births and transitions. It is that also of the Dutch Declaration of Independence from Spain, in 1579, as well as that of the acceptance by the United States of America of the gift of the first Republic in the Pacific, which hence- forth shines as a luminary in the American galaxy. 127 America m the East How many people are in our new oceanic territory? The latest census, that of 1896, enumerated 109,020 persons. Of pure Ha- waiians, there were 31,019 ; of part Hawaiian blood, 8,045 ; of Japanese, 24,407 ; of Chinese, 21,616 ; of Portuguese, 15,191 ; leaving 8,302 Americans and Europeans, the former being by far in majority and constituting the bulk of the educated persons of influence and property. Let us look at each of these strains of humanity. While probably the majority of Asiatics in the islands are immigrants from China and Japan, most of the Portuguese, certainly one-half of them, were born in the archipelago. It is believed that about fifteen thousand persons of European or American blood first saw the light in Hawaii. Thou- sands of children also are the offspring of Chinese and Japanese fathers and Hawaiian mothers, forming a stock which is noticeably an improvement on the aboriginal element. The major portion of the white foreigners who are not Americans are British, Scandi- navian, and German. Whence came the Hawaiians ? Who shall 128 Hawaii, our New Possession declare their generation ? It is like trying to separate giants in combatj or like riding be- tween the fires of two hostile armies, to attempt decision of such a question. One line of writers declare in their books that the Kana- kas, or Hawaiians, emigrated from the East, — that is, from America. This theory bases itself upon the general trend of the winds and ocean currents, and links the islanders with the Toltecs of Mexico, while certain resem- blances in mental traits and physical features are also pointed out. Other scholars fortify their conclusions that the Hawaiians came from the West, or Asia, by arguments drawn from language and the similarity of customs, tools, and household equipments to those in the Malay island world. They think that the Hawaiians are among the oldest of the Polynesian peoples. They argue that the various archipelagoes and islands of the southern Pacific were colonized by people of an ancient branch of the Malay race, who started from what is now the Dutch East Indies, and gradually scattered them- selves over the face of the seas. The con- flict of opinions, between those who look to 9 129 America in the East the sunrise and the others who point to the sunset, has in its course taken on features which remind one of that " odium " which, whether called theological or scientific, has its seat in human nature, rather than in the nature of the subject of inquiry. In reality the controversy illustrates the old story of the shield with two sides, for nature seems to point out that both theories are true. The well-mapped ocean-world, so long studied by hydrographers, shows clearly that the Hawaiians came from both the West and the East, first from one and then from the other. When we study the action of that great Pacific Gulf Stream called the Kuro Shiwo, or Black Current, — first scientifically studied and described by Captain Silas Bent, U. S. N., — we find an explanation of the mys- tery and the reconciliation of opposing the- ories. From the tropical ocean boiler a river of hot water runs up from the Malay Archi- pelago past the Philippines, Formosa, Riu Kiu, Japan, Kuriles, and the Aleutian Islands. Then, flowing down past the coast of Califor- nia and northern Mexico, it bends in half its volume westward, and, as the Equatorial 130 Hawaii, our New Possession Drift Current, streams toward the Sandwich Islands and back to Japan. A tree uprooted in a monsoon off Luzon will drift northward, eastward, and westward, and finally be stranded off Oahu, " swinging around the circle " in a way that might have surprised Andrew John- son. Boats disabled and driven out to sea have done the same thing, I have the record of scores of such waifs. It was the frequent rescue of these Japanese junks with dead and living men on board, by American ships, which first led to the repeated despatch of our vessels and finally of a fleet to Japan. Only last year a Japanese junk that had been swept in this semi-circular and recurved current stranded on one of the Hawaiian Islands. Furthermore, the analogies of language and the remarkable basic similarity of personal and household arrangements in the whole island world, from the Philippines to the Sitkan and Hawaiian Archipelagoes, show that the North American " Indians," of all sorts and kinds, and the Hawaiians are as closely related to one another as are the vari- ous European nations. He who studies the line of natural lighthouses, the chain of land- 131 America in the East marksj the unceasing food-supply lying along that great circle, from the Malay Archipelago to Central America, has little trouble to ac- count for the origin of at least some of the natives of America in Hawaii. 132 CHAPTER XIX OUR NEW FELLOW-CITIZENS A ROUGH glance at the history of Hawaii shows the old story of con- querors and conquered, suggesting that every portion of the earth has been feudalized or its land held in military tenure. Just as the Malays and Japanese lived under forms of feudalism, even before any Mendez Pinto or Captain Cook changed the unlettered night of prehistoric times into the dawn of written history, so the Hawaiian had wrought out a feudal system not intrinsically different from that of mediaeval Europe. Even to-day, keen observers believe they can trace the blood of the old chiefs, who through the centuries of war had struggled toward centralization of author- ity. Before white men came, Hawaiian soci- ety consisted of two classes, — those who owned land, and those who did not. By the time Cook arrived, there were only five or six independent rulers, each of whom in his ^33 America in the East petty kingdom was suzerain over vassal chiefs who supplied food or military service. These lower chiefs were in turn served by the middle men between the rulers and the people, the latter being little more than serfs. This tendency to centralization became incarnate in Kamehameha, who at the end of the last century had made himself sovereign of the whole archipelago. As in our days there has been a tendency in hermit nations to self- reformation, so in Hawaii it seems hardly possible to deny that, without foreign influence (though it is quite possible that the little in- fusion of Spanish blood may have had some transforming power), there was a tendency in Hawaii toward emergence from barbarism into civilization. The victor-king, having strengthened his kingdom, died in 1819. Fitly to-day his statue, in heroic attitude and ancient garb, stands in Honolulu. The Hawaiian symbol of sovereignty was not crown or sceptre, sword, mirror, or crystal ball ; not almanac or coinage ; but a feather cloak made of thou- sands of " wee modest " feathers, tipped with a spot of color, which grow singly on the 134 Our New Fellow-Citizens inner bodies of a species of little birds nearly- extinct. Under the courageous leadership of his son and his widow, the age-old system of Taboo was overthrown, and the reactionary party defeated in battle. Then a wild storm of iconoclasm burst upon the islands. The iconoclasts destroyed the idols so thoroughly that it was with difficulty thereafter that any could be secured for curiosities. When the American missionaries, fourteen strong, came in 1820, they found a nation without a relig- ion. They reduced the language to writing, introducing the printing-press and gradually fitting the natives for civilized government. The evolution of rights and privileges fol- lowed steadily upon the adoption of Christian- ity by the Hawaiians, while the introduction of horses and cattle, as well as the innumer- able ideas and improvements by foreigners, completely changed the face of the country and of society, especially where human beings were grouped in villages, towns, and cities. The native Hawaiian is still the most in- teresting specimen of humanity to be found in the islands. He is a winsome and a happy person, this native Kanaka. He has the 135 America in the East genius of good nature. He laughs easily and enjoys life. He troubles not himself about to-morrow, for he takes no thought of it. He is like " our friend the enemy/' whose reply to the call to work to-day is, " Ma- riana." Mother Nature has spoiled her island children by long-continued indulgence, and they suffer, though perhaps unconsciously, because she has not chastised them enough with hunger and the sweat of toil. On her other and favorite sons she has during gener- ations used the discipline of leaden skies, sharp winds, cold winters, rocky soil, and relentless foes ; but in Hawaii there is no weather, and, except where lava boils or cakes, no infertile ground. Mark Twain's inquirer for meteorological variety, who was referred to Connecticut, where he could find one hundred and thirty- three kinds of weather within twenty-four hours, would be a bankrupt in Honolulu. In perpetual sunshine, amid sapphire waves, on a soil that continually laughs with fruit and food, even without the tickling of spade or harrow, the happy Hawaiian has a genius for laziness. He eats and drinks, having learned, 136 Our New Fellow-Citizens like the waves, " thus to live in the moment, too." Why should he worry to accumulate ? The .seas abound with fish. The bananas, oranges, and cocoanuts hang near his grass hut by the millions. No one could ever locate, or even imagine, a Christmas-tree in these isles, where branches are ever laden with color and delicacies. Only an occasional hour of work is needed to keep the taro-patch in order. The grass seems to be a permanent bed, inviting to continuous naps, while the flowers, fragrant and beautiful, lure to amusement and decora- tion. The Kanaka will indeed ride his pony — purchased for what the man in the song found in his inside pocket- — to town, and there, on the dock or post-office steps, chat over the news by the hour ; but hard work has no charm for this son of the sun. His wife and children, like himself, love flowers. Flis daughter, flower-garlanded, and eschew- ing side-saddle, rides astride a horse and gal- lops over road and street like a " scorcher." Like her father and brother, the maiden is at home in the surf, having learned to swim when a baby. 137 America in the East We are not likely to be oppressed finan- cially by our new fellow-citizens. Hawaii has not yet reared a native millionaire or a Shylock. The Kanaka can keep a fruit- stand, a fish-stall, or a curio-shop, but his is not the inheritance of the cunning Jew or the shrewd Yankee. The results of centuries of mercantile training are not in him. Though he makes a dehghtful servitor behind the counter, it is rare indeed that he is found in the counting-room, or that his name appears in that of a firm known abroad as well as at home. Nevertheless, you will find him at all occupations. He makes a superb boat- man and fisherman, a good mechanic, book- keeper, compositor, and even editor, lawyer, and minister. He is a politician also, but as a cunning follower, never as a forceful leader. Life has been too easy for him and his ances- tors to enable him to compete with men from Old or New England ; with the Chinese, who have reduced competition in practical life to a science ; or even with the restless Japanese. If, as some German philosophers say, the potato has caused the decadence and proved the ruin of the Irish, so the taro has pre- 13S Our New Fellow-Citizens vented the development of the Hawaiians. This water-plant, so common in China and Japan, has found its most congenial home in Hawaii. There is no " martyrdom of man," to use Winwood Readers suggestive phrase, in Hawaiian agriculture. Drop the taro either in the irrigated ditches, anywhere, or even on the uplands, in the moist climate of Hilo, continue to plant at odd times during the year, and one acre will yield enough to sustain eigh- teen men during twelve months. One small patch, kept from weeds by an occasional hour of labor, will easily feed a whole family. " Ten acres enough " in Yankee land may safely lose its decimal in Hawaii and yet suffice for a household. This crop, which never fails, together with bananas, wild oranges, cocoanuts, and fish, makes sustenance too sure. There is not enough of the " discipline of un- certainty " for the best human development. Our new fellow-citizen finds his chief food m poi. This he makes by cooking, scraping, and pounding taro, waiting for a slight fer- mentation, adding water, and beating into paste. Then, probably after his fingers have been well greased with roast pig (somewhat 139 America in die East after the most approved style hinted at in Charles Lamb's " Dissertation '') or even with fried fish, he whips a goodly mass around his forefinger, and hoists it into his mouth, with- out call for fork or spoon. In modern times, his house stove very likely consists of an old kerosene tin, cut out at one side and on the top ; but for an open-air feast he uses an oven dug in the earth. In this his pigs, cuts of beef, and the meat food generally, are wrapped up in taro-leaves. Then the packages, being properly stratified into a ^vq or six decker sandwich, guarded by moistened banana-tree fibre and laid between red-hot stones at the bottom and a top mass of earth, are steamed during five or six hours. This process equals Delmonico's, and beats the revolving spits of our hotels, in bringing out the flavor. Thus the most deliciously cooked viands for their famous feasts are served on palm-leaves al fresco. Nevertheless, the labor for such a feast is a severe tax on the Kanaka. It means a spurt. Then comes the inevitable reaction. Fond as he is of drinking and being merry, the Ha- waiian is still more fond of recovering from 140 Our New Fellow-Citizens weariness by resting long in "sweet doing nothing." No wonder that the ceaselessly industrious and thrifty Chinamen beat the natives at farming, and in most lines of en- deavor that require manual labor, while the brainy Yankee and the European rich in nervous force excel him wherever prolonged head-work is required. This is true of the majority. There is another side, of course, and a nobler side, but of the minority. It is a serious question, not indeed whether the Hawaiian must, but whether he will, go the way of the dodo and the bison ; for, besides being dandled in luxury on Mother Nature's lap, he has been worsted in the battle of life by the horrible diseases which the white men brought, when they " bade good-bye to God and self-restraint " in the old days, before the better influences of Christianity rooted themselves in these isles which waited so long for Christ's law. It is almost certain that Captain Cook's estimate of 400,000 natives is a gross exagger- ation. The number should have been divided by two at least. Yet it is sad to-day to behold so small a survival of the original population. 141 America in the East Where, however, the pure Hawaiians can live by themselves, with a maximum of the blessings and a minimum of the bane brought by civilization, they increase in numbers, as well as in physical strength and intellectual graces. Notwithstanding the great missionary suc- cesses, it is a mistake to suppose that Christ- ianity within two generations can or does extinguish the paganism of centuries. Not a few brutalizing superstitions still remain in the island. Nevertheless, the conversion of the "Sandwich Islanders" to the religion of Jesus forms one of the shining episodes in the grand story of missionary triumph. Not only have there been a transformation of native character, and hundreds of earnest and conse- crated native pastors trained and set to work, but Hawaii has been a centre of the radiation of Gospel light and power through all the South Sea, by means of evangelists and teachers to other islands. What early Christian Ireland was to Europe, Hawaii has been to Polynesia. 142 ^■ a John L. Stevens, U. S Minister to Hawaii^ 1892. CHAPTER XX ORIENTALS AND OCCIDENTALS IN HAWAII UR new fellow-citizens, the Portuguese in Hawaii, form a hopeful element in the community. They are industrious and honest, being mostly laborers, but excellent citizens. They are, for the most part, the sons and grandsons of those who were brought from the Azores and Madeiras to labor on the plantations. Their capacity for improvement is shown in this, that as soon as the Chinese were imported in the summer of 1865, the Portuguese, especially those born on the islands, turned their hands to the work of skilled mechanics. Most of the public im- provements in the archipelago have been wrought by them. They co-operate in most of the social and political measures which are inaugurated by the intelligent men of the com- munity, and are heartily in sympathy with the United States, having thus far used their rights of suffrage intelligently. Their spiritual sus- 143 America in the East tenance is derived through the Roman Catho- lic Church, which always makes for law and order. The Chinese began to come in 1 865, having been invited, and indeed brought over, by the Hawaiian Bureau of Immigration. As it is nearly impossible to get a Chinese woman across the " black waves," these immigrants were all males, and therefore did not improve the social life of the Hawaiians, any more than the white sailors from Christendom. But, as in all the Malay and Polynesian world, the son of a Chinese father is a decided improve- ment on his insular mother's stock, usually resembling his paternal rather than his maternal ancestors. The Chinese takes to labor naturally. He knows how to replenish the earth and subdue it. He has the hereditary virtues of thrift, patience, and industry. In Hawaii, he has control of much rich land once held by natives. Now we see the rice-fields and taro-patches, truck-farms and poultry-yards, everywhere worked by Chinese, and that many of these farmers and merchants from the Flower Land have become rich. Indeed, it is almost im- 144 Orientals and Occidentals possible even for so-called Christian civiliza- tion to stand against the competition of the Chinaman. Hence the old story is told again. The invitation, once given in need, is with- drawn and the barrier set up. Since 1886 no Chinaman need or can come to Hawaii. " Everlasting Great Japan," which in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries sent her sons as pirates, traders, travellers, and immigrants all over eastern Asia from Saghalin to Java and from Borneo to India, altered her poUcy in a hurry when to the Portuguese was added the Spaniard. From 1637 to 1868 she fiercely excluded the foreigner, and rigidly included her own people. When, by the co-operation of forces within and without, Japan became the Mikado's Empire in fact as well as in name, the new Japanese of the Dispersion began to number thousands. Yet those in Hawaii were not approved or recognized by the Tokio Govern- ment until 1884, after which date they began to emigrate in num,bers that frightened both natives and white men in Hawaii, who, instead of the quiet rustics and polished gentle- men whom they had thus far seen, beheld an 10 145 America in the East obstinate, ignorant, and altogether unlovely class from the back-country parts and worse areas in the Japanese cities. Later on, there was some improvement in the quality of these little brown men — so distinctly inferior to the Chinese in size, but so much more self- assertive and quarrelsome. When it was found that there had come upon Hawaiian soil an army of 20,000 " Japs,'' among whom, as it seemed impossible to doubt, were many ex- soldiers, there was genuine alarm. When, further, the Imperial Government took inter- est in their presence, and sent men-of-war to the island to look after the sons of Nippon, there was consternation among the Americans, who were dearly hoping, yet with fear, to see what we now behold. When, further, these annexationists contrasted the splendid modern steel cruiser " Naniwa " with the antiquated wooden warships of the United States, they feared that, between the increasing emigration and the political ambition of the Japanese, Hawaii was certain to become a portion of Dai Nippon. Indeed, after whipping the Chinese, and ripping open the colossus of China for European aggression, the average Japanese 146 Orientals and Occidentals abroad was not excessively modest. This fear of Japan was not allayed when Hawaii became a republic. It seemed imperative that wise regulative measures should not be counter- acted by Japanese craft and unscrupulousness. The annexationists beat the big drum rather noisily, and strained their throats unnecessarily in clamoring for quick union with the United States, lest the maw of the Japanese dragon should engulf the tiny republic. Nevertheless, I confess to have had more amusement than edification while reading, in the newspapers of this decade, about the Jap- anese bugaboo. I can safely affirm that there never has been the slightest danger of Japan's seizing the Hawaiian Islands, or any sign of the Tokio Government's having any desire to swamp the country with emigrants. If there is one thing certain in the history of the past, in the conditions of the present, or in the possibilities of the future, it is that Japan, while strenuous for her rights, will not seek a quarrel with the United States. The Jap- anese, as individuals and as a nation, have their faults and weaknesses, but they know real friendship — yes, even when the manifes- 147 America in the East tations of it are sometimes odd ; and they feel not only sure but certain that they have one good friend in the United States. Further- more, they have always believed that Hawaii could never be anything else than a part of the United States. Supposing that of the one hundred thou- sand and more present inhabitants of Hawaii, one-half are our fellow-citizens, what is our duty toward them ? What prospect have we for seeing them and their children becoming as good American citizens as are the average in New York or California, in Louisiana or Arkansas ? Those who think of Americans as only " pure-blooded Anglo-Saxons " — if there ever were such persons, at any time since De Foe wrote his " True-Born English- man " — may look with fear and contempt upon " our new fellow-citizens.'' But those who, through the perspective of history, see that, not as a matter of opinion, but of fact, we are a very mixed people — not having even a majority of English, though probably a ma- jority of British, descent — who have learned by study how large a proportion of the blood of Continental Europe already runs in the veins 148 Orientals and Occidentals of our nation, who brings home to his mind cleariy how many millions of fellow- Americans there are who are descended more or less di- rectly from Indian or African ancestors, will not be frightened at the problem of Hawaii. We not only need but we ought to be ashamed of ourselves as Christians if we have not the Caleb spirit to say of this new promised land that, educationally and spiritually, "we are well able to possess it." The man of faith who is acquainted with the home missionary work of our churches, who knows what has been done for the negro, the Indian, and the Chinese within our bor- ders, who has mastered the literature of mis- sions, who has read, marked, and inwardly digested such a book as that of Dr. James S. Dennis on " Christian Missions and Social Progress," will not fear, but rather rejoice than cower in fear before, this fresh problem. This new part of America, like the older land, means opportunity. Had I not myself seen the wonderful works of God and of the con- secrated service of my fellow-Americans in Japan, had I not known the co-working of the heavenly Father and of his children in 149 America in the East other lands of the East, had I experience only of that which I saw and heard at Min- neapolis in October, 1897, at the semi-centen- nial of the American Missionary Association, I should still believe, as Caleb did of Canaan, that " we are all able to possess it," and ought to welcome gladly the task of entrance into the white harvest-field of Hawaiian humanity. What God and American Christians in co- operation have done in raising up the fierce Sioux and Chippewa, and the slave from the indigo swamp, to Christian manhood, can be done in any part of the United States, whether continental or insular. Personally, I do not believe better Christians are made than the Chinese and Japanese when truly turned to God in Christ Jesus. Indeed, it may possibly be that these sons of that continent, from which came all true and abiding religions, have something to teach us. What I believe of the Asians, there are Christian teachers on the active field who believe of the Hawaiians. Of the " remnant " we can speak with as much confidence and warmth as did the Hebrew prophet of that which made the new State of Israel after Babylonian captivity. It Orientals and Occidentals is they and their fathers who have given Hawaii her Christianity, her splendid civiliza- tion, and a future of hope for the aboriginal and the newer inhabitants. Their conduct during the trying times of corrupt royalty, under the discipline of cold blasts from Wash- ington, and as makers of the republic, is beyond praise. No finer specimens of the Americans abroad, now become Americans at home, have been known in our history. We need not fear or doubt the power of our people to plant and nourish colonies, and to elevate inferior races, while we have the inspir- ing example of the Americans in Hawaii before us. Having glanced at the manifold activities of the versatile Americans in Asia during the past century, I propose now to show in a few rapid sketches what has been accomplished by the navy of the United States. It will be seen that in all the years before the pivotal date of May i, 1898, our officers and sailors in the ships of wood were as worthy of honor and praise as those in the modern cruisers of steel. The past record of our navy in the Far East augurs hopefully for the solution of 151 America in the East future problems. That arm of the national service which can show the names of Glynn, Perry, McDougal, Pearson, Foote, Tattnall, Rodgers, and Dewey on its record, is not likely to lack men of heroism, wisdom, patience, and perseverance in the coming century. ^52 CHAPTER XXI OUR FLAG IN THE WATERS OF CHINA AND JAPAN A T the date of the expulsion of the . Spaniard and the Portuguese from Japan, a new nation was begun by the Pilgrims at the edge of the North American wilderness. Two centuries later, in 1 837, the unarmed ship " Morrison," sent by an American firm in China to take back Japanese waifs into Yedo Bay, was fired on and driven away. "Why," asked the owner, " is the sentence of expulsion passed so long ago upon the Spaniards and Portuguese entailed upon us ? " It is credit- able to the Great Pacific Power, as President Arthur named the United States, that her very first ships carried the olive-branch. Beside the apostles of gainful trade, our country sent missionaries, physicians, and teachers, plantmg churches, hospitals, schools, and colleges. In the empire of China, first peacefully opened to American commerce by Shaw, and in Japan 153 America in the East and Korea, both led into the world's brother- hood of nations by Perry and Shufeldt, blood has been spilled by our people only in self- defence or after provocation. The Dutch and British East India Com- panies opened the eyes of Americans to the rich harvest-fields of trade whitening in the Far East. It was American ginseng that first, through the Hollanders in the Hudson Valley, made the Chinese practically aware of and interested in "The Country of the Flowery Flag.'' It was the Chinese leaf, tea, shipped from Amoy on British merchantmen, that precipitated the Revolutionary war, bring- ing about that event of July 4, 1776, which has ever since required an endless supply of Chinese fire-crackers to celebrate it. No sooner was peace concluded between Great Britain and the United States than the ship " Empress," loaded with ginseng, and commanded by Captain Green, sailed from New York on Washington's birthday, February 22, 1784, for Canton. Major Samuel Shaw, her supercargo and ex-artillery oiHcer in the United States army, established American trade in Canton. In the ship " Massachusetts," he 154 China and Japan returned, and was American cousul from 1790 to 1794. The exchange of ginseng and tea, and afterwards of cotton and crockery, became lively and permanent. Captain Kennedy, in 1783 in the ship " Columbia," built in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, sailed up the great river of Oregon and named it after his ship, thus making a basis for the Ameri- can claims, and opening the way for barter of the furs of Oregon for the silks of China. Captain Gray carried the American flag round the world between the years 1787 and 1790. Soon American commerce with China began to attract the unwelcome attentions of Chinese pirates. The first passage at arms between American citizens and Chinese was in 1809, when Mr. J. P. Sturgis, of Boston, arrived in the ship " Atahualpa," Captain Bacon, at Macao. The terrible Chinese pirate Apootsae was then ravaging the coast, capturing imperial forts, laying whole towns under contribution, mas- sacring those who opposed him, and terroriz- ing the mandarins. In vain were rewards offered for his head. Having watched and seen the chief officer and an armed boat's crew 155 America in the East leaving the " Atahualpa" for the city to obtain a river pilot;, he thought the capture of the for- eign devil's ship would be easy. Ranging his junks under color of moving up the river, and feigning to run past the American ship, the pirates suddenly rounded, expecting to leap on board and kill the eighteen or twenty men left there. Instead of quick success, the Chinaman caught a Tartar. Astounded as the Yankees were, their cannon were fortu- nately loaded, and they made lively use of them, and with Brown Bess muskets, horse- pistols, and boarding-pikes, defended them- selves with spirit. The Chinese threw on deck plenty of those home-made hand-gren- ades which, owing to the quantity of sulphur in the powder, were unpoetically termed " stink-pots," but they killed none of their foes. Amid the shrieks and groans of their wounded, a hellish din with gongs and drums was kept up. The Yankees fired with such effect that the Chinese were beaten off. Apootsae called away his men, and his ships were soon lost to sight. This episode put such courage into the cowardly mandarins that, by means of bribery and treachery, they 156 China and Japan secured the cut-throat Apootsae, and had him put to death by the slow and prolonged pro- cess of hacking, called " the thousand cuts/' From this time forth there was intense respect for Americans at Canton and Macao, and business increased with little interruption. The American flag was seen in Japanese waters as early as 1797, at a time when the future Commodore M. C. Perry and his brother Oliver, boys of three and twelve years old, trained by their Spartan mother, were learning how to conquer self before capturing a squadron and opening a hermit empire. Over-fat Holland, then neither brave nor little, but distracted and bleating like a fat sheep before Napoleon the wolf, had been de- graded into the Batavian Republic. The Dutch flag was wiped oflF the sea, for British cruisers were at the ends of the earth. In order to keep up their trade-monopoly with Japan, the Dutch of Java engaged Captain Stewart, on the ship " Eliza " of New York, to go to a place of which — except in Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" — few Americans had ever heard. Thus the thirteen stripes and seventeen stars were mirrored on the waters of 157 America in the East Nagasaki Bay when President Jefferson was in Japanese eyes the " King of America." In 1799 Captain James Devereaux, in the Amer- ican ship " Franklin," performed the same task. When the nineteenth century opened. Captain John Derby, from Salem, Massachusetts, under charter of the East India Company, attempted to open trade with Japan, but failed. In 1803 Stewart, still flying the American flag, came again to this loop-hole which the Japanese kept open by means of the Dutch. Except ginseng, the Japanese wanted none of our products. Japanese art pictures in symbol the primal introduction of civilization into their " Cliff Fortress Country " by means of a whale, and the god of literature has a brush-pen in one hand and a roll or pad of manuscript in the other, while he stands in festive attitude on the back of a huge sea-monster. In reality, it was a whale that introduced the Ameri- cans to Japan, and ushered in her present amazing prosperity. In search of this fur- nisher of oil and bone, American ships moved out beyond Nantucket southward, around Cape Horn, and up the Pacific. Though 158 p o w m w o U China and Japan the blubber industry was nearly destroyed by the Revolutionary war, it revived. By 1812 our men of the harpoon were so numerous in the Pacific Ocean that Commodore David Porter, in the " Essex," with David Farragut among his midshipmen, was sent out to pro- tect Yankee whalers from British depredation. Already some had gone far north, bringing back stories of how the little brown men of Japan caught whales — as they do yet — in big nets. Commodore Porter, in 1815, urged upon Secretary James Monroe that Japan be opened to commerce, and plans were matured for the despatch of a frigate and two sloops of war ; but the vessels were never sent. Now began the long story of the imprison- ment of shipwrecked American sailors on the coasts of Tycoonland. John Quincy Adams denied the right of Dai Nippon to be a hermit nation, but his was a voice crying in the wilderness. Neither our government nor people seemed to be properly interested in foreign commerce, much less in any naval application of the doctrine of " manifest des- tiny " or territorial expansion. 159 CHAPTER XXII THE ADVENT OF AMERICAN POWER IN THE PACIFIC WHEN Andrew Jackson became Presi- dent, the United States began to formulate something like a foreign policy. Commodore David Porter made treaties with Turkey. The French and the Neapolitans were compelled to pay their debts. One of the most brilliant of American naval opera- tions in the Mediterranean was seen when six of the finest floating fortresses in the world, under " Old Glory," entered successively the Bay of Naples, and ranged their broadsides opposite the beautiful city of King Bomba. Changing his attitude of haughty refusal to pay, he handed over in cash what he owed the United States for his father's depredations. Even Asia felt the new influence from Washington. Edmund Roberts, of Ports- mouth, New Hampshire, — posthumously, and perhaps truthfully, called in stained-glass i6o America in the Pacific memorial the " ambassador " of the United States, but officially President Jackson's " agent," and navally rated as captain's clerk, — became our efficient first American envoy in the Far East. On the sloop of war " Pea- cock," after overcoming great obstacles, he made treaties with Muscat and Siam. In Cochin China, he failed, where success was impossible. In the expectation of reaching Japan, he died June 12, 1836, at Macao. In August of the next year Commodore Ken- nedy, in the United States sloop " Peacock," reached those islands, one of which Captain Reuben Coffin, of Nantucket, had already named, but which were called by the Japan- ese Bonin, or " no man's land," for they were then claimed by no government. Since 1876 the Bonin group has been made an in- tegral part of the Mikado's Empire. The " Peacock " was our first man-of-war in Japan- ese waters, the forerunner of Dewey and his steel squadron. Americans took up the torch dropped by Roberts to bear it on in the race. Messrs. King and Co., of Macao, in their own ship, appropriately named after the great missionary II 161 America in the East " Morrison/' reached Uraga, in Yedo Bay^ July 29, 1837. Their freight consisted of ship- wrecked Japanese and presents for the people. As on William Penn's colonizing ships, there was not a gun or cannon aboard. The story of their repulse is soon told. Though they explained their mission, and were visited by hundreds of people who saw their unarmed condition, they were fired on before casting anchor, and again the next morning from a fresh battery of cannon built overnight. The same experience met them in Satsuma, farther south. In the eyes of the Japanese, the Spaniard and Portuguese had tarred all aliens with the same brush. By the time of " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," American naval operations had become so far organized that there was an " East India squadron." The United States ship of the line "Columbus" and the "Vincennes" reached Yedo Bay in 1 846, but were at once surrounded by scores of armed boats. To the polite letter of President Polk, an answer of impudent de- fiance was returned, and Commodore Biddle was insulted. While in full uniform, stepping from a junk, a common Japanese sailor gave 162 America in the Pacific the American chief a push which landed him unceremoniously in the bottom of his own boat. Japanese officers promised to punish the man, but nothing was done, and the Amer- ican ships went away. The immediate result was that the American shipwrecked sailors — who were not indeed always of the loveliest disposition — were more cruelly treated than ever. One of them, on threatening possible vengeance from American men-of-war, was sneeringly told that his government could care nothing for poor seamen, for a Japanese boatman had insulted even an American ad- miral, and had not been made to suffer any punishment. 163 CHAPTER XXIII GLYNN, PERRY, AND HARRIS THE episode of Biddle and the boatman in Yedo Bay made our naval officers, and one in particular, resolve on a different course of deportment. Captain Geisinger, formerly of the " Peacock," hearing from the Dutch consul at Canton of eighteen sailors imprisoned at Nagasaki, ordered Commander Glynn in the United States brig " Preble " to rescue them. At this time the seas were so little known, the charts so imperfect, and the season so inclement, that naval men at Hong- Kong laughed at the idea of the little fourteen- gun brig ever arriving at her destination. At Napa, in the Loo-Choo Islands, the natives openly scorned the notion of Glynn being able to do anything, when, in the " Japanese victory over the Americans,'' — referring to the episode in Yedo Bay, — a ship of the line and a sloop of war had been " driven away." 164 Glynn, Perry, and Harris All this put Glynn on his mettle. Reach- ing Nagasaki, he dashed through the cordon of boats and dropped anchor within range of the city suburbs. The boom of the cannon an- nouncing his arrival was sweet music to the American sailors in prison. Boarded by the chief interpreter with attendants, who inquired his business, Glynn was ordered to leave the waters of Japan at once. The American's immediate reply was that his mission was to the governmuit. Then, rather ostentatiously, he gave the order to heave anchor, spread sail, and move forward. Visions of involun- tary hara-kiri at once excited the Japanese to voluble protests. Nevertheless, Glynn moved into the inner harbor and anchored within two hundred yards of the batteries on either side of the anchorage. He refused to see any- body but the governor, sending word that he would not leave until he had obtained the American seamen on deck. He demanded their immediate release. Furthermore, he made it plain that if the cordon of boats was not quickly broken up, he would blow them out of the water. . During the nine days the " Preble " re- 165 America in the East mained, a great army of soldiers gathered. Extra guns to the number of sixty were mounted, any one of which, rightly trained, might have sunk the " Preble.'* Yet, in spite of the glittering arms, the bright and varie- gated colors of the feudal banners, and the military and naval flags, the American com- mander, while granting a little longer time, refused to modify his request. Half his crew were on deck all the time, and every precau- tion against surprise and preparation for at- tack was made. Glynn was ably seconded by Lieutenant Silas Bent — afterwards with Perry, and the scientific discoverer of the Kuro Shiwo, or Pacific Gulf Stream. A new governor came into office. Visiting Glynn in the cabin, he asked for three days more time. Making an end to suavity of manner, Glynn dashed his fist upon the table and exclaimed, " Not another hour ! '* Nor should the governor nor any of the party leave the ship till he got an answer. Instantly the excited Japanese stood up, the interpreter telling Commander Glynn that this was a high officer, and must not be so spoken to. " So am I," retorted Glynn ; " I represent 1 66 Glynn^ Perry, and Harris the government of the United States." A parley was then asked for by the Japanese. With watch in hand, Glynn waited during the promised fifteen minutes. When the Japan- ese returned to the cabin, the governor re- marked to Glynn that he could have the men on the following day. Then " grim-visaged war smoothed his wrinkled front." With the frankest cordial- ity Glynn ordered refreshments, extended every courtesy, and shov^^ed the officers the drill, discipline, manual of arms, and general quarters. The next day the imprisoned Americans were brought on board, with every particle of property that belonged to them or their owners. Within fifty-nine days from leaving, Glynn had returned to Hong-Kong. Among the captives released was Ronald MacDonald, born in Astoria, Oregon, about 1825. He had reached Japan in the v/haling- ship " Plymouth," and had been voluntarily put ashore for curiosity's sake, but was involun- tarily made a prisoner. This bright youth was the first teacher of the English language in Japan, — the forerunner of that modern education by American teachers which has so 167 America in the East transformed an Oriental people. He was a bearer of the Pilgrim's creed to a nation which now rejoices in a written constitution and is tending to democracy ; for, when asked by the Japanese officer to state the source of all power in the United States, and proceed from the highest to the lowest in authority, he answered, first of all, " the people," — a phrase inexplicable to the Japanese of that day. Among his pupils was Moriyama, who served as interpreter in the Perry negotia- tions. Commander Glynn put into the hand of Perry the key which that gallant officer used with such success in making the long-closed doors of feudal Japan open to commerce and civilization. By the blending of scrupulous politeness, consummate attention to the details of etiquette, and, last but not least, the dis- play of abundant and most efficient force. Perry was able to win a " brain victory," without firing a hostile shot or shedding a drop of blood. Yet Commander Glynn had paved the way for his success. When Perry's peaceful armada had sailed away, Japanese officialdom hoped it had got 1 68 Glynn, Perry, and Harris rid of the " hairy barbarians" for a long inter- val. What was the amazement of the Shi- rnoda officers on August 21, 1856, to behold the United States steamship " San Jacinto/' Commodore Armstrong, with Townsend Harris, consul-general, on board ! A resi- dence was asked for, and the common courte- sies proper in opening relations of official amity were demanded and obtained. Amid the strains of " Hail, Columbia," Harris landed. On September 4 our sailors formed a ring around the flag-stafF and cheered " the first consular flag" in the empire. At 5 p. m. the*" San Jacinto " left for China. Meanwhile, without a ship or a sailor, practically deserted by his government for eighteen months, except a brief visit from Captain Foote in the United States ship " Portsmouth," Townsend Harris won every point, and prepared the way for the diplomacy of twenty nations. Refusing to deliver Presi- dent Pierce's letter to any one but " the Em- peror," he entered Yedo, the long-forbidden city, on November 30, 1857, refusing on the way to undergo any of the humiliations com- mon to the Tycoon's vassals. His guard, at- 169 America in the East tendants, and baggage-horses were decorated with the American arms and colors. With only his Dutch secretary, Mr. Heusken, he secured audience of the Shogun, standing. Fie continued during many weary months the instruction of these political hermits in modern international etiquette, in view of a desired treaty of commerce and foreign residence. While the American ships were in China, the pot of Japanese politics was boiling over in murders and assassinations. The counter- play of forces was between Kioto, the seat of the Mikado's authority, and Yedo, the place of long usurpation and of the sham emperor. Signature to the treaty being delayed, Harris threatened to go to Kioto. 170 CHAPTER XXIV THE GALLANT ACTIONS OF FOOTE AND TATTNALL IN CHINA THE names of Foote and Tattnall take us across the Yellow Sea. The former recalls the only passage at arms between the two forces of the governments of China and the United States. The latter revived a famous saying of Walter Scott, "blood is thicker than water/' making it mean forever, to speakers of the English tongue, that Briton and American are one in heart and aims, as in their best inheritances. While Governor John Bowring, Admiral Seymour, and Consul (afterwards Sir) Harry Parkes were having their quarrel with the Chinese commissioner Yeh, American steamers were twice fired on when passing the barrier forts near Canton. It seemed high time to teach the Chinese that all foreigners were not opium-smugglers, and that peaceful neutrals had some rights which ignorant man- 171 America in the East darins were bound to respect. Commodore Armstrong ordered Captain (afterwards Rear- Admiral) Foote, of the " Portsmouth," to bombard, capture, and destroy the forts. The steamer "San Jacinto " drew too much water to get near enough to use her guns, but the Httle American steamer " Williamette " towed the saiHng-ship " Portsmouth " to within five hundred yards of the largest and lowest fort, which was built of great blocks of granite and mounted heavy cannon. The " Levant," towed by an egg-shell steam-launch, the " Kum Fa," struck on a rock. So the " Portsmouth " on the first day had to fight alone. The Chinese began the war. For one mo- ment that day the long granite walls and darkened embrasures of the fort seemed in harmony with the sleepy repose of the beau- tiful soft afternoon, but before anchor was dropped, grape and round shot flew around and over the ship. Loud and clear were Footers orders as, without steam and without wind, in a narrow and unknown channel, and with only the precarious expedient of a spring cable, the "Portsmouth" got into position. 172 Foote and Tattnall in China To the few non-combatants on the ship, — purser, chaplain, surgeon, etc., — the time seemed long before the eight-inch ship's guns began to roar. Then her timbers quivered with the recoil of eight starboard broadside guns, and the cheers of our men made inspir- ing and consoling music. The shells from the " Portsmouth's " columbiads were hurled with awful effect, and the splendid marksman- ship quickly told inside the fort. Though the Chinese stood to their guns manfully, they had no explosive shells, but only grape and round shot. These lashed the water into white foam or flew over the ship. The "Portsmouth," caught in the current, was swung round with her stern tovs^ard the fort, which exposed her to a raking fire. A thirty- two-pound shot came into the cabin, carrying off the right arm and crushing the hip of a marine. Captain Foote at once ran out a gun from the stern port and continued the fight. When dusk fell, the fort was nearly silent. During several days, filled up in the inter- val with diplomacy, the Americans prepared for a land attack. On the 21st the " Levant," towed by the " Kum Fa," silenced one fort 173 America in the East on the left after an hour's cannonade. Then four hundred of our marines and sailors, in their boats, towed by the " Kum Fa," moved landward for a charge over muddy fields to take the forts. The launch of the " San Jacinto " was struck by a cannon ball and three men killed. Once on the semi-solid land, and in the face of a hot fire of grape, round shot, jingal, and rockets, our men rushed forward. The Chinese fired so rapidly that it is wonderful that our men were not all swept away ; but, as a rule, the jingal and rocket men fired too high. As soon as our men entered the forts, they broke and fled. Our total loss was seven killed and twenty- two wounded, all, in the final attack, belong- ing to the " San Jacinto." Under the ship's artillery fire, and during the fighting in the fort, at least three hundred Chinese lives were lost. A rocket, with a spear-pointed head and a feathered bamboo shaft six or eight feet long, bounced over the rice-fields and struck one of our marines, entering the leg along with its dirt and straw, and causing his death. One hundred and seventy-six guns were found in the fort, one of which was a monster 174 Foote and Tattnall in China brass piece of eight inches bore, weighing fully fifteen tons. It was over twenty-two feet long, and nearly three feet across at its greatest diameter. These four barrier forts were cap- tured between November 20 and 22. Al- though this gallant exploit was highly com- mended by the British officers, it attracted almost no attention in the United States. Nevertheless, it greatly cleared the situation, the Chinese learning to distinguish Americans and the American flag as they had not done before. At one of our navy-yards a monu- ment recalls the episode and names of our ga-llant slain. A few months later Commodore Tattnall appeared in Chinese waters. It was Tattnall who, in 1847, at Vera Cruz, wanted to pro- long his half-hour's cannonade of a fortress built of heavy masonry, with little steamers mounting one gun each. It was he who said, " War shortens life, but broadens it." Now, in i860, he was conveying Mr. Ward, the United States minister, on the chartered steamer " Toeywan," into the Pei-ho River. On the 23d of June the British and French allied gunboats, having blown up one boom, 175 America in the East attacked the forts, but being unable to force the second, were caught in a trap under short range of the Chinese guns, and were terribly defeated. Many ships were sunk or silenced. Eighty-five men were killed, and three hun- dred and forty-five were wounded. Tattnall, in the American steamer outside of the bar, was a spectator. He bore the sight until things were at their worst. The fiagship " Plover " had parted her cable, and drifted a helpless wreck until lashed to the " Cormorant." With the admiral wounded, and all her men killed or disabled, only the one bow gun was still gallantly served by a weary squad. Then the American commo- dore ordered his cutter, and in the thick of the fight passed through the fleet and the hell of fire to visit and cheer Admiral Hope. A round shot from the Chinese fort killed TattnalFs cockswain and shattered the stern of his boat. This raised the fighting blood of both tars and chief to the hottest. To the British officer's query of surprise at this act of a neutral, Tattnall explained that blood was thicker than water, and that he would gladly aid their wounded. Meanwhile the 176 Foote and Tattnall in China American sailors, moving up to the bow, leaped on board the " Plover," and actually- relieved their exhausted British sailor-mates, serving the gun during a round or two until Tattnall ordered them off, even while ap- proval twinkled in his eyes. His excuse for towing British marines into action, for assist- ing in an assault upon a Chinese fort, and for other technical violations of international law was, in a phrase, a sentiment, but one destined to strengthen and deepen as the years flow on. On the other hand, with equal humanity, Tattnall offered the services of his surgeons to aid the wounded Chinese ; but neither the Chinese government, nor race, nor nation — if there be such a thing as the last, which we doubt — has ever been particularly interested in saving lives endangered in war. TattnalFs offer was declined. The Pei-ho forts were captured. Our minister, J. E. Ward, reached Peking, refused to make the ko-tow, or nine prostrations, but ratified the treaty and returned. 12 177 CHAPTER XXV MCDOUGAL IN THE " WYOMING " AT SHIMONOSEKI THE American men-of-war " Mississippi" and "Powhatan'' were released from China, and in the nick of time reached Japan, then politically Hke a volcano just ready to blow off its rock cap. Townsend Harris had, on February 17, 1858, secured the written promise of the Yedo government to sign the treaty, and on the 27th of July the American envoy was at Yokohama with Tattnall on the " Powhatan," delivering his letter, urging the Premier li's signature " without the loss of a single day." Yet, so far, the anti-Tycoon party at Kioto had withheld the Mikado's signature. The country seemed ready either for intestine war, or conquest by the " hairy alien." Should Japan become as India or China ? The regent-premier li answered no. He signed the Harris treaty July 29, and opened Japan 178 ^^ Wyoming" at Shimonoseki first to the United States, and thus to twenty nations. For this act he was assassinated, March 23, i860, while the Japanese embassy sent by him was in America. In our days the critical scholarship of Shimada Saburo has set Ii*s long-clouded character into the sun- light of honor. The hermit days of the agitated Japan of 1853-68 are forgotten in the wealth, power, and splendor of the industrial and naval empire of to-day. Nevertheless, the olive-branch from Amer- ica meant civil war in Japan. " The steel parted from the wood." Swords flashed from the red scabbards and from the white. Sat- suma, of the scarlet sheath, typified the Mikado-reverencing and progressive South. Aidzu, of the virgin white wood covering the steel blade, stood for the loyal and conserva- tive North. Choshiu, in the West, however, held the Strait of Shimonoseki, the great high- way of foreign commerce. "In obedience to the [imperial] order," was inscribed on the flag which the clansmen flung to the wind from bluffs which they lined with batteries of heavy guns. They staked out the channel, so as to hit exactly the ships of the " barba- 179 America in the East rians," who had defiled the Land of the Gods. On June 25, 1863, that eventful day fixed for the " the expulsion of the barbarians from the God-country/' the American merchant- steamer " Pembroke/' with a pilot furnished by the Yedo government, and with the American flag apeak, was on her way northward through the strait. She was fired upon by the Choshiu clansmen in the batteries and on their armed brig, formerly the " Lanrick," but was unhurt. The peace of nearly 250 years in Japan was broken. On July 8 the French despatch- vessel " Kien Chang" was hit in seven places, her boat's crew nearly all killed by a shot, and the vessel saved from sinking only by lively use of the pumps. On July 1 1 the Dutch frigate " Medusa " was hit thirty-one times, seven shots piercing her hull, and three eight- inch shells bursting on board, four men being killed, and five wounded. On July 20 the French gunboat " Tancrede," though steam- ing swiftly through the channel, was struck three times with round shot. Not long after a steamer belonging to Satsuma, but mistaken for an alien vessel, was set on fire by shells 180 ^^ Wyoming" at Shimonosfeki and sunk, twenty-six Japanese losing their lives, their bodies floating past Yoshibe Rock. The Choshiu artillerists were in high feather at their splendid successes. With their armed brig, their bark (formerly the " Daniel Webster''), and the big steamer " Lance- field" converted into a man-of-war, the Japanese believed that they could whip any- thing afloat which the foreigners might bring. The Confederate privateer " Shenandoah " had annihilated our whaling fleet in the North Pacific, and our commerce having been swept from the seas by the "Alabama," Americans liv- ing in Japan felt like people without a country. Captain David McDougal was then in search of the " Alabama." His ship, the sloop of war " Wyoming," mounted six guns, two of them being eleven-inch Dahlgrens. He heard the news of the " Pembroke," from Minister Robert Pruyn at Yokohama. He determined to cheer up his countrymen. Though without charts of the strait, or map of the batteries, McDougal ordered coal and stores on board with all despatch. He learned the exact draught of the Japanese steamer " Lancefield," and was delighted to i«i America in the East' find it greater than the " Wyoming's." . On July 165 under a cloudless sky, without a breath of v/ind, and the sea as smooth as a tank of oil, the " Wyoming," with her ports covered with tarpaulin, so as to look like a merchantman, arrived in the strait. The lieutenant in the forecastle called out that he sighted two square-rigged vessels and a steamer at anchor close in to the town. Most of the " Wyoming's " men and her Japanese pilot had never been under fire. When, therefore, McDougal called out, " All right ; we will steer right in between them and take the steamer," not a few aboard turned pale at the thought of their captain's thus " running amuck." Moreover, McDou- gal, noticing the stakes that marked the channel, and suspecting that the Choshiu guns were all trained on it, ordered the man at the wheel to run the ship inside, between the stake-line and the northern shore. The Japanese pilot seemed paralyzed with terror at the ship's running so close under the bat- teries. Yet McDougal took his risks, with cool knowledge of the situation and the depths of water, and without foolhardiness. „ 182 _,t.crfrj^^'^^r From Harper's Mai^^zine. Copyright, ISUS, by Harper & Brothers. The Double-ender " Monocacy." Mk. From Harper's Magazine. Cojiyri^ht, li'JS, liy Harper & brothers. McDougal's Ship, the "Wyoming." ^^ Wyoming" at Shimonoseki Even before the ship was thus steered, the eight-inch guns on the bluffs opened fire. The American flag was hoisted at 10.30 a.m., and the artillery of the '^Wyoming" began to play. McDougal's wisdom was quickly justified. Great red dragon-like tongues of flame and white clouds of smoke revealed fresh batteries on the hills and behind the town. Shot and shell screeched through the air, but they flew ten or Mteen feet over the heads of the " Wyoming's '' men, for the guns on shore had all been pointed upon the channel. There- were six finished batteries, mounting in all thirty guns. The three Japanese men-of-war carried eighteen pieces, making forty-eight cannon opposed to the " Wyoming's " six. The first Americans killed were two sailors near the anchor, and then a marine named Furlong, from Maine. Except Furlong, all the casualties were in the forward division. By 10.50 A. M. the Yankee ship, now in front of the town, dashed directly between the steamer and the two brigs. The Japan- ese gunners on the " Lanrick," who were so near that their faces could be seen, fired no 183 America in the East fewer than three broadsides from their bronze twenty-four pounders, while the muzzles of the " Wyoming*s " four thirty- two pounders nearly touched theirs. The " Lanceiield," having her heavier guns pointed up the chan- nel, was not able to make use of them, but fired swivels and muskets. The " Wyom- ing" rounded the bow of the steamer, and when out into the clear water again became the target of the batteries behind the town and of one brig, the other vessel showing signs of sinking. Unfortunately, the " Wyoming " grounded. Seeing this, the heavily manned Japanese steamer began to move, either to escape into the inner harbor, or to ram the "Wyoming" and board her while stuck in the mud. For- tunately, the Yankee's propeller worked the ship off. Then, neglecting the sinking brig, the " Wyoming " manoeuvred, in the terribly swift stream, until the pivot-guns had the range of their splendid target. Then both Dahlgrens spoke. Their shots so demoral- ized the company on board the " Lancefield " that the dignitaries from under the magnifi- cent purple canopy got off in sculling-boats 184 ^^ Wyoming" at Shimonoseki and were rowed away, while the sailors leaped overboard by the score, dotting the water with topknots. Again McDougal ordered the gunners of the eleven-inch Dahlgrens to fire. At first they seemed to pay no attention, and the order was given three or fi3ur times. The gun-captain of the forward pivot was only waiting to get the exact range. The big shell struck the " Lancefield '* at the water-line, passed through the boiler, tore out her sides, and burst far away in the town beyond. The frightful explosion, casting out steam, smoke, ashes, iron, timber, and human beings, was succeeded by a gurgling swell, under which the steamer disappeared from sight. On her way back, the "Wyoming" dropped shells with marvellous accuracy into the batteries, one of which was wholly destroyed. At 12,20 P.M. firing ceased. Fifty-five shot and shell had been fired within a space of one hour and ten minutes. Counting time lost when aground, this meant more than a gun per minute. The "Wyoming" was hulled ten times, her funnel had six holes in it, two masts were injured, and the upper 185 America in the East rigging badly cut. The Choshiu clansmen fired chain-shot, grape, shell, and round shot from guns mounted on carriages of improved foreign pattern, able to sweep a wide arc and to change their elevation quickly. Their one hundred and thirty rounds killed five and wounded seven of our men. The loss of the Japanese, beside one battery ruined and two ships sunk, was probably over one hundred. After studying the original papers, and questioning numerous eye-witnesses, both Japanese and American, it is hard for the writer to qualify his matured judgment that in the annals of the American navy no achieve- ment of a single commander in a single ship surpasses that of David McDougal in the "Wyoming" at Shimonoseki. McDougal set the mark for Commodore Dewey. The Manila victory was on a larger scale. It cannot have been morally greater. Four days after McDougal's exploit, the French thirty-five-gun frigate and gunboat " Tancrede," with a land force of two hun- dred and fifty men, with maps made by the Dutch captain, shelled the forts, took one i86 "Wyoming" at Shimonoseki five-gun battery of twenty-four pounders, and came away. Nevertheless, Choshiu became the centre of opposition to the Shogun's govern- ment at Yedo. The clansmen, re-enforced by ronins, or free lances, from all parts of the empire, repaired their losses, built new batteries, mounted heavier guns, and suc- ceeded for MtQtn months in closing the strait against foreign commerce. The Tycoon be- ing helpless, it became necessary for the treaty powers then represented in Japan to force the passage and destroy the forts. 187 CHAPTER XXVI OUR LITTLE WAR WITH ONE GUN N the allied fleet assembled to enforce the treaties and chastise the rebellious vas- sal, out of a total of 17 ships, mounting 208 guns, with 7590 men, the British had nine men-of-war. The heaviest were equipped with splendid new breech-loading Armstrong rifled cannon, of which the English officers were exceedingly proud, not sparing their ridicule of our antiquated muzzle-loaders. The French had three fine vessels, mounting 49 guns, with 1235 men. The Dutch squad- ron consisted of four heavy ships, carrying 58 guns, served by 951 men. What was the American force ? Our civil war was in progress, and the only national ship on the station was the sailing sloop of war "Jamestown," Captain Cicero Price, worthless in a dangerous strait with a narrow channel and the tide running like a mill-race. Yet the moral influence of the United States 188 War With One Gun was desirable, as showing united action of the powers. So, like a tiny bantam amid big fighting-cocks, the little steamer " Ta Kiang " of 600 tons was chartered. A- thirty-pounder Parrott gun from the " Jamestown " was mounted on her deck. Lieutenant Frederick Pearson, with a party of thirty marines and sailors, was sent to co-operate with the fleet in towing or carrying the wounded. The ordinary complement of this merchant ship's officers and sailors was to work the steamer, while Pearson and his men were to give it a martial air. Nothing was said about fighting. Since the government at Washington could not be communicated with, and approval of the action of Pruyn and Price was not cer- tain, Pearson was given orders which he might interpret to suit a Quaker ■ — or other- wise. In reality, despite Washington's warn- ing against "entangling alliances," here was a case in which the United States was allied with three European powers for war-purposes against an Oriental people. It forms a strik- ing precedent. Was it the first ? The greatest of naval battles in Japanese waters was fought September 5 and 6, 1864. 189 America in the East The SIX heavy ships took up a position on the left, fronting the town and the ten bat- teries, which mounted sixty-two cannon. The fiVQ hght vessels made a flanking squad- ron on the right, while in the centre were the largest ships, — " Euryalus,*' " Conqueror," and " Semiramis," — all finely equipped with heavy rifled guns, and among them was the little "Ta Kiang." In the battle which fol- lowed, lasting during the afternoon and next morning, the " Ta Kiang " took part, doing splendid execution at three thousand yards with her rifled Parrott. In a trial of speed, Pearson's men actually beat the gun-squad of the " Euryalus " with her breech-loading lOO-pounder Armstrong gun. It must be remembered, however, that the method of breech-loading was in those days so clumsy that this feature was later abandoned in the British navy. It was resumed when the notable improvement of hinging the breech, and putting in a gas-escape check, and an outward latch on, made breech-loading the only method worth considering. The " Ta Kiang " assisted handsomely in towing the boats of the landing force which 190 War With One Gun captured and dismantled all the forts, but beat all the vessels and quickly landed the fifty-six wounded on board in the hospital at Yokohama. Pearson was warmly praised by the British, French, and Dutch admirals, and awarded by Queen Victoria the decoration of the Order of the Bath, which Congress allowed him to wear. Yet neither McDougal nor Pearson ever received promotion, notice, or thanks for his superb and shining example of duty nobly done. In May, 1898, a prominent Japanese editor wrote : " The ex- pedition against Choshiu did more to open Japan's eyes than anything else." 191 CHAPTER XXVII A BRUSH WITH FORMOSA SAVAGES UR civil war being over, Farragut's flag-ship, the " Hartford," Commo- dore H. H. Bell, joined the China squadron. The American bark " Rover " had been wrecked on the southeast corner of Formosa, and her crew murdered by the copper-colored natives, whose favorite sport was head-hunt- ing. As usual, the Chinese mandarins could do nothing. So on June 13, 1867, guided to the right place by British residents of Takao, a force of 1 8 1 marines and sailors was landed from the " Hartford " and " Wyom- ing, " who were to go into the bamboo jungles to chastise these Indian-like skulking cannibals. After four hours' marching in the frightful moist heat of darkest Formosa, unable to see but a few feet in the tangled thickets, " a fight in a furnace " took place, in which Lieutenant-Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, one of the finest officers in the 192 Formosa Savages navy, was slain. The loss of the enemy, who were scarcely visible in the undergrowth, and were only indicated by the frequent flash of a gun-barrel in the sunlight or the puiF of smoke from their hiding-place, was not known. Beyond burning a few huts, little damage was done. The body of Mackenzie found a hospitable grave in the garden of the British consulate at Takao, which again showed that " blood is thicker than water." A young officer named Sigsbee, afterward captain of the battle-ship " Maine," made a sketch of the funeral and burial-spot. American interests in Formosa were after- ward handsomely served by General Le Gendre, United States consul at Amoy. A few months later, January ii, 1868, Admiral Bell, with Lieutenant Read and ten sailors, was drowned in the upsetting of a boat off the ever-dangerous Osaka bar, Japan. No Amer- ican officer of so high rank had thus far died on this station. The graves of the seamen in Kobe Cemetery, like those at Shimoda, Yoko- hama, and other points in the Far East, are faithfully and lovingly decorated by our men annually on May 30. Memorial day is always 13 _ 193 America in the East impressively observed by our men abroad. Usually, in the case of recent burials, our American tars lay flowers on the graves or hang a wreath on the monuments of their British sailor-mates also. " Blood is thicker than water." Americans could not but rejoice when, in 1895, the Japanese took over Formosa from the Chinese, and began to govern it decently. 194 CHAPTER XXVIII THE KOREAN EXPEDITION JAPAN had forged ahead in enlightened progress, but Korea persisted in her mood of morose seclusion. Besides American vessels shipwrecked on her inhospitable coasts, the crew of the schooner " General Sherman,'' which, early in August, 1866, entered the Ping- Yang River, met violent deaths. Whether " merchant or invader," aggrieved or aggressors, those on board lost their lives. The Koreans, first with fire-rafts and then with weapons, had attacked and slain them all. The facts in the case were investigated and found about twenty years afterward by Ensign John B. Bernadou, the first naval officer wounded in our present war with Spain. To inquire into the " General Sherman " affair, and to make a treaty, an American force, consisting of the " Colorado," " Alaska," " Benicia," " Palos," " Ashuelot," and " Mono- cacy," under " fighting John Rodgers," moved 195 America in the East into the Han River, on which Han- Yang, the Seoul, or capital of Korea, is situated. With Mr, F. F, Low, our minister in Peking, with whom was the responsibility of peace or war, our men caught sight of the superb scenery of Korea at Boisee Island, May 30. Only the " Palos " and the old double-ender " Mono- cacy," now the " Noah's Ark'' of the Asiatic squadron, could enter the river. On June 2, leaving the heavy vessels behind, four steam- launches and the two gun-boats moved out to the work of surveying. Around the bend of the river was "a whirlpool as bad as Hell Gate," and a channel only three hundred feet wide. To the surprise of the Americans, there was a fort and a new earth-work mounting several thirty-two pounders, and hundreds of jingals lashed by fives to logs. The treacherous Korean com- mander was one second too late. A storm of fire burst and clouds of smoke rose over the fort, while the water was torn into foam and our men soused in the splash. One Ameri- can was wounded, but of the two or three hundred Korean missiles of many sizes, not one injured a ship or boat. The bow guns of the 196 ^}mi^f!^^^9^^^f^9mM^ 3 '^^ From Harper's Magazine. — Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers. Captain Homer Blake. The Korean Expedition launches, the cannon of the moving " Palos," and the ten-inch shells of the " Monocacy " at anchor quickly cleared the fort of its defenders, the white-coated Koreans flying like sheep before the well-dropped shells. Those who know the inside of the hermit nation's history do not wonder at the silli- ness, obstinacy, and ill-concealed contempt of the Tai Wen Kun's cat's-paws, called officers, who from the first rudely rejected all offers of intercourse. This prince-father, with heart of stone and bowels of iron, an intense hater of foreigners and Christianity, was then the virtual ruler of Korea. Admiral Rodgers allowed ten days for some apology for the treacherous attack, but none coming, an expedition of chastisement was prepared. The two gunboats, four launches, and twenty boats carried ten companies of infantry with seven pieces of artillery, the 105 marines and 546 sailors being organized as a landing force. With the sailors of the " Monocacy" and " Palos," this expedition, under Captain Homer C. Blake, numbered 759 men in all. Among the active officers were Winfield Scott Schley, Silas Casey, C. M. Chester, L. A. Kimberly, 197 America in the East Douglas Cassel, Seaton Schroeder, Albion W. WadhamSj and others now famous. The "Monocacy," strengthened with two nine-inch guns from the " Colorado/' led the way up the river June lo, and quickly breached the wall of stone, ten feet high, and emptied with her shells the first of the ^ve forts built on three promontories. Our men landed eight hundred yards below the fort, and went into camp. After destroying everything warlike in the stone fort and the water-battery, they bivouacked under the stars, the marines guard- ingthe outpost. In the dark the white-clothed Koreans moved about like ghosts, firing on our pickets. The next day, dragging their howitzers over the hills, our men moved towards the next line of fortifications called the " middle/' fort. After the " Monocacy " had shelled it into silence, and the marines found it deserted, the sailors destroyed everything in it. Up hill and down dale in this country, rough to soldiers dragging cannon, but a dream of beauty to tourist and poet, our men moved to the main stronghold, which seemed perched like an eagle's eyry upon a 198 The Korean Expedition high rocky blufF. How could such a citadel be stormed by men without wings to fly ? This fort, mounting 153 guns, large and small, was fully garrisoned by stalwart tiger-hunters from the north. To the left thousands of armed natives were gathering in dark masses on the flanks of the Americans, and in a rush on the howitzer companies of the rear-guard and outposts they might overwhelm their foes. Some of our men were already prostrated by the heat. Something must be done quickly. From a ravine, up the steep incline of a cone 150 feet high, our men must climb in face of jingal and musket fire. Fortunately, the shrapnel of the howitzers kept the clouds of warriors on the flanks at a distance, while the *' Monocacy's " shells had breached the walls. At the right moment Casey gave the order, and up the ladderlike cliffs our men rushed amid a rain of jingal balls. When the tiger- hunters could no longer load their clumsy pieces, stones, dirt, arrows, and spears were their weapons. Fighting with desperation in the hand-to-hand struggle, the Koreans chanted a death -dirge in melancholy cadence. The majority were slain inside the walls, and T99 America in the East the few fugitives were quickly annihilated by the rifles of McLean's sailors and the canister of Cassel's howitzer battery. About ^^o Koreans were slain. Only twenty prisoners, all wounded, were taken alive. The other two forts, open to the rear from the main work, were easily entered. On our side. Lieutenant McKee and two other men were killed, and ten wounded. Five forts, 50 flags, 481 jingals and cannon (27 being heavy guns), and hundreds of matchlocks were captured as the result of the two days' operation. Courage, zeal, and dis- cipline marked our heroes throughout. Ex- cept possibly in the disembarkation on a mud flat, it is diflicult, from a naval point of view, to see how the operations could have been more wisely planned or more scien- tifically carried out. Some of the Korean cotton-armor suits, flags, lances, and rude breech-loading cannon, of a model like those used by Columbus, were brought to Washington. Seen in the perspective of Korean history, It seems now utterly improbable that any treaty could have been made at the time 200 The Korean Expedition when the Tai Wen Kun ruled the country. Even so sound an authority as the late S. Wells Williams declared to the writer that Rodgers's chastisement of the Koreans helped to make them willing to treat with their fellow- creatures in 1882. After a winter of negotia- tion in Peking, Commodore R. W. Shufeldt, in the United States steamship " Swatara/* off Chemulpo, May 19, signed the document which ordained peace and friendship between one of the smallest and one of the greatest of nations, and his guns saluted the new flag of Korea. To-day, in Seoul, the young stars and stripes and the age-old mystic symbols and diagrams wave in harmony. Electric lights, an American-built railway, the first in the kingdom, improved machinery and methods, to say naught of schools, teachers, hospitals, and physicians, show the change from isolation and barbarism. It has been only in the nineties that Ameri- can steel ships with modern armament have been seen in Asiatic waters. On the 3d of January of this year. Commodore Dewey hoisted his pennant on the United States steamship " Olympia," and his subsequent 201 America in the East exploits are known. Let not the lustre of his fame be dimmed, or the credit of his daring acts be discounted. Yet in Asiatic waters there were brave Americans before him. All honor to them ! 202 CHAPTER XXIX THE HISTORIC MOVEMENT TOWARDS THE PACIFIC T was an apocalyptic vision to Vasco Nunez de Balboa as he stood on the Darien peak and gazed upon a sea unknown before. Thus to the European conscious- ness the mightiest of oceans was revealed. America had been the great obstacle to those who, by means of a straight westward pas- sage over the waters, would reach China and the Spice Islands. Through the long course of explorations in America the one aim of Europeans was to find a waterway to China. But centuries were required for the unveiling of the American continent even in outline ; nor is its northern end known yet. Only now is the full significance of the Pacific Ocean and its importance beginning to dawn upon the civilized world. Compared to this vast area of blue water, the Atlantic Ocean is but a lake. 203 America in the East Looking at this greatest of oceans from the other or Asian side, there was no knowledge or consciousness of its vastness. From the unlettered men of the Australasian continent and archipelagoes, to the highly civilized Chinese and Japanese, the " great sea " was simply a vast unknown, into which disap- peared every year fishermen and sailors. Legend and fairy tale told of Utopias and wonderful lands beyond, or on the sea-floor located the abodes of the undying, with dragon kings and queens decked in coral and pearl ; but the " great sea " never mirrored the sail of home-coming ships after they had been swept into the swift Black Tide. Nevertheless, from between Luzon and Lombok this great current, which, through all the unmarked centuries, and perhaps every year, bore northward on its bosom unwilling emigrants, conscripts of fate, made a pathway to America. In this sea, food was always plentiful. Landmarks by day, illuminating volcanoes by night, and even habitable shores were never far away. Thus Nature, or Pro- vidence, had made a natural highway, furnish- ing also food, motor-power, lighthouses, and 204 ' e guideposts. It was along the Philippine, Japanese, Kurile, Aleutian, and Alaskan archipelagoes that America was, in one way at least, populated. Now the time has come when nature's highways of wind and current are made obsolete by steam. The intercourse is mutual, and in direct lines. Including bays and islands, the United States, even without Alaska, has a total coast-line of 21,354 miles, of which 3,251 miles front the Pacific rim. The coast-line of Alaska is greater than that of our Atlantic seaboard of 12,359 i^i^^s. We are within forty-five miles of Russia. Our westernmost island of Attu brings our frontier within seven hundred miles of Japan. Our steamers now cross from San Francisco to Yokohama in twelve or fifteen and to China in eighteen days. The central archipelago of Hawaii, and some smaller islands or foot- holds in the Micronesian Archipelago, are ours. We have possession of the Philippines — the gateway to China, which is the richest single market in the world. Let us inquire concerning the possibilities of this domain. William H. Seward, one of the wisest of 205 America in the East statesmen, the first and most far-seeing be- liever in the expansion of the United States beyond the Pacific, wrote over a generation ago: " The Pacific Ocean, its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond, will become the chief theatre of events in the world's great hereafter." We are to-day seeing the fulfil- ment of his vision, which has become reality. The central sea of human interests was once the Mediterranean or Mid-Earth Sea. Again, the Atlantic became such. Now the largest of oceans between the greatest of land-masses on the globe, well fitted for man's noblest achievements, is to win its honors long waited for. Already more than one-half of the race dwells by its shores. If the popu- lation of the globe be 1,500,000,000, and, ignoring the Atlantic coasts, we assign to the western American slope 40,000,000 ; to Australasia, Dutch East Indies, Philippines, and the islands of Oceania, 52,000,000 ; to the British Indies and dependencies, 290,000,000 ; to the Malay Peninsula and Siam, 9,000,000 ; to French India and Indo-China, 22,000,000; to Korea and eastern Siberia, 2 1 ,000,000 ; to 206 Movement towards the Pacific Japan and Formosa, 45,000,000; to the Chinese Empire and islands, 400,000,000, — we shall have a total of 878,000,000 souls, or considerably more than one-half of the world's population, in the Pacific area. Providence, or the Power that guides human development, invites us to look abroad. The world-house is being rebuilt. It is no longer Japanese-like, set behind moats, with the garden in the rear. It is now to be on the American model, with plenty of piazza and front windows. Our eleven States which we reckon within the Pacific territory have as yet but six per cent of the population and ten per cent of the wealth of the Union. Cali- fornia, Oregon, and Washington possess about sixty per cent of the wealth of the whole group, yet these eleven States have as yet but about six per cent of the whole foreign trade of our country. Nevertheless, theirs is the grander promise and potency. Looking at the extraordinary growth of this region, re- membering that only " a cycle of Cathay " ago there were not as many hundreds as there are now millions of white residents in these States, and that, instead of the English-speaking 207 America in the East republics in Australia and New Zealand, these lands under the Southern Cross were little more than lines on a map and empty of white men, we must acknowledge the transfer of world-interest. The white man is rushing both ways, from east and west. The centre of the world's hopes and ambitions has shifted to the Pacific. The Russian is marching seaward, building his railways as he goes, settling the great plains and valleys of southern Siberia, and commanding northern China. Where thirty years ago forests stood and tigers were shot, stands Vladivostok, a city of fifty thousand people. Southwardly, in warmer and richer regions, the Briton owns a splendid highway to India, lined with islands, fortresses, and coaling stations, which he holds for the good of a fifth of the race. He is exploring the African valley from Cairo to the Cape for a railway, which will be free to the world. In the tropics, he holds superb ports, islands, and coast tracts. In the south temperate zone, he has built up great commonwealths between Capricorn and the Antarctic. On the bosom of the Southern Pacific, the Union Jack is the 208 < H < u < o X H o Movement towards the Pacific predominating flag. He is our friend, and is stretching out hands to greet and welcome us, and to ask that we co-work with him for the good of the world. Japan, a new naval and industrial empire, under predominantly Anglo- Saxon influences, has started up. Obtuse- nerved China is awakening to the realization that the face of the world has changed. The Malay race now waits for its uplift and fruition, under the tutelage of nations holding that open Bible which knows no special favorites of Heaven, but only new men in the image of the holiest man. On our American side, British energy and capital have built a railv/ay across Canada, and started splendid lines of steamers to win the carrying trade of the tea and silk countries. Across the United States the centre of popu- lation moves westward every year. It is already near the Mississippi River. New highways of stone or iron are being built, and new lines of ships launched, while already Hawaii is ours. In the nature of things, our chief industrial outlet must be toward the West and over the Pacific. In Europe, our manufactures can win but limited success, 14 209 America in the East owing to hereditary skill and keen competi- tion ; but in those great markets in countries bordering the Pacific where half the popula- tion of the globe is, European and American meet on neutral but not on equal ground, for we have the advantage, possibly, of finer in- ventive power, and certainly of nearness, which means cheaper freights. As our coun- try becomes more densely populated, as " the West" becomes settled, conservative, and " slow," a larger export in commerce will be an absolute necessity. This we shall find in what was the Far East, but is now our near West. 2IO CHAPTER XXX TRADE AND MARKETS IN ASIA SIGNS are already manifest that our ocean- carrying trade is moving swiftly from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In one decade, from 1884 to 1894, the shipping on the Atlantic coast decreased by about 130,000 tons, while that on the Pacific coast increased by about 125,000 tons. Everything points to a large increase, within a few years, of our share in that commerce on both sides the Pacific basin, which has already reached a total of twenty million tons annually. In five or ten years, or at least within a generation, there will be railways in China, the Nicaraguan Canal, a fairly complete American railway system from Alaska to Chili, and the trans- Asiatic railway completed. Then the present ^5,000,000,000 of Pacific Ocean commerce will doubtless be doubled in amount. The writer of this article remembers when, the foreign trade with Japan amounting to 211 America in the East less than $ 10,000 a year, men sniiFed and sneered at the idea of the Mikado's Empire ever being worth the attention of first-class European and American trading houses. Now Japan is a factor of nearly first-class influence in the new world-problem. Her industrial movement is no sudden spasm. It is based on the healthy growth of democracy, which moves to the realization of the noble political ideals. If only her constitutional, political, and her industrial expansion proceed at an equal rate, and is kept pure by a steadily improving morality, then Japan will be a great controlling power in the Pacific, and pretty sure, with fair treatment by us, to work in harmony with " the Anglo-Saxons," by which we mean speakers of the English language. Thirty-five years ago, Japan had not so much as one tall chimney in the way of associated industrialism, or an iron rail, or a steamer. To-day, she has hundreds of cotton-mills, with nearly a million spindles, employing 25,000 operatives. Instead of sending out a few curios, she now exports silk, tea, tobacco, woven goods, matches, various manufactures, and coal. Her foreign com- 212 Trades and Markets in Asia merce amounted in 1897 to nearly ^200,0005- 000. The national revenue has doubled in twenty years, and the general wealth tripled since foreign commerce began. On the other side is China, which has regions capable of producing everything, and a population that can be educated into appre- ciation of almost all that Occidental skill and experience can supply. China's conversion and regeneration will come from without, but the child is already born who will live to see the Empire threaded with railroads. Yet, some day, she will change from being a passive instrument of the ambition of Russia and France, and will become an active agent. The industrial revolution has already begun, and both her exports and imports are changing. She has coal, iron, petroleum, natural gas, sugar-cane, tobacco, indigo, cotton, and all sorts of food supplies. The reign of Confucius will not last forever. The next " cycle of Cathay " will mean more to the world than ever Mr. Tennyson dreamed. India has also changed. Her traditional products of opium, indigo, and spices are now in the shadow compared with her raw and 213 America in the East manufactured cotton, jute and jute goods, oil, seeds, wheat, rice, wool, timber, and coal. Korea's foreign trade, which a decade ago was nearly nil, amounted in 1897 to 111,755,625. It is more than probable that Britain, assisted very probably by the United States, will maintain "the open door" in China. This means that, despite all that Russia or France may do in conditioning Chinese trade and development north and south, the richest part of China, the valley of the Yang-tse, with an area of six hundred thousand square miles, inhabited by the most naturally indus- trious and commercial people in the East, will be our open market. The Great River flows into the Pacific, and already Shanghai at its mouth, " the coming New York of the Far East," has an annual foreign trade of nearly ^80,000,000. To-day, of the lands bordering on the Pacific, Anglo-Saxon nations hold Alaska, British America, and the United States, while the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes are now the ruling flags in the central Pacific. British peoples rule New Zealand, Australia, Hong-Kong, parts of New Guinea and 214 Trades and Markets in Asia Borneo. France holds land in Annam between Siam and the China Sea. Germany- has part of Samoa and the port of Kiao-Chau in China. The Dutch possess Sumatra, Java, Celebes, Lombok, and other islands forming Insulinde or Island India, whose inhabitants number nearly 34,000,000 people. Alarmists have started the story that the Netherlands Government contemplates building a steel- clad fleet in order to protect its oceanic pos- sessions against probably American aggression. As a matter of fact, however, the proposal to do so was made before the Hispano-American war broke out, and was rejected in the last session of the States-General. The Nether- lands have no fear of the United States, but of Germany only. 215 CHAPTER XXXI OUR FRIENDSHIP WITH RUSSIA ONE striking fact, which includes a long series of events that belong to our his- tory in the Pacific Ocean, is our friendship with Russia. Being so deeply rooted in the past, this must condition our future develop- ment there. It must also remain a permanent element in any consideration of a possible alliance with English-speaking nations. Sur- prising to many Europeans is this mutual sentiment between an absolute despotism and a democratic republic. Yet this friendship has roots that go back in time as far as William Penn and Czar Peter. In 1671 the founder of Pennsylvania — the man who an- ticipated in his writings both the Czar's ireni- con and that federation of nations which may yet come — held an interview. Penn talked in his mother's Dutch tongue with the Rus- sian autocrat who, to civilize his people, be- came a mechanic and ship-carpenter. Again, 216 Our Friendship with Russia in the days when George the Third, urged on by the corrupt Parliamentary ring which forced the American Revolution, applied for twenty thousand Russian soldiers to fight our fathers. Queen Catherine refused to lend a single mercenary. On the contrary, she pro- posed and consummated the Armed Neutral- ity. Both actions touched the hearts of our fathers. It was by the orders of his imperial master the Czar, that DashkofF, the Russian minister at Washington, in 1813, offered his services to our government to bring about peace between Great Britain and the United States. President Madison accepted, and thence issued the Treaty of Ghent, — the inside history of which is yet to be written. From the very first appearance of the American whalers and merchant ships in the Pacific Ocean, the friendship of the Russians was manifest. The first treaty with the United States and Russia, in 1824, was ex- ceedingly liberal, declaring the navigation and fisheries of the Pacific free to people of both nations. In 1830, when Commodore Mat- thew Perry was sent, in the new ship " Con- cord," to bear John Randolph of Roanoke as 217 America in the East our first Minister to Russia, the Czar wished to engage American naval officers, even as he afterwards employed American engineers to build his railways. Friendly relations steadily deepened between the two countries, until, as we all remember, a Russian fleet was sent into our waters to assist us in our Civil War, in case of hostile interference by Great Britain. In both countries emancipation took place, the serfs being liberated in 1861, and the slaves being set free in 1863. Both emanci- pators, the absolute Czar and the republican President, fell under the hands of the assassin, and thus both nations were united in sym- pathy and sorrow. The cession of Alaska in 1867, with a coast line larger than our older one on the Atlantic, made Russia on her Asiatic side our nearest western neighbor and pacific, we trust, in a two-fold sense, forever. Since the triumph of the Union, after the Civil War, American manufacturing and commercial interests have steadily increased in importance and value in " all the Russias." No American admin- istration will lightly disturb our friendly rela- tions with this mighty Power. 218 CHAPTER XXXII AMERICAN ENTERPRISE IN THE PACIFIC THERE were Americans in the islands of the Pacific and countries adjoining, even while our fathers were colonists under the British crown. As soon as a treaty of peace with Great Britain was signed, even be- fore we had any land west of the Mississippi, and hardly beyond the Alleghenies, an Ameri- can ship " Empress," of which Major Shaw of the United States First Artillery was super- cargo, sailed on Washington's birthday from New York, in 1784, to bear the flag and extend the trade of the young republic. In the previous year, 1783, Captain Kennedy, in the ship "Columbia," built in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, sailed up the Oregon River and named it. Thus the record of American enterprise on both sides of the Pacific, and of honorable achievement in the Far East, begins almost in the very year of our recognition as a nation by Great Britain. 219 America in the East Besides the barter of Canton fire-crackers and American ginseng (first discovered by a Jesuit priest in Vermont), the Chinese de- manded our furs. A profitable commerce opened, which led the captains and crews of hundreds of American ships to become ac- quainted with the whole coast line of America fronting the Pacific. In addition to furs from America, they took sandal wood from Hawaii. After trading with the Asian continent and refitting in the archipelago, our merchant nav- igators returned to the United States with tea, silk, and porcelain. The Chinese name for Hawaii is still the " Sandal Wood Islands." This traffic enriched Kamehama so that he was able to unify the whole archipelago. At the same time, Hawaiians engaged on Ameri- can ships attracted the notice of Christians at home. Indeed, the presence of two of them at New Haven in June, 1810, helped to kindle the impulses that led to the for- mation of the American Board of Commis- sioners for Foreign Missions, — one of the noblest growths of the mind and heart of our people. As usual, missionaries were pioneers, and 220 American Enterprise in 1 8 19 established themselves in Hawaii. A commercial agent arrived in 1820, though no treaty was made by the United States, until in 1823 one was negotiated by Captain T. Ap Catesby Jones. Not only did our trade with China enrich us in many ways, but it promoted powerfully the development of ship-building, until, in the American clippers, built to supply us with tea, the acme of grace, beauty, and speed in sailing ships was reached. Can any one say that the American acquisition of the Philippines, so near to markets con- taining half the world, will not similarly stim- ulate trade and enterprise ? American diplomatists in the Pacific lands were led by Edmund Roberts, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the United States Steam- ship " Peacock," sent out by President Jack- son, he made treaties with Muscat and Siam. He visited Cochin-China, and was preparing to open friendly intercourse with China and Japan, when he was taken ill and died. A long line of successors from the Country of the Flowery Flag followed Roberts. Joseph Bal- estier, our consul at Singapore, opened trade with Borneo by the treaty of June 23, 1850 ; 221 America in the East but American missionary teachers had been at work on the island as early as 1836. Siam, China, Japan, and finally Korea were brought into relations with the United States. Of the names of Caleb Cushing, Anson Bur- lingame, S. Wells Williams, and our later envoys, Seward and Denby, associated with China, of Matthew Perry and Townsend Harris, with Japan, of R. H. Shufeldt and H. N. Allen, with Korea, we may well be proud. In all of these countries, Americans have been foremost in introducing the best elements of civilization. In the Caroline Islands, they have lifted up a race from can- nibalism to decency, writing, hope, and enter- prise. Schools, colleges, hospitals, literature, and Christian religion have made the same indelible mark, as to the real meaning and purpose of Americans, which " the Great Pacific Power," as President Arthur called our country, has stamped on Turkey, India, Polynesia, and the Far East. In making known to the world this might- iest of oceans, with its great island-world, its currents, highways, and continental shores, whether luminous in history, shadowy in 222 American Enterprise tradition, or utterly unknown, the Americans have not been behind the great nations of the earth. It is just exactly "a cycle of Cathay," or sixty years, since that American exploring expedition which, under Commodore Wilkes, sailed on its voyage of ninety thou- sand miles, revealed the Antarctic continent, hitherto unknown, and through the researches of Charles Pickering, Horatio Hale, and James D. Dana, so enriched science. Thousands of our whaling ships became familiar with the coast line of both Americas, as well as with the lands inside the tropics and close to the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. The early records of New England ports, such as Salem and Newburyport, reveal how daring were our merchant navigators in carrying the flag and opening trade in the countries of the Americas and the Chinas, so that the hermits of old Nippon began to count the " black ships " by scores and hundreds in a single year. Captain Silas Bent, with Glynn in Japan in 1849, ^^^ ^^^^ Perry in 1853, made known the existence in the Pacific of the Black Tide, a great gulf-stream similar to that in the Atlantic, with potencies for the creation of 223 America in the East climates, the peopling of continents, and the regulation of an ever-increasing commerce. Space does not allow us to more than hint at the story of America in the Pacific, which grandly deserves a volume. Suffice it to say that for over a century we have had an army of pioneers who scarcely dreamed of the mag- nitude of the movement they were leading. Our commercial captains who first carried the American flag round the world, our missionaries and first diplomatists, were but pioneers of the world-movement now cen- tring in the Pacific, in which also our naval history is so glorious. This is concerned not only with battles and bombardments, with chastisements of piracy, treachery, and cruelty to the shipwrecked, with war and the shedding of blood, but also with noble works of science and humanity. On land, by the energy and pluck of Marcus Whitman, the missionary, the Northwest slope, Washington and Oregon, became ours, and, later, Fremont and Kearny won for us California. Then Commodore Stockton hoisted our flag and formed a pro- visional government. In the South Pacific, our whaling fleets and industry. Porter's 224 American Enterprise achievements in the " Essex " with the British ships " Phoebe " and " Cherub " and temporary occupation of the Marquesas Islands ; the naval exploits in Chinese waters of Foote, Tattnall, and others ; the fights with pirates and their extinction ; the treaties made by the sailor- diplomatists Perry and Shufeldt with Japan and Korea, with two brilliant episodes at Shimonoseki, and the expedition under John Rodgers in Korea ; the exploring expedition of Wilkes, and his discoveries on the Antarctic Continent; the exploring expedition of John Rodgers through Behring Strait ; the cruises of the "Shenandoah" and^Ticonderoga;" the deep-sea sounding of the " Tuscarora ; " the exhibition of man's greatness in the hour of death at Samoa, — make brilliant chapters in the history of the United States navy in Asiatic waters, crowned by Dewey's achieve- ments at Manila. Now, in the ordering of that Power not ourselves, the main army of the American people have come up with the advance guard. In the new evolution of history in the Pacific, shall we lead or be led ? IS 225 CHAPTER XXXIII PRECEDENTS AND RESOURCES WHEN we see what brain-victories the Dutch and English have won, con- quering and holding millions of people less by force of arms than by might of mind, we wonder whether Americans also have not the character and intellect requisite to rule ten millions of the Malay race. Apart from the employment of native troops for police and military work, it has been argued, and reason- ably so, that a knowledge of Sanscrit by British scholars in India has been worth to Great Britain an army of a hundred thousand men. It is certain that the intellectual con- quest of the Malay language, the dialects of Insulinde, and of the social customs of the natives have stood in little Holland in potency as a half-dozen army corps. It will be utterly vain for Americans to suppose that by navy guns and infantry rifles and territorial governors, the Philippines can be 226 r L < w u w o ^: w w o 2; Precedents and Resources conquered, pacified, and administered. The greatest victories must be those of brain and virtue. But it is our faith that we are well able to attempt the task. Look at our vast reserves of unused force in educated men, graduates of Annapolis and West Point, — for only a fraction of the gradu- ates educated at public expense serve full pub- lic careers. Look at our armies of young men and women possessing a college education and special professional training. Look even in our army, among the volunteers. What trades, business, handicrafts, expert ability are not represented in the ranks ? Even were our men now in Luzon disbanded and set to peaceful work, the requisites of industrial con- quest would be at hand. Despite the bad politics of Pennsylvania and New York, to say nothing of such varieties of governors as Illinois and South Carolina have allowed to grow, we still think it possible that the Amer- ican people can produce the administrators and their helpers who can rule with honesty and ability the new American Insulinde. For, on the other side, the problem of the permanent government of the Philippines is 227 America in the East far from hopeless. Here are millions of men waiting, for what? For justice and oppor- tunity to improve their condition of life. They know what the Spaniard's rule was, and what was the power of priests who were often more Spanish than human, more Roman than Cathohc. So long as the dreamed-of self-government by natives means only the grip of the strongest hand, there will be little incentive to industry or improvement of life among them ; but, once given authority which secures the greatest good to the greatest number, education which means opportunity for all, religion which makes new and better men and a happier state of society, then there will be quick response. To those things which can be best understood at once, there will be speediest welcome. Open, with trust tempered by prudence, the schools, courts, a local army and a navy, according to ability, and life will be worth living as never before. Despite our Jeremiahs, these are some of the blessings which American rule will certainly bring. Wise statesmanship will recognize founda- tions on which to build. The Spanish 228 Precedents and Resources teachers and missionaries have brought proba- bly five million of the people within the pale of the Roman Catholics. Yet it would be the dream of the mere theorizer to suppose that only Catholic missionaries would go out from the United States, for wherever the American flag floats, there is a fair field and no favor. There will be no trampling on that flag, even by an archbishop. There will no intolerance and insults to those outside of another faith. All public support to any- thing sectarian will be at once withdrawn ; but there will be the widest liberty for the Catholics to extend their doctrines and to enlarge their fold. American Protestants can break new ground in those parts of the archipelago yet uncul- tivated by missionaries; though we believe they will find, for a generation or two to come, their best field in educational work, rather than in direct preaching and popular evangelization. All over the earth, the Roman form of the faith improves mightily under the criticism and in the presence and stimulus of reformed Christianity, — based as it is on an open Bible and teaching democracy 229 America in the East in religion. So likewise Protestants, so-called, are all the better for the challenge of their claims and the provocation to good works from Christians of the Roman cult. So also it will be in these islands, especially if the work of Christianizing and building up the characters of men is attended to, more than the desire to work harm to rivals. American missionaries in the Caroline Islands have given the world an object- lesson of American civilization, even without government protection. Here we see the true spirit of the American, who looks at the world and humanity not with the eyes of a bargain-maker, politician, or economist, but in the light of those ideals of duty taught by the Master. Here is a case of where men have come, and women too, and have given the people writing, books, literature, education, the arts of life, hope for the future, and a rule of conduct that has wrought wonders within two generations, until by Spanish aggression the hopeful enterprise was nearly ruined. May these islands soon be ours by just acquisition and righteous control. 230 CHAPTER XXXIV OUR IMPERATIVE NEED FOR the government of the Philippine people, we need our best men in all the varied lines of human ability. There must be made, by a better civil service than we have now, a real career open, and not a mere temporary position for those fitted to lead and rule. There must be fair salaries, secure tenure of office, a pension on retirement, and a reasonable amount of dis- tinction and consideration. Strange as it may seem, we cannot see why these will not come. Demand and supply react upon each other. Our lamp of experience may be small, and it is, alas, still true, as Coleridge has taught, that the lessons of history cannot be learned when " passion and party blind our eyes," for then " the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us." 231 America in the East Yet there is some patriotism left above passion and party; and because we believe this, we set our little lighted wick in the re- flectors of British and Dutch history, so that the track ahead of us is illumined. Even in going around the curves, we can have guidance. When we see how these two peoples have had much the same corruption in politics, the same and probably worse party-clamor and passion, and yet have risen above it, — the sober sense and second thought of the nation prevailing, — why cannot we at least hope and take courage from the past — our own and theirs ? A few years ago our navy yards were the nests of political jobbery. It is not so now. Bad as our politics may be, they are surely not, in the mass, worse than those of our fathers, when election day was so often the synonym with riot and bloodshed. Responsibility sobers and develops. " New occasions teach new duties." Long experi- ence has demonstrated that the surest way to save a dying society is to interest its members in some larger work. Awaken thought in the great world-problem of missions, and there follows enlargement of ideas, liberahty of 232 Our Imperative Need pocket, and substantial effort. The way to make a man or a nation is to give educative responsibilities — not too much or too many at a time. Because it is the politician's trick — " of an ancient and fish-like smell," easily perceived — to divert attention from home- needs by foreign war, must the American of 1899 ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ other extreme of barbed- wire enclosures and Chinese foot-binding? We are very far from being satisfied with our civil service, nor do we yet think that our governmental administration, either in gross or detail, is what it ought to be. We need a foreign policy which is not Democratic, Repub- lican, or in any way partisan, but national. Though progress in this direction and reform of the civil service is slower than we can wish, it is not so very different from what we note in history, especially British history. On the printed page, we can read in a few minutes of great movements and reforms, and we may and do, in spite of ourselves, get the idea that in the old days the bettering of things was not so tedious an operation, or had so many set-backs and discouragements as in our time. But in reality the road from 233 America in the East disease to health is never a straight one. Re- form does not ride on the Empire State Express. Even should it come, as hysteria or a hurricane, it is more destructive than wholesome. While human nature remains so exasperatingly conservative, sure progress will be slow. Yet we take hope. Our navy is worth all the money we have spent upon it, if it has demonstrated no other lesson than that which it has made patent, viz. : that right training of elect men in rigid courses of disci- pline, with noble traditions and the sanctions and environment of honor, yields the most satisfactory results to the nation. Does not our regular army prove the same thing? Is not our improved civil service, slow though its reform be, a proof of our general claim ? Does not even the advance thus far made encourage us to believe that we have the material and the moral reserves for grappling to the new tasks which have been laid upon us? Yet West Point and Annapolis do not graduate all the able men of the country. Our missionaries do not monopolize all the zeal and working power in good citizenship 234 Our Imperative Need abroad, though they do set an inspiring example. Journalistic Jeremiahs would lead one to suppose that honesty and political capability scarcely existed within our borders. Now, apart from the other sons and daughters of the republic, we have, as promising material, an army of young people, children of army and navy officers, professors, teachers, doctors, who, with intellectual heritage and that splen- did self-control and reserve of force so richly nourished in the home of professional men, think high and have to live plainly and with wise economy. As in the English civil service, so we venture to believe it will be found in ours, that, for the lifting up of bar- barous races, the building of new states with Anglo-American ideals in the Pacific, and for the filling of the difficult posts of statesmanship and political routine, no class of men will fur- nish a larger contingent than the sons of American ministers. If we read the past aright, the American people will not follow ; they will lead. No theoretical objections or academic warnings will repress their instincts of national develop- ment. The same motives which have for a 235 America in the East hundred years impelled them will drive them now into new enterprises, of gain indeed, but also of desire for mutual benefit between man and man, of education, of moral uplift, of spiritual blessing. Nor in these will they fail or be discouraged until they have set righteousness in the earth. 236 INDEX 237 Index AbEEL, Dr. David, 73, 77. Adams, John Quincy, 159. Aidzu, 179. Alaska, 28, 205, 218. Allen, Dr. Henry N., 123, 222. Allen, Dr. Young J., 83. American Board C. F. M., 220. American Commerce, 53, 71. American Firms in China, 71, ici. American Flags, 157, 175. American Foreign Policy, 87. American Inventions, 104. American Literature, 117. American Missionaries, 49, 76, no. American Missionaries in Hawaii, I3S» 151- American Political Classics, 117. American Text Books, Ii6. Angell, J., 87. Anglo-Saxons, 53-57, 212. Antarctic Continent, 223. Antisell, Dr., 115. Apootsae, 155. Armstrong, Samuel, 27, 169, 172. Arnold, Sir Edwin, 112. Arthur, President, 222. Australia, 208. Avery, 87. Bacon, Alice M., m, 112, 120, 155. Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, 203. Balestier, Joseph, 221. Battles, 174. Beggars of the Sea, 9. Bell, Commodore, 192. Bent, Silas, 130, 166, 223. Bernadou, John B., 195. Berry, J. C, 106, 109. BIddle, Commodore, 164. Bingham, John A., 119. Black Tide, 204. Blake, Homer C, 197. Blake, Wm. P., 115. Bonin Islands, loi. Bowditch's Navigator, 116. Bridgman, Dr. E. C, 79. British, 25, 48, 191, 232. British and American Co-operation, 54- Brooks, Wm. P., 115. Brown, James Ross, 87. Brown, Rev. S. R., 73, 109, 120. Bryan, Samuel M., 108. Buckley, Dr., in. Buddhism, 68, 94. Burlingame, Anson, 86, 222. California, 207. Caoutchouc, 38. Capron, Horace, 115. Caroline Islands, 222, 230. Casey, Silas, 197, 199. Cassel, Douglas, 198. Cathay, a cycle of, 58, 90, 92, 207, 213, 223. 239 Index Catherine, Queen, 217. Catholic Missionaries, 84. Chamberlain, B. H., 1 1 a. Chaplin, W. S., 115. Chauvinism, 112. Chester, C. M., 197. China, 54, 58, 61, 62, 65, 21 Chinamen, 141. Chinese, 16, 32, 138. Chinese Decay, 65. Chinese Empire, 61. Chinese in Hawaii, 128, 144. Chinese Newspapers, 82. Chinese People, 64. Chinese Reformers, 122. Chinese Repository, 79. Chino-Japanese War, 14, 89, 146. Choshiu, 179, 181, 186, 191. Christian Missions, 81, 83. Christianity in Japan, 105. Chronology of Japan, 93. Civilization, 30, 38. Civil Service, 231. Clark, E. W., 115. Clark, W. S., 115. Cochin-China, 221. Coffee, 41. Coffin, Reuben, loi, 161. Coleridge, 231. Confederate Privateers, 181. Confucius, 67. Constitution of Japan, 118. Cook, Captain, 126, 133. Cotton, 42. Crawford, J. U., 115. Crosby, ill. Culbertson, M. S., 77. Gushing, Caleb, 85, 222. Cutter, J. C, 106, III, 115. 109, Dana, James D., 223. Darien, 203. Dashkoff, 217. Declaration of Independence, 127. Decoration Day, 55, 193. Denby, Minister, 88, 222. Dennis, James S., 149. Devereaux, James, 158. Dewey, 3, 17, i6i, 186, 225. Diplomatists, 224. Dutch, II, 25, 33, 44, 47, 96, 127, 157, 180, 188, 191, 215, 232. East India Company, 72. Eastlake, E. W., 102. Eastlake, F. Warrington, 120. Eldredge, Stuart, 115. English, 47. English in Japan, 103. English-Speaking Peoples, 44, 50, 53- _ Expansion, 21. Famous ships, 183. Farragut, David, 159. Fenollosa, E., 114. Feudalism in Hawaii, 133. Feudalism in Japan, 133. Finck, H. T., 120. Foot-binding, 66. Foote, A. H., 169, 171-173,225. Formosa, 60, 192, 193. Foster, J. W., 88. France, 214, 215. Fremont, 224. French, 180, 188, 191. Fukuzawa, no. Furlong, firom Maine, 183. 240 Index GeISINGER, Captain, 164. Germany, 215. Ginseng, 54, 71, 154, 220. Glynn, J., 103, 164, 223. Goodyear, 37. Gordon, M. S., 120. Grant, General, 88. Great Britain, 214. Great Wall of China, 66. Greey, Edward, 120. Hale, Horatio, 223. Happer, A. P., 74. Hardy, A., no. Harris, F., 120. Harris, Townsend, 13, 104, 169- 170, 176, 222. Harwell, 106. Hawaii, 125, 205, 220. Hawaiian Origins, 128. Hawthorne, 118. Hearn, L., 120. Heco, 102. Hepburn, J. C, in, 120. Hermit Nations, 22. Heusken, Mr., 170. Hideyoshi, 9, 95. Hildreth, R., 120. Holcombe, C, 88. Holland, 226. Hong-Kong, 54, 164, 167. Honolulu, 134. House, E. H., 102, 120. Imperialism, 3. India, 26. Insulinde, 26. Islands of United States, 19. lyeyasu, 95. 16 Jackson, President, 221. Janes, L. L., in. Japan, 29, 61, 75, 145, 209, 211, Japanese, 16,54. Japanese History, 94. Japanese in Hawaii, 128, 145. Japanese Origins, 94. Japanese Reformers, 122. Japonism, 93. Jefferson, President, 158. Jewett, F. F., 115. Jones, D. W. Ap, 115. Jones, T. Ap Catesby, 221. Jute, 41, 43. Kamakura, 95. Kamehameha, 134, 220. Kanaka, 135, 136. Kang, 83. Kearny, 224. Kennedy, Captain, 155, 161. Kidd, Benjamin, 22, 45. Kimberly, L. A., 197. King, C. W. & Co., loi. Kitasato, Dr., 52. Knapp, A., 97, 120. Knox, G. W., 120. Korea, 60, 69, 122. Korean Newspapers, 123. Korean Reformers, 122. Ko-tow, 86. Kuro Shiwo, 130, 166. LaFARGE, J., 114, 120. LeGendre, C. W., 193- Legge, Dr., 48. Leland, Dr., 115. Li Hung Chang, 89. Long, J. L., 120. 241 Index Loti, P., 112. Low, F. F., 196. Lowell, P., 120. Luzon, 131, 227. Lyman, B. S., Ii5« Macaulay, 26. McCartee, D. B., 106. MacDonald, R., 45, 103, 167. McDougal, D., 103, 181, 186, 191. McKee, Lieutenant, 200. Mackenzie, A. S., 192. Maclay, A. C, 120. McLean, 200. Magnetic Needle, 69. Malay Language, 226. Malay Race, 129. Manchius, 16. Manila, 186. Manjiro, 102. Marquesas Islands, 225. Martin, W. A. P., 74, 88. Mason, L. W., iii. Mediterranean, 206. Meiji, 92. Mendenhall, T. C, 115. Mikado, 92-95. Missionaries, 224. Monroe, James, 159. Montague, J., 127. Monuments, 55, 103, 134, 175, 194. Moriyama, 168. Morrison, R., 71. Morse, E. S., 115, 120. Munroe, H. S., 115. Murray, D., 107. Muscat, 221. Mutsuhito, 92. Nagasaki, 96, loi, 103, 106, 158, 164, 165. Napa, 164. Nanking, 83. Nantucket, 10 1, 1 58. Navy, 234. Neesima, 1 10. Newburyport, 223. New China, 90. Newspapers, 102. New Zealand, 208. Nobunaga, 95. Oregon, 207, 224. Pacific Gulf Stream, 130, 166. Pacific Ocean, Islands in, 19. Pacific Ocean, 130. Parker, P., 75- Parkes, H., 171. Parley, Peter, 116. Paul, H. M., 115. Peabody, Cecil H., 115. Pearson, F., 103, iii, 189, 191. Peking, 88. Penhallow, D. P., 115. Penn, William, 162, 216. Perry, Matthew C, 49, 92, 114, i54j 157, 168, 222, 223. Peter, Czar, 216. Philippians, 5—7. Philippines, 10, 47, 60, 1 31, 221. Pickering, C, 223. Pierce, President, ill. Pinto, Mendez, 133. Piracy, 54. Poi, 139, 140. Polk, President, 162. Populations, 206. Porter, D., 159, 160, 224. 242 Index Portuguese, 128, 143. Portuguese in Hawaii, 128. Premier li, 178. Price, Capt. C, 188. Printing, 69. Printing Press, 72, 135. Protestant Missionaries, 84. Pruyn, R. H., iii. Pumpelly, R., 114. Queen victoria, 196. Quinine, 39. Randolph, John, 217. Reed, WilUam B., 86. Richards, Miss, 109, iii. Riordan, R., 120. Rip Van Winkle, 62. Rittenhouse, 127. Roberts, Edmund, 160, 221. Rodgers, John, 195, 201, 225. Russia, 205, 214, 216. Russians, i6, 208. SaBURO, Shimada, 179. Salem, 223. Samurai, 97. Sandwich, Earl of, 127. San Francisco, 33. Sanscrit, 226. Sapporo, 115. Satsuma, 180. Schley, W. S., 197. Schroeder, S., 198. Scidmore, E. R., 120. Scott, M. M., III. Scott, Walter, 171. Scudders, 48. Seoul, 123. Seward, Wm. H., 205, 222. Shaw, Maj. S., 154. Shiba, Bell of, i. Shimonoseki, 179, 186, 225. Shimonoseki Indemnity, 119. Shogun, 95. Shufeldt, R. H., 2, 122, 154, 201, 222, 225. Siam, 221. Sigsbee, 193. Simmons, D. B., 106, 120. Slavery, 55. Smith, E. P., 108. Spaniards in Hawaii, 126, 134. Spices, 32, 33, 35. Statistics, 211. Stewart, Captain, loi. Stockton, Commodore. Sturgis, J. R., 155. TaI wen KUN, 197, 201. Talbot, Olyphant & Co., 73. Talcot, Miss, iii. Talmage, J. V. N., 80. Taoism, 68. Taro, 138. Tattnall, T., 171, 175, 225. Taylor, io6. Tea, 41, 68, 154, Tennyson, Alfred, 58. Terry, Professor, iii. The Pei-ho Forts, 177. Tokio, 2, 93, 118. Tokugawa, 96, 98. Trade, 211. Translations, 75, 108. Treat, Ulysses, 115. Treaties, 178. Treaty of Ghent, 217. Tropical Products, 32, 43, 46. Tropics, 34, 46, 53, 56. 243 Ind ex Utopias, 204. VeRBECK, G. F., 75, 106, 120. Vladivostok, 208. WaDDELL, J. A. L., 115. Wadhams, A. W., 198. Wainwright, 102. Ward, General, 27, 88-89, ^75> 177. Washington, 207, 224. Washington, George, 8, 22. West Indies, 51. Whalers, loi, loa, 158. Wheeler, Dr. L. N., 80. Wheeler, William, 115. Whitman, C, O., 115. Whitman, Marcus, 224. Whitney, N. W., 115. Wigmore, J. H., 120. Wilkes, Commodore, 223, Williams, G. B., 108. Williams, S. Wells, 73, 78, 79, 86, 88, 90, 102, 222. Wing, Yung, 73. Women in China, 112. Women in Japan, 112. Wyckoff, M. N., 115. YaTOI-TOJIN, 1 1 6. Yedo, 95. Yeh, 171, Yokohama, 104. Young, John Russell, 87. Young China, 90. 244 JUl S 1899