ALA'4 DS 507 b^Jhii^CompanyPublisfierJ Gass i^ SXq_ Book ^=p=V^— CopyiiglitN"_ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. The Royal Elephant of Siam YOUTH'S COMPANION SERIES TOWARD THE RISING SUN V, Sketches of Life in Eastern Lands BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & company, publishers 1902 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, "r«uo Copies Received JUL 16 1902 EIGHT ENTHV --. ft^XXa No, COPY 8. THE YOUTH'S COMPANION SERIES GEOGRAPHICAL READERS THE WIDE WORLD NORTHERN EUROPE UNDER SUNNY SKIES TOWARD THE RISING SUN STRANGE LANDS NEAR HOME (In preparation) >% ^<\ ^ Copyright, 1902, by Perry Mason Company PREFATORT NOTE n^HE volumes of the ''^Touth's Companion'' Series .entitled '''The Wide World^' ''''Northern Europe^' " Under Sunny Skies,'' " Toward the Rising Sun," and '-'^Strange Lands near Home" provide in interesting and attractive form a supply of reading material for either home or school that is especially suitable for supplementing the formal teaching of geography. "" The Wide World" with which the series prop- erly begins, presents vivid scenes from many countries. Each of the succeeding volumes enters into somewhat greater detail on a limited area, which is indicated by the title. The sketches have been prepared by authors whose work needs no introduction. The present volume includes India, China, Japan, Korea, and the islands of the eastern seas, a region of perennial, and now of very special, interest. [v] CONTENTS Page SiAM Sara Lee . . . , i A Morning in Benares . . Hugh Wilkinson . . 9 A School in China .... Ade/e M. Fielde . . 16 Country Life in China . . Cheste?- Holcombe . . 29 A Chinese Visit Marie Louise Bar roll 36 Korea and its Army . . . Frank G. Carpenter . 45 Korean Ways 53 Home Life in Japan 57 A Fair Lady of Japan . . . Wm. Elliot Griffis . 65 The Head-Hunters of Borneo William T. Hornaday "j^j Christmas in the Tropics . Rounsevelle Wildman 84 Malayan Child Life . . . Rounsevelle Wildman 92 Life in Manila » . . . . Charles B. LLoward . 104 Housekeeping in East India. Sara Jeamtette Duncan 115 The Fire Worshipers . . . S. G. W. Benjamin . 129 Pronouncing Vocabulary 135 [vi] TOWARD THE RISING SUN SIAM AND ITS ROYAL WHITE ELEPHANT Fifty years ago little was known in America of the kingdom of Siam beyond the fact that it was the native land of the Siamese twins, and in a vague way we had heard that the people of Siam worshiped white elephants. After the Sepoy Rebellion in India, English civilization made its way through India, on to Burma, and opened the closely sealed ports of Siam and Cochin China. We then began to learn something of the " Heart of Farther India." Now the flood of Europeans pouring into the South Pacific Islands is day by day carrying Western manners and ideas into the shut-in kingdom. The late king, Maha Mongkut, having learned of England's power and greatness from his neigh- bor, Hindustan, chose an Englishman for one of [I] Toward the Rising Sun his counselors, and hnported an EngHshwoman as governess in his harem. It is owing doubtless to the influence of these officials that the door of the kingdom has been opened for English education. Siam has an exquisite flora. There the citron and cocoanut are fairest of fruit. Yet with all its wondrous vegetation it has not the tropical heat that annuls the beauty of India. The climate is delicious. The Bay of Bengal on the one side and the Gulf of Siam on the other keep this kingdom refreshed with sea breezes. Bangkok, the capital, built out into the river Menam, which is the great artery of the country, is called the Venice of the East. Indeed, it is even more of a water city than the Queen of the Adriatic, for while Venice has its foundations on solid ground, Bangkok actually floats on the water. Huge bamboo rafts are constructed and lashed together with enormous chains, and on these the houses, shops, and even the gardens are built. We chanced to arrive at Bangkok on a feast day. The river up which we sailed to reach the city makes so many sharp turns that, although ■ [2] Siam and its Royal White Elephant the distance was not far, the time that we occu- pied in sailing it was long, and it was night when the glories of the floating city burst upon us. A marvelous panorama, an illuminated world, seemed spread out before us. Thousands of fire globes shed their brilliant hght over the broad bosom of the water; and on both sides, as far as the eye could reach, there was an endless succes- sion of lights, of every imaginable color, shade, and shape, forming an illumination such as only Eastern ingenuity can devise. Every floating house was decorated with the twinkling eyes ; the yards and masts of every ship and even the tiniest boat sparkled with the brilliant, colored fire, while the more distant pagodas, palaces, and minarets were a blaze of glory. It was the great annual festival of Siam — the Feast of Lanterns — and had we arrived one day later we should have missed this fairy- land spectacle. The temples, of which there are one hundred in the city, are built on the river bank. Here also stand the king's palaces, the houses of the foreign consuls, and the residences of the nobility of the kingdom. During the last century the [3] Toward the Rising Sun capital of Siam stood on the river bank above the position of the present capital ; but the annual overflow of the river caused such a deposit of mud that the miasma from it at low tide made terrible havoc among the dense population, and frightful epidemics of cholera occurred every year. So the present city was built lower down the river on rafts bound together. These rafts are arranged in groups, each group containing five or six rafts, and are moored to great poles driven into the bed of the river. The change of location has effectually relieved the people of Bangkok of the presence of the cholera, but they have only exchanged one disease for another, for the damp- ness of the city creates rheumatic fever. Of any appliances for curing disease the inhabitants are pitifully ignorant, and our medical missionaries are doing a great work for them in that respect. The houses, even the few that are on the bank, and of course the floating ones, have no com- munication with one another by land, not even by a footway, as in Venice, so all the traveling about the city is done by boat. The thousands of little canoes used for carrying people about are each managed by one person, generally a young [4] Siam and its Royal White Elephant girl, for the Siamese, unlike other Eastern nations, do not shut up their women. Almost every conceivable commodity is borne in these little boats — rice, fish, fruit, flowers — and every sort of haaidicraft is carried on in them. Here you may see a Chinese manufacturing rich soup over a hissing kettle and delivering it to his customers ; another person is baking bread ; another, under his gayly striped awning, is weav- ing gold thread into embroidery, while a mite of a child manages the little boat. The scenes in the water streets are always new and interesting. There is a queer sense of insecurity in " shop- ping " in these floating bazaars which gives an added zest to the picking up of " antikas," as the natives call curios of all sorts. Sir Edwin Arnold told us of the "Light of Asia," and in pleased recognition of the English poet's effort to make known to the world the god of Siam, the king conferred on him the distinction known as the Order of the White Elephant. The sanctity which the Siamese attach to the white elephant is not difficult to understand when we remember that the doctrine of the transmigration of souls is one of the most vital points in the [5] Toward the Rising Sun Buddhistic reHgion, and that the white elephants are supposed to be tenanted by the souls of their dead kings. The king may well pay great atten- tion to any white elephant that he is fortunate enough to secure — the animal is very rare — for he thinks that he is taking care of his future home. We read in ancient history of how eagerly the white bull Apis was sought by the Egyptians, and what feasting and rejoicing they made when he was found. There are much the same demon- strations of joy in Siam when a white elephant is captured. One of the most splendid temples near the city is set apart for his highness, the Royal White Elephant. It stands in a garden of palms, in which grow thickly the tuberose, honeysuckle, passion flower, and the chempa, the national flower of Siam. In this garden, at the time of my visit to it, a dozen priests, dressed in gamboge-dyed robes, were weaving wreaths and chanting praises to the great white beast, which stood lazily waving his trunk and helping him- self to the leaves and branches placed before him. He seemed to me to be second in size only to Barnum's mammoth Jumbo, and his skin was [6] Siam and its Royal White Elephant white, smooth, and spotless, with a large scarlet rim around each of his eyes. His stall was a large, high room, with windows around the top; the floor was covered with a mat work wrought of pure chased gold, each interwoven plait being about half an inch broad and as thick as a five- dollar gold piece. On this costly carpet the unwieldy animal stood and stamped his great feet, with no more care for its magnificence than if it had been his native green turf, " wearing out," as some one said, "as much gold in a year as many hard-working people gain in ten." Several priests were constantly engaged in cleaning the floor, in piling up fresh herbage for his majesty to feast on, and in polishing the tar- nished spots. Other persons, professional gold- smiths, were taking the worn strips out of the golden carpet and replacing them with new, shining ones. The man who was so fortunate as to entrap this sacred animal was rewarded with a hereditary pension of one thousand ticals, and was raised to a very high office in the kingdom — that of water carrier to the elephant. The jars in which the water is transported, and the troughs from which [7] Toward the Rising Sun the sacred animal drinks, are of pure gold covered with filigree work. As a god, the white elephant is horrible, but regarded merely as a royal toy, each monarch to his taste. The sovereigns of the civilized world spend vast sums of money in pomps and vanities, and in the gratification of their appetites. Tibe- rius had his Capri, Napoleon his ambition, to which he sacrificed millions of treasure and uncounted human lives, and why should not the king of Siam have his elephant ? Sara Lee. [8] A MORNING IN BENARES Benares, on the Ganges, India, is said to be the oldest known habitation of man in the world, and time and tradition have sanctified the city in the Hindoo mind down even to its very dust. It has ever been the headquarters of rehgion, even before the great reformer, Buddha, preached to the Hindoos, hundreds of years before our era. There existed at that time a form of worship combined with caste, a monstrous superstition and idolatry, a religion evolved out of the cries of early humanity to something external to itself. Buddha broke down all this. He destroyed caste, set aside the priesthood, abolished sacrifice and empty forms, and, appealing only to man's intel- lect and conscience, set up his great principle of absorption into the Deity, instead of promising a heaven of conscious souls. Buddhism once numbered more followers than any other religion in the world ; but though Benares was the cradle into which it was born, [9] Toward the Rising Sun and from which it spread all over India, and thence eastward even to Japan, it has been expelled from the land which gave it birth, and Brahmanism has resumed its ancient place and authority. One day — it was a great festival — we went at sunrise to the Ganges to see the pilgrims bathe in its holy waters. This surely is one of the most startling and wondrous sights in the world ! The city as we entered was illumined with a soft, rosy light, and the streets were thronged with natives streaming down to the river in thou- sands through the dusty streets and under dust- laden trees. The dress of the pilgrims consisted of the lightest drapery, of beautiful colors, loosely worn. Many of the pilgrims, no doubt, came from homes far away in the remote parts of India. What a strength of faith — irrational faith to be sure — was there ! How wildly their hearts were throbbing ! They had been waiting and longing for this day for a long time, perhaps for all their lives. Every day come the pilgrims in crowds to this sacred city, to become purified by bathing in the [lo] A Morning in Benares sacred waters of the Ganges. Out of a popula- tion of three hundred thousand, half of them are pilgrims, ever shifting. We leave our carriage as we near the river and make our way through the dense crowds of pil- grims, not one of whom evinces the slightest interest in our presence. Reaching the river, we take a boat and are rowed up the stream. We see the city stretching along its banks for miles. Flights of high steps line the river, and at their top rise temples, palaces, and towers, and in the midst of them the superb mosque, with its two towering minarets, erected in the seventeenth century. The steps are like a grand stand on a race course, thronged with natives of all ages, down to little children pressing into the waters as far as they can get. Rich and poor, well, ill, and dying, are either in the water or waiting their turn to enter it, to wash away their sins, to pray, and to throw into it innumerable garlands of little yellow flowers. The morning sun is now well up and brilliantly shining over the river, which is here about a third of a mile across, and flooding all the animated Toward the Rising Sun scene with a rich and mehow golden Hght. Floating down this great river, we gaze bewildered at these multitudes at their devotions, washing, ^^-^^, Pilgrims bathing in the Ganges drinking, and throwing in their flowers as offer- ings. The drapery of the women is of beautifully toned colors, dyed in simple but exquisite hues. All are bathing and washing. Some remain in the water for hours together, wrapped in the deepest thought and religious contemplation, and [12] A Morning in Benares seeming very earnest in their devotions. Even the sparkHng-eyed children wade into the water and mutter their Httle prayers with all the solemnity of their elders. We float down near them. We might as well be invisible, for we attract no notice. Here and there dotted about among the crowd on the steps are immense umbrellas made of matting and nearly fiat; under these are the priests. When the bathers have finished their devotions in the river, they go to these priests to have painted on their foreheads a small spot of a sticky-looking substance, for which the priests exact a high price. The British government has put a stop to practices which formerly used to be common here, — practices which were not discouraged by the priests, and which were done in the name of religion. From all parts of India pilgrims would come here to drown themselves in the river. They would be tied between two large earthen- ware pots, and would then wade out into deep water, being kept afloat by the empty jars. These they gradually filled with water, till they sank with them from the gaze of the approving multi- tude on the banks. [13] Toward the Rising Sun Other practices, which also have been stopped, were the burying alive of lepers and the burning of widows with their dead husbands, unless they pre- ferred to be buried alive. Cases occasionally occur even now of fanatics who bury themselves alive. In Benares there are said to be five thousand temples, and in all of them are repulsive-looking idols covered with rice and flowers and dripping with the sacred water thrown upon them by persons coming from the river. The temples are crowded with worshipers, and the floors are covered, con- siderably over the soles of one's boots, with slush of water, rice, and trampled flowers. The heat and smell are nearly overpowering. Little niches in the walls of the streets have each their hideous idols, and they too are deluged with water, rice, and flowers. Everything in Benares is worshiped, even peb- bles from the river and dust from the streets. One temple we visited is sacred to the Brahman bulls. There were many bulls there of huge size, fat, content, and garlanded with flowers. There are also many sacred wells. One, the Well of Knowledge, the water of vv^hich the pilgrims drink, is nearly filled up with the flowers which the worshipers have thrown in as offerings. The [14] A Morning in Benares smell from these wells is absolutely choking in its offensiveness, and the slush about them is nearly ankle deep. All we saw, excepting from a picturesque point of view, was painful in the extreme. It must be almost impossible to eradicate superstitions so inrooted as are those of the Brahmans. True religion, science, and education alone can reach and cleanse these morally pestilent spots. Hugh Wilkinson. A, SCHOOL IN CHINA After many contradictions an error remains extant in recent books, in the statement that edu- cation is universal among the men of the Middle Kingdom. As a matter of fact, not more than one Chinese man in a hundred, take the empire through, knows how to read, and still fewer can write a letter. Of women, not more than one in a thousand can read; these are members of wealthy families, and have, in the happy past, been the domestic pets of their learned fathers and brothers. Only boys go to school. There is no system of public instruction, and all learning is acquired in private classes. A man who has sons or grandsons whom he wishes to educate, finds out how many of his friends and neighbors are willing to join in the establishment of a school and will pay the usual rate for the instruction of a pupil — two or three dollars in sil- ver, one peck of rice worth from thirty to fifty cents, and a hundred copper cash worth nine cents. [i6] A School in China From ten to twenty boys are enough to meet the expenses of a school. The trustee hires the teacher and becomes responsible for the payment of his salary, as well as for rice, fuel, tea, tobacco, and paper to supply his needs. The teacher expects, besides, from each pupil, a small present of cash, amounting to from three to five cents, at each of the six festivals of the school year. The income of a teacher in a village school sel- dom amounts to more than thirty dollars a year, beyond current expenses. A teacher who has taken a literary degree may receive from fifty to ninety dollars a year, but he is usually employed as tutor in a city. The trustee provides a schoolroom, which is often an ancestral temple or an empty dwelling house. He also supplies the teacher with a chair, desk, bedstead, and cooking utensils. Each pupil brings his own desk, stool, and whatever else is required by him in the school- room, including what are commonly called " the four gems of the study " — the brush used in writing hieroglyphics, the cake of ink which is rubbed upon a wetted inkstone to make the pig- ment in which the brush is dipped, the inkstone, [17] Toward the Rising Sun in which there is a Httle well to hold water, and the set of books to which all aspiring youths devote themselves. On the day of opening the school, the trus- tee makes a noonday feast, to which he invites the teacher and as many other guests as will make a party of eight. These guests sit down at two small square tables. After dinner the pupils assemble, and the teacher pastes upon the schoolroom wall a sheet of paper upon which he has written, in large characters, the name of Confucius. On a table, set as a temporary altar before the revered name of the philosopher, are placed lighted candles, censers, three cups of tea, and some packages of molasses candy made into tubes symbolic of the unobstructed mind. Before this altar the teacher and pupils burn incense sticks and " spirit money " in homage to the sage. The teacher stands nearest the altar, and the boys, grouped behind him, kneel with him, and thrice bow the forehead to the floor. The teacher then informs Confucius of the day, month, and year in which the school is opened, and prays for his favor, saying : [i8] A School in China " O greatest and holiest of sages ! Bless these thy disciples ; open their understanding, and make it easy for them to learn. When they write make their wrists flexible as willow withes, and when they recite make their words to flow like water in a mountain brook. Help them to compose both in prose and verse, and to attain literary degrees." The obeisance to Confucius having been thrice repeated, the teacher stands beside his chair, and the pupils one by one pay homage to him by kneeling once and touching the floor with the forehead. The trustee then distributes the molasses candy among the boys, and they take it home and present it to their parents and friends. The name of Confucius remains upon the wall during the year, and is worshiped by the pupils, each by himself, on the first and the fifteenth day of every lunar month and at all the chief festivals. At the end of the year the teacher and pupils again worship it together, with the same formali- ties as at the opening of the school, and then take it from the wall and reverently burn it. The school opens about a month after the New Year and continues, in a desultory way, for eleven [^9] Toward the Rising Sun months. The teacher goes to his native place whenever there is a dramatic performance or any other festivity of especial importance there. He also goes when the rice is harvested, and he needs to receive his share of the produce of his farm, when there is a funeral in his clan, and when there is a birth or a wedding in his family. He is also absent for a few days at each of the stated festivals — that of worshiping at the tombs of the ancestors, in the third month ; that of the races of the dragon boats, in the fifth month ; that of homage to the god of the bedstead, in the seventh month ; that of the harvest home, in the tenth month ; and that upon the shortest day of the year, in the eleventh month. The pupils expect a vacation, on their own account, whenever a play is performed in their village, and they easily get leave of absence when domestic duties call them from study. Truancy is, however, punished by the rod. Every forenoon and afternoon each pupil, as he comes, takes from a cup upon the teacher's desk a tally which he lays before the teacher. If any tally remains too long in the cup, the teacher sends some pupil to bring the truant, and, unless [20] A School in China the parents come to explain his absence, he is whipped. After all the boys are accounted for, the teacher replaces the tallies in the cup, and, thereafter, if any boy desires to leave the room, he must take his tally and lay it before the teacher, replacing it when he returns. It is customary for all the pupils to go to the schoolroom at dawn to learn their lessons. When the sun is well risen, the eldest boy knocks at the teacher's door and asks permission to recite. The teacher emerges and hears the recitation, and the pupil then goes home to his breakfast. When all have recited and breakfasted, they return to sweep the schoolroom and wash the teacher's dishes before beginning study again. About noon they go home to dinner and play until the middle of the afternoon, when they resume their lessons and continue study until sunset. After their early supper, the older ones go back to the schoolroom for study during the evening. The teacher is usually accompanied by a son or nephew who does his cooking and benefits by instruction with the local students. The pupils assist the teacher in his simple housekeeping, and [21] ,I1U A Toward the Rising Sun their mothers do his washing, mending, and sewing without other compensation than his dihgence in imparting knowledge to their sons. When the teacher has ascertained which woman is most expert in the cutting and making of garments, he honors her by sending his cloth to her to be made up. Those who are eager to have their sons make rapid progress encourage the teacher by presents of dainties and by special favors. The course of study includes only reading, writ- ing, and composition. Any one who desires to learn arithmetic, letter writing, and the art of detecting counterfeit money, must study these branches under one or more specialists who fit young men for commercial pursuits. The reckoning of accounts, the writing of epistles, and the inspection of coins are each a vocation whereby many men earn their living. The course of those who hope to be true literati lies distinctly among the classics. The Chinese primer is an ancient book of rhymes with three monosyllables in each line. After this follows the book of one thousand different characters, metrically arranged in lines of four words. [22] A School in China Having mastered these, the student pkuiges into the revered conversations of the sages, taking " Backing " the Lesson in order three books of Confucius and two of Mencius. These are all committed to memory. When they have been thus mastered the learner returns upon his route and studies each of these [23] Toward the Rising Sun books with notes and a commentary, supple- mented by the explanations of the teacher. After that he studies a large volume which contains all five of these books, with more extended notes on the whole ; and he endeavors to get all possible light upon the text by reading many authors and by listening to the conversations of the learned. The beginner in study takes his book to the teacher and hears him read a column or more, after which the pupil returns to his desk and cons this lesson aloud, until he can recite it without look- ing at it. He then takes his book again to the teacher, turns around with his back to the master, and recites what he has learned. This is called "backing the lesson."^ In this way the pupil commits the whole book to memory, and he is expected to learn it so thoroughly that he can at a moment's notice repeat any passage in it. Writing begins soon after reading. At first the learner blackens, with a little brush dipped in pigment, the red hieroglyphics printed in his copy book. When he can do this neatly, he ^ The two designs are reproduced from sketches made by a Chinese artist to illustrate this article. [^4] A School in China traces the same upon transkicent paper laid over the copy. Later on he copies from the books he reads, and still later he writes from memory. Converse of the Learned Composition, which is regarded as the real test of scholarship, is begun at an early age. Just before the noonday recess the teacher writes a [25] Toward the Rising Sun sentiment, a proverb, or a proposition upon a slip of red paper and pastes it upon the door. Each boy as he goes out reads the Hne, and in the afternoon renders to the teacher an- other Kne which will, with the first, make a couplet. The more advanced the pupil the more time does he devote to composition, and odes, blank verse, ballads, and madrigals are followed by the highest style of prose, written in imitation of the classics. All honors, social, pecuniary, and official, await the scholar, and the teacher has always at hand illustrious examples to hold up for the emulation of those who become discouraged. Among the ancients, as among the moderns, many who were poor or stupid rose to eminence by sheer diligence and self-discipline. The teacher tells of So Chin, who, being afflicted with drowsiness when at his nightly studies, thrust a needle through his flesh so that pain might keep him awake, and of the restless Sai Lin, whose active body revolted against sitting at his books, and who cured him- self of a constant disposition to rise and leave them by placing a pail of cold water where [26] A School in China his feet would be immersed in it whenever he stood up. A warning is given in the career of the un- scrupulous Pang Kien, who cut off the ends of the straws that his teacher told him to arrange evenly, while the careful and honest Sung Pin separated a similar bundle and laid the straws straight, one by one, and found that they were all of uniform length without cutting. The char- acter thus manifested by the two showed their teacher which of his pupils would best repay his efforts, and his judgment was justified by the event, for Pang Kien came to no good, while Sung Pin won renown and wealth, and great honor came through him to his preceptor. Such examples stimulate the ambitious student, and he has, besides, ever before him the hope of a first place at the examinations. At these examinations three degrees may be taken. He who takes the third degree, that of "Advanced Scholar," is sure, sooner or later, of position, power, and riches. Many strive for the first degree until they are gray-haired, and fail of attaining it, while others gain the third even in youth. It is said that "in these degenerate Toward the Rising Sun times it is not as it was of old," and that money often secures the coveted degree that scholarship fails to win. Adele M. Fielde. Chinese Arithmetic. — The art of reckoning is seldom taught in Chinese schools except in a very rudimentary way. The abacus, or reckoning machine, is a slow and clumsy device compared with written Arabic numerals, and yet the Chinese must employ it for many simple processes which Americans perform mentally. A Shanghai newspaper speaks of the problems in arith- metic which have recently been included in the govern- ment examinations for the lower grade of scholarship. One of these problems was the following : " If eight thousand picols of rice, worth thirteen taels a picol, are sent as freight, and the charges are paid in rice at the rate of two taels a picol, how much rice will it take to pay the cost of transportation ? " It is said that of the ten thousand candidates for the degree in one of the provinces only one tried to solve the problem, and his answer was wrong. [28] COUNTRY LIFE IN CHINA Rural life, as it is in our country, can hardly be said to exist in the Chinese Empire, where one sees hamlets, villages, and cities everywhere. In a land where by climbing eight or ten feet one may count from fifty to a hundred villages within easy reach, there is no space left for the solitary farmhouse. China is one-third less in area than the United States, and contains six times as many people. There eighteen persons must occupy the space given to one in our land. There twenty acres make a very large farm ; no land is wasted in fences and every inch of space is utilized. In China one never sees sheep and cattle feed- ing on the grass or lying under the trees. They are reared in comparatively small numbers, as few Chinese can afford to eat meat, and they are either " stall-fed " or are allowed to graze on hill slopes too steep to be cultivated in their natural state or by terracing. [29] Toward the Rising Sun Cattle are usually reared solely for service in cultivating the soil. The animal oftenest put to this use is the donkey. But one frequently sees a donkey, a mule, a horse, an ox, and a cow all hitched together to one farm wagon. These, with pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, and ducks and geese where there is water, complete the list of the domestic animals of the Chinese. During the busy season the entire population, men, women, and children of all ages, come forth from the villages and spread over the fields for the work of the day. From the earliest dawn until dark, work is kept up every day during the farming season. No Sunday breaks the deadly monotony of labor, for everybody must work all the time in the race for life. Pass through a Chinese farm village at midday, and you imagine it deserted. No one is to be seen or heard unless it may be some old, helpless person sitting in the sun. Pass again in the evening, and you wonder where so small a hamlet finds room for so many people. The air rings with their jests and laughter. Examine their homes and you wonder how they live at all, let alone laugh in such misery. [30] Country Life in China The houses are mud-floored, unplastered shells, one story high ; the walls are built of mud, some- times with a tiled roof, and usually without a pane of glass. There is a wooden lattice where windows should be. In cold weather paper is pasted over this, but in summer there is no need for such extravagance. Across one end of the inclosure is a raised platform of mud. On this is spread a mat of reeds. This mat forms the only bed for all. Two carpenter's " horses " for chairs, perhaps a small table, a half-dozen earthen cups and bowls, and a large supply of chopsticks complete the furniture. Several such rooms, each for a family, are built around a courtyard, filled at night with carts, plows, farming implements, and all the domestic animals of the establishment. The entire hamlet is composed of such premises, with perhaps a small store with ten dollars' worth in stock, and the inevitable village temple, where a mud Buddha, covered with paint and tinsel, sits in solitary state. Although the larger country centers have a variety of stores and business places, my descrip- tion is true of the average Chinese farm village. [31] Toward the Rising Sun In spite of the wretchedness, which one notices only on a close inspection, a Chinese landscape possesses a quiet and very marked beauty. There are no unsightly fences, — farm boundaries are marked by stone pillars sunk in the ground at the corners, — and there are no untilled fields. In a level part of the country the spectator may look out as far as the eye can reach upon a vast sheet of vivid green, enlivened with clumps of trees, gray houses, and pagoda pinnacles pricking the deep blue of the sky. The extravagant foreigner is impressed by the Chinese economy. Here absolutely nothing is wasted. The grain is cut by hand with the sickle. Then the roots are pulled out of the soil and laid away to dry for fuel. Every inch of cultivated soil is gone over in the autumn, and a supply of grain and grass roots is 'gathered to burn in winter. When this is done, old women and children go along the roads and paths and carefully rake the border, perhaps two feet wide, between the wagon track and the plowed land, to gather every stray leaf and flower stem for fuel. Millions of families have no other fuel in a winter like that of the Ohio River valley. [32] Country Life in China During winter the men and boys search the roads in every direction for all sorts of garbage which may fertiHze the soil. Their winter is a dreary alternation betw^een this sort of labor and shivering in cheerless homes. Still, Chinese farmers are careless in certain directions. Once I distributed a quantity of grain and vegetable seeds am.ong some who undertook to see whether these seeds from America would do what I had promised. The men were delighted with the increased crop, but a year later, when I expected to find larger fields of the foreign cotton, grain, and vegetables under cultivation, I found none. The farmers had neglected to save seed ! Repeated efforts to induce market gardeners near Peking to raise "foreign vegetables," with certainty of a good market, have been without result. If furnished with seed every year, they will grow them every year, but not otherwise. The Chinese vegetables are poor, yet although Peking has been open to foreign residence over thirty years, the tomato alone, of all our garden produce, is grown there. Chinese farm implements are simple, not to say rude, in their construction, but they answer the Toward the Rising Sun Chinaman's purpose. The farmers sow grain always in drills, using the Asiatic original of the American grain and seed drill. It is commonly drawn by a downcast donkey, and consists of a sort of cultivator tooth for making the furrow, with a hopper and valve worked by a bit of string. Thus the amount of seed per acre can be regulated. Behind this are two bits of board held on edge, making a V-shaped figure. These push the earth back upon the seed. Behind these again is a small stone roller. This machine drills only one furrow at a time, but does the work well. A common sight in a Chinese farmyard is the fanning mill, which is almost identical with its American brother. And there it has been for hundreds and thousands of years. A series of markets or fairs are held at certain centers on fixed days, and to these the farmer takes his scant surplus of grain for sale. Here he purchases the few coarse articles and luxuries, such as tobacco and tea, that he needs. Beyond these market towns the wildest vagrant among all the farmers seldom or never roams. Once I inquired of an old man who cowered under the lee of a temple wall, to escape the [34] Country Life in China bitter wind of a December afternoon, how far it was to a city which he named and where I hoped to pass the night. " I don't know," was the response. " But don't you hve here.f^" I asked. " Yes ; I 've Hved just yonder all my life." " How old are you ? " " Seventy-four." " Then how can it be that you don't know the distance to Huailai.r^ " " How should I know ? I have never been there." The distance was eight miles. Chester Holcombe. [35] A CHINESE VISIT In China official courtesies are conducted with much exactness, and the attendant ceremonies are always in direct proportion to the rank of the visitors. In any of the provinces a visit to or from the governing mandarin must conform to the strictest etiquette. The ranking mandarin in each prefectural city is termed 2i fu-tai, and his authority corresponds very nearly to that of an American governor. His residence is generally fixed at the largest and most important city in the prefecture. Next in rank among the governing m.andarins are those officials placed in charge of the lesser cities, or even groups of towns. These corre- spond to the mayors of our larger cities, and the official designation of a mandarin holding this position is tao-tai. In this official are apparently vested the duty and power of both governor and sheriff. He exercises absolute control in both civil and criminal cases, and there is generally little chance of appeal from his direct decision. [36] A Chinese Visit Chinese law is not only despotic but in many cases unjustly administered, and for this reason European and American residents in China are not required to live under Chinese rule. When the different foreign nations made trea- ties with China, by which the several localities known as " treaty ports " were opened to commerce, it was stipulated that the tribunal before which the accused foreign resident must be tried should be that known as the consular court — a court presided over by the consul of that country of which the accused was a resident. The foreign portion of the city of Shanghai is distin- guished in that it is built upon ground which has been granted to certain foreign nations for residence and the transaction of business. There are three of these grants, — the French, English, and American Concessions, — and [37] A Chinese Bank Note Toward the Rising Sun these together form the modern city of Shanghai. The French Concession is that nearest to the an- cient Chinese city of Shanghai, — the word Shang- hai means near the sea, — the Hne of division being a high brick and stone wall, the dismantled remains of what was, centuries ago, a formidable defense. Old Shanghai is presided over by a tao-tai. Every year he pays one formal visit to each foreign representative. It is customary for this visit to be made during the first part of the month of January ; and the persons to be visited are formally notified of the day on which the visit will occur. While living in Shanghai, I was fortunate enough to be among the guests invited by the American consul general to assist at the recep- tion of the tao-tai and his six chief magistrates. Early on the appointed day a servant arrived, bearing the card of the tao-tai, together with those of the suite of officers who would accom- pany him. These cards in themselves were a curiosity. They were of bright scarlet paper, nine inches in length and five inches in width, and bore in full black characters the name and various titles of the several officials. [38] A Chinese Visit As the cards of the lesser dignitaries contained fewer titles, these were printed in larger char- acters than that of the tao-tai, j^i whose "paste- " board " was lit- erally filled with A Chinese Interior closely printed characters setting forth the various degrees to which he had attained. The party did not arrive until five hours after the cards had been delivered. This delay was to [39] Toward the Rising Sun insure the formal reception of the visiting official. At about two o'clock in the afternoon a crowd of coolies began to gather in those streets through which the procession would pass. As a Chinese official, no matter how exalted his rank, never considers his procession complete without the attendance of a rabble, there were no policemen on hand to disperse the crowd. At last in the distance was heard the discord- ant clang of a gong, and soon after appeared six men on horseback, wearing high pointed red hats and bearing red umbrellas. These insignia always denote the presence of a Chinese man- darin. Closely following the horsemen came four men bearing two enormous gongs, which were beaten constantly. Next in the procession came a single horse- man, dressed in green and wearing a headdress of feathers ; then followed a guard of soldiers, perhaps four hundred strong, armed with rude swords and spears and clad in dark blue uni- form. A band of music composed of drums, fifes, and reed instruments came next ; after this his excellency, the tao-tai, and attendant -— [40] A Chinese Visit magistrates borne in closed sedan chairs, curtained with rich brocade. When the procession arrived at the door the chairs were lowered, and the officials, alighting, received from their servants boxes containing long foxtails, which, as a badge of distinction, they carefully inserted in their hats. The length and stiffness of these foxtails, which extended about two feet from the hats, had precluded their being worn in the sedan chairs, and therefore they had been carried by servants. After the party had entered the house, a most elaborate kotowing and bowing began. A China- man does not shake hands in our fashion. He clasps his hands together and moves them up and down slowly, bowing to the person saluted. After the formal introduction to the members of our party, tea w^as served. It was clear and strong, scalding hot, and served with neither cream nor sugar, in small brass cups with covers. Great formality must be observed in drinking this national beverage. The cup must be held with both hands, raised slowly to the forehead and then lowered to the mouth, the small cover [41] Toward the Rising Sun moved slightly to one side and the contents swallowed with as much noise as possible. With the aid of the interpreter the conversa- tion began. An interpreted conversation is always unsatisfactory, because the interpreter may say what he pleases. In this case, how- ever, the conversation was unimportant, consist- ing mainly of an exchange of compliments, with an occasional allusion to the beauties of the country. The costumes of our distinguished visitors were rich and gorgeous. Their garments, made of the most costly silk brocade, were lined with Russian sables brought from Vladivostok, the [42] A Chinese Visit original cost of the furs alone being between five hundred and six hundred dollars for each coat. Each official wore a string of beads, the number of them denoting his rank. Some of the beads were made of jade, and others of ground spices pressed together and highly polished, dark in tone and rich in color. As a man is promoted from one official position to another, his string of beads grows longer. Great importance is attached to the number of beads to which one is entitled, and the official wears them with the [43] Toward the Rising Sun same pride that a European has in the medals with which his sovereign has decorated him. When the guests departed there was a renewal of ceremonies. Before entering the sedan chairs the officials removed their foxtails and carefully returned them to their boxes. The line of the procession was again formed and with beating gongs marched off, followed by the coolie rabble. Marie Louise Barroll. [44] KOREA AND ITS ARMY To us the newest country of the far East is Korea. Not many years ago it was practically unknown to the civilized world, and it was as late as 1882 that Admiral Shufeldt, of the United States Navy, acting as ambassador, made our first treaty with its king. It was through this treaty that Western civilization was first introduced into the Hermit Nation. Since then embassies have been sent from the Korean court to some of the greater powers of the world, and a few years ago their strange-looking representatives, clad in bright-colored silk gowns and wearing great horsehair hats on the crowns of their heads, surprised Washington. Before this a party of the Korean nobility had traveled throughout this country and Europe, and since then many noble Koreans have gone abroad and brought back new ideas to the king and his people. Not long ago the king bought a steam launch, and he can now sail from his capital to [45] Toward the Rising Sun his seaport on the great river Han in a few hours. He has introduced electric Hghts into his royal palace, and the business of the court, which always takes place at night, is done under the rays fur- nished by the inventive genius of Mr. Edison. A few years ago the king of Korea resolved to reorganize his army. Being very friendly with the United States, and admiring the Americans greatly, he sent ambassadors to Washington to select four army officers, and promised them large salaries if they would come to his capital, start a [46] Korea and its Army military school, and make American soldiers out of the Koreans. The chief of the officers engaged was General Dye, who had served with honor in the Civil War and w^ho had been employed by the khedive of Egypt in the organization of the Egyptian forces. The Korean army, prior to this time, had been drilled after the Chinese plan. The only arms used were old matchlocks. There were very few cannon, and the matchlocks and bows and arrows were the principal weapons. The army consisted of about eight thousand men, about four thousand of w^iom were at the capital, Seoul. Picked troops were kept about the royal palace and were used to guard the body of the king. The uniform of these soldiers consisted of long gowns, and the officers were gorgeously appareled in gowns of silk, the sleeves of which were blood red, this color being emblematic of the old fashion of wiping bloody swords upon sleeves. Each army officer of note wore a great embroidered square on his back and breast containing the picture of a tiger, whose wide-open jaws threatened the enemy. [47] Toward the Rising Sun General Dye first attempted to remodel the dress of the common soldier. There is a strong anti-foreign faction in Korea, and he had to work very slowly, as this faction was opposed to any change in krmy matters. He at last got the sleeves made smaller, cut off the skirt so that it was made into a kind of blouse, and took out ,4i The Korean Army four-fifths of the cloth which the Korean soldiers had formerly worn in their pantaloons. He did not attempt to make them change their hats, but he armed every soldier with a good gun. He organized a royal military school, though he had as much trouble to induce the young nobles to adopt a soldier-like dress as Professor [48] Korea and its Army Bunker had to get them to study without the assistance of their servants. The young noble- men thought they should lose caste in changing their costume. As they were so high in rank, it was almost impossible to punish them, and the American officers have had hard work to make progress. The colors used in the new Korean uniform are different from those of any of the armies of Christendom. The shirtlike waists are of purple cotton faced with red ; the hats are black, and there is a bright red band about them. The pantaloons are purple, and the feet are swathed in great white boots of padded cotton. During my stay at the Korean capital the native general in chief invited me to attend a review of the troops. I rode in a chair borne by four big-hatted Koreans to the drill grounds at the edge of the palace, and saw four hundred soldiers go through all sorts of evolutions, most of which seemed to be those of the gymnasium rather than those set down in military tactics. The general would give a command, and every soldier would lift his leg and hold it at right angles to his body until another word brought it to the ground again. There was the raising of [49] Toward the Rising Sun the arm, the throwing out of the fists, and other exercises which many school children of the United States practice daily. There was also some very pretty marching, and the men handled their guns with no little skill. After the review was over, I accompanied the general in chief to an audience with the king, and was much amused at the state of this mili- tary man. Two servants walked with him, one on each side, holding up his arms, and a whole retinue went in front with a band of music, shouting to the people to clear the road, for the great general and the foreign dignitaries were comino^. In battle, Korean generals are always accom- panied by their servants. When he rides on horseback, a general has a servant on each side of his war horse to hold him in position, and a third stands at the horse's head to hold the ani- mal during the fight or to lead it to the advance or retreat. These servants accompanied General Han to the gate of the king's audience hall. They left him there, and he walked alone across the yard, with his head bent and his sword hilt toward the [50] Korea and its Army ground. He walked softly up the steps at the left leading into the room in which his majesty stood, bent down on all fours and bumped his head upon the floor as a sign of the reverence he felt for his king. Then rising, he stood with his sword uplifted, at the right of the king, while my audience took place. At the close of it he backed out from the king's presence with bended head, and so con- tinued till outside the gate, where he again sprang into greatness and had a whole host of servants to do him homage. This Oriental formality runs through all ranks of the Korean army. It is, says General Dye, the ruin of the service. He thinks that Korea will never have good soldiers until the officers learn military tactics by the same hard knocks that our officers do, and until they put them- selves more on a level with their troops and work with them. The soldiers of Korea act as the police of the capital. The city of Seoul contains about two hundred and fifty thousand people, most of whom live in one-story thatched huts. A great wall runs around the city, climbing the mountains [5'] Toward the Rising Sun and crossing the valleys which surround it ; and this wall has a number of gates. At sundown a band of soldiers, with music much like that of the Scotch bagpipe, marches out of the palace and closes the gates, which, after this, cannot be opened until the morning. At this time the king's military signal corps springs into life on the mountain tops about the city. Watch fires built upon them tell him, by means of an elaborate code, whether there is trouble or peace in the different parts of his realm. This system of watch fires acts as a sort of telegraph line, reaching from the capital to the remotest districts, and at this hour every night fire after fire appears on the hilltops throughout Korea. Frank G. Carpenter. [52] KOREAN WAYS The Koreans are a strange mixture of Chinese and Japanese. Though their faces are almost Japanese, their customs, through their having become thoroughly imbued with Chinese ideas, are much more Chinese than Japanese. And they have even ventured to invent a few customs of their own. The Korean winter is long and bitter, but the Korean has anticipated the American in provid- ing his house with a furnace. His furnace, how- ever, is constructed on a different principle from the American's. Practically, his whole cellar is a furnace. It has an opening out of doors, and into this opening the Korean, before he goes to bed at night, stuffs a quantity of fuel, which smolders all night and heats the house — which never has more than one story — to an uncom- fortable degree. Next to the Eskimos, the Koreans are the heartiest eaters and heartiest sleepers in the- [53] Toward the Rising Sun world. Their favorite dish is young dog, and their favorite drink Japanese beer. Like all Orientals, they devour great quantities of fish, and watermelons are their favorite fruit. Their country abounds in all kinds of animals, wild and domestic. There are tigers, bears, deer, cows, horses, dogs, cats, wild boars, eagles, storks, woodcocks, and many other kinds of birds. There are also snakes in great numbers, for the Korean not only venerates but loves the snake. No Korean ever kills a snake. He feeds it and does everything he can to make it com- fortable. The poorest and the hungriest Korean will share his evening meal with the reptiles that crawl about the rocks that bound his garden. The traveler sees few goats in Korea, but that is because they are so much esteemed that they may be reared by no one but the king. They are used solely for sacrificial and other religious purposes. The signboards on the Korean roads are a curiosity. Each is shaped like an old-fashioned coffin, and is topped by the grinning Korean face of Chang-Sun, a great soldier who lived about a thousand years ago and who opened the country -with roads and paths. To this day, therefore, he [54] Korean Ways beams upon travelers throughout the land, and his name is recorded with the directions and other information on the signboard. The Korean hotel is only a rest house, where the traveler may cook and eat his own meals and wrap himself in his own blanket and sleep. The average Korean wants little more than these things, except a chance to write poetry and paint pictures. Every educated Korean is a poet and a painter; and the majority of Koreans are highly educated, as Iforean education goes. The Korean's social position depends on the brilliancy with which he can pass competitive examinations. Scholarship takes the precedence of all things but royalty; it is even esteemed above common sense. The real religion of the country is ancestor worship and the terror of devils. In every Korean house burns a perpetual fire, which is sacred to the dead ancestors of the household. To tend this fire, and see that it never runs the least risk of going out, is the first and most important duty of the housewife. Blind men in Korea invariably practice the profession of casting out devils. They frighten [55] Toward the Rising Sun the supposed fiends to death by means of dia- boHcal noises, or pretend to catch them in bottles and carry them to places from which they never escape. The person of the Korean king is wholly sacred. To touch the king's person with a weapon or any instrument of metal is the high- est treason. This principle has its disadvantages, for ninety-four years ago King Tieng-tsong-tai- dang died of an abscess rather than permit a subject to touch his body with a knife. [56] HOME LIFE IN JAPAiN The houses of the Japanese are, as a rule, only one story high ; but it must be borne in mind that the requirements of this Oriental civilization are less than in Europe. Generally, in the houses of the poorer classes, there is one room which serves as dining room and sitting room, and in addition a small nook for cooking, and another for bathing, the kitchen being commonly at the front of the house. The rooms are covered with clean, soft mats, upon which no boot or shoe ever treads. Even foreigners on entering the homes of the natives carefully remove their shoes at the door and enter in their " stocking feet." When meals are served, small square tables about a foot high are brought out, one for each person, and the family sit on the floor. When the meal is finished, these tables are removed and the dining room becomes a sitting room. At night thick cotton quilts are brought from a small clothespress and spread 'on the mats, and [57] Toward the Rising Sun the room thus furnished becomes a sleeping chamber. It is said that a Japanese house of three rooms can be buih for from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, and the furniture, which consists prin- cipally of mats and sliding partitions, costs fifty dollars more. There are unlimited quantities of good building stone in the mountains and vast deposits of firm clay for making brick, but on account of the frequency and severity of earth- quakes, no stone or brick houses are built for ordinary purposes. The Japanese are very cleanly in their habits, and the bath tub is in daily use. It is large and high, with a charcoal furnace in one side which heats the water. A lid sometimes incloses the whole of the top, excepting a space through which the head of the bather emerges. Before visiting Japan, I had read that the natives sometimes sit in these tubs with the water bubbling round them at boiling heat, but this is not the case. They certainly use water at a much higher temperature than would be consistent with our ideas of comfort, but they do not boil themselves. [58] Home Life in Japan These bath rooms, unless properly ventilated, would be dangerous places, on account of the charcoal fumes ; but in ordinary cases the bath tub is left so exposed that there is nothing to fear in this respect. Indeed, the traveler's great concern when bathing at a Japanese inn is to keep the tub sufficiently screened from the curious, gaping crowd. A Japanese family — father, mother, sons, daughters, and servants — all use the same tub of water; and Europeans are looked upon as very fastidious when at a country inn they decline to use water that has previously done service for half a dozen Japanese guests. There are no stoves in Japanese houses. A little brazier or a small square wooden box filled with ashes, upon which rest a few^ bits of red-hot charcoal, is all that the people have to heat their rooms in the coldest weather. The garments of the Japanese are thickly wadded, but the long open sleeves and the short socks are almost no protection to the arms and feet. In winter the people seem to abandon them- selves entirely to the task of keeping warm, for though the thermometer in Japan does not often [59] Toward the Rising Sun indicate an excessive degree of cold, there is a pecuhar dampness in the air which is very trying, and the cold breezes from the sea seem sometimes to penetrate to one's very bones. The people sit on their feet by these little fire boxes from morn- ing until night, holding their slender fingers over the few red coals, and though their hands and feet may be warm, the chills creep down their backs, and the numerous draughts of air from the sliding doors keep them half ill with coughs and colds all winter. A Japanese house, even when the owner is quite well to do, is a comparatively diminutive affair. Miss Bird, a celebrated traveler, says that whenever she enters one she feels " like a bull in a china closet." To us, with our English and American notions of comfort, these houses look very empty. Tables, chairs, and bedsteads are unknown to the people, and when, as is sometimes the case, our servants have friends visiting them from the country, to whom they wish to show the strange possessions of their foreign masters and mistresses, nothing delights them so much as the sight of a foreign bed with its fluted shams and dainty hangings. I might, perhaps, except the [60] Home Life in Japan bureau with its large mirror. Until quite recently metallic mirrors only have been used, and it is amusing sometimes to watch Japanese rustics when they see themselves for the first time reflected in a foreign mirror. The manufacture of glass is a new thing in Japan, but both the colored and non-colored are now made in considerable quantities. Even yet, however, glass is but little used for windows. Ordinary Japanese houses still have paper windows. The decorations of a Japanese house are very simple. Usually at one end of the sitting room is a raised platform, called the toko-no-ma, above which is hung a kake mono, or picture scroll. On the part of foreigners a taste for kake mono is an acquired one, but in time curio hunters often become possessed by such a passion for the works of old Japanese masters that they are willing to pay fabulous prices for them. On the toko-no-ma one usually sees vases of bronze or porcelain, containing branches of flower- ing shrubs, and often in the houses of poor people valuable art treasures are to be found. Every family of means has a go-dow7t, or fireproof . [6i] Toward the Rising Sun warehouse on the premises, in which are kept the family heirlooms and other valuables. Fires are so frequent in the large cities that the people expect to be burned out every two or three years. The houses of the better classes are surrounded by high hedges and are usually quite concealed from the public road. At the back of the house there is often a pretty garden, in which miniature mountains, grottoes, bridges, and waterfalls sur- prise one at every step, and even the houses of the very poor have usually a few feet of ground, either at the front or back, devoted to some favorite flower, Japanese farmhouses at a distance are very pic- turesque. The roofs are of thatch and are often crowned with a row of blue-eyed iris. Hedges of graceful bamboo surround the premises, while the camellia and other flowering shrubs of great beauty give variety to the scene. Japanese women talk much about being busy, but on account of the simplicity of their habits, their housekeeping is much less burdensome than that of American women, and they spend a large portion of their time in gossiping with their [62] Home Life in Japan neighbors. At the close of the year they have a great cleaning, when all the mats are taken up and every part of the house is swept and garnished in preparation for the New Year's festivities, but at other times the housework goes on with very little excitement. One peculiarity of Japanese houses is the shelf on which the household gods are kept, for the masses of the people are idolaters. Tablets to the memory of deceased members of the family are also kept on this shelf, and on anniversary days offerings of rice and tea are placed before them. Any traveler fastidious about pillows should take his own with him. A Japanese pillow is merely a block of wood about a foot long, upon which rests a small roll of cloth, and for us to attempt to sleep on one would be torture. The Japanese rest with the neck, not the head, on the pillow, and the object of lying in this uncomfortable position is to prevent the hair from being disar- ranged. The coiffure of a Japanese lady is so fearfully and wonderfully made that she cannot arrange it herself. She is obliged always to get the assistance of a professional hairdresser or of [63] Toward the Rising Sun some personal friend, and on this account she usually dresses her hair but once a week. Even the old palatial residences of Japan are characterized by the same simplicity that marks the humbler homes, but their exquisitely fine mats, carved panels, and painted screens are very beautiful to tourists' eyes. [64] A FAIR LADY OF JAPAN The "fair lady of Japan" whom I knew as a gracious hostess in the very strange land of the newly opened Japan of 187 1, was a princess, or rather a daimio's wife. Mother to the heir of the castle and domain of Echizen, allied to the proud family of Matsudaira, she was beloved as well as honored in Fukui — City of the Happy Well. The lord of Echizen could call into the field in war time three thousand knights and footmen, all able, in the old days, to wield the two-handed sword and to poise or push lance or pike.- On horseback they could shoot the dreaded " willow- leaf " arrows from their man-high bamboo bows. All around Fukui were sites of battlefields, ruins of old castles, relics of war time stored in the temples, and famous places of ambuscade or open combat where "every time a bowstring twanged an enemy fell." In modern days the Echizen riflemen won fame in the civil war of [65] Toward the Rising Sun 1868-70, which destroyed feudahsm and gave unity and new Hfe to Japan. Princess O Raden — Pearl-Shell Nacre — as we shall call her, was born in the quiet days of the Land of Great Peace; that is, very near the middle of this last century, in Higo province, famous for its fertile soil and its excellent rice. In those well-laden cornucopias, distributed at New Year's time and answering to our Christmas tree and stocking combined, a tiny bundle of Higo rice, inclosed in its pretty green straw cover, always figures. Best of all after its brave and wise men, — one of whom first, in 1866, started the youth of Japan to study in America, — Higo is renowned for its beautiful women, one of whom was O Raden, whose story we shall tell. The Japanese equivalent for being "born with a silver spoon in one's mouth" is to open eyes first on the big twin bronze dolphins — in Nagoya they are of gold — that stand on their chins, twirl- ing their tails high in air, on top of each castle tower. Every daimio's or baron's capital in old Japan had a castle surmounted wdth these bronze dolphins. To be well born, one must live inside [66] A Fair Lady of Japan or near the castle inclosure in the quarter of the samurai, or gentry. Within the castle moats, under the glorious camellia trees, O Raden was born. When grown to girl's estate she played out in the garden, made — with its little mounds, rocks, waterfalls and ponds, pebbles and beaches — to look like Japan in miniature. In the water swam big gold and silver carp that came near the shore and poked their noses out of the water, at the clapping of her hands, to be fed on cracknels. Usually she broke up the cakes to be easily swallowed. When she threw them in whole, out of mere mischief, it was with great glee that she watched the fish jump and nibble at the crusty delicacies. On cold and rainy days, when all play was indoors, there were toys in plenty for the little toddlers on the cushion-like matting, for O Raden had brothers and sisters. Little O Raden's instruction was in etiquette, writing, and the rules of household procedure, according to that famous book. Woman s Great Learfting. By the time she was sixteen this fair lady of Japan knew all the famous stories of history and legend, was fond of reading and [67] Toward the Rising Sun poetry, and had her lesson book nearly by heart. She excelled in embroidery, fine painting on silk and crape, and was especially expert in mak- ing those wonderfully pretty confections which, we are frank to say, are marvels of beauty to the eye, but less lovely to the palate. Except for the coming of Commodore Perry and the American war vessels into Yeddo Bay in 1853, when O Raden was only five years old, she might, barring an occasional journey to Yeddo, have lived and died at her home in Kumamoto. After Perry came Townsend Harris, who asked not merely, as the commodore had asked, for fuel, water, and food for ships, and kind treatment of shipwrecked sailors, but also for trade and com- merce and the right of foreigners to live in the country. At this all Japan was alarmed, for it was feared that the United States wanted to con- quer territory, as England, France, and Russia had done in Asia. The Mikado said " No," but the bold prime minister in Yeddo said, " Yes ; better yield to the Americans politely than go the way of China and get whipped, or of India and be conquered." Like our General Jackson, he " took the responsibility." [68] A Fair Lady of Japan He signed the treaty which admitted the mer- chants, the missionaries, and even the women of America, — once so strenuously objected to by the Japanese envoys, — and which soon brought twenty nations in the wake of the Americans. Japanese poHtics, which for two hundred years had been sleepy and frigid, now became red-hot. The daimios of Mito and Echizen personally protested. The prime minister imprisoned Mito. He deposed Echizen and ordered him to hand over his government to his nephew and adopted son. In due course of events this young man, Matsudaira, found himself lord of a province rich in tea, silk, rice and mulberry paper factories, possessing the best seaport on the Sea of Japan, amidst splendid scenery and in a bracing climate, the ruler of half a million people. Having all these, he must needs have a wife. The old Japanese etiquette provided that a man could see his intended bride, though she might be utterly unconscious of his presence or her fate. O Raden had come to Yeddo with her father, a relative and officer of the daimio of Higo. Mat- sudaira saw her often — in the garden among her [69] Toward the Rising Sun maiden friends, in the joy of festal New Year's Day, and more than once in her home occupa- tions. Having seen, he decided. All preliminaries to the wedding — the be- trothal, appointment of the lucky day, details of the journey from her own to her future husband's home, mutual exchange of presents, the "three times three" of the ceremonial wine cup, or wed- ding ceremony proper, and the feast at which the two families were to meet — were duly arranged by "go-betweens." These were shrewd and keen old ladies who knew how to laud and bargain, praise and criticise, and finally strike the balance between the two contracting houses. They knew well also how to " line their own sleeves " with gold coin for their trouble. White-hooded, gowned in silver-gray robe and cherry-red crape petticoat, zoned with girdle of Kioto brocade, all glorious with beauty and per- fume, and best of all with a sweet spirit, O Raden stepped into her palanquin. Escorted by her gentlemen relatives, she reached the great gateway space of the Yeddo mansion and entered beneath. Its ponderous crimson rafters blazed with the gold trefoil of the Matsudairas. Soon, on the [70] A Fair Lady of Japan pea-green matting woven of rice straw, her maids were spreading out her flowing robes as she knelt upon the floor. Unseen by her — for the snowy floss silk hood swathed her hair and shaded her eyes — sat, six feet across from her, the young daimio of Echizen. He was clad in " evening dress," which had starched wings standing out from the shoulders. Between groom and bride stood a low table, out of which seemed to grow an old pine tree, beneath which were the figures of the happy old couple, man and wife, of Takasago, who had lived joyfully through scores of years. Near these were a stork and a tortoise, emblems of long life and happiness. Two lovely young maidens, holding a long- spouted, gold-lacquered, rice-v/ine kettle, were yoked to each other by red and white strings gayly adorned with bows. These two " butter- flies" would correspond to our bridesmaids. On a high tray, standing a foot from the floor, was a tier of gilt lacquer cups forming a three-storied arrangement. Each held a spoonful of the hot rice liquor which the " butterflies," when all was ready, poured into the golden cups. Farther [71] Toward the Rising Sun back sat the relatives of the couple, all on their knees and ankles. The sacramental sipping of the rice wine is the Japanese equivalent of our "yes," when we take " this man " or " this woman " to be our mate for life. " Three times three " were the mutual sippings. Until the middle cup of the second drinking the bride was "blind," with cap on. She took down the pagoda of cups again, and at the sec- ond sip lifted her snowy cap and for the first time beheld her future husband. At Japanese weddings this is always the fact in etiquette and theory, if not in reality. After one month of married life in the city then called Bay Door, — Yeddo, — now known as Tokyo, she took the journey with her husband to her castle home, two hundred miles westward, arriving on a cloudy day toward evening. Her first morning view of her new environ- ment in Fukui was a glad surprise. The vast plain was filled with bowing ears of ripened rice, not yet touched by the shining sickle. Great white-sailed junks, glistening in the morning sunlight, seemed to be moving over the fields as [72] A Fair Lady of Japan in a toy game on the floor ; for on unseen rivers they were speeding, laden, to the sea. All around were villages, glossy-tiled temples, crimson pagodas, blue mountains, and violet valleys. To crown all with the element of majesty, Hakusan, the monarch moun- tain of northern Japan, glistened under a crown of fresh -fallen snow. "How lovely! No heart pain — homesick- ness — here for me ! " she cried. "Time's horse," as the Japanese say, quickly ran the course of four years. O Raden enjoyed watching the procession of the flowers ; the autumn harvests [73] Toward the Rising Sun and the winter s fallow of the cotton, indigo, and tobacco fields; the sowing, transplanting, bloom- ing, and ripening of the rice plant, which furnishes the millions of Japan with their daily food; the customs and manners of the people, with their dialect and ways, so much alike and yet so interest- ingly unlike the province of her childhood. To the Japanese of those days "all the world" meant Japan. Civil war broke out in 1868, and the daimio and the Fukui troops went to the war in Kioto and the north about the time when a son was born to O Raden. The Mikado's army was victorious. The soldiers returned. The wise men of Echizen decided that schools should be organized on the American principle, and that the people should be taught by strange men from the West. When, therefore, the American teacher, in the summer of 1871, made his home in the City of the Happy Well, he found not only hospitality at the hands of the government officers and the bright and studious young men, but also welcome with sparkling eye, smiling face, and gracious kindness from the fair lady in the castle. [74] A Fair Lady of Japan It was on the Japanese Decoration Day that 1 first saw her, amid a throng of fair attendants, at the ancestral hill shrine of the princes of Echizen. Later on it was the American teacher's privi- lege to see the mansion of the lord and chief lady of Echizen. Wonderfully simple, as com- pared with our overfurnishing, seems the Japanese house, even though it be a nobleman's ; but the evidences of personal refinement and aesthetic tastes are sufficiently numerous and impressive. Only one year, and that the last year of Japa- nese feudalism, did the writer enjoy the kindly hospitality of Matsudaira, the lord of Echizen, and his wife, this fair lady of Japan. Then went forth the decree of the Mikado calling all his feudal vassals and subjects to Tokyo, not that they might cease to be noblemen, but to resign princely ter- ritorial power. On the day when the beautiful lady and her husband left their ancestral castle and domain forever, tens of thousands of the people gathered with tearful eyes to say farewell. As I remember the fair lady, she was not arrayed in flamboyant colors, as we might sup- pose from Japanese fans. Her glossy, raven- black hair was simply dressed and ornamented. [75] Toward the Rising Sun Her gowns were always extremely rich but plain. Her face was of the oval form, with the tiny mouth, the long but not prominent nose, the intense black eyes, and the high-arched eyebrows which stamped her lineaments with the mark of aristocracy. Her reputation among the gentle- men and ladies of the old clan and house of Echizen, and among the common people, as a faithful wife, a devoted mother, a pure and noble woman, had its basis in actual facts. History moves swiftly in modern Japan. The last prince of the house of Echizen and the fair lady of Japan now sleep under the camellias. The baby boy is now a graduate of Oxford Uni- versity. He lives, when not in Tokyo, among his father's old friends, who honor him both for his own and his ancestors' sake. He employs himself in the way appropriate in modern Japan, in the age of the railway, tele- graph, and telephone. He is doing his part to make what was once ancestral soil richer than ever it was in good grain and live stock, and best of all, in good men and women. Wm. Elliot Griffis. [76] THE HEAD-HUNTERS OF BORNEO In some respects the Dyaks of northern Borneo are the most remarkable people in the world. It is not by reason of their intelligence, for they are simple-minded, unlettered savages, without a written language. Nor is it on account of their skill in arts and manufactures, for they have little mechanical skill. Neither is it on account of the buildings and monuments they erect ; for of the latter they build none at all, and their only buildings are their long village houses, set up high on posts, which, being entirely of wood, last but a few years. " Then," asks the reader, " for what are they remarkable ? " Simply this : for their moral principles, their innocence of hypocrisy, lying, and all forms of deceit so common amongst all civilized people and most savage ; for their virtue, their fair- mindedness, their great and abiding paternal and parental affection ; for their chivalrous regard [77] Toward the Rising Sun for woman, their respect for the right of property, and the sacredness of human character from slander and vituperation. At times, I am almost afraid to write about the Dyaks, lest I overdraw my account of them and make them out better than they are. I could not have believed so much of these people myself if I had not seen them. I encountered many strange beasts and birds and creeping things in the East Indies, but to me none were half so wonderful as the Dyaks of Sarawak. It is now almost a misnomer to call them by their old, familiar name, " head-hunters," for to-day that is only an empty name for people who are innocent of head taking, and all similar crimes against humanity. Their war shields and jackets have been used up as playthings for the children ; the deadly parong latok, which could easily cut off a man's head at a single sweep, has become a rusty heirloom. Their immense bangkongs, or war boats, large enough to hold seventy-five men, have fallen to pieces and totally disappeared from the rivers of Sarawak. The only trophies of their head-hunting days, which they preserve with great care and refuse [78] The Head-Hunters of Borneo to part with either for love or money, are the head trophies themselves. They are to be found only in the larger villages, to which they have descended from past generations. It happened that the first Sea Dyak village in which I set foot contained a fine collection of these ghastly relics of former wars. Hanging in an open bamboo crate, above the fireplace in the common hall, were about twenty human skulls, grimy with the smoke and soot of years. When James Brooke, afterward Sir James Brooke, Rajah, landed in Borneo in 1839, from his own little vessel, the " Royalist," he found the territory of Sarawak in a most pitiable condition. The country belonged to the sultan of Bruni, and was misgoverned by reprobate Malay nobles who inflicted every manner of oppression — slavery, robbery, and murder by proxy — upon the patient and long-suffering Dyaks of the jungle. The wretched people of the weaker tribes were stripped of their crops, their goods, and in many cases their wives and children, which grieved them most of all. If they raised their voices against their oppressors, the Malays would send powerful hostile tribes against them [79] Toward the Rising Sun and often exterminate a whole village at a single blow. In the division of the spoil of such expe- ditions, the Malays took the plunder, and the victorious warriors were content with the heads. In a few years more, the Dyaks of Sarawak would have been either exterminated or driven from the territory had not Sir James Brooke secured control of the country, with absolute power, and set about the task of bringing order out of chaos. He was another Abraham Lincoln. Like him, his character combined the wisdom of a judge, the courage of a general, the virtue and goodness of a philanthropist. He found the Dyaks with the worst government in the world, and he gave them the best. He found them at perpetual war, and he gave them lasting peace. He found them poverty stricken, oppressed, persecuted, and hunted like wild beasts, and he left them free, protected, prosperous, and happy. They gave him loyalty and obedience, and in return he gave them wholesome laws and justice which is speedy, sure, and free as air to the poorest subject. The dwellings of the Dyaks are unique. They never live in towns with the Malays, Chinese, and [80] The Head-Hunters of Borneo others, but in the clearings along the river banks or in the fastnesses of the hill jungle you will find their long village houses, usually but one in a place, perched up from six to ten feet above the ground on round posts. Sometimes the structure is nearly two hundred feet long, with a roof of gray, weather-beaten thatch, and an open, slatted floor which never needs sweeping because all the dirt falls through. Along one side of the building is a row of rooms, all the same size, in which live the mar- ried couples and children. The rest of the space is a vast, open hall, where the people meet to chat, receive visitors, and do all kinds of indoor work. In the center of this great hall is the common fire, over which hang the head trophies when there are any. Some of these long houses of the Sea Dyaks are of great length, even exceeding five hundred feet, and containing over two hundred people. The first village in which I set foot was one hundred and ninety feet long, and contained sixteen family rooms. It is wonderful to see how successfully the inhabitants of the long houses live together [8i] Toward the Rising Sun without quarreHng. I hved in one village of the Sibuyau Dyaks for a month without once hearing a quarrel, or even high words, or seeing a child punished. The Dyaks are the happiest people I know. Their wants are few and easily supplied. Almost the only clothing of the men is a wide strip of bark cloth, five or six feet long, wound around the loins, with one end falling to the knees in front like an apron, and the other behind in the same way. The costume of a Dyak woman is a very short petticoat of coarse native cloth, which [82] The Head-Hunters of Borneo reaches from the waist to the knees. She some- times wears a jacket of cotton cloth, and a hat of Malay pattern, but never when at home. The Dyak has great affection for his children, and he regards his wife as his equal in everything except hunting and fighting. In all matters of importance her opinion is asked, and he treats her with great respect. The subsistence of the Dyak is rice and bana- nas grown on his farm, pigs and chickens grown under and around his house, wild fruit and honey, and wild hogs, deer, porcupines, and birds slain or trapped in the jungle. He gathers gutta- percha, dammar gum, rattans, and beeswax, which he disposes of to the swindling Chinese traders who visit his village, for cloth, gongs, and rice. Since the death of Sir James Brooke, Sarawak has been owned and ruled by his nephew, Charles Johnson Brooke. William T. Horn ad ay. [83] CHRISTMAS IN THE TROPICS " Melly Klissmas ! " It was a modest little voice with a fascinatingly bad pronunciation that awoke me with a reminder that there could be such a thing as a " Melly Klissmas " amid spiced breezes and under the burnished dome of the equatorial sky. I rubbed my eyes and answered, " Merry Christ- mas, Ah Minga ! Bring tea and fruit." Then I opened the net door of my mosquito house and went to the window. My thermome- ter registered eighty degrees in the shade. A great, widespreading, flamboyant tree just outside the window dazzled my eyes with its gorgeous, flame-colored burden of flowers, and effectually reminded me that I was to spend a Christmas amid fruits and flowers, green grass, and lotus-covered streams. All the strangeness and newness of the Asiatic scenes about me, which had somewhat lost their edge during the last year, came back to me as I [84] Christmas in the Tropics reflected on the far different scenes of my former Christmas days. I experienced a renewal of the mingled bewilderment and delight that I felt when I crazed for the first time from the deck of the great Peninsular and Oriental steamship on the long, stone-bound Bund, that inclosed a har- bor crowded with the strange shipping of China and India. It had a background of massed trop- ical foliage that but half hid the towering minarets of a Mohammedan mosque, the slender spire of an English cathedral, and the gilded dome of a Brahman temple. These rose from the wilderness of buildings and streets thronged with 'rickshas and bullock carts, Chinese coolies and Hindoo merchants, that constitute the great mart of Singa- pore, once the home of the fierce Malayan pirate. Another timid knock at the door. I respond crossly in the lingua Frmica of the East, ''Apa lu man ? " (" What do you want ? ") Ah Minga, who despises Malay, and will only speak it to the servants, answers, " Kling man bottomside base got many Klissmas." This curious pigeon-English phrase means that there "is a Hindoo downstairs who has brought me many Christmas presents. [85] Toward the Rising Sun I pulled on a suit of white linen and descended to find Mohammed Sinupula standing in front of an array of baskets containing a strange melange of offerings. One held a leg of Shanghai mut- ton, another a peck of mangoes fresh from Bang- kok, 3,noiheY J?zsan£-s, or bananas, and pomeloes, another a box of Manila cigars, and another mandarin oranges. The mistress had not been forgotten, for Mohammed had brought her two bottles of Florida water from our own country, a big Eng- lish almond cake, and a tin box of sweets. He bowed to the earth and prayed that " the heaven- born will accept these little gifts from his most humble servant Sinupula, son of Mohammed, as a Christmas greeting." Then he prayed that " the fare of the great American sa/izd may be as odorous as sandalwood." He salaamed again and walked away with a stately tread. His tall, graceful form, his kindly, bronzed face, his mild black eyes, his strange, flowing garments, his plaited, conical grass hat and red sandals, imprinted a picture on my memory that will stand unique among other Christmas scenes that are treasured there. [86] Christmas in the Tropics Closely following Sinupula came others to whom I had been kind or who were in rriy employ. They bore fruits, homemade candies, and cakes. They were dressed in their own peculiar Oriental costume ; the Malay with his sarong tied loosely about his waist and falling like a skirt about his legs; the Tamil wrapped in a half-dozen yards of pure white gauze, with his nose and ears filled with brass studs; the Chinaman looking cool and clean in his volumi- nous white pantalettes and stifHy starched jacket ; the Ceylon lace merchant with his long, jet-black hair held primly in place by a circular tortoise- shell comb. They one and all accepted the fact, without murmur or questioning, that December the twenty-fifth of each year is a time of giving presents to their masters. To them it is prob- ably a heathen custom ; but they bow gracefully to it, and put their masters to shame by the punctiliousness with which they observe it. We went to church at half-past ten. The weather was intensely hot, and yet we drove to the great English cathedral on the Esplanade, and braved the blinding glare of the Malayan [87] Toward the Rising Sun sun, just to try to keep up a simulation of the Christmas observed in distant homes. The usual hours for worship are half-past six in the morning and half-past five in the evening. Our ordinary garb of pure white linen and cool cork helmets we had discarded for suits of woolen and derby hats — so hard did we try to delude ourselves into familiar Christmas feeling. The night before, on Christmas eve, I saw a hundred or more men — rich shipowners, high officials — making a similar effort. Their wives were at home in England or Germany, recuper- ating after a long term in the Orient. Those that had not wives were younger sons and brothers. All had met at the club to spend Christmas eve. . In the center of the room was a tree, decorated with candles, toys, candies, and penny balloons; at its foot were the presents. An orchestra played outside under the widespreading arms of a great banian tree, and spotlessly dressed Chinese " boys " circled about with refreshments. Songs were sung, the men laughed and cheered and slapped one another on the shoulder, and yet every one knew that it was a pitiful failure. [88] Christmas in the Tropics Between laughs faces grew grave, and far-away looks filled tired eyes. They were wondering what wives, mothers, and friends were doing on that night in the blessed land of the snows. The great English cathedral is but a copy of others in London and New York ; as unsuitable in its Gothic grandeur for the hot breath of the torrid zone as for the cold winds of the arctic. Its great vaulted roof, ponderous pillars, and long, narrow chancel protect you from nothing save a sight of the face of the kind old bishop of Singa- pore and the sound of his pleasant voice. [89] Toward the Rising Sun The one innovation that has broken the cast- iron sameness of the EpiscopaHan temple is the great white punkahs which swished back and forth through the hot air above our heads. The punkah is the sign of the East from Port Said to Yokohama. The church was decorated with maidenhair ferns in abundance, great pure eucharist liHes, and dehcate dove orchids. A brilHant green Hzard with a long, curving, pointed tail glided silently down the aisle and peered into the soft felt hat of his honor the chief justice. His honor only smiled. It paused but a moment and then departed on its journey among the worshipers. No one felt any alarm. It stopped in front of a little English girl, and gazed at her from head to foot with its jeweled eyes. The child took no more notice of it than if it had been a fly. Then it wandered back and found a resting place on the venerable archdeacon's prayer book. Another lizard, with red and yellow stripes, came out and chased the green lizard into the organ loft. That night thirty of us met to eat a Christmas dinner. There were no great hearth fires or [90] Christmas in the Tropics blazing Yule logs ; no mistletoe, no snow beat- ing against window panes, no passing sleigh bells; none of the vigorous and bracing winter sounds with which we of the North were familiar. But there was a wonderful sky, studded with innumerable stars and jeweled with the South- ern Cross. There were mild breezes, heavily laden with the intoxicating perfumes of the pro- fuse tropical life outside. There was the realiza- tion that on such a brilliant night, amid such tropical scenes, the first Christmas was cele- brated on this same continent. There were bonbons and snappers, and songs, and happy faces, and good cheer; but, after all, Christmas is not Christmas when the thermome- ter stands above one hundred degrees in the sun. ROUNSEVELLE WiLDMAN. [91] MALAYAN CHILD LIFE They called her Busuk, or " the youngest," at her birth. Her father, the old chief of the village, whispered the soft prayer to Allah in her little brown ear. The villagers brought presents of sarongs run with gold thread, and not larger than a handker- chief, for little Busuk to wear about her waist. They brought also gifts of rice in baskets of cunningly woven cocoanut fiber ; of bananas, a hundred on a branch ; of duria^is, that filled the bungalow with so strong an odor that Busuk drew up her wrinkled, tiny face into a quaint frown ; of cocoanuts in their great green, oval shucks. Busuk's old aunt, who lived far away up the River Maur, near the foot of Mount Ophir, sent a yellow gold pin for the hair ; her husband, the Hadji Mat, had washed the gold from the bed of the stream that rushed by their bungalow. Busuk's brother, who was a sergeant in the sultan's artillery at Johore, brought a tiny pair [92] Malayan Child Life of sandals worked in many-colored beads. Two days later the Imam Paduka Tuan sent Busuk's father a letter sewn up in a yellow bag. It con- tained a blessing for Busuk. Busuk kept the letter all her life, for it was a great thing for the high priest to do. On the seventh day Busuk's head was shaven and she was named Fatima ; but they called her Busuk in the village, and some even called her Inchi Busuk, the princess. From the low-barred window of Busuk's home she could look out on the shimmering, sunlit waters of the Straits of Malacca. The loom on which Busuk's mother wove the sarongs for her husband and her sons stood by the side of the window, and Busuk, from the sling in which she sat on her mother's side, could see the fishing boats glide by, and at rare intervals one of the royal launches. Sometimes she blinked her eyes as a vagrant shaft of sunlight straggled down through the great green and yellow fronds of the cocoanut palms that stood about the bungalow ; sometimes she kept her little black eyes fixed gravely on the flying shuttle which her mother threw deftly [93] Toward the Rising Sun back and forth through the many-colored threads; but best of all did she love to watch the little gray lizards that ran about on the palm sides of the house after the flies and moths. She was soon able to answer the lizards' call of "gecho, gecho," and once she laughed outright when one, in fright of her baby fingers, dropped its tail and went wriggling away like a boat with- out a rudder. But most of the time she swung and crowed in her wicker cradle under the low rafters. When Busuk grew older she was carried every day down the ladder of the house and put on the warm white sand with the other children. They were all naked, save for a little chintz bib ; so it made no difference how many mud pies they made on the beach nor how wet they got in the tepid waters of the ocean. They had only to look out carefully for the crocodiles that glided noiselessly among the mangrove roots. Although the varnished leaves of the cocoanuts kept almost every ray of sunlight out of the little village, and though the children could play in the airy spaces under their own houses, their heads and faces were painted with a paste of [94] Malayan Child Life flour and water to keep their tender skins from chafing in the hot, moist air. At evening, when the fierce sun went down behind the great banian tree that nearly hid Mount Pulei, the khateeb would sound the call to prayer on a hollow log that hung up before the little palm-thatched mosque. Then Busuk and her playmates would fall on their faces while the Holy Man sang in a soft, monotonous voice the promises of the Koran. Every night Busuk would lie down on a mat on the floor of the house with a little wooden pillow under her neck, and when she dared she would peep down through the open spaces in the bamboo floor into the darkness beneath. Once she heard a low growl, and a great dark form stood right below her. She could see its tail lashing its sides with short, whiplike movements. Then all the dogs began to bark, and the men rushed down their ladders screaming, ''Harimo ! harimo ! " ("A tiger ! a tiger ! ") The next morning she found that her pet dog, Fatima, named after herself, had been killed by one stroke of the great beast's paw. Once a monster python swung from a cocoanut tree through the window of her [95] Toward the Rising Sun home and wound itself round and round the post of her mother's loom. It took a dozen men to tie a rope to the serpent and pull it out. Busuk went every- ^ where astride her father's broad shoul- ders as he collected the taxes and settled the disputes in the little vil- lage. She went twice to Johore, and gazed in open-eyed wonder at the palaces of the [96] Malayan Child Life sultan and at the fort in which her uncle was an officer. " Some day," she thought, " I may see his Highness, and he may notice me and smile." For had not his Highness spoken twice to her father and called him a good man ? So when- ever she went to Johore she put on her best sarong, and in her jetty black hair she put the pin her aunt had given her, with a spray of sweet-smelling chumpaka flower. When she was four years old she learned to read and write. In a few months she could outstrip any one in the class in tracing Arabic characters on the sand-sprinkled floor, and she knew whole chapters in the Koran. So the days passed under the gently swaying cocoanuts, and the little Malayan girl grew up like her companions, free and wild, with little thought beyond the morrow. That some day she was to be married she knew, for since her first birthday she had been engaged to Mamat, the son of her father's friend, the punghulo of Bander Bahru. She had never seen Mamat, nor he her, for it was not proper that a Malay should see his [97] Toward the Rising Sun intended before marriage. She had heard that he was strong and Hthe of Hmb, and could beat all his fellows at the game called raga. When the wicker ball was in the air he never let it touch the ground, for he was as quick with his head and feet, shoulders, hips, and breast as with his hands. He could swim and box, and had once gone with his father to the sea sports on New Year's Day at Singapore, and his own boat had won the short-distance race. Mamat was three years older than Busuk, and they were to be married when she was fifteen. At first she cried a little, for she was sad at the thought of giving up her playmates. But then the older women told her that she could chew betel when she was married, and her mother showed her a little set of betel-nut boxes, for which she had sent to Singapore. Each cup was of silver, and the box was cunningly inlaid with storks and cherry blossoms. It had cost her mother a month's hard labor on the loom. Mamat was not to take her back to his father's bungalow. He had built a little one of his own, raised up on palm posts six feet from the ground, so that she need not fear tigers or snakes or [98] Malayan Child Life white ants. Its sides were of plaited palm leaves, every other one colored differently, and its roof was of the choicest attap, each leaf bent carefully over a rod of rattan and stitched so evenly that not a drop of rain could get through. Inside there was a room especially for her, with its sides hung with sarongs, and by the window was a loom made of kamooning wood, finer than her mother's. Outside, under the eaves, was a house of bent rattan for her ringdoves, and a shelf where her silver-haired monkey could sun himself. So Busuk forgot her grief, and she watched with ill-concealed eagerness the coming of Mamat's friends with presents of tobacco and rice. Then for the first time she was permitted to open the camphor-wood chest and gaze upon all the beau- tiful things that she was to wear for the one great day. Her mother and elder sisters had been married in them, and their children would, one after another, be married in them. There was a sarong of silk, run with threads of gold and silver, that was large enough to go around her body twice and wide enough to hang from her waist to her ankles ; a belt of silver, with [99] L.ofC. Toward the Rising Sun a gold plate in front, to hold the sarong in place ; an outer garment, that looked like a dressing gown and was fastened down the front with golden brooches of curious Malayan workman- ship ; a pair of red-tipped sandals ; and a black lace scarf to wear about her black hair. There were earrings and a necklace of colored glass, and armlets, bangles, and gold pins. They all dazzled Busuk, and she could hardly wait to try them on. A feast was held on the day of the ceremony. All the guests, and there were many, brought offerings of cooked rice in the fresh green leaves of the plaintain, and baskets of delicious mango- steens,*and pink mangoes, and great jack fruits. A curry was made from the rice that had forty sambuls to mix with it. There were the pods of the moringa tree, chilies and capsicums, prawns and decayed fish, chutneys and onions, ducks' eggs and fish roes, peppers and cucumbers and grated cocoanuts. Busuk's long black hair had to be done up in a marvelous pile on the top of her head. First, her maids washed it beautifully clean with the juice of the lime and the lather of the soap nut; then it was combed and brushed until every hair [loo] Malayan Child Life glistened like ebony ; next it was twisted up and stuck full of the quaint golden and tortoise-shell bodkins, with here and there a spray of jasmine and chumpaka. Busuk's milky-white teeth had to be filed off more than a fourth. She put her head down in the lap of the woman and closed her eyes tight to keep back the hot tears that would fall, but after the pain was over and her teeth were black- ened, she looked in the mirror at her swollen gums and thought that she was very beautiful. Now she could chew the betel nut from the box her mother had given her ! The palms of her hands and the nails of her fingers and toes were painted red with henna, and the lids of her eyes touched up with antimony. When all was finished, they led her out into the great room, which was decorated with mats of colored palm, masses of sweet-smelling flowers, and maidenhair fern. There they placed her in the chair of state to receive her relatives and friends. She trembled a little for fear Mamat would not think her beautiful ; but when, last of all, he came up and smiled and claimed the bit of betel nut [lOl] Toward the Rising Sun that she was chewing for the first time, and placed it in his mouth, she smiled back and was very happy. Then the kadi pronounced them man and wife in the presence of all. " Written deeds may be forged, destroyed, or altered, but the memory of what is transacted in the presence of a thousand witnesses must remain sacred. Allah il Allah ! " And all the people answered, " Suka ! suka ! " (" We wish it ! we wish it ! ") Then Mamat took his seat on the dais beside the bride, and the betel box was passed around. First, Busuk took out a syrah leaf smeared with lime and placed in it some broken fragments of the betel nut, and chewed it until a bright red liquid oozed from the corners of her mouth. The others did the same. Then the women brought garlands of flowers — red allamandas, yellow convolvulus, and pink hibiscus — and hung them about Busuk and Mamat, while the musicians outside beat their crocodile-hide drums in frantic haste. Toward night Busuk was put in a rattan chair and carried by the young men, while Mamat and the girls walked by her side a mile away, where [102] Malayan Child Life her husband's big boat lay moored. It was to take them to his bungalow at Bander Bahru. The band went, too, and the boys shot off guns and firecrackers all the way, until Busuk's head swam, and she was so happy that the tears came into her eyes and trickled down through the rouge on her cheeks. So ended Busuk's childhood. ROUNSEVELLE WiLDMAN. ['°3] LIFE IN MANILA BEFORE THE WAR The three white men with whom I lived when, a few years ago, I was in the employ of an Amer- ican firm in Manila, shared with me a large house stand- ing in the midst of a luxuriant garden about two miles up the right bank of the River Pasig — a river which winds down from the Enchanted Lake back among the hills, passes between old and new Manila, and loses itself in broad Manila Bay. The ground floor of our house served as a carriage room and quarters for some of the servants. Its upper floor was divided into sleeping rooms and a wide sala, or drawinsf-room. The structure was built with various provisions against earthquakes; for example, several huge posts, like the masts of a ship, ran from the roof down into the ground, as supports ; the walls were covered with painted canvas, instead of plaster, and the panes of the windows were of [104] Life in Manila before the War oyster shell, instead of glass. These windows were framed in overlapping panels, which could be pushed back into the wall, thus turning the room into a sort of veranda. When the conchas were closed in the daytime, the light coming through them was very agreeable. Our " retinue " consisted of about sixteen native servants, including house boys, coach- men, grooms, gardeners, and general hangers-on. This sounds very luxurious ; but each man received only eight Mexican dollars a month, out of which he clothed and fed himself and his family, if he had one. After we left for our offices in the morning, the " boys " had nothing to do until we returned, except to dust the rooms and keep the floors polished. Their most arduous duty w^as to pro- vide the house with water, w^iich was brought every morning in a hogshead fastened to a hand- cart, from the public fountain nearly a mile away. It had to be carried laboriously upstairs in buckets and emptied into an enormous porce- lain tank, shaped like half an eggshell, which stood in a back room and contained the house- hold's daily supply for washing, cooking, and [105] Toward the Rising Sun drinking — that used as drinking water being carefully boiled and filtered. Our household included also three or four Chinese " chow " dogs, with thick orange-colored fur and coal-black tongues ; and Pedro, the house- snake, a small python, which traveled about inside the canvas walls and kept us free from rats and mice. Pedro never came out, and we were not disturbed at all by his proximity. We slept on strips of matting, spread over cane-seated couches, the legs of which rested in bowls of water to prevent visits from centipedes, tarantulas, white ants, and other tropical gentry that cannot be kept out of the houses. Wash- stands, sideboards, and refrigerators are protected in the same way. The big white ant and little red ant seem particularly fond of tooth powder, and not a vestige would be left in the morning if a washstand rested directly upon the floor. Tiny little green and yellow lizards used to dart about among the books on the table, after the lamps were lighted, devouring the insects which swarmed around the lights. Occasionally one of these lizards would drop from the ceiling, alight- ing with a resounding " smack." [io6] Life in Manila before the War Our amusements were few and far between. The deadly heat from sunrise to sunset debarred us from any form of outdoor recreation except driving, and on Sundays and holidays we found little to do except to "lie off" in Japanese wrappers, and read or watch the natives at their games. One game that the children played was much like " prisoner's base." Another consisted in keeping a big hollow ball, made of bamboo strips, in the air, by kicking it around a ring of barefooted players, who stood several yards apart. The player who missed it was evidently " out," and the last one " in " was the winner. They would play this game in the glaring sun- light by the hour. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, I took a short ride on my pony, either among the hills lying inland, or among the scattered native villages surrounding the town*. On other days we drove across the river to the Luneta or grand promenade to hear the band from the Spanish garrison — wonderfully well it played — and to watch the caballeros and senoritas slowly strolling up and down the broad path. [107] Toward the Rising Sun Sometimes I would cross the drawbridge over the moat that surrounds the walls of old Manila, and wander among the queer, old-fashioned can- non which surmounted the moss-grown fortifica- tions, and would dream of the days when they defied the Chinese and Malay pirates, little think- ing that they would one day be dismantled by Dewey's terrible shells. On such occasions I was always followed at a little distance by a soldier or two, ready to pounce upon me if I attempted to take a photograph or even make a sketch. From this point I could see the white walls of Cavite, with its arsenal and navy yard, glistening eight miles away along the shore. Directly across the river from the old city stood the modern business quarter with its great hemp presses and " godowns," and its hundreds of Chinese coolies trotting up and down, laden with bales of hemp and bags of raw sugar ready to be sent out to the ships of all nations, lying at anchor a mile from shore. I could also see the beautiful old cathedrals and monasteries, and the great observatory where the Jesuit Fathers keep their tireless, self-imposed watch and warn the [io8] Life in Manila before the War seaports of the whole far East when the dreaded typhoon is on its way. Through centuries of intercourse with the Malay and Chinese races, the natives of Manila have lost all trace of their original characteristics, if indeed they are in any degree kin to the bands of " Negritos " still existing in the mountains and forests of northern Lu- zon — little black men who are supposed to be aborigines of the island. These are fuzzy-headed, hideous dwarfs, living in absolute savagery, A Business street without intelligence enough even to build huts, and treacherous and cowardly to the last degree. Their lano^uao'e consists of little more than bird- like chirps and whistles. But the " Manila boys " or FiHpinos of to-day are stalwart, muscular fellows, of a dark chocolate color, with straight, scrubby hair and well-shaped features, although their eyebrows have a curious tendency to meet over the nose, which gives many of them — and most of their women — a sinister cast of countenance. [109] Toward the Rising Sun The dress of the men in and around the towns consists of a white bosom shirt, sometimes lavishly embroidered, worn with the skirts flapping out- side a pair of white linen trousers. " Chinillas," or heelless slippers, are their usual foot gear. If a hat is worn, it is commonly some white man's discarded " derby," a comically incongruous covering. They are an easy-going, indolent race, useful as clerks and servants, but having a strong dislike to manual labor, which accounts in part for the enormous number of Chinese in Manila, who are willing to perform every kind of work at the lowest wages. The dress of the women is more elaborate. It consists of a brilliantly colored skirt reaching to the ground and varying in texture according to the means of the wearer; a short black overskirt caught up at one side ; a white waist with sleeves extending to the elbow; and a stiffly starched, embroidered " mantilla," folded cornerwise, with the ends crossed on the breast. The whole effect of this costume is agreeable and becoming. [no] Life in Manila before the War The FiHpino Uves in a hut built entirely of bamboo, — framework, floor, and all, — which stands about two feet from the ground on stout bamboo posts or legs, by way of protection from floods and earth- quakes. This hut is thatched all over with the long, dried | " n i p a " leaves, whence the name of " nipa huts." They bear an uncanny resemblance to huge , , J A " Nipa Hut " brown bugs, and are so inflammable that the local insurance companies will not insure a house if there is a nipa hut within forty yards of it. With a hut, a mango tree, and a fighting cock, the unambitious Filipino is perfectly satisfied with life. If he owns a pig and a few hens, he is considered prosperous. If his possessions include a "paddy" (rice) field and a water buffalo to wallow through it once or twice a year attached to a crooked stick by way of a plow, he is a power in the community. [Ill] Toward the Rising Sun Often several families will own a paddy field and a buffalo, or " carabao," between them, as was the case with certain neighbors of mine, whose carabao, when off duty at night, often used to make a mudhole for him- self directly across the entrance to my driveway, get into it, bury himself, all but his head, and trip Plowing " Paddy " ^p j^^y pony whcu I drovc out in the morning. This always brought me profuse apologies from the neighbors, emphasized with gifts of fruit and eggs. The Filipinos are a very cleanly race, and the women take great pride in their hair, which is often allowed to hang loose in a great black, wavy mass, sometimes reaching to their heels. When " done up," it is combed straight back from the forehead into a big knot at the back of the neck and surmounted by a huge comb of horn, or tortoise shell, or silver. I do not remember hav- ing seen any native, of either sex, with the least sign of baldness, and gray heads are very rare. In spite of their cleanliness they are utterly careless of sanitary precautions during an epidemic [112] Life in Manila before the War of cholera or smallpox, although in nine cases out of ten either disease will prove fatal there. During the worst run of cholera they will persist in eating green fruit and in drinking the foul river water. And if one gets the small- pox he will go about his work as usual until forced by actual weakness to give up. I noticed one day that my horse boy, who had been with me about a month, presented rather a peculiar appearance, and I asked him what the matter was. " I have the smallpox, senor," he said, beam- ingly. " And how long have you had it ? " I demanded, backing away in a hurry. " Two weeks, seiior," he answered, with great pride. I told him to go home and stay there, which he did, and eventually recovered, but I had to sup- port him and his family in the meantime, and I spent a rather nervous fortnight, although, having been vaccinated seven times, I escaped the disease. It will be readily perceived from these few reminiscences that we have not gained a perfect ["3] Toward the Risin? Sun paradise in taking Manila ; but there can be httle doubt that a period of businesslike American administration will vastly improve the conditions of life there. Charles B. Howard. ( ["4] HOUSEKEEPING IN EAST INDIA There are so many points of difference between a house in Peepulpore, Bengal Presi- dency, and a house in — Boston, Massachusetts, for example, that I quite expect to have some trouble in making you feel at home in this article. Not upstairs nor downstairs nor in my lady's chamber is there any familiar corner where I might install the reader while I explain the rest to him. Yet certainly there are chairs in [115] Toward the Rising Sun the drawing-room, — wicker chairs, — for we have not acquired the Oriental habit of sitting on the floor. I can ask you to take one. There is even a rocking-chair, said to be American ; but it has a straight back and a nar- row seat and only about six inches of "rock" altogether, and the yellow bow on the upper left-hand corner does not make up for these things. It never saw America; it was made in England, where they understand umbrellas better, perhaps. The others have all come from the China bazaar. They are coarsely woven of cane, and the Chinaman who obtained a dollar apiece for them to begin with cheated me. Any one of them will bear you if you are not too heavy, but I do not like to see the commissioner, who weighs one hundred and eighty pounds, imperil the dignity of the Government of India upon them. Under one or two I observe from where I sit little piles of sawdust dropped on the floor. That is the work of the beetles. The white ants are reported from behind the bookcase and the red ants have been clearing out the [ri6] Housekeeping in East India sideboard, and last night a cockroach of refined tastes ate three fingers of my last and longest pair of evening gloves. These things would worry one in America; one would arrive, perhaps, at the heroic remedy of kerosene. Here it is not the custom to worry — besides, nobody has the energy. It is the custom to call thehouse bearer, who has charge of the book- case, and the khan- samah, who has charge of the side- board, and the ayah, who has charge of the gloves, and say to them in the vernacular, "What kind of work is this, O poor-sort-of-person ? " If after that the ants and the cockroaches con- tinued, it would be proper to address the bearer as a man without shame, and the khansamah as the son of an owl,' and the ayah as a thriftless [117] Toward the Rising Sun one, and to fine them all three cents of their wages, which would linger longer in their mem- ories than any form of vituperation. If there- after they did not mend their ways, the bearer and the khahsamah and the ayah would all get " chute," which is permission to depart ; and before the sun went down behind the banians their places would be taken by others worthier than they. The doors stand open all day long when it is not too hot, from room to room, from house to garden. For privacy they are hung with what we call portieres in civilization, and "purdahs" in India, of such stuff as one can afford. Some people, who believe in encouraging native indus- tries, have green and purple stripes; but I think that is being rather unnecessarily public-spirited. I have Japanese bamboo and bead screens in the drawing-room instead; but then I, being guided and governed by a pink wall cut in two by a green grapevine, am not fairly typical. There is matting on the floor, greenish-brown matting woven in great stripes by crosslegged Bengalis in a hut in the bazaar; and there are palms in the corner and orchids in the windows and photographs of home upon the wall. [ii8] Housekeeping in East India A long, narrow board, with a broad flounce to it like a lady's petticoat, hangs from the roof across the middle beams. That is the punkah, put up last week, for it is almost the first of April and the " ghurrumka-din " (days of heat) are upon us. The punkah-wallah — the native who operates this great fan — sits in the veranda and pulls the rope, which goes through a hole in the wall. The dining room is matted and holds six chairs, a table, a Burmese carved sideboard, and another punkah. It is a large and lofty room, and sometimes it seems, figuratively speaking, to yawn for want of furniture. Toward the Rising Sun One tries in India to possess as little fur- niture as possible. Dust hides in the hang- ings, spiders as big as an American dollar live in the cornices, the moth enters into the sofas, and the rust, corrupts everything that is cor- ruptible. The "memsahib" (mistress) is a person from whom orders proceed. Her business in life is to know what pleases her, to praise, or to rebuke. She is not at all necessary to the domestic machine ; it may run a little more or less smoothly for her presence, but it is self- running. Her servants understand their business much better than she does. She may dismiss, but she is not qualified to interfere. What could you do, pray, with a live fowl and some tropical vege- tables and a handful of charcoal embers and an order for breakfast in half an hour, with the tem- perature at one hundred and six degrees in the cook room ? The real government is the sahib. The memsahib is his secretary and representa- tive; and there are two departments, each with its head. Even domestic affairs in India are arranged on an official basis. [120] Housekeeping in East India The department of the table, with all that appertains to it, is under the khansamah. The department of the house is directed by the bearer. The khansamah, always a Mussulman, is offi- cial chief to the waiters and the cook. He is head butler, and there is a waiter to each member of the family. His subordinates find it well to be on good terms with the khansamah, and a person with whom it is well to be on good terms soon grows rich in India. Besides, he generally does the "bazaar," the memsahib's marketing, bringing in a daily ac- count; and the result of that is that he some- times invests his little savings in house property in Calcutta, bringing in four hundred rupees a month. This is an anomaly, in view of the fact that his own pay is about twelve, until one comes to India and studies it in the light of dushtri, Dusturi means commission, and the commis- sion you are expected to pay varies with your income. I grieve to think of the price extorted from the wife of the commissioner for a saddle of mutton. The commissioner is the "burra sahib " (chief sahib), and the burra sahib should pay more for his saddles of mutton than anybody [I2I] Toward the Rising Sun else in the station, not because he gets better ones, but because he is the burra sahib. I know the energetic response the httle house- wife of Boston would make to that. " Why not do your own marketing ? " Dear little Boston house- wife, it is impossible. In Peepulpore the bazaar is three miles from the sahib's dwelling, — three very hot and dusty miles. Moreover, such an innova- tion would not please the khansamah. He would not protest; he would salaam just as respectfully as before ; but next day the memsahib's marketing would not be served up as appetizingly as usual. The bearer, also, is an influential person. He dusts and trims the lamps and cleans the shoes and is responsible for the general well-being of the household. He would be outraged if you asked him to sweep. His servant, the mater, does that and all the other menial work. The memsahib is not supposed to know of the exist- ence of the mater ; if she values the respect of her establishment she must never speak to him or take anything from his hand ; and strange as it may seem to any one who does not know the far-reaching operation of caste, we in India find it wise to submit to this custom as to many others. [122] Housekeeping in East India The bearer calls his duster a jharvMii, and a large part of the amount every memsahib intends to save at the end of the month disappears in jharruns. What becomes of the jharruns is a problem yet unsolved. The bearer can account for the using up of at least a dozen a month without casting any light on it. He says they all go for daily use and that he has given three to the groom. The memsahib's imagination is supposed to ex- plain the rest, and while it is at w^ork, the bearer would like one rupee and six annas to pay for some new jharruns. When I have watched the operation of the mater's brush, which is only a bunch of split cane, and of the bearer's jharrun, I sometimes feel an acute longing for a stout American broom [123] Toward the Rising Sun and a large duster and the opportunity of turn- ing both of these unoffending domestics out. For the mater's duty is done when he has raised as much dust from under the matting as possible and picked up a torn envelope from the floor. The bearer has accomplished his when he has flicked every article in the room once or twice with his jharrun ; and it is not of particular consequence to either of them which does his work first ! But you know the uncompromis- ing character of the American broom. What an awkward piece of luggage it would be and how unlikely it would seem to be funda- mentally connected with one's happiness in Peepulpore ! So when I went to India I did n't take one. Very seldom does the memsahib make or mend. There is a useful functionary, called a durzie^ who relieves her of that. The durzie is usually a lean and venerable little Mohammedan, wearing a long white coat, a small round white cap, and a pair of spectacles. Invariably the durzie carries an umbrella — an old brown umbrella, with its fullness tied in with a shoe-lace. [124] Housekeeping in East India I have never seen a diirzie with his umbrella up in the daytime ; but at night, especially on a bright, fine moonlight night, he opens it to keep off fever and the dew. A procession of durzies going home from their work on such a night as this is one of the queer things of Peepulpore. The durzie's pay is from three to four dollars a month, and, like all the other servants, he feeds himself. His whole service is at your disposal for this sum: his personal attendance from ten to five, and his great toe, which is of no insignifi- cant assistance in long seams. All he asks is a yard of matting to sit on in the veranda, some- thing to mend, or something to copy. Toward the Rising Sun A pair of trousers for the sahib, a tennis blouse for the memsahib, a nightdress for the baby — nothing is beyond his imitation, provided he has an original; but it would be a daring person who would appear in gar- ments which the durzie had been allowed to evolve out of his own imagination. The Anglo- Indian memsa- hib is not over- burdened with cares. She toils not, neither does she spin, except when she first comes out. Then, for a month, she darns her own stockings, and tidies her own drawing-room, and tries to teach the cook how to make puddings. Soon, however, she finds that the cli- mate does not encourage that kind of housekeep- ing, and that all the lazy ladies whose acquaintance she has made are wiser than she. [126] Housekeeping in East India The day begins very early with a Ught break- fast, and then comes a ride or walk while the shadows are still long. After that a bath and a second breakfast, and to see that the sahib gets away to ofiEce with the proper helmet on his head and a bit of mignonette in his buttonhole. Then the khansamah's accounts and a struggle with that dignified official which may or may not result jn reducing his bill by four cents. Then orders about tiffin, dinner, the pony, and the garden. Then it is twelve o'clock, and for two hours the memsahib either pays visits or receives them. Tiffin comes at two, and then there are "chits" to write and answer. A chit is a note, and it is the sole business of one servant to fetch and carry chits. If the memsahib wants a yard of ribbon or a tin of cocoa, or a book from the library, or a four for tennis, a chit is the medium through which she obtains it; and all the long Indian day is dotted by servants in coats of divers colors, unexpectedly but meekly appearing at one's elbow with a note. With the tea urn comes the sahib, and the short hours before the quick -falling Indian [127] Toward the Rising Sun darkness are filled with golf or tennis or another ride. There are no concert rooms or lecture halls or theaters in Peepulpore. If you have not dined with the commissioner and the commissioner has not dined with you, and neither of you has dined with the doctor, it is likely that you will talk awhile in long chairs on the veranda, where the south breeze is blowing across the rose garden, and think of the beauty of the stars and the lone- liness of Peepulpore, and go to bed. All night long the jackals will howl, not unmu- sically, in your dreams, and an impertinent crow will wake you in the morning. Sara Jeannette Duncan. 128] THE FIRE WORSHIPERS Many persons are familiar with the fervid lines of Moore's splendid poem called " The Fire- Worshipers." The farewell scene between Hafed and Hinda is one of the most affecting passages in the early poetry of this century. It has been so widely read and has produced so deep an impression that there are many whose only idea of the prevalent religion of Persia is derived from a perusal of that poem ; and often has the ques- tion been asked me whether there is any other religion practiced in that country beside that of the worship of fire. The facts are that out of a population of nine millions that empire now numbers only a few thousand genuine worshipers of fire. With the exception of about eighty-six thousand Arme- nians, Jews, and Nestorians, the remainder of the Persian people are Mohammedans. It was soon after the rise of Mohammed that his fanatical hosts assailed the frontiers of Persia. [129] Toward the Rising Sun Those who refused to abandon the old faith of Zoroaster for that of Mohammed were persecuted, and mostly slain or driven from the country. Those who fled from Persia sought refuge in India, where they form, in our time, an intelligent and flourishing community, known by the name of Parsees, or Persians. It is amid these strug- gles of an ancient race against the domination of a new religion and dynasty that Moore has laid the scene of his " Fire- Worshipers." Notwithstanding these long persecutions, which have continued over one thousand years, and only now are beginning to relax and permit the fire worshipers of Persia to live there unmolested, a small, steadfast band has always remained in that land, preserving the faith of their fathers and their rites and ceremonials unchanged. In Persia they are called Guebres. This is simply a corruption of the Arabic term " Kafir," which means a heretic, an unbeliever. In time it has become a word of contumely and scorn. Although so few in numbers, yet the Guebres are a very interesting community, for in them we see the old Persian stock of the days of Cyrus and Xerxes unmixed with any other race; while [130] The Fire Worshipers the religion they practice is that which was intro- duced into Persia or perfected by the famous Zoroaster, who hved at least twenty-five centuries ago. Zoroaster was born in the northern province called both then and now Adarbaijan ; this name means " the region of fire," and it may have been so called because the religion the distinctive doc- trine of which is supposed to be the worship of fire had its origin there. It is only just to state that intelligent Guebres repudiate this doctrine. They assert that it is a mistake to call them fire worshipers. They say that fire is to them not an object of worship, but only a symbol of the beneficent Ormuzd, or good God, who is clear and radiant and pure, like the glow of the rising sun or the flames of fire, and that it is through the symbol that they adore the good Spirit. This may be true of the more intelligent fol- lowers of the doctrines of Zoroaster, but there is no doubt that the ignorant classes believe that light and fire are real emanations of God, and worship them as such. Fire is by them held so sacred that they never smoke tobacco, and for that reason it is not by them considered courteous [■31] Toward the Rising Sun to use the weed in the presence of a host or guest who is a Guebre. In every household of the Guebres fire kindled from the sacred flame at the new year is kept burn- ing the entire year. That is the purpose they fol- low, but whether they always succeed in preventing the fire from being extinguished is doubtful. The Guebres have many peculiar doctrines and customs. One of these is the use of yellow in their garb; another concerns the theory of immortality. They maintain that there are two principles, the good and the evil, which they call Ormuszdao and Ahrimasdao. The ancient Greeks corrupted these names to Ormuzd and Ahriman. These two principles, or influences, fight for the mastery through the ages, seeking to win possession of the soul of man. The new year is called by the Guebres the No Rooz, or New Day. It comes at the time when the sun crosses the line in March. Their tradi- tions state that this festival was ordained by their great legendary king. Shah Jemschid. Although most of the Persians are now Mohammedans, yet they all accept the period for the commencement of the new year established in their country long [132] The Fire Worshipers ages before the camel driver of the desert sent his armies to force them to his creed ; and thus, at the No Rooz, Guebres and Mussulmans alike rejoice. The latter pretend that they celebrate the occasion because it is the birth anniversary of their prophet, but this is a mere flimsy excuse, concocted in order to show their disdain for the Guebres. But in a hundred ways the Persians show that in their celebration of this annual fes- tival they are following the traditions of their fire- worshiping ancestors. Nowhere is the new year celebrated with more mysticism and pomp and universal rejoicing than in Persia. For weeks before it arrives the people begin their preparations for the occasion. Every one seeks to raise money to purchase the new suit of clothes he is expected to wear at the time, and the confectionery and provisions for the ten days of feasting, as during that period the shops are mostly closed. So important is it to be prop- erly prepared for the No Rooz, that family heir- looms are often sacrificed in order to provide the needed money. When the new moon of that month appears, devout Persians look to the east, then covering Toward the Rising Sun the face with their hands, they slowly turn until, on withdrawing the hands, the gleaming sickle of the new moon is seen directly in front. Per- haps our superstition about discovering the new moon over the right shoulder is suggested by this Persian custom. The eve before No Rooz is also the occasion for a curious ceremony, evidently suggested by the mystical meaning which the Guebres attach to fire and light. The common people leap over heaps of burning brushwood laid in rows. It is possible the heathenish custom alluded to in Scripture of "passing children through the fire" may be a form of this ceremony. As the hour approaches for the sun to cross the line, the Shah meets the high spiritual and temporal dignitaries of the kingdom in the great audience chamber of the palace. At the moment the astrologers announce the No Rooz, the Shah gravely exclaims, " Mambarek bashed ! " (" May it be propitious to you ! ") A sacred song of rejoic- ing is then sung by a mollah, or priest; after this each courtier, according to his rank, offers his obeisance to the Shah, and receives from the royal hand a present. S. G. W, Benjamin. [^34] PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY OF PROPER NAMES, FOREIGN WORDS, Etc. The pronunciations are, loith a few exceptions, those of Webster'' s International Dictionary Explanation of Diacritical Marks a, e, i, o, u, long ; a, e, 6, less prolonged ; a, e, i, 6, u, short ; a, e, i, o, u, obscure; far, last, fall, care; term; food, foot; furl; 6 as in for; oi as in oil; ow as in cow ; ch as in chin; g as in get; n as in linger, link; ng as in sing ; th as in thin; tii as in thine; zh = z in azure ; n = French nasal ; ti = French u ; k = German ch. Abraham (a' bra ham) Adarbaijan (iid' ar bi jan') Adriatic (ad' re at' Ik) Ah Minga (a men' ga) Ahriman (a' ri man) Ahrimasdao (a' ri mas da' 6) Allah (ar la) America (a mer' i ka) Apa lu man (a' pa loo man') Apis (a' pis) Arabic (ar' a bik) Arctic (ark' tik) Armenian (ar me' ni an) Arnold (ar' nold) Asia (a' shi a) Asiatic (a shi at' Ik) Attap (at' tap) Ayah (a' ya) Bander Bahru (ban' da ba' roo) Bangkok (bang'kok') Bangkong (bang'kong) Barnum (bar' niim) Benares (ben a' rez) Bengal (ben gal') Bengali (ben ga' le or ben' gal e') Borneo (bor' ne o) Boston (bos' ton) Brahman (bra' man) Brooke (brook) Brunai (broo ni') Buddha (bood' da) Buddhistic (bood dis' tik) Bund (bund) Bunker (biin'ker) Burma (bur' ma) Burmese (bur mez' or -es') Busuk (boo sook') 35 ] Toward the Rising Sun Caballero (ka bal lya' ro) Calcutta (kal kiit' ta) Capri (ka' pre) Carabao (ka' ra ba' o) Cavite (ka ve ta') Ceylon (se Ion') Chang-Sun (cliang soon') China (chf na) Chinese (cht nez' or -nes') Chinilla (chi nil' la) Chumpaka (choom' pa ka) Cochin China (ko' chin chi' na) Concha (kon'ka) Confucius (kon f u' she lis) Cyrus (si' rus) Daimio (di' mi 6) December (de sem' ber) Dewey (du' i) Durian (dii' ri an) Durzie (door'ze) Dusturi (diis too' ri) Dyak (di' ak) Dye (di) Echizen (a' che zen) Edison (ed'ison) Egyptian (ejip'shan) England (in gland) Episcopalian (e pis' ko pa' li an) Eskimo (es'kimo) Esplanade (esplanad') European (u ro pe' an) Eatima (fa' te ma) Eilipino (filipe'no) Florida (fl6r' i da) France (frans) [ Fukui (f 00 koo' e) Fu-tai (footi') Ganges (gan' jez) Germany (jer' ma ni) Ghurrumka-din (gur room' ka din) Guebre (ge'ber or ga'ber) Hadji Mat (hadj' i mat) Hafed (ha' fed) Hakusan (ha' koo san) Han (han) Harimo (ha' re mo) Higo (he' go) Hinda (hin' da) Hindoo (bin' doo) Hindustan (hin' do stan') Huailai (boo i' li) Imam (e' mam) Inchi (en' ki) India (in' di a) Jackson (jak' son) Japan (ja pan') Japanese (jap a nez' or -nes') Jeinschid (jem' shid) Jesuit (jez' u it) Jew (ju) Jharrun (jar'roon) Johnson (jon'son) Johore (jo' hor') Kafir (ka' fer) Kake mono (ka' ka mo' no) Khansamah (kan' sa ma) Khateeb (ka teb') Khedive (ka' dev') 136] Pronouncing Vocabulary- Kioto (ke o' to) Koran (ko' ran or ko ran') Korea (ko re' a) Kotow (ko tow') Kumamotu (koo ma mo' too) Lincoln (link' on) Lingua Franca (lin' gwa f ran' ka) London (lun' dun) Luneta (loo na' ta) Luzon (loo zon') Malia Mongkut (ma' ha mong' koot) Malacca (ma lak' a) Malay (mala') Mam at (ma' mat) Mam^barek bashed (mam' ba rek ba' shed) Manila (ma ml' a) Massachusetts (mas' a chu' sets) Matsudaira (mat soo dl' ra) Maur (mowr) Memsahib (mem'sa'hib) Menam (ma nam') Mencius (men'shius) Mexican (meks' i kan) Mikado (meka'do) Mito (me' to) Mohammed (mo ham' med) Mollah (mSr la) Moore (moor) Mussulman (mus' siil man) Nacre (na' kra) Nagoya (na goi' a) Napoleon (na po' le on) Negritos (neg re' toz) Nestorian (nes to' rl an) New York (nu york') Nipa (ne' pa) No Kooz (no' rooz) Ohio (o hi' o) Ophir (o' f er) Raden (o ra' den) Orient (o' ri ent) Ormuszdao (or' mus da' 6) Ormuzd (or' muzd) Oxford (oks'ford) Pacific (pa sif ik) Paduka (pa doo' ka) Palanquin (pal' an ken') Pang Kien (pang ke' en) Parong latok (pa rong' la tok') Parsee (par'se) Pasig (pa' seg') Pedro (pe' dro) Peepulpore (pe' pul por') Peking (pe king') Perry (per'ri) Persia (per' shi a) Pisang (pe' sang) Pulei (poo' le e) Punkah-wallah (pun' ka wol' la) Purdah (pur' da) Raga (ra' ga) Rajah (ra' ja or ra ja) Russia (riish' a) Sahib (sa' hib) Said (sa ed') 137] Toward the Rising Sun Sai Lin (si len') Sala (sa' la) Samurai (sa' moo ri) Sarawak (Sarawak') Schuf eldt (shoo' felt) Senorita (sa' nyo re' ta) Seoul (sa ool') - Sepoy (se' poi) Shah (sha) Shanghai (shang hi') Siam (si am' or se' am') Siamese (si' a mez' or -mes') Sibuyau (se boo yow') Singapore (sin ga por') Sinupula (se noo poo' la) So Chin (so chen') Suka (su'ka) Sung Pin (soong pen') Takasago (takasa'go) Tamil (ta' mil) Tao-tai (ta 6 ti') Tiberius (tibe'rius) Tieng-tsong-tai-dang(te'engts6ng ti dang') Toko-no-ma (to' ko no' ma) Tokyo (to' ke o) Townsend Harris (toun' zend har' ris) Tuan (too' an) Venice (ven' is) Vladivostok (via' de vos tok') Xerxes (zerks' ez) Yeddo (yed'do) Yokohama (yo ko ha' ma) Yule (ul) Zoroaster (zo ro as' ter) [■38] 1902