"«V,»^■ > - I, A.,* ; ■ , '" ,'.<■''■'■ rij<':'d::i;-: •■ - A 4V A Girdle Round the Earth ^Monxc ilcttcrs from jForcign ILantis BY D. N. RICHARDSON CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY i8S8 Copyright By a. C. McClurg and Co. A.D. 1887 TO HIS THE AUTHOR APFECTIONATELY DEDICATES THIS BOOK. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE PACIFIC. Page The Starting-Point. — A Halt at Denver. — Through the Rocky Mountains. — Salt Lake City. — California i CHAPTER II. ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. Life on Shipboard. — \\Tio are we all ? — Side-lights on the Missionary Ques- tion. — The World as seen from a Ship's Deck. — Bright Days and Moon- light Nights. — How we pass the Time. — Our Crew of Chinese Sailors. — A Lost Sunday. — A " Ship Sociable." — Death on the Deep. — A Ship's Library. — Tempestuous Days. — A Taste of a Typhoon. — Safe in Harbor CHAPTER III. JAPAN. Yokohama. — Street Scenes. — The Jitirtkisha Men. — Japanese Farming Regions. Glimpses of Home-Life. — Ruined Shrines and Temples. — Images of Buddha 22 CHAPTER IV. JAPAN. Tokio, the Eastern Capital. — The American Legation. — Japanese City Life. — Curious Street Conveyances. — Hotels and Restaurants. — A Jap- anese Printing-office. — Type-setting under Difficulties. — The Educa- tional Quarter. — The University of Japan. — The University Library. — Medical Department and Hospital. — The Missionary Quarters ... 32 Vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. JAPAN. Page Among the Mountain Temples. — The Holy City of Nikko. — A Ride along the Queen's Highway. — Tree-Planting in Japan. — Processions and Fes- tivals. — Gorgeous Temples and Mighty Images 41 CHAPTER VI. JAPAN. kJinriklsJia Ride to Kofu. — A Bit of Earthquake Experience. — The Holy Mountain of Fuji. — Among the Silk- Workers. — A Boat-Ride down the Rapids. — A Japanese Pleasure Resort. — No Cattle on a Thousand Hills. — A Race of Vegetarians 52 CHAPTER VH. JAPAN. Kioto, the Western Capital. — Visit to an Old Japanese Castle. — Theatres and Wrestling-Matches. — A Visit to the Green-Room. — More Colossal Idols. — Temples and Museums. — The Contribution-Box. — Cremation in Japan. — A Religious Dance. — Champion Roosters and Native Swine. — Freaks of Female Beauty. — Tea-Making and Tea-Drinking. — Last Days in Japan. — Seven Hours at Nagasaki. — An Old-Time Yan- kee Merchant. — General Grant's Camphor-Trees. — Good-by to Japan. — Again at Sea 62 CHAPTER Vni. CHINA. Shanghai, the Emporium of the East. — The Chinese Enigma. — Off for Pekin. — The Yankee Skipper Abroad. — Home Newspapers and Baked Beans. — Sunday at Sea. — Methods of Maritime Commerce. — Up the Pei Ho River. — By Mule-Cart to Pekin. — A Memorable Journey. — The Great Central City of the Middle Kingdom S2 CHAPTER IX. CHINA. Life in Pekin. — The Missionary Question again. — Two Sides of the Case. — Catholics at the Front. — Curiosities of Chinese Journalism. — The American Legation in Pekin. — Unpalatial Quarters. — Hardships of Official Life. — Some Much-Needed Reforms 94 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER X. CHINA. Page The Great Wall of China. — Perilous Roads through Mountain Gorges. — A Wonder of tlie World. — Other Chinese Walls. — The Great INIing Tombs. — Good-by to Pekin. — Off to the Southward. — Down Stream in a " House-Boat." — A Chilly Journey. — From a River-Boat to a Cow- Cart. — Discomforts of Chinese Travelling. — A Land of Conservative Decay. — Progressive Influences. — The Outlook for China no CHAPTER XL CHINA. Hong-Kong, ths " Valley of Fragrant Waters." — Iron-clad Peacemakers in the Harbor. — Canton, "Great Eastern City.'' — Its Floating Population. — Aspects of the Place. — Streets, Houses, Temples, and Pagodas. — A Chinese Cemetery. — Silk-Weavers at Home. — A Water-Clock. — A Po- lice Court in Canton. — Extorting Confessions from Prisoners. — Savage Proceedings. — Methods of Punishment in China. — A Chapter of Hor- rors. — Thanksgiving Day in Canton. — A Home-Like Feast. — An American-Chinese Merchant of the Olden Time 125 CHAPTER XH. THE ISLE OF JAVA. Voyaging on the China Sea. — Life on a French Mail Steamer. — Eating, Drinking, and Resting. — Skirting the Sumatra Coast. — Crossing the Equator. — A Night at Singapore. — Climate and Costume. — A Talk about Tea. — The Cup that may Inebriate. — Some Facts for Tea-Drinkers at Home. — A Tarry at Batavia. — Gridiron E.xperiences. — A Flight to the Cooler Uplands \y^ CHAPTER XHI. CEYLON's ISLE. Across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon. — A Public Garden in the Tropics. — Among the Floral Wonders. — The Temple of the Sacred Tooth of Buddha. — Venerable Shrines and Relics. — Questions of Faith. — Sights and Scenes in Columbo. — Jewels and Jewel Merchants. — Churches in Ceylon 15^ Viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV. INDIA. Page Madras and the Bay of Bengal. — Indian Water-Craft. — A Look about Madras. — Calcutta. — Its Gardens and Banyan-Trees. — The Burning Ghats of India. — A Native Funeral. — Climbing the Himalayas. — Among the Lofty Peaks. — Benares, Birthplace of Buddha. — Scenes on the Ganges. — Cawnpore and Lucknow. — Cities of Dreadful Memories . 165 CHAPTER XV. INDIA. Agra Fort. —The Glories of Taj Mahal. — A Marble Paradise. — Delhi, City of Indian Potentates. — The Story of Minar Tower. — Shah Jehan's Masterpiece. — Among the Jewelled Temples. — A Day at Jeypore. — The Horses of an Indian Prince. — A Ride on an Elephant. — Bombay. — The Worst Hotels in the World. — The Caves of Elephanta. — The Towers of Silence. — Parsee Burial Customs. — A Bombay Hospital for Animals 1S4 CHAPTER XVI. AR.\BTA AND EGYPT. Again at Sea. — Aboard an Indo-European Grain Vessel. — The Indian Wheat Question. — A Warning to American Farmers. — Across the Arabian Ocean. — Up the Red Sea. — Visions of Araby the Curst. — .\ Great Nation and its Downfall. — Red Sea Memories. — Mount Sinai and its Monasteries. — The Gulf and City of Suez. — Alexandria, a City of Romantic History. — Cairo. — The Mingling of West and East . . 209 CHAPTER XVII. BIBLE LANDS. From Jaffa to Jerusalem. — Sharon, Ajalon, and Ramleh. — Tent-Life in the Holy Land. — Jerusalem the Golden. — A Valley of Humiliation. — Zion's Desolation. — The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. — A Place of Sacred Memories. — Going up to Jericho. — The Valley of Jordan. — By the Shores of the Dead Sea. — The Persistence of the Jews. — Jor- dan's Stream in Poetry and in Fact. — Lazarus' Tomb, and Some Reflec- tions. — Gardens of Gethsemane. — A Bit of Monastery Life. — The Fictions of Sacred Places 233 COA'TEA'TS. IX CHAPTER XVIII. BIBLE LANDS. Page Good-by to Jerusalem. — Our Cavalcade through Old Historic Lands. — Shiloh, " Place of Peace." — At Jacob's Well. — Sichem and Samaria. — The Tomb of John the Baptist. — On the Judaean Plains. — Nazareth, — Cana and Galilee. — Banias and Damascus. — Comparing Notes with a Village Sheik. — The Ruins of Baalbec. — Resting at Beirut. — The Best Way to Travel in the Holy Land 267 CHAPTER XIX. EST ASLA MINOR. Beirut, City of Alexander. — Missions and Colleges. — Coasting the IMediter- ranean. — Tripoli. — Alexandretta and Aleppo. — Tarsus, City of Saint Paul. — Mersina and Smyrna. — Ephesus and its Mighty Ruins. — The Isle of Rhodes. — Up the /Egean Sea. — The Turkish Dardanelles . . 291 CHAPTER XX. CONSTANTINOPLE. The City of Constantine. — The Fairest Scene on Earth. — The Turkish Custom-House. — The Dogs of Stamboul. — Turkish Merchants and Bazaars. — The Unspeakable Turk at Home. — Boating in the Bos- phoriis. — Sunday in Constantinople. — The Sultan goes to Pra)-er. — A Splendid Pageantry. — The Mosque of St. Sophia. — A Temple of Magnificence. — Visit to Robert College. — A Spot of Historic Memo- ries. — Among the Howling Dervishes. — The Most Interesting City in the World 299 CHAPTER XXI. ROUMANIA AND AUSTRIA. Bucharest, " City of Enjoyment." — Turn Severin. — A Merry Gathering. — Up the Danube. — Budapest. — A City of Hospitals. — \'ienna. — Her Architectural Beauties. — The Surgical Mecca of the World. — Medical Students at Home and Abroad 323 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXII. ITALY. Page Across the Brenner Alps. — Verona and Shakspearian Memories. — Bologna. — The Story of a Precious Fainting. — A Sanitary Pageant. — The Home of Galvani and of Galileo. — Naples^ — Her Pictures and Her Marbles. — The Farnese Bull. — The Pompeian Museum. — Relics of a By-gone Civilization. — The Aquarium at Naples 329 CHAPTER XXni. THE BAY OF NAPLES : PiESTUM AND POMPEIL On the Bay. — Capri and Sorrento. — A Moonlight Drive to Anialfi. — Dan- gers of the Way. — Paestum. — Ruin and Desolation. — Grecian Tem- ples. — Salerno. — On to Vesuvius. — Ascending the Volcano. — Pompeii. — Sights and Scenes in the Dead City 341 CHAPTER XXIV. RAMBLINGS IN ROME. Old Triumphal Arches. — The Palatine and Capitoline Hills. — The Pan- theon. — Rome Not Seen in a Day. — The Vatican. — The Forum and its Memories. — Rome in Early June. — Healthfulness of the City. — Courtesy and Generosity of the Italians, — Treasures from the Hand of Raphael. — A Marvel in Mosaic 353 CHAPTER XXV. THROUGH THE ALPS. Pisa, its Tower and Temples. — Among the Mountain Lakes. — The Gothard Tunnel Line. — Marvels of Engineering. — Through the Snows on Horse- back. — Geneva, Lake and City. — A Region of Fine Scenery and Bad Theology. — The Decay of Travel in Switzerland 366 CHAPTER XXVI. POLAND AND RUSSIA. Berlin to Warsaw. — In a German Sleeping-Car. — Crossing the Russian Frontier. — Passport Abominations. — Farm-Lands in Russia. — The Problem of Tree-Planting. — Some Suggestions for American Farmers. — Moscow, City of the Czars. — The Church the Ruling Power. — The Sights of Moscow. — The Kremlin. — Churches and Palaces. — Off to St. Petersburg. — A Sleeping-Car that is better than Pullman's. — Peter's Summer Palace. — The Hermitage and its Art Displays. — Our Lady of Kazan. — Sunday in St. Petersburg. — Liberty as Expounded by a Russian Colonel -;So CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER XXVII. SCANDINAVIAN LANDS. Page Finland. — Helsingfors. — Abo. — The Land of the Midnight Sun. — Through the Straits of Bothnia. — Norway. — Christiania. — An Over- Population. — Relief in Emigration. — Denmark. — Copenhagen. — From Copenhagen to Schleswig-Holstein. — Kiel. — The Great Surgeon Esmarch 406 CHAPTER XXVin. PARISIAN DAYS. Night Turned to Day. — Pleasuring in the Parks. — Place Concord. — An Hour with Pasteur. — Hydrophobia Antidote. — Sending Patients away Cured. — Preparing and Poisoning Rabbits. — Bouillon and Poisoned Spinal Cord and Brain. — The Uncertainty Remains. — Great is Pasteur, None the Less 414 CHAPTER XXIX. OLD ENGLAND. Going down to Essex. — Sunday Rules. — Among the Hounds and Horses. — The Greatness of London. — What London Eats and Drinks. — The Little Island of Jersey. — Jersey People and Cattle. — Farming on the Island 421 CHAPTER XXX. CLOSING UP. The Cost of Travel. — The Hotels on the Way. — Cost of Living. — Our Friends the Officials, Diplomatic and Consular. — Unpaid Service. — What Travelling Teaches. — Starting for Home. — Good-Byes. — Adieus and Thanks. — Home Again 435 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER I. FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE PACIFIC. The Starting- Point. — A Halt at Denver. — Through the Rocky Moun- tains. — Salt Lake City. — California. A YEAR to go around the world ! A whole twelve months of scenes and curious happenings in far-off foreign lands ! You have thought of doing this ; almost promised yourself that when you got old enough and rich enough, and could " spare the time," you too would go arovmd the world. Most of us get old enough ; some of us get rich enough ; but the time ! the time ! — to spare the time ; to cut loose from goods and lands, from stocks and dreary desks ; quit clients, patients, readers, home, and friends — ay, and our enemies, whom we so dearly love ! Full many a promise must be broken, and few the voyagers round the world. • •••••■ One likes to stop at Denver. The prairie stretch is ended, cornfields and flocks and herds are passed, and we come to this way-off place, rimmed in by everlasting snows, and full of vim and enterprise. A day or so among old friends ; a day or two on the Great Burlington Route — the Denver and Rio Grande — to Salt Lake City. Your train goes playing hide-and-seek among the towering palisades, darting in and out of deep dark tunnels, whisking around sharp angles, skipping across wild- rushing Avaters, shying in front of pretty cascades, hanging upon sharp rocky points, rushing and screaming in and out among the hills as though scared into a madcap race for life by the noise of its own echoes ; right along the base of the great Grand I 2 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Canon, defying the gorges and the threatening bowlders, skipping across the raging waters on deep-set iron brackets, then a zig- zag scurry far up the mountain side, and with a grand trapeze movement it achieves the tip-top Marshall Pass, eleven thousand feet above the sea, — the highest point scaled by the noble iron horse. But words will never tell of its antics, its breath-taking dizzy heights, its giddy freaks on sharpest curves carved deep into the rough old Rocky Mountains' sides. High above the tree- tops, higher above the beetling crags, higher yet into the dark thick clouds among the soaring eagles, there you ride, and gaze in speechless wonder, — wondering that man should so dare to trespass upon the realm of the impossible. Hot in the plain below, the mercury falls to forty-five on that bold, cloud-piercing iron trail. Taking a breath or two, and giving passengers a chance to look down upon the earth's distorted face, the train speeds on. Down, down, and down, by crooks and curves, leaping from ridge to ridge, across the swift-running home of the speckled trout ; right along the outer verge of giddy ledges, then sweep- ing back to the foot of them ; down, down, and still deeper down rushes the well-filled train, hour after hour, till the lowest level is reached, — the place of sage and sands, of deep-cut 4^ -^ gorge and steep-sided cailons ; over high bridges and through ^ S^ the long dark tunnels, right and left, to and fro, between the parting rocks and under the dizzy crags, till the great broad busy plain is reached. A wonderful trip, and a way full of wonders ! To describe its grandeur were impossible ; to talk of its cahons, its mountain views, its glens and parks and peaks, were but a waste of breath. These be the noble pictures where- with the traveller adorns the chambers of his brain, the tone and composition of which can be imparted but feebly. Salt Lake ! One feels like taking off his hat to Brigham Young ; and but for his fearful social faults, might do so. But even as it is, let him be thanked for conquering Utah ; thanked for causing this once desert waste to blossom as the rose, yearly to yield its golden harvest, to feed and clothe the people ; thanked for his brave push and daring enterprise ; not thanked that in these days of progress, better thought, and faith in social purity, he should attempt to curse the land with the deathly demorality of a Solomon or Saladin. FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE PACIFIC. 3 A day in Salt Lake among friends and interesting sights, then off for the California Eden ; down through the alkaline tophet, into the fair fruited summer land that skirts the quiet sea. I like California ; not that I have seen much of it, but it fills up the lungs, stirs up the blood, chases ejmui, gives new life, greater elasticity, added enjoyment. Not a step toward the Garden of the Gods ; not an inch of Yosemite or Yuba Dam. The big trees are of no account ; let us but rest right here, out of the dirt and clear of the dust, where the ocean breezes come and the mountain air makes old men young again. I like this climate, and wish it could be taken along with us and kept for use forever. While you swelter with your mid- August nineties in the shade, we enjoy our sixty-nine or seventy. While you try to sleep beneath a burdensome sheet, we royally wrap ourselves in double blankets, quilts, and counterpanes, and wander with content into the ten-hour vale of blissful dreams. The days are fairly warm ; the nights so delicious ! And the evenings — why, such evenings as we have would put every West- ern-States corn-grower in a perspiration lest the coming night and frost lay his crops in waste. But the frost does n't come ; night only dallies near the margin of the frost, gives all her sleeping children rest, retires in perfect order, making room for the rising sun, who comes and makes the earth to laugh with golden wheat, the purple grape, and juicy peach. And when Winter comes, he leaves his zero on the other side of the moun- tain. Jack Frost comes, but he is not the careless, costly fellow whom you too well know. He silvers the planks a little, just kisses the opening rose-leaves, but never blasts a bud. Ice is a rarity, in real fact, else I am the most deceived of mortals. The winters of this San Francisco region are warmer than the summers: a climatic paradox. Rainy? Yes; but while the skies weep, the earth rejoices, — puts on her brightest verdure; roses burst into bloom. And while the Hawkeye hugs his red- hot stove and piles on fuel, blankets, and thick overcoats, to beat the lower zero weather, these Californians are about in their shirt-sleeves — doors open, out-door work going on — building, ploughing, or making preparations for the coming sum- mer with its burden of golden grain and luscious fruitage. Speaking now of fruit — you have all seen California fruit. It is sold in every store and railroad train in every State and 4 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Territory, In fact, the new traveller gets hold of the idea that there is no other sort, most of it being so unripe, tasteless, tough, and stringy ; but so soon as he gets into this California country, he finds he has been imposed upon ; for in point of ripeness, blush, and flavor, the fruit of this ocean-bordered State has no known peer, I am glad to know this, having said some pretty niean things about California fruit, and having heard many others do the same. But it is not entirely our fault. To win the market, Californians send out unripe, stringy, wilted stuff, because the ripened crop could not stand the ship- ping; or if sent out ripe it gets so over-refrigerated that the taste is much impaired. No, you must go to Rome to see the Pope ; you must come to California to enjoy California fruit. No other country gives you choice strawberries nine months in the year, and on no other tables will you find the strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry side by side for months and months together. Iowa strawberries come with May and go with June. Those of California come with March and stay till December. And the vegetables — there may be better potatoes some- where, but we have seen none so fine. In fact, everything grows that is planted here, save hay and corn. The excep- tion is a heavy one ; but cattle and sheep and horses no more live on hay alone than does the Christian man on bread. Mixed crops of dry feed are raised in abundance, and the mixture of wild or cultured cereal straws makes just as good horses as timo- thy and clover. As to corn — in such a glorious climate as this, corn is not king. He makes some pretensions here and there in some varieties, but does not wear a crown. Corn is captious, — wants four-and-twenty hours of broiling heat for a month or two, to ripen up his golden seeds. Such restful sum- mer nights as California gives her children chill the corn. So she compensates mankind with most excellent smaller grain, and glorifies herself in abundant luscious fruit. Good-by to California and the States. Our ship will sail to-day, — this i8th day of August, 1885. Gripsack in hand, we hurry up the gang-plank of the steamer " Rio," bid our kind friends adieu, and pass through the Golden Gate and out to sea. ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. CHAPTER II. ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. Life on Shipboard. — Who are we all? — Side-lights on the Missionary Question. — The World as seen from a Ship's Deck. — Bright Days and Moonlight Nights. — How we pass the Time. — Our Crew of Chinese Sailors. — A Lost Sunday. — A "Ship Sociable." — Death on the Deep. — A Ship's Library. — Tempestuous Days. — A Taste of a Typhoon. — Safe in Harbor. WE are now six days afloat, — fifteen hundred miles on our course ; five hundred passengers enrolled, princi- pally Chinamen ; every day is serene, and every night a star- spangled charm ; and, with scarce a sickened soul on board, the noble ship speeds gayly on her course toward the happy isles that lie beyond the round globe's broadest, deepest, and most pacific sea. Look in upon us. We are not all Chinamen ; some forty odd hold first-class tickets, — forty odd, no two of us alike, and very few bent upon the same errand. We are men, women, and children, — some intent on business, chasing the almighty dollar around the world ; some hold rank in our nation's diplo- matic corps, and some are going home ; some, with the Bible in their hands, are going forth to kindle Christian watch-fires in far-off pagan lands ; others to minister not to minds diseased, but to the ills and pains of human life ; and others still go forth to travel over land and sea in search of mental gain and pleas- ant recreation. We are American, English, German, Dutch, and Japanese, — a very well-assorted happy family. So far the voyage has been an easy one ; only the first day out, in the somewhat restless waters beyond the Golden Gate, were the passengers disinclined toward food and sociability. Sailing at three o'clock on Tuesday last, the seats at table, at first well filled, became ere long conspicuously vacant. Some took a taste or two of food, then calmly laying down their spoon or fork, stole quietly forth upon the open deck to see, perhaps, what caused the ship to roll, or watch, alee, the festive sporting 6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. whale. Others, with pah'ng brows and grim resistance, defying heartless Neptune, doggedly plied their knife and fork, but to no purpose, and looking aslant down the long rows of chairs and plates, picked up their hats as though they had their fill, and, with forced nonchalance, followed the first ones forth to commune with the bounding billows. Husband and wife were parted ; the son forgot his father, the sister her brother, chil- dren their parents ; hope became swallowed up in fear, appetite resigned its eager sway, sociability grew deaf and dumb ; and as the rolling ship ploughed on, and the dinner courses came to the cake and creamy end, the softly gliding, long-queued waiters found none there to serve, save a few old travelled toughs who had long since passed receipts with him of the three-fluked fork. People all laugh and cry and get sea-sick in the same language. They may call for bread and meat in twenty tongues ; but joy or sorrow pulls the same facial muscles, and brings forth the same laughs or moans. It was not until the afternoon of the second day that all returned to the awning-shade of the spacious after-deck. Some said they had been taking a quiet rest, — a-reading like ; others denied all illness, but had been a little queer about the head and vest ; and only now and then a pa- tient, honor-bright, owned up to sickness of the sea, and wished himself at home, or anywhere on earth but here. But in spite of all this, it is a glorious sea, — a bit restless and broken at first, calling for the table-racks, but a gently rolling, swelling, mostly placid sea, that rocks you as you ride, with even, lulling, soothing motion, till you gently fall asleep in berth or chair, rocked in that softly swinging cradle, full of peace and rest. It is the poetry of motion, this sailing on the broad and noiseless sea, days and weeks from land, away from din and dust, safe from shore and care, defiant of call or question — none of the world's news or strife to disturb, or messages or orders to pull you here or there. What is the business of the land to those who go forth in ships ? What its politics, its mines, its loot and care ? We sleep and eat, we read and chat ; we are like those blooming valley lilies, — we toil not, neither do we spin. Who are we? Well, we are an American minister and his family, going abroad to represent the American eagle at the capital of the central kingdom in the long-lived and much-storied ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. 7 city of Pekin. To this far-off mission is the stalwart colonel called from the land of the Wabash, — a noble Wabash sycamore, chosen for his great legal knowledge and broad, cool, and level head, to wrestle with the great and ever-growing Chinese ques- tion. The colonel and wife, a lovely daughter, and three prom- ising sons, make up a pleasant party. The colonel moves quietly about, making most agreeable company, spending his more quiet daytime hours extended on his deck-chair, poring over thick volumes of Oriental lore, or intently browsing among the tender twigs of juicy romance. He spent a laborious fort- night among the foes and friends of the middle kingdom, in San Francisco, — feted and badgered, besieged, bedined, and impor- tuned on this much-knotted point, until he found the quiet and protection of the sea. Here, too, is the new consul, John M. Birch, who goes to Nagasaki, — an unmarried man, genial, pop- ular with all, certainly with the young ladies, among whom he is in perplexing demand. That he has seen fit to leave his home and go into voluntary exile, in that far-off, out-of-the-way port, for four long years, seems a marvel. We also have a Princeton graduate, a son of the minister, as secretary of legation, and one of the salaried students who go abroad in the interest of the State Department to gain a knowledge of the Chinese language. Our relations with China are such that the education of a corps of young men in this language has become a necessity. We are missionaries likewise — eight or ten of us — going to China, or returning to China and Japan, — old men and those of middle age, young men and young women, — people of bright countenances and mild behavior, who chat and knit, who preach and sing sweet psalms well interspersed with winsome ballads from their Eastern homes and plaintive melodies from warm plantation life. They hold interesting " sociables," tell stories of planting the cross and teaching the little ones in Asiatic homes and streets. Some are young and raw recruits, full of zeal and bright anticipations, with a life of untried and perhaps bitter scenes before them. Ov^er there, cuddled up between the sky- lights and the life-boat, is a very newly married couple, minia- ture missionaries, rather weakly looking, — a mere boy and girl, who mingle little with the rest, and rarely seem even to smile ; homesick I know, heart-sick I fear, sea-sick beyond all doubt, poor weenie ones, going far from home and parents' care to do 8 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. ministerial battle among the distant Asian lands. How I pity them ! How they will come to need father and mother, and kindly influences of their far Ohio home, in the dreary days and trials and illness that are sure to come ! Even now they gaze far back upon the open sea, and weep with clasped hands. Would I could send them back ! If missionaries must be sent abroad, send in their stead some stalwart gospel men who can be easily spared and who are better calculated to bear the brunt of this lonely and tiresome task. We are business men, Japanese, going home from trading- trips among the people of the States and other lands, who have been scrutinizing shops and factories, doing their national dis- plays at New Orleans, peering curiously into the knowledge of other men, — going home to establish new trades and improve their old ones. Small, bright- eyed, active, courteous little men they are, who seek the society of the intelligent and pry into the business and logic and literature of enlightened peoples, to ben- efit their native land. I envy them, as they talk and read ; for what a world has been freshly opened to them ! What broad ranges of agriculture ; what vistas of business, machinery, archi- tecture ; what long aisles of the world's written history, volumes of poesy and romance, countless pages of modern and classic lore, to them until lately shut out from view and sense ! Verily, they have groaning tables to feast from ; and eagerly do they embrace their opportunities. Unlike their Chinese cousins, they seek to come into harmony with the outer world, adopt our ways of dress, our business methods, and theories of enterprise, " Tell me," we said to one of our Japanese passengers, " what progress in matters of religion are our Christian missionaries making among the native people of Japan?" "Not much," he said, — "not much among the older and better classes of our people ; perhaps some among the lower classes ; but I don't think so very much." " How do you regard them among you, — favorably, or other- wise?" "Oh, we like them very well. They make us no trouble. We like well enough to have Christians come among us and teach in our schools, and nobody will hurt them." " But you are of a very different religion. Do you like to have our people try to pull it down and bring in a new faith ? " ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. 9 " Yes, our people have a different religion, and they will keep it. But if a Japanese wants to be Christian, we let him do it j if he wants to wear American clothes, we let him ; if he wants to make trade with Christians, we let him. It is all right if our people want a new religion, but I don't think they do. We have a good religion ; every nation must have a religion ; so many people are kept good by it." " Do Japanese people of the higher and more educated classes believe in Buddhism?" " Not all do. I think they are just like Christians about that. A good many Cliristians I talk with don't believe in the story about that queer way Christ was come into the world, and a good many Christian books printed now in our language don't believe it. So I think some Buddhist and some Christian pretty much alike about what they think." We are American men of business, hunting trade in all parts of the world, — - in Australia and in China ; establishing houses of commerce in Japan and in the islands where gums and spices grow ; planting agencies in the furthermost ends of the earth ; buying hides in South America, Mexico, and India ; looking up lands in Australia and New Zealand ; opening clothing and curi- osity shops in many a far-off mart. A great place to study the world and its methods of trade, its dissemination of useful arts, industries, and economies, is the deck of an ocean-going steamer where the keen and alert merchants make their homes and talk over the affairs of trade for many an ocean day. They all must needs make acquaintances, and talk, and compare notes ; and they chat best about what they know best. Nine ocean-steamer days. The head winds hold us back, but the average is over ten miles an hour, and this has brought us north of the Sandwich Islands, — too far north to see them. That noble Earl of Sandwich was a remarkable man ; he got his name into the world's atlas and into the mouths of hungry people for- evermore. He was a man of close political grip in the middle of the last century, when Captain Cook was afloat ; and he was also an inveterate gambler. So closely did he pursue the festive tiger that he had no time to squander at meals ; but when pressed by hunger, he regaled himself on split and meated buns without interfering with the progress of the game ; and so this popular 10 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. food came to be called sandwiches, and for him were the islands named. The outlook is rather extensive. To ameliorate this daily toil of letter-writing, the kind-hearted chief engineer of the "Rio" has surrendered his cosey office, chair, and desk ; and the whole seventy-eight millions of square miles of watery waste is round about me. He is a clever man, and — the doctor says, in a low whisper — is soon to marry our good stewardess. Asking the gouty steward about it, he scowled and spake of whales abeam and flying-fish. Afar to northward is Alaska's prong of islands ; to the south, the kingdom of the Sandwich Isles. California is far behind, and away ahead the Asiatic shore. Glorious are the ocean views. From this front door outspreads a space of love- liest blue, — smooth-shaven ocean lawn, without a tree or shrub to break the view. A step or two beyond my threshold sports the spouting whale, and through gently rolling waters troop great porpoise schools. Flying-fish are often seen ; but our constant attendants are long and stout winged gulls. A pair of these set out with us last week, and for a thousand miles were our only winged companions ; but meeting a sail to-day, two more of these dauntless scullions of the sea forsook it and joined our ship to travel back to Asia. All day long they float and poise on steady wing, watching with eager eyes every crumb thrown from the ship's galley, swooping down upon each mor- sel, and, with wings outspread upon the rocking waters, they rest and eat, then mount and spy again. Our every meal pro- vides for them a feast, with now and then a lunch. The day's work done, the eating over, lights turned down, the people gone to rest, then, also, rest these busy birds, buoyed upon the rest- less wave, to wake at hint of dawn and overtake the ship for early breakfast. Most charming are the sunset skies and the soft evening hours. As Sol sinks down to take his needful rest, great wide- spread banks of softest golden clouds are ready to receive him, — clouds with varying tints, assuming shapes of animals and ships, cities and domes, and walls tricked out with glinting minaret and tinted gonfalon. Scarlet and crimson stripes and gorgeous puffs of brightest gold light up and decorate the west- ern sky long before darkness interferes. Then comes the big, bright, silver moon, throwing across the rippling waves its long, ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. II wide, trembling silver bridge, broadest and brightest of all the airy structures, with one pier by our ship, the other in the golden- appled garden of Hesperides. Over it through all the live-long night trip troops of ocean fairies, bringing us bits of beauteous golden dreams, and carrying forth to sleeping ones afar bright dream-thoughts of our home and loved ones pillowed there. Glorious indeed are these Pacific moonlights ; doubly intense compared with those of land, — sometimes a sunny moonlight, paling the stars as gas-lights do the candles. Hour after hour in the night's most silent watches, heedless of slothful sleep, we sit and watch the lunar-glinted waves that sheen the sea as far as eye or wandering thought can reach. Tired of sitting, we rise and pace the deck, humming low airs lest we disturb the sleepers. About the smoke-stack, cuddled up like pigs, lie the sleeping crew ; while at the wheel the sleepless helmsman stands close by the tireless guardian angel of the "bridge," who paces to and fro, scanning the horizon's wide dim rim. Glorious wakeful nights upon the broad blue sea, lighted by moon and star — the ship's great lungs and heart breathing and throbbing, as with a gently rolling motion she ploughs bravely on. Broad- backed billows fill the ocean field ; through the bright moon- light glint the stars ; sharp rings the bell that counts night's silent watches, till, late, Ave go unwillingly below, to spend the after-night in restful sleep and pleasing dreams of far-off lands, and far-off friends, and home. How do we live at sea? In ways of quiet comfort. At six in the morning we turn out for coffee, or take it in our berth ; with it, some bites of bread and jam. Bathing and dressing take the time till half-past eight o'clock, when comes the break- fast hour. Then, under the broad awning of the spacious after- deck, we sit and chat and smoke, or read or walk, or while away the hours with various games. At half-past ten there is a mis- sionary meeting in the grand saloon, — music and mission talk, reminiscences of mission life, and queer experiences and ob- servations of many kinds in many homes and lands. At one is tiffin, — a most substantial lunch of meats and drinks ; that whiles away an hour, followed by more sitting and reading or walking to and fro, yarning and gaming, discussing the ship's last run just posted on the stairs, surmising the voyage's length, studying maps and language-primers, — and so spending the day till six 12 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. o'clock, when comes the dinner, served in many courses by the noiseless, gliding, deft-fingered Chinamen. Dinner and dessert over, the social deck is occupied again till nine or half-past nine, when tea and cakes are served. Then most of us turn in ; the few remain on deck, to chat and muse and while the listless time away with no prevailing sound save the rippling waves' soft lullaby and the mighty engine's ceaseless throb. What does it cost to run this ship? That is the very question we asked the mate. Well, a round trip from San Francisco to Hong Kong, including stops at Yokohama out and back, occu- pies eighty days. Officers and crew are one hundred and thirty men, whose wages are twenty thousand dollars ; five hundred mouths to feed, and forty tons of coal per day, cost twenty thou- sand dollars ; handling of freight and other incidentals, say half as much more : fifty thousand dollars is about the round-trip figure of expense, counting no interest for investment or cost of wear and tear. It is a floating city, a little kingdom, in which the captain is the king, whose word is law. No fuss or noise is made, yet everything is astir ; no orders are heard, yet every one on duty takes his stint in ceaseless method. The crew are Chinamen. They glide about the ship with noiseless tread, cleaning the deck, ranging through the rigging, toting the coals, and feeding the fires ; and thus the round of work goes on, in changing watches, all the day and days, as though there were no place else, — no land abroad or waters underneath. " Why do you employ Chinamen to do this work? " we asked. " Why not hire white men? " " We should be glad to do so," the ofificer replied, " but we can get no such trusty crew of white men as this, in California or China. They obey orders punctually, do their work and do it well, are always on hand, and are peaceable and sober. I don't like Chinese ; but they are better sailors and better servants than any crew we can get, and so we employ them. So long as white sailors at the ports we touch are less trustworthy than the heathen Chinese, we have to accept the situation and do the best we can." This is a sad reflection ; but ships must sail, the world's work must go on ; and if the Christian countries fail to produce the best sailors and best servants for this wide ocean trade, then ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. I3 must we sadly bow to the inevitable and man our ships with foreigners. Is this sort of trouble increasing? Has the day- come upon us when our ships and our homes, our houses and our lands, are being deserted by the laborers of our own race and their places filled from afar ? Has the heathen that was given to us for an inheritance made us his inheritance ? Perhaps we have been five days too long in San Francisco, and seven days too long upon this ship, and thought too much about it ; but if you, reader, think this, come and hear and see and judge for yourself. This is Saturday, as we see by the calendar. Yet to-morrow will be Monday. The day we lose in passing the one hundred and eightieth degree of longitude should be Sunday, the 30th of August. The loss is important ; all the more so because with it goes our Sunday dinner, which, on ship as well as on shore, among most good people, has several new and interesting features. We don't very much care about the loss of the customary Sunday service, for the missionary people supply us with that — every day in the week. These services, it is griev- ous to remark, are confined, to an alarming extent, to the missionaries. The captain says there are nearly six hundred heathen on the ship, and one would naturally suppose that some of these gospel meetings would be held in the steerage, where these Buddhistic sinners are snugly packed ; but nothing of the sort has been done ; and so these poor benighted pig-tailed souls, who are denied all parlor and piano privileges, get neither taste nor smell of the gospel feasts. It is hard to understand these missionary ways. Why they wait till they get to China or Japan before making a raid on the children of darkness, when there are such quantities of very raw material so very close at hand, is more and more a mystery. Even the Chinese minister aboard can give no satisfactory answer to the problem. But perhaps he may know and won't tell. There was a sort of ship-sociable a night or two ago, the leading feature of which, as set forth in the bills and posters pasted on the gangway mir- ror, was a lecture from our minister to all the Chinas on the Chinese question. So a treat was counted upon, of course. He opened it up in good style, — quoted the several names of Chinaland ; brought to the front Saint Buddha and the sage Confucius ; alluded to the score of thick volumes he had read 14 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. upon Chinese history, old and new, their manners, customs, arts, religion, and what not. Then he slipped a cog, and about the dear Chinese said not another word, — not even why they braid their hair as girls do. He referred us to the learned fed- eral judges, their writings and decisions, and all the more be- wildered us by saying that each one's writing contradicted the other's writing, and each one's opinion was overruled by the opinion of the other ; and finally that the topmost bench had overruled itself. Yet still there was hope ; but it did n't bloom, for all at once he cut loose from the real point he said he had to talk about, reversed the wheel of time a score of years, and, with the stars and stripes wrapped close about his towering form, fought well again the battles of the war. It was an elo- quent affair, in which the brave colonel paired off our army and our generals with those of other lands and times, from Arbela to the Wilderness, to the great disparagement and dismay of Alex- ander the Great, — again covering our loved land and brave men with another halo of glory, and warning other lands and powers to look sharp to their fading laurels. The audience was disappointed, yet gladdened. They had lost their grip on China, but had watched the eagle's flight with natural satisfac- tion ; and so they voted thanks and gratulations. This much has our minister to China wisely learned, — to keep his mouth shut about Chinese affairs until he knows them better. Death has found us, far out upon the water. A consumptive Chinaman, who was hastening home that he might die in the land of his fathers, died this morning, and the surgeon has been down to embalm him. The poor fellow had no money, — only a counterfeit quarter, which would n't pay the expense. He would have been thrown overboard, as is usual ; but his fellow- passengers made up a purse, and had his remains preserved for Chinese burial. It costs twenty-five dollars to embalm a China- man, but white men must pay a hundred. Why this unfriendly regulation in favor of the Mongolian, I cannot tell. It is said that the people or the politicians of San Francisco would be glad to pay the embalming expenses of all the Chinamen there, and ship them off to China ; but it would be a sad loss of politi- cal capital. ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. I 5 Our course across this noble space of water is more than half done, and eight or nine more days will, we trust, place our feet upon the Japan shore. Already our sea-wearied passengers gaze anxiously across the big ship's bows, hoping to see a speck of land ahead, so tired are they of this seafaring life. They have forgotten their sea-sickness, got pretty well acquainted, told all their plans and yarns, talked politics and discussed knotty points of theology, been beaten at cards, and lost money on the sailing pools, gained unerring knowledge of future bills of fare, played and romped and studied till there is really nothing left to them but the proceedings of the previous meeting. Novel-reading is a notable feature of steamer life, as it is of home-life. The beaten tracks on our library carpets run not to the historical shelves, nor yet to those of science. The alcove of religious reading is terra incognita; but worn is the carpet and broad the oft-trodden path that leads to long and closely packed shelves of the novelist's product. Ship reading is about the same. Just wait a few days till the mal de mer has van- ished, the novelty of the sea worn out, then make a "round up " of the reading matter. A history or two, now and then a fairly written book of travel, a magazine or two — and novels everywhere ! Paul de Kock in the hands of bald-headed men ; the vagaries of Zola thumbed and conned by matrons and maidens ; the fermentations of Ouida ; and here and there a better work by Black or Wallace, or some one else, — all read and re-read, and passed from hand to hand as though the chief end and aim of man, the heaven and hope of woman, were to cram their leisure hours and gorge their ample brains with unreal notions about imaginary situations, high-spiced scenes, and questionable characters. And our Japan friends — what are they reading, in their verti- cally lined books ? Romance. " Do you have many novels in your language? " I asked an intently reading Asian. " Oh, yes, we have very many novels." "Are their plots and characters much like those of French and American writers, — of home-life, courtships, love-scenes, marriage, suicide, and social fireworks in general? " " Oh, yes ; they are very much the same, only I like them rather better, — ours than yours." 1 6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. " Yes ; but are your social customs, then, like ours ? For instance, you are a young unmarried man ; you know many nice young women ; you have picked out one you think you would like to make your wife. What do you do about it? Court the girl, gain her consent, and then go and ask her par- ents if you may wed her? " " Oh, no, no ; that would n't do at all. If I think the girl will make me a good wife, I must go and ask her parents first. Our parents meddle too much with young folks' love-affairs. They want to know all about it — what we talk about and think — just the same as they do in Europe. I like much better the way you do in America ; and we must have it that way, too, sometime." " But where do you get the romance for your books, if the old folks do the young folks' courting, and don't allow them any social latitude ? " " Oh, well, they think they do it all, but they don't. Our young folks have their way, under the rose, and all the more because they strive for what they are denied. There are plenty of things to write the books about." So it goes, here and there, and in lands beyond the sea. " Love laughs at locksmiths," and nature ever contends for its own course, and age forgets not its youth. And thus it is that chairs and stools and shelves are thickly strewn with warmly tinted, often tainted, books of fiction ; this is why these books are closely held before bright eyes, and closer yet to eyes grown dim with age ; why heads, both young and old, bow to the shrine of the romantic goddess of fiction. On sea or land, at home or far away, the same old father Adam and dear old mother Eve hand down and down the ever-tempting, ever- welcome, ever-luscious Eden apple. Yesterday was Saturday. Sunday is nowhere, for to-day is Monday. Perdidi diem f But the ship dashes on in joyous safety, gently swinging like a hammock, crowding through the dark blue waters, through the broad and beaming sunlight, under the moon and under the starlight, through the mists of morn and evening, through the squalls and past the cloud drifts, panting hourly on and on. The storm is past ; the sea is settling into a more quiet, even surface ; the ship has resumed her westward course ; the pas- ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. ij sengers have lost all appearance of deep anxiety, and are re- turning, one by one, and forming little conversational knots upon the shaded after-deck. Many a one has had his wish to see a Pacific ocean typhoon fully gratified. This is Sunday — the first Sunday we have had in two weeks. For several days previous to Saturday, both ocean and barometer warned the officers of unusual atmospheric conditions. The weather was hot and sticky. Along the quiet sea, at regular intervals, came great swells that caught the ship and tossed her right and left, causing her to quake and roll. Chairs were lashed to keep them and their occupants from being pitched pell-mell from side to side ; and in spite of table-racks, the dishes slid and tipped and spilled in extent and manner most annoying and ridiculous. Meat and drink became unseasonably mixed ; soup, mingled with wine and water, dashed suddenly into one's lap or coat-sleeve, or upon the carpet ; crockery and glassware sported about the tables, — butter-plates bucking the potato dishes, tureens battering each other ; knives, forks, spoons, napkin-rings, and salt-cellars chasing each other to and fro, — rattling, jingling, and scooting about with insane activity. The hot nights were no less turbulent. The constant rolling of the ship made walking extra-hazardous, and in the constant effort to keep from being rolled from our berths, many pas- sengers spent tiresome and sleepless hours. Friday was a little easier, and passengers resumed their games upon the deck, and there was hope that the last days of the voyage would bring us quiet and rest ; but those who remained on deck till the mid- night hour, and observed the increasing barometrical depression, surmised that a big storm was abroad upon the sea and might soon overhaul us. Some minutes after twelve the wind rapidly increased, and there was music in the air as it came whistling through the shrouds with fast-increasing velocity. All sail was taken in, the life-lines set, and everything clewed up for a rattling gale. Against the increasing wind and wave, the ship pressed stur- dily on until early morning. Leaving a very unsatisfactory couch at half-past five, w^e went upon deck. To get there without broken bones was to work one's passage carefully among con- fused furniture and sliding mattings, — stumbling, catching and 2 1 8 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. holding at the tables, stanchions, balusters, — anywhere to get a grip. The deck was a howling wilderness. Riotous winds roared through the rigging and into the throats of the ventila- tors ; the air was filled with wet and spume from angry waves ; the sea, as far as eye could reach, was a field of angry billows, surging to and fro, upon which our ship tossed like a chip. Barometer still falling. At 6.45 o'clock, it being decided that the " Rio " was battling with a typhoon, and that continued resistance was unwise, the engines were slowed and the ship was thrown from her course and headed about toward the California coast, maintaining only steam enough to keep her to the wind. This course was kept for nearly thirteen hours. From 6.45 in the morning until about one in the afternoon, the sea gained strength and fury. Our breakfast was taken with one hand clinched upon the tilting tables, the other holding a cup of ready-prepared coffee or a piece of bread and meat. Only two of the lady passengers appeared, and only the best of the other sex. The servants were dashed upon the floor, plates flew about the room, the ship rocked, rolled, and took the thumping seas as they thundered against her iron sides and dashed in wave and spray upon the deck. An ambitious wave caught life-boat No. 10, and dragged one end from the davit into the water. A sailor went down to fasten a line to get her back again, when another sea parted the fastening at the stern, and sent her spinning out among the wild waters ; the alert Chinaman saving his life by grabbing a friendly line, up which he suddenly climbed out from the jaws of death, upon the deck. The unfortunate boat was watched in vain. Later in the day a fighting wave stove in another life-boat ; others leaped over the topmost skylights, drenching every one within reach ; others burst in upon the lower deck, carrying away sev- eral yards of the port bulkheads, and giving the steerage a watery benefit. Perhaps our thoughts could have been read in our faces. Many of us had never been to sea or seen an ocean storm be- fore ; and with these, as with some who had won their spurs in ocean tempest, there was a deeply seated gloom. Many an unrecorded wish was made in the rueful hours of Saturday. The cook's galley had been washed out, spoiling all chance for a good lunch or dinner ; nor could we have eaten such, had they been ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. 1 9 cooked. The half-past twelve lunch was a sight to see. Those who sat down upon the drenched cushions fought for every mouthful, holding by one hand to the most convenient object, — a catch-as-catch-can affair, that was ludicrous to behold. Ser- vants were climbing the steep deck of the ship, then, as she rolled back, working their way down, sliding on the floor, — biscuit, meat, potatoes, and Chinamen rolling and darting about in the most vexatious irregularity. In spite of the dangers of the hour, — the bumped heads, contused limbs, deathly sickness, and lines of deep melancholy and dejection, — laughs would break out ; and I am really afraid that the handful of steady-nerved ones who kept open house in the smoking-room, and " tried to cheer their comrades and be gay," got too little credit for their good offices. Regardless of their real thoughts, they bravely breasted the melancholy tide, and, even at the risk of appearing heartless, smoked away the dizzy storm, told their stories and sung their songs, holding themselves as still as they could with a constant grip ; while others stayed below and with trembling hands tried on their life-preservers. At half-past one o'clock we noted a change in the sea, and the ugly rolling was a trifle easier ; but the barometer kept on falling. At three the change was quite perceptible ; but the glass kept getting worse and worse till six o'clock, when it came to a stand and remained so for an hour. At seven it began to rise ; and then we knew the storm had swept past, the ship had rode it out, and we were safe. With the rise of the glass rose the spirits of the sick and faint-hearted. Color came back to pallid faces and animation to blanched cheeks and anxious eyes. The storm was past and danger had flown away. The timid ones sang for joy, and vivacity and thankfulness pervaded every tongue and heart. The shrieking winds had spent their fury ; no life had been lost ; and they spoke in hushed tones only when talking of what might have been had our good ship sprung a leak, or been injured in her vital parts, or failed us in the dark tem- pestuous night. This is the month for typhoons along the Japanese coast, yet they are not of frequent experience with these steamers. The word "typhoon " is Chinese, — ta-fung, "great wind." One in 1874 cost thirty thousand lives. Captain Seabury, in forty years upon the sea, had rode no fiercer gale, nor had he seen the 20 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. barometer at so low a point — twenty-eight degrees — as his reached on Saturday ; though Captain Krusenstern records, in 1S04, the entire disappearance of the mercury, when the storm became tieh kii^ an " iron whirhvind." The estimated rate of the typhoon, or great circular gale, is from eighty to one hundred miles per hour, according to Captain Bedford's handbook, the latter figure representing winds that dismast and often sink the best of sailing-ships. The pressure of an eighty- mile gale is about thirty-one and a half pounds to the square inch, — a pressure before which no sails can be used. In these gales steamers have a great advantage over sailing-vessels, inasmuch as the former can leave their course and steam out of the storm ; while the latter has no such choice, but must stay and ride on with it and abide the consequences. The storm has passed, and those who wished to view a thor- oughly maddened sea have had their wish ; they have had rather more than they expected, — more of absolute danger than they ever counted on or ever want to see again. And yet it is the most gi-and and awe-inspiring of all pictures. The swift-revolving storm lashes the ocean into desperate fury, the waves mounting and dashing, producing tints, amid the spume and foam, of won- drous range and beauty. The highest storm wave is not the " mountains-high " wave of fiction, but the twenty-five or thirty feet high wave of fact, and is not a mild or easily managed foe to meet. Yet our ship is a good sailer, and, for such a storm, took less water and underwent less loss and damage than many a one has done. She is ably officered, and rides the water like a duck. The Chinaman makes an excellent stormy-weather sailor, going to his appointed work, aloft or alow, with admirable alacrity and efficiency. To be sure, he is a heathen, and of course a terrible sinner ; but when the hour of danger comes, he is a very good man to have around. Of course in his time of intense peril, when many a life depends upon his steady nerve and iron muscle, he has no thoughts such as the Christian thinks ; but as he has a chance for his life, he whips out his bit of joss- paper, with its bit of tinsel and cabalistic words, and burns it on the altar of the storm-god. Below in the gilded cabin good Christians prayed that God would stoop from his heavenly height and calm the raging storm ; on the storm-stricken open deck, and farther below in the fetid steerage pen, the heathen burned his ON THE PACIFIC SEAS. 21 prayer-paper. The one will tell you, when the storm is done, that the prayer of the pious hath great avail with Heaven ; the other will tell you that his precious joss-paper works wonderful effects with the powers of the wind and sea. Since the storm is over, we are not very captious about these points of theology. The prevailing opinion in the smoking-room chapel is that a stanch ship, ably officered and manned, is a better antidote for this typhoon fiend than either missionary or heathen joss. At all events, the storm has left us ; God has been good to us ; the sea is calm again, the ship is crowding on ; we shall see land to-morrow, and port next day, — just nineteen days from the other shore. *^^ 22 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER III. JAPAN. Yokohama. — Street Scenes. — The yinrikis/ia 'M&n. — Japanese Farm- ing Regions. — Glimpses of Home-Life. — Ruined Shrines and Tem- ples. — Images of Buddha. JAPAN ! The " Rio " dropped anchor in the broad harbor of Yokohama on Monday evening at nine o'clock. And, by the way, we have heard from that raging typhoon torment several times since landing. An English ship got into it with less sea-room than we had, and was compelled to pass its focus. She lies out in the harbor, minus two life-boats and several spars. A French ram is also anchored there, with like expe- rience. A good many people have reason to remember that unpleasant reception on the Eastern Asiatic coast. It was an experience well worth having, of which one, however, is better than two. Pacific ocean ! Magellan gave it this misleading name. It was on his trip around the world in 1520, when after some six- teen months of furious storms, and a loss of more than half his fleet, he fought his way through the Patagonian straits, to which he gave his name, and came into the quiet waters of the open sea, which he noted in his log as the mer pacijique ; and Pacific it has been from that day on, — the plain adjective becoming, without intent, the adopted name of the most spacious division of the globe. Yokohama ! The word means " across the bar." It is a cu- riously mixed up seaboard city, — a medley of all nations, and of all sorts of dress, undress, vehicles, and architecture. Fine stores, good hotels, — American, English, German, French, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, — broad streets, narrow streets, canals, goods of all kinds, shows of too many kinds, climate hot and enervating, — a paradise of people of leisure, Mecca of curio traders and those who sell more staple goods. The natives are undersized, brown-skinned, black haired, a frank and simple-man- JAPAN. 23 nered people, who have absorbed a tinge and taint of foreign habits and customs, and a sharp, emotional way of getting the best end of all kinds of bargains. In matters of dress they are much mixed, varying from the full-fledged English costume to the half-native and the full-native, the latter being part clothing and part or entirely naked truth. Children of the lower classes seem to thrive in the costume of Eden, and many grown people of both sexes seem given to a somewhat scandalous economy in matters of raiment. The native part of the city is a succession of narrow streets of toy houses, sometimes two. stories, more often one, with roofs of tile, shingle, or thatch. Every little store or shop is both shop and dwelling, having an open space in front for exposing goods for sale, and a raised matted floor on which the proprietor, family, loungers, and customers lie about in a promiscuous way, — some clad, some partly clad, and others neither. The narrow unpaved streets are thronged with people ; some men are carry- ing loads, others are hauling freight on two-wheeled carts, and jiiirikishas are hurrying to and fro in much confusion. Every one is good-natured, easily pleased, and apparently happy. To be hauled about at a lively trotting pace by human beings hitched to carts is a queer sensation. The vehicle is the jin (man) riki (power) sha (wheel), and is a Yankee missionary's invention. It has two wheels about three feet high and two and one half feet apart. Swung upon the axle by light three-leaved elliptic springs is the seat of an old-fashioned gig, with folding top to keep off sun or rain. The seat is eighteen inches wide, upholstered in cloth or leather ; and between the thills the coolie steps, after you are seated, catches a thill in each hand, brings his load to a balance, and starts upon an easy loping trot — or, if in a hurry, on a smart run — to the given destination. Going into the country some twenty miles or more the other day, I timed my men, — a little wiry fellow of a hundred and twenty pounds weight, and a pusher of the same stature, — and they made the first eight miles in an hour and twenty minutes : quite as fast as one would jog his horse and buggy on our prairie roads. Returning, and on a favorable road, they would make mile spurts in four to five minutes, tearing down steepish roads at a rate at which one would not drive a horse, and in which a misstep or a collision would prove disastrous. 24 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Having " done " the city fairly well, visited a score of tea- houses, drunk a gallon of hot, delicious Japan tea, paid our re- spects to the powers that be, and to Buddhistic priests and those of Shin-to, seen the native plays, and ordered thinner and more comfortable costumes, we took a guide and sheets and certain meats and soups and drinks, and put off for Enoshima by way of Kamakura, the former place being over twenty miles from Yokohama. We went in pursuit of scenery, temples, tea-houses, native color, — to spy out the land and its people. There were twelve of us, — my governor, the Duke of Nagasaki, our English- speaking guide, myself, and eight coolies. AVe had four silver- plated jhirikishas. A span of horses, with a single driver, would have answered every purpose and much reduced the length of the procession and the expense as well ; but what can a carriage and pair do on a six-feet country road with frequent two or three board bridges ? Not much ; so we did what had to be done, — rode behind the nervy, sweating, benighted heathen ; and it was not a bad ride either. One never fully realizes what uses human flesh and blood can be put to until he has packed his kit and gone abroad in distant lands. At first I did n't feel quite right to see those panting fellows hauling me up hill and down, and really wished, on their account, my weight was some pounds less ; but then, reflecting that a good book has plainly set it down that the heathen is a considerable part of our rightful inheritance, put all conscientious qualms aside, and lit a fresh cigar. Out into the Japan farming region we went, — up the wide, meandering valley, with its branches right and left extending into the bordering hillsides, clothed with bushes ever green ; along narrow strips of unfenced, clean-ditched district road, stretching out among the well-kept garden grounds ; among rice-fields, bench above bench, levelled up one after another, as the grade runs up or down, to hold the ever-needed water. We passed fields of rice and beans, peas, bird-seed ; now and then some sweet potatoes, water potatoes, and sugar-cane, with not a weed or straggling bush in sight. Still the road went on, by scattered thick-thatched dwellings ; yards fenced with bamboo, and neatly laid-up rice-straw stacks ; past the plainly sculp- tured mile-stones, and the wayside springs of purest water, fur- nished with small shell dippers, that all who come may drink ; JAPAN. 25 past the frequent wayside chapels, with their rudely sculptured Buddhas, reminding one of Italian and Swiss wayside shrines for silent prayer to the madonna or her son. On and on we go through straggling hamlets, with wide-corniced, green-decked roofs, till suddenly the 'rikishas wheel into a neat and well- swept court, where we are warmly welcomed by clean and trimly clad wives and daughters, who beg us to remove our honora- ble shoes, and sit upon their soft, clean matting, rest, and sip the fresh-brewed tea from tiny cups, and taste of dainty sugared rice-cake and many sweet and toothsome confections which they hasten to bring forth. As we sit there the whole household gathers about, curiously watching, looking at our rings and dia- monds, chatting and laughing, brewing and pouring tea, bowing many bows ; reminding one, for all the world, of simple, careless, merry children, who know no harm and feel no fear. Departing, they make repeated and very low bows, thanking us, over and over, big and little, old and young, for our patron- age j bidding us good-by and good fortune, and asking that we come again. Lunching at these places, they take you to their ornamental garden, with its trained dwarf trees and flower shrubs and mimic temples. From the smooth-walled pools they scoop out the choicest pearl-scaled fish, which are dressed and cooked to a delicious turn and served on neat blue-figured earthen ware. Bring your own bread, if bread you want ; for in the copious language of this country there is no such word as bread — or soap. The housewife has no baking days, no bread, biscuit, rolls, buns, or cakes and pies about her tidy house. Rice and vegetables there are in abundance, but not a bit of bread. How must many a Christian woman envy these poor heathen housewives ! for though of all housekeepers they are most scrupulously clean, they have no kneading of dough, no mixing and rising, no yeasting and watching, no baking or icing. Not a Japanese husband finds fault with his wife's bread ! What a blessing, even in the land of the pagan ! What use of sending missionaries to such people as these? What use to talk to them of the bread of life ? The Eucharist, to these simple ones, is nonsense ; they know no bread nor wine. But we must move on, — over hills with their far and lovely views of mountain, vale, and ocean ; along the green-fringed banks of brooks, and among the tall forest-trees, by the rushing 26 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. waters and among the singing birds and giant butterflies ; past more farm-houses, painted black, or painted not at all ; over the hills and through the cool gorges, out in the sun and into the shade, past stone-laden and lumber-laden carts, drawn and pushed by brawny-limbed and knotty-chested coolies, — men doing the work of mules and oxen ; past native ponies laden with rice, straw bales, or long, slim, trailing bamboo ; past quan- tities of mats, on which the barley, beans, and other seeds are being thrashed or cleaned, or spread out to dry ; past troops of naked young folks and half-dressed men and women, work- ing among the fields about the house, or basking in the shade, returning your kindly greeting — ohyo, " good-morning " — with friendly bow and smile. Verily, we are a long way from home and in a very strange country. The cook and carpenter sit at their work ; nor does the blacksmith, cooper, or coppersmith stand at his. No man enters his house until he has removed his sandals ; no speck of dirt is brought upon the smooth-waxed or softly matted floors, upon the feet of any one. Think of it, ye American wives who toil all day to sweep out the mud and dirt brought in on shoes and boots, daubing the clean-washed floors and soiling and foul- ing your thick and ever dusty carpets, — only think of it ! And your mild-eyed pagan sister over here knows not your sad fate, or she would send you missionary aid. In her parlor there is no chair or sofa ; no bric-a-brac, no nothing but cleanest of all wood and softest of all mats. Step into her bedroom, if you please. There is no bed, no furniture whatever, only neatly plain or lacquered woods and finest braided mats. Shove back the paper-paned screen sash. The whole floor is one room. Slide them into place again. Behold, it is all bedrooms, halls, dining-rooms, parlors, anything you please, — big rooms, little rooms, or all the rooms in one. Everything is most carefully clean ; for is it not written in their household words, that " when the houses of the people are kept clean, be certain that the government is respected and will endure " ? About these rooms in every house hang printed paper proverbs, plain or framed. Shall I translate a few? — "Buddha will bless us." " He does not like us bad." " Shin-to will take care of good family." Our guide translated many more of the same sort; and we wondered if the mottoes hung up in Christian JAPAN. 27 homes of late years were not copied from or suggested by such as these. Can it be true that in lands other than Christian lands there are pure and noble thoughts, pure and happy homes, good people and good customs, that we might thrive in head and heart and pocket by carefully copying ? Still on the road to Enoshima, working along through the paddy-fields, along the neatly cultivated lands. Inquiring the cost of farm help, we find that from six to ten cents a day is the average price, according to season and demand, which, as the laborer boards himself, cannot be called excessive ; and yet in a country where a pennyworth of rice will feed a man all day, and much less than that amount provide him with clothes, the price cannot be said to be too httle. In countries where the wages paid are from five to ten times the cost of board and clothes, there would seem to be no ground for complaint, even though the price, like this one, seems to be ridiculously small. Inquiring further, we find that female help at houses and taverns is about two dollars a year with board and clothes. This does n't seem to leave much margin for profit ; yet it is safe to say that these girls have about as much money saved at the end of the year as many of our servants who receive far greater wages. Before going to Enoshima, let us take a rest at Kamakura. It is, or was, a place that you may not know or care to know much about. Probably you will not find it on your map ; and yet long before you were born, and long before this Chris- tian era, Kamakura was a large and influential capital. Nothing now remains but a small village or two, and here and there a temple, some old gateways, stairways of stone, statues of wood and stone and brass and bronze, that tell of the greatness and the glory that once pervaded the spot ; and as you pass from shrine to shrine, and observe the traces of a long-dead past, you cannot help feeling that your visit has been postponed too long by several hundred years. What shall I show you? There are many temples, chapels, shrines, gates, imposing approaches, grand old trees, and various objects, all so new and queer and strange one knows not how to pick them up and show them to a reader, so as to make them interesting. But here is Hachi-man, the fine old Shin-to temple. Imagine yourself two miles away from it, looking toward it, — down a long, straight, broad, and elevated causeway, hned 28 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. by fine old trees, and gated here and there with gates of stone and bronze. This is a mere hint at the once noble approach to the temple, over which the worshippers passed in grand pro- cession over the road and the curiously Avrought stone bridge that spans the wide canal. Here the procession halts ; only the tycoon and his noble lords can pass farther on. At the rise of three stone steps, the nobles must dismount and bare their feet, for this is holy ground. A little farther on, the tycoon must dismount at the stair of a single step ; for no four-footed beast may farther go. With bared heads and feet they proceed to the chapel, then to the grand granite stair\vay, some fifty feet in width and as many steps in height, up by the sacred trees and graven images, then through the gates, whose posts and hinges are of aged bronze, into the sacred temple's stone-paved court. It cannot be described so you can understand it, for I don't understand it myself; but as you turn to the left, an old man — a priest, or bonze — with gravest mien and shaven head, takes a few coppers in payment for a printed prayer or sacred amulet, which is supposed to give one peace of mind and devotional purpose, as the temple gate is reached. The procession is far behind ; the nobles enter, the tycoon pene- trates to the inmost holy place where none but him may go. Kneeling are the countless worshippers, hushed is every voice ; for within the darkened recess the greatest of the land holds communion with the Omnipotent. This was in the far-gone, dimly lighted past. We of the present are less formal. Passing leisurely along, we too mount the steps, rest midway beneath the big trees' shade, invest our seti in printed prayers, tread the smooth-hewn granite walks, but enter not the holy house ; that is for other feet and for heads with other thoughts. Passing around the temple, along a painted colonnade, an attendant displays curious old swords and armor, pottery and lacquered plates, — treasures of times long past and rulers long since dead and gone. We wander about among the sacred flowering cherry-trees, about the walks and carved and painted woods, past shrines and lanterned stones of curious shape and meaning. Farther on is another temple. Mounting long steps, \vith balustrades of plain hewn moss-grown granite, we come past pyramidal stones and sacred trees and shrines, to a dimly lighted JAPAN. 29 temple with seated images of painted or gilded wood. Here, too, are packages of printed prayers, which we may buy and chew into pulpy balls and throw at the seated images at either side of the opening. If you chew your prayer up well, and throw it straight, it will hit the painted fraud square on the nose, or on his breast or cheek. If it sticks, you have won good luck, and your prayer is efficacious. If it does n't, you buy another and try again. Behind large folding-doors, opened but twice a year, stands a great gilded image, carved from a single piece of camphor-wood, thirty-five feet high, and large in proportion ; this is the wife of the god Dai-Butsu, who sits in bronze some distance away. By the light of dim candles, elevated by the pock-marked, merry bonze, we gaze upon this lady's gilded greatness, more im- pressed by the excellence of the carving and richness of the gilding than by any odor of sanctity. A few coppers, and a friendly slap on the fat priest's shoulders, cause him to open wide his strong-toothed mouth and roar with laughter. Stopping to take a cup or two of tea in passing down the steps, the silver- haired old mother tries to remove my finger-ring; but finding it immovable, she laughs and chatters, pats my hand, rings a very clear-toned bell that looks like an old-time spice-mortar, pours out another tiny cup of tea, bids us good-by, and bows us many thanks for having called to see her. How these people amuse and charm me ! Of course I know they are awfully benighted heathen, and have got to suffer frightfully, with a lot more of us, through all eternity ; yet one can't weep all the time about that, so we sit and chat, sip tea, eat sweets with these old folks and young folks, children and babies, and have a real merry frolic, using what words we chance to know, and so passing a pleasant hour. They are so frank and cheery, so free from form and cere- mony, that you really imagine you have come upon old friends and are having a chat and romp with old-time neighbors. But let us move along to Dai-Butsu, "great Buddha," past pyramidal stones and images, along a hewn-stone walk, up the middle of a broad court ; and there, full in front of us, squatting on a broad cut-stone pedestal, sitting as if in deepest thought, is Buddha, the great and glorious rich bronze Buddha, — the effig}' of him before whom more knees are bent and more heads are bowed in trust and prayer than are bent and bowed before 30 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. any and all other earth-born deities. In grand composure, and with peacefully folded hands, he sits in pose of deepest thought, and from eyes of purest gold looks down upon the world of wor- shippers. This grand image, which has been sitting here seven hundred years, is one of the finest pieces of bronze work in all the world of art, — made by these groping heathen while yet Amer- ica was undiscovered and Europe was black with bigotry. It is a wonderful statue. Would you measure it ? Its height is fifty feet, — a sitting figure, mind you. To go around its base you walk a hundred feet. From point of chin to top of forehead is eighteen feet six inches, and its width from ear to ear is seventeen feet nine inches. Measure an eye — four feet across ; an eyebrow — quite as long ; the nose is three feet ten ; an ear is six feet nine ; the space from knee to knee is thirty-seven feet ; the cir- cumference of thumb, three feet. The head is said to be of gold bronze, and worth a third of a million dollars. The body and limbs are of fine bronze, cast in sheets, two inches thick, and skilfully brazed together and neatly finished at the seams. With- in are stairs, a little chapel, places to sit about. On the floor are four huge bronze lotus leaves, once a part of the image's base, — the same old lotus lily that you see in the Egyptian temples of five thousand years ago; the same lily expressive of more modern faiths ; the same lily of the annunciation that Saint Gabriel holds, as, kneeling in the presence of the timid Vir- gin Mary, he announces there that mystery of gods and men, — the immaculate conception, the mystic coming of the Christ. So does this same bronze lily, that we see here in far-off pagan Asia, or among the sands of hoary Egypt, or in the pictured glories of the Vatican, with its creamy soft-curved petals, ten- derly and closely link together religions old and new, and plainly preach to us in many languages and shrines of peace and love and purity, also of mystic birth. Before this lovely lily leaf have all the great religions bowed ; on the Nile, the Jordan, Ganges, and Euphrates, and by the tawny Tiber, — all have bowed ; and, in one form or another, all continue to bow. Wonderful lily, mysterious lily, — lily of Osiris and of the Dagon Bel ; lily of Buddha ; lily, too, of Christ, — who shall tell us when at first it rooted in the religious heart ; where first it bloomed and gave these earthly children thoughts of peace and hope? JAPAN. 3 1 And yet we have not described the legendary caves and bronzed temple gates on the island Enoshima, whither we were going ; have said not a word of our greeting by the busy host and happy-looking hostess at Katase, nor told how the pretty, laughing, busy daughters showed us our softly matted rooms in the sweet and airy second story ; how they brought pipes and tea, fresh water, dainty towels, dinner, and wooden pillows ; how we bathed in the sea-surf and slept sweetly on our matting. All this, and many things queerly and curiously done, we have not now time or space to tell, but only to say we are quite out of the world that we know about, and in one in which each turn of the eye has a fresh surprise ; where manners are strange and the ways of the people are simple ; where people are plenty and raiment often scarce, — among the merry happy heathen, the mild-mannered children of Adam, who may sin and know it not. 32 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER IV. JAPAN. Tokio, the Eastern Capital. — The American Legation. — Japanese City Life. — Curious Street Conveyances. — Hotels and Restaurants. — A Japanese Printiiig-Otitice. — Type-setting under Difficulties. — The Educational Quarter. — The University of Japan. — The University Library. — Medical Department and Hospital. — The Missionary Quarters. FROM good old Peter Parley we learned that the great city Jeddo was in the Island of Niphon ; and that was all. In these latter days, since the jNIikado has made his capital here, the city has taken the name of Tokio, the eastern capital ; and for a longer space of time the island has been known to the world as Japan. In former times, as to-day, Tokio took rank among the larger cities of the world ; it now contains some six hundred thousand people. It is a second-rate seaport, sev- enteen miles from Yokohama, the principal port of the nation. Between the two places is a well-built double-track railroad over which well-equipped trains run every hour during the day and most of the night, on schedule time of forty-five minutes. The coaches are Japanese, first, second, and third class, having seats upholstered in red leather or cloth, or made of plain wood, according to class. Most of them are "smokers," with open- bottom spittoons, or spit-holes, set into the floor. Most of the natives have learned to sit upon the seats as we do, but some prefer to squat upon the floor or seats in Oriental fashion. About the first thing to be done in Japan, after arriving at Yokohama, is to go up to Tokio, the home of the Mikado and of the American minister ; for without the aid of both these func- tionaries your trip must be confined to the treaty limits, — a few miles beyond the seaports. The passports you get from the Secretary of State at Washington have no value whatever in aid- ing your inspection of interior Japan, While the Japanese can go anywhere he pleases in America or Europe, no American or JAPAN. 33 European can go where he pleases in Japan. This seems to be a one-sided sort of treaty, but it is a fact ; and as the Japanese authorities very kindly furnish any extent of passport you may ask for through your minister, the regulation works no hardship after all. Our legation at Tokio is very pleasantly located in the foreign quarter ; the place is of Italian villa style, with commodious offices, and spacious and well-furnished reception and family apartments. The minister finds plenty of work to engage his attention. To a business man it would seem as though our Japanese affairs had not been properly administered. For in- stance, we buy of Japan all her tea and much of her silk crop, which come into our ports free of duty. This and some small items amount to fourteen millions of dollars annually, — mostly for tea, not a car-load of which crop do they place in any other market. In return for this trade, they buy of us about three millions annually, — mostly petroleum product. It is a large part of Minister Hubbard's duty here to see that the eleven millions drawn from our commerce is materially reduced, — not by decreasing our purchases, but by causing this people to feel that it is to their interest to buy more goods in America of such kinds as they are now buying elsewhere. America is in no way compelled to look to Japan for tea or silk, both of which prod- ucts are of inferior quality in that country. Most fabrics now imported into Japan are from Europe. A little more activity over there might tend very materially to regulate this heavy bal- ance against us, and make room for more of our over-products. One thing is certain : nothing will be accomplished in this behalf without effort. Our minister is doing his share, but he needs active co-operation from our enterprising manufacturers. In its general dimensions, Tokio is eight miles wide by ten miles long. It contains several fine large parks, large and small gardens, numerous temples, shrines, and costly tombs, statues, and public fountains. Broad canals cut it through and through, crossed by numerous bridges of wood, stone, and iron. It has a long stretch of double and single track street-railways, equipped with American cars. Gas is used for street and pri- vate light, though on account of expense most of the stores and dwellings use kerosene and oil, in modern lamps or native paper lanterns. The telegraph is much used all over the coun- 3 34 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. try, the lines being erected in the most substantial manner. Telephones, electric bells, and hand-grenades for quenching fire are getting into use, and now and then one sees a bicycle or a tricycle. The streets, some of which are spacious and planted with avenues of shade trees, are mostly narrow, — av- eraging not more than twenty or thirty feet, — and are lighted at night with gas, kerosene, and Chinese lanterns. There is no sewerage ; yet so punctually do scavengers perform their work, that offensive odors are not more noticeable than in our larger cities. Night-soil is a leading factor in this country's agricul- ture ; and whether in city or village or farm-house, or by the country roadside, great account is made of it, and great results achieved. . There are large stores and small ones, the latter very nu- merous, and usually comprising store or shop and dwelling all in one. The display of goods is not so general in the larger stores as with us ; but to each is attached a fire-proof godown, or warehouse, in which the main stocks are kept and from which they are brought when needed. In the smaller shops the goods are much displayed, and the purchaser may sit or stand and make selections ; but visiting larger ones you put off your shoes at the threshold, and put on some ready slippers or go in stocking-feet over the clean matted or brightly polished wooden floors, to do your trading. The soiled soles of boots, shoes, clogs, or san- dals are not to enter Japanese dwelling, shop, store, shrine, or temple. You may keep your hat on as much as you please, — native men and women rarely cover their heads at all, — but look well to your foot-gear ; for nails and dirt that mar and soil the floor and mats must be left at the portal. What a world of labor, patience, toil, and trouble such a custom saves ! The street transit service is abundant. There are street-cars, bashas (a sort of two-horse omnibus), jiiirikishas, kagas (sus- pended baskets), in which the public may ride about ; or you may take the street afoot, — side, middle, anywhere you like. Sidewalks are an exception, and are confined to more fashiona- ble streets, but are not much used. For all purposes of rapid locomotion, the jinrikisha is the thing. The brawny, fleet- footed coolie (the word is Hindostanee, kuli, " slave " ), puts him- self between the thills, and takes you about at a jog trot or rapid run with speed and safety. Put two coolies tandem to your JAPAN. 35 cart, and you fairly fly. Wishing to go one night to a quarter of the city called Oyvveno, some six miles from our Seiyoken, the four karumas made the whole distance, through crowded streets, dashing over bridges, flying around sharp corners, part- ing the crowd with shouts and screams, and setting us down inside of forty minutes. Landaus and coupes are rare upon the streets, being used only by the dignitaries ; and before them runs the lively betto, who clears the crowd and opens up the way. A city of some six hundred thousand people, and but a single hotel, and not a spire to be seen ! The Seiyoken is the only hotel at which you may register, sit on chairs at the table, sleep upon a bedstead, and live in some measure as at home. There is a restaurant on a mixed plan, and a European club- house ; but the inns are almost entirely native, where you eat upon the floor and sleep right where you eat. In our country raids we have to do this way, and in time one may come to like it. With all the rest, you must feed yourself with chopsticks, — a feat in gastronomic jugglery in which I have not yet become adept. I can hold the sticks, if I hold them quite still ; but any attempt to manage the things seems sure to bring disaster. Grabbing at a mouthful of rice or fish, the sticks slip crosswise, and oftener the morsel goes flying to the floor or on one's lap than it reaches its intended destination. It requires nerve to eat with chopsticks. Any hesitation, the least lapse of nerve or joint or muscle, flings your food into the most unexpected places. Early education counts more in the use of chopsticks than any one would think. At first sight it seems simple enough, but to do it well is extremely difficult. The novice should not attempt it before company. Casting about the city one day, and taking in the many sights, — museums, street shows, exhibitions of strength, and what not, — we fell back on first principles and wandered to a news- paper office. They have plenty of newspapers here, said to be good, and well worth reading ; but for reasons of my own I don't read the Tokio papers. After a thirty years' newspaper career one should be quite content to quit that sort of reading. But halting our ka?'itmas at the door of the " Nichi-Nichi Shin- bun " (Daily News), we went in. The door was twenty feet wide. Behind a low counter sat five clerks. Passing one of 2,6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. them our card, we were told that the proprietor and editors had gone home. Asking to be permitted to step into the press- room, a boy was kindly called to conduct us. The press-room was on the same floor, and contained four or five treadle job presses, all at work, and two steam-power news presses, one of which was running. They were of English make, without " flies ; " one man to feed white paper, and another to receive and pile the printed sheets. The edition was from eight to ten thousand, according to demand. The paper is delivered by carriers, at §8.50 a year. We were then shown into the type-setting room, upstairs. It was a large room., like too many other printing places in all countries, — cluttered up with boxes, tables, stands, and all sorts of rubbish, pitched about in needless confusion. The whole printer class is alike. I have been in their dens in every land and continent, and find them quite the same, — almost always wanting in order and cleanliness of room and appurte- nances. Just why printers should be thus content to delve in dirt and confusion is not for me to say ; but that is what the average printer does. The chief feature of the " Shinbun " ofiice was its type-case, for there was only one case of body type. And such a type- case ! Shade of Benjamin Franklin, what a case ! Suppose we measure it. It is divided, for utility, into two sections slop- ing toward an alley five feet wide. Each section is four feet wide by thirty feet long. Four feet by sixty ! There 's a news case for you. This is divided into small compartments, or boxes, into which the type is laid in regular piles, — several piles of different letters in the same box, — with faces all towards the compositor, and " nicks " all one way. In the alley are ten or twelve compositors, — mostly boys, big and little. Each holds a wooden " stick," with brass rule. The type are all of a size ; the " stick " is not set to the measure of the column, but to about half that measure — it being the business of other work- men to impose the lines in columns, take proofs, and make up forms. Now, then, for the tj^pe-setting. Armed with sticks and rules, the dozen compositors read a line or two of the " copy " in a sing-song voice, each rushing to some box far or near for the first-needed letter, then back ten or twenty feet for the second JAPAN. 37 one ; all are on the lively move, — rushing and skipping to and fro, right and left, up and down, chasse, balance to partners, swing the corners, up and back, singing the copy, catching one letter here, another there, prancing and dodging, humming and skipping, — a promenade, cotillon, Virginia reel, raquet, and all hands around, upon the same floor at the same time, and the same dancers in each, — a perfect babel of noise and confusion, yet out of confusion bringing printed order. It was a sight to be seen, — twelve lively printers setting type from one case ! " How many different characters are there in this case? " we asked our guide. Then our guide asked the printers, the print- ers asked the foreman, but none could answer better than to say, " Nobody knows, sir ; nobody knows. Many thousand." Later on we repeated the question to a more intelligent person, who said, " At least fifty thousand." Japanese printing is mainly done in Chinese characters. That will account for the remarkable size of the case, and the racing to and fro of the compositors. Just why they intoned their copy all the while was not made clear to us, further than the remark that it was the custom. The price paid for composition depends, as else- where, on quantity and quality of work performed, the best of the compositors earning about thirty dollars a month. By this time it had become known that there were strangers about, and the gentlemanly editor of the " Romanji Zasshi " ap- peared and kindly invited us to his private office. The " Ro- manji Zasshi " is a small quarto literary sheet, printed in Roman type, and published in the interest of a movement now being made among prominent Japanese to substitute the Roman for Chinese characters. This gentleman kindly conducted us to the office of Mr. G. Fukuchi, proprietor of the " Nichi-Nichi Shinbun," who introduced the editors, with whom we spent a very agreeable half-hour. IMr. Fukuchi had fair command of the English language, and was fully conversant with newspaper matters. He had been printing the " Shinbun " several years, found it a good business, and is very anxious to have the Roman alphabet adopted by the powers of Japan. " For in type-setting alone," said he, " it would make in my expenses a difference of thirty-three per cent." He had tried to print a weekly edition of his paper for country circulation, but was quickly discouraged 38 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. by the fact that there came a rapid falling-off in city subscrip- tions, too many city readers being content with a weeldy instead of a daily paper. Tokio monopolizes the Japan newspaper business ; there being only one other point, Kofu, in eastern Japan, where news- papers are printed. The masses of the people are able to read in their own way, but comparatively few can grasp the full flow of Chinese characters. In point of illiteracy, the statistics place this nation at only seven per cent, or next to Bavaria, which is the lowest on the list. Of great interest in Tokio is the educational quarter, — the University of Japan, through which we were conducted by Pro- fessor Waddell, of the civil engineering department. Tokio is a city of schools, — common schools which all children must attend ; mission schools of the various evangehcal sects ; private schools where arts, sciences, and language are taught ; all crowned by the Imperial University, established under the new order of affairs. This university has about two thousand students, under the charge of about eighty professors, who teach from four to five hours daily, at a salary of $4,000 each. The campus is within the city, and comprises about one hundred acres of high ground, formerly the private property of one of the daimios, or feudal lords. Some of the departments have large and commodious modern buildings of brick and stone. The library comprises over 150,000 volumes, 60,000 of which are English, German, and French. And here let me stop to record the fact that what we are pleased to term the pagan country of Japan — a country with less than one half as much arable land as the State of Iowa — devotes $9,000 a year to the development of her university library of 150,000 volumes. The medical department is ample and much patronized. It is of the so-called " regular " school, with large facilities for clinic and laboratory work. Connected with it is a spacious hospital, in which are treated many patients. The rooms of the several wards are commodious, abounding in air and light, and all fully equipped with comfortable beds and other needed appurtenances. Sewerage there is none ; yet for downright cleanliness and entire absence of all offensive odors, the university hospital of old Japan may safely challenge com- parison with any in the world. We went from ward to ward and japan: 39 room to room, among the beds of the sick and suffering ; yet we found nothing in the least degree offensive to the smell. The medical museum, also, with its countless specimens, its doleful souvenirs of fell disease and death, was as positively clean and free from any impure odor as your nicest sitting-room or parlor. The amphitheatres and places for dissection and vivi- section were in the same good order. It was most remarkable ; and we came away thinking that if cleanliness be next of kin to godliness, surely there is but one short step in this far-away land from earth to heaven. The Japanese Government is making, out of its own material, studious, efficient men, — men of letters and of science, doctors, surgeons, lawyers, engineers ; filling their country with new thoughts, new energies and activities. For nearly twenty years this good work has been progressing. Twenty-five — yes, fifteen — years ago the life of a foreigner, unaccredited, might not have been worth a rush in Tokio ; now one may go where he wills, and be welcome. Molesting no one, he will be treated with courteous kindness and be made to feel as much at ease as any- where in the most favored lands. Hitherto all cost of tuition and much of the general support of students at the university has been borne by the government. To induce bright young men to prepare themselves for the trades and professions, the imperial treasury has been open wide for all these years. Now that the plant is well started, and the people see that the fruit is good, the government has fixed a tuition rate, just now going into effect, of about twenty dollars yearly ; helping only such with board and lodging as are poor in pocket, leaving the rich to provide for themselves. We spent some hours at the missionary quarters. Are the missionaries doing any good in Japan, — making any impres- sion on the old religion? You hear these and similar questions often asked. The answer will depend somewhat upon who makes it. Let us step into Dr. Gardiner's Episcopal school at Tokio. He has a school of young men and women, whom he is fitting for Christian lives and work. They are taught to speak and read in our tongue, and to become familiar with the Bible and with Christian thought. The Doctor feels confident that good and permanent work is being done for his church ; and every missionary will tell you the same, — that Christian thought 40 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and action are well begun here. The school buildings are good, and the homes of the mission people as good as any in Tokio, — well supplied with home-like comforts. This is all as it should be. The churches should not ask missionaries to go abroad to live in hovels, and to suffer for food, raiment, or pleasant sur- roundings, or even for luxuries ; and so far as we have seen or heard, none of them do. We have asked others than mission- aries what the work amounted to as far as they might know, and have to say the report has not been favorable, Whether true or not, the missionaries are accused of leading lives of sunny ease, — living in the best of houses, surrounded by servants, taking to labor sparingly, having far more of this world's temporalities than does the average contributor to the mission fund. Such answers, and still harsher ones, come from our own people, — not from the natives, — from merchants, men of the professions, men of the sea, men of the press and of the diplomatic service. Possibly we have been unfortunate as to inquiries ; possibly the mission people have no good reason to expect friendly indorse- ment from Europeans and Americans. Yet one thing is certain : we are no whit wiser than when we put the first question to a Yankee who had spent many years in China : " What effect is Christianity having upon the old religion of Buddha and Confucius?-" He replied : " About as much as a flea on the back of an elephant." Again, we asked of a mission man long in the Chinese land : " What effect is the Christian mission-work having in China? " Without hesitation he answered : " Tlie leaven we are placing there will, in God's own time and favor, leaven the entire loaf." JAPAN. 41 CHAPTER V. JAPAN. Among the Mountain Temples. — The Holy City of Nikko. — A Ride along the Queen's Highway. — Tree-Planting in Japan. — Processions and Festivals. — Gorgeous Temples and Mighty Images. NIKKO is a holy city, about a hundred miles from Tokio, in a mountainous district two thousand feet above the sea. It is a place of shrines and temples, tycoon tombs, and most curious ecclesiastic developments. The exultant Neapoli- tan counsels us to " See Naples and die." The Genoese, with better sense, says, " See Genoa and live." And now comes the Japanese critic and says, " Until you have seen Nikko, never say beautiful." On the margin of my Murray a friend has written : " To visit Japan and not see Nikko would be like going to India without seeing the Taj Mahal." So, summing up the testimony in the case, we decided to waste no time before seeing the beautiful precinct. The road was terrible. But it was all the Empress's fault. The progressive Mikado, or emperor of the two hundred and twenty big and little islands of Japan, — all together about the size of Dakota Territory, — has an empress, who proposed some months ago to make a visit to Nikko to see the priests and temples, as the dutiful wife of a direct descendant of Deity should most certainly do. In order that her carriage wheels might roll smoothly, a mandate went forth that these twenty-five miles of generally poor road should be put in perfect order. Hence we found the regular road, which for most of the way is lined on either side by noble overarching forest-trees, in a per- fect state of siege. What with much ditching and more loose dirt, piles of broken rock and more piles of sand and gravel, the grand old avenue between the tall trees the priests or daimios had wisely planted there three hundred years ago was a total wreck ; and travel was compelled to take itself just outside the trees, into the deep mud filled with the spreading roots. The 42 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. soil, generally damp, was now aggravated by heavy rains. We do not so much mind mud or roots when taken separately, but encountered together, in almost unlimited quantities, they are rather trying ; and whether we go in a two-horse basha, as we are sorry to say we did, or return by jinrikisha, as we had to, the road developed more humiliation than any we had ever tried. The basha (the word is from ba, " horse," and s/ia, "wheel ") is a four-wheeled, thoroughbraced, fore and aft vehicle, with thin canvas top. Ours was drawn through the slush and constant rain by a pair of native ponies of the pointed gothic sort, much galled and over-whipped. Nine dollars was the price, — not of the outfit, that were extortion, but of the ride. Starting out, it soon came to pass that the clap-trap affair would not carry us and our baggage, so a ''rikisha and two coolies were employed at two dollars more, and away we went. Light-laden as we were, the team was sometimes stalled ; but in time it got us there. And for all this trouble of the dreadful road we have to blame the queen. "Do these 'rikisha men ever swear?" The consul, who evidently considered any amount of Buddhistic profanity excus- able under such infliction, was disappointed when Matsuda, our native guide, told him that Japanese never swear. They have afflictions and many faults, but they have not yet learned that vile habit which, we grieve to say, attaches most to that religion that claims to be the best. But then we must wait until the Christian stove-pipe and delusive carpet- tack have been introduced. If Buddhism can stand those demons of immor- ality, then may we call our missionaries home, and open wide our doors and homes to missions from Japan. But the road to Nikko — let us say no more about the fifteen mortal hours of rain and mud and cramps and untold disgust. The coolies were active, — full of chatter and jollity all the way ; the tea-house people greeted us warmly, bringing pots of fresh hot tea and plates of candied rice-cakes ; and black-teethed wives and chattering daughters sat around and watched and laughed and brought more, chattering merrily the while, bidding us welcome, and saying the good-byes as though we were old friends of the family. The most charming feature of the route is the long and mag- nificent avenue of conifers, — their stately tapering trunks reach- JAPAN-. 43 ing far towards the sky, and stretching all the way along, broken only by the several country villages. Three hundred years of growth have given them great beauty and high commercial value. None of these trees are felled, save as the winds uproot them. Tree-planting seems to be a part of the religion of Japan, as two must be planted for every one cut down. A httle of this religious sentiment would be of untold value to our United States. There is a single hotel in Nikko, and cheery, soft-matted chambers awaited us, with dining-room fronting upon the sec- ond-story veranda, which fronts the oblong neatly kept and foun- tained court. We dined abundantly. Mock-turtle soup, brook trout fresh from the rushing mountain streams, fresh roast chicken, delicious beef, with wheaten bread and strawberry jam, made us forget the toils of our journey and prepared us for a night of most refreshing slumber. These Nikko shrines and temples I find it almost impossible for me to describe ; and I have looked through several books in vain for some paragraph that might convey to other minds some adequate idea of what they look like. They are siii ge?ieris ; there is nothing in architecture with which to compare them. But it may be safely stated that in richness of carved wood, lacquer, bronze, solid gold mountings, sacred urns and lamps and movable appliances, in painted screens, rich gilding, and over-abundant ornament, they well claim precedence of any in the world. They are not stately like Christian cathedrals ; con- tain no marbles or precious stones ; no walls of stone or brick, no towers, spire, or minaret enter into their construction ; but outside and inside they have a most deft and elaborate system of carving, lacquer, and precious metal work. We were most fortunate in being able to see these gorgeous temples, even to their most sacred places. Bearing a letter from Chief-Justice Miller, of the United States Supreme Court, to Yoshidu Kyonari, second minister of the home office here, and formerly Japanese minister at Washington, we were cordially re- ceived and provided with letters to the governor of the province of Utsunomiya and the priests of the Nikko temples. The gover- nor gave us his kind attention, despatching a special messenger ahead to make all preparations, so that we were received by the Nikko mayor, who tendered us the freedom of the city, and 44 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. announced the order of our observation. He said we were most timely in our visit, as on the morrow would be celebrated, at one of the principal temples, an annual festival in grand procession and ceremonial ; and that, on account of the priests being in- volved in this great feast, it would be better to attend that first and visit the sacred places next day. Next morning we visited the great red lacquer bridge that spans the rushing mountain torrent at the upper end of the pleasant little temple village. From massive stone abutments, supported on the cantilever plan by four octagon monolithic shore piers, — two at each shore, — springs a single span of bright red lacquer work eighty-four feet long by eighteen feet wide. The bridge was built in 1638, for the special use of the shoguns, or tycoons. It was a curious revelation, inasmuch as the principle involved seemed to be identical with that developed in the new canti- lever railroad bridge at Niagara Falls. The latter is of iron, but in construction only an amplification of this one : but this was done two hundred and fifty years ago, and has stood the cen- turies' seasons with only slight repairs. So light and airy a work, thrown so skilfully and yet substantially across these dangerous waters so many years ago, and by a people, too, whom we are pleased to relegate to pagan gloom and ignorance, is a matter full of interest. We copy their thoughts and even patent them as inventions of our own ! Crossing by a secular bridge close by, we are at the foot of the temple hill, up which, by various broad, smooth roads or cut-stone steps, we come unto the holy places, — places of gor- geous temples until within the past few years unprofaned by foreign feet. Proceeding up the country road and along the mountain torrent, we come to the assembled Buddhas, — a long row of seated stone images of the great son of heaven ; hundreds of them seated against tlie bushy bank, moss-grown with age, peeping forth from the thick foliage, sitting there with eyes downcast and features full of deepest calm and saintly thought, — sitting there through all the ages, these gray stone effigies of Buddha, founder of a religion that was old before our era, and numbers yet four hundred million converts ; sitting in calm repose, looking not upon the glories of this world, but down the long deep-shaded aisles of time into the realm of the unknown. Here in the rural stillness, broken only by the foamy mountain JAPAN. 45 waters rushing through the narrow granite gorge, among the bright wild-roses and amid the stooping mountains, is found the earliest home of proselyting Buddhists on Japan shores. But the procession forms at ten o'clock ; and hastening back to the temple steps, we are met by a clean-shaved, silken-robed priest, who bows profoundly as we exchange introductory greet- ings with the officials. It will be an hour yet before the procession moves, so a place of honor is accorded us on the high-priest's alcoved balcony by the high-walled roadside. But before taking it we are conducted to a grand old temple, shrine, and museum, of ultra-sacred temple wares. Along a very wide and cleanly grav- elled way, lined in the middle by a clean-cut granite path, laid bias, we come to very broad and easy granite steps that pass by many a carved stone or fine bronze lantern, up to the threshold of the sacred house. Put off your shoes, for only stockinged feet can enter here. The shining lacquered floor is thickly matted, the mats inwrought with gold. Before a lighted altar, loaded down with vessels of chased gold, of lacquer yet more dear, and richest golden bronze, our worthy conductors fall prone upon their faces ; nor do they stir till we have gone our rounds, defamed the holy places by touch of feet and hands, gazed upon the en- shrined 2;oiden Buddha seated on the burnished golden lotus bloom, felt with our hands the golden life-sized storks, the blooming lotus plants in pots of golden bronze, the golden rice plant, screen work of thick and heavy mesh in solid wires of gold, shrines of purest metals, costly garments, silken sacred rolls written in gilded characters, garments of officiating priests heavy with golden thread and surface needle-work in silk and silver and in golden threads, portraying various churchly scenes. About the altar, within the most sacred place, where but a few years since not even the Emperor of Japan might go, we tread and peer about ; around the carved and gilded cloisters, into the holy places, almost guiltily we went, feeling after all that we had no right to be there, no right to inflict ourselves upon their sanctities. A wonderful place ! Without and within of per- fect finish, bright with strange jewelled decorations and carved projections — every point, from stone sill to the upper cornice, crowded with carving, lacquered work, and works of gold and bronze. Wonderful in their stalwart fierceness are the tiger- dragons, the devil-giants, the myriad fearful forms that guard 46 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the doors and gates, whose crystal eyes glare down on the in- truder as if to wither him on the spot ; whose every tooth and fang is clear and bright, springing from fiery jaws as if to crush and swallow us alive. Up and down the broad wrought granite steps, along broad avenues of stately trees and terraces, we come back to the sacred way and to the balcony where we are to wit- ness the gi-eat festival, — the massing of ancient temple warriors and saints, dragons and banners, and the great golden shrine or ark in which abides the earthly spirit of the Eternal God. There are church festivals everywhere. Religious sects abuse each other, and condemn each other's adherents to all manner of pain and torture ; but all agree that there must be festivals. These outward demonstrations — processions, picnics, sociables, and Sunday-schools — are absolutely necessary to sectarian ex- istence, far more so than the sermon prepared for the dull ears of the older people, who, while they hear it or go peacefully to sleep under it, often do very much of their own thinking. But the show-pieces of the church catch the eye and ear of all, and stamp upon the minds and hearts of the young impressions that time or argument can never efface. Though this is not a Christian country, it has a religion, priests, places and objects of worship, festivals, and processions ; they pray orally, on paper, and by wheels ; they believe in the efficacy of prayer and miracle cures ; they give liberally of their money to build churches and shrines ; and I have heard that a select band of Buddhist priests is now being thoroughly educated in the English tongue, as preliminary to a substantial missionary movement on America and Europe. This may strike one as rather queer ; but when we reflect that Mormon missionaries have built up their sect out of Christian material, and are con- stantly adding more recruits in spite of all opposition, what may we not expect of this Buddhistic movement? But we were going to the procession and festival. Passing beneath a lofty gateway flanked by numerous banners of strange device, we enter the grounds of the high-priest. The Bud- dhistic priest, like his Catholic brother, does not marry ; but this does not prevent him from having an elegant house and com- fortable surroundings, for he must eat and entertain. We are conducted to the entrance, where all shoes are laid aside, greet- JAPAN. 47 ings are made, and cards exchanged, after which we are shown through the house to an open-fronted room, — a spacious alcove overlooking the broad approach to the temple, some twenty feet below. This fine apartment, divided into three portions by low screens, accommodates our party, the dignitaries of state, and the members of the French ambassador's family. For our refreshment, tea and confections are placed at our disposal on small lacquered tables scarce twelve inches high. The sacred way upon which we look is a hundred and twenty feet wide, carefully smoothed and guttered with dressed stone. The embankment walls on either side are eight feet high, of carefully faced and closely jointed stones of odd sizes, laid without mortar. Over beyond are the spacious grounds of the priests of another temple and shrine that we had just been shown. The temple drum — a large barrel-shaped affair — is loudly tapped, and up past our point of observation rush a group of lads, bearing freshly broken boughs, with which, amid much shouting, they lash the road. Laughing in high glee the well- dressed children follow, gathering the broken twigs and scattered leaves. This is done with great ringing of bells and beating of the temple drum, for the purpose of purifying the road and driv- ing off such evil spirits as might be lurking around to interfere with the holy train about to pass that way. After such precau- tions, no devils dare come to trip the feet of pious worshippers. It is a queer proceeding, to our barbarian minds ; yet you may have read how Christian people of by-gone days — and even now in some parts of the world — made use of bells, trumpets, and other noisy things, to exorcise the Devil or his many imps, who are supposed to take fiendish pleasure in annoying the chil- dren of light ; and how the sweet-toned Sabbath bells, now rung or tolled to call us forth to church, or to announce a death or burial, were at first used to warn away the prowling imps of Satan. The wide and high-walled sacred way has become crowded. The aged and the young, of all sorts and conditions, in holiday attire, are out to see the show. It is a curious crowd to look upon, — full of animation, and well warmed with bright and pleasing bits of color. Not a hat or bonnet is to be seen. The music from the temple terrace announces the moving of the procession. In slow and solemn measure the priests and people 48 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. move down the temple court, and underneath the great gray torii, or granite gateway, nearer and nearer, to the beating ol the monstrous temple drum. As the cortege approaches our out- look, section after section halts before us as if to be reviewed. Each detachment presents some new and pleasing feature. All are dressed in costumes of two hundred years ago, — costumes that are carefully preserved within the temple godowns for such occasions. The procession is not so much to represent the present as the past, when the great Shoguns ruled. First comes a company of much-sworded infantry, followed by men in rare old netted mail and gilded armor, others with bright lances, and more with flaunting banners. There also comes the monstrous tiger, with glaring eyes and much display of hungry teeth, — a great stuffed effigy, borne upon the unseen heads and shoulders of six men ; then come musicians playing strange tunes on ancient instruments ; priests mounted on horses richly caparisoned in gilt and heavy silken trappings, attended each by large retinues on foot ; then men who bear aloft on heavy framework more gilded banners of curious design ; young people in queer-shaped tunics ; a troop of saintly women dressed in richly woven fab- rics ; more horses, men, and still more gilded banners : and now, amid the shouting crowd, upon a heavy framework borne upon the shoulders of seventy sturdy men, comes the massive golden shrine of the god of the occasion, who scatters coin upon the road, for which the children scramble. The great and costly shrine holding the spirit of the deity stands still before us. The music increases ; the people shout and bow their heads ; the gorgeous shrine gleams in the sunlight, and moves on again toward the lower temple, where sacred ceremonies of offerings and presentations are to be held. Of course we leave our seats, resume our shoes, and follow on. The procession enters another large court, where the shrine of the god finds rest in a special temple, whose broad hinged doors are swung upwards, fronting another edifice some thirty feet away, the sides of which are also opened wide. Now come prayers and offerings. Richly robed priests from an inner apartment pass forth seventy sacred vessels, each laden with offerings of carefully prepared food. Over their mouths are bands of paper inscribed with a prayer, worn that human breath may not be breathed upon the holy offerings. The sacred ves- JAPAN, 49 sels are of richest workmanship, in chased gold, golden lacquer, inlaid bronze, — each dish a costly treasure ; and these are passed one by one unto the high-priests, who bear them on with formal step, placing them one by one, with low obeisance, upon the long lacquer table in front of the deity. This ceremony occupies a full half-hour. The offering is made amid a con- stant flow of plaintive music from the priestly band ; the chief high-priest, in silken robes, kneels prone upon the richly woven mat, fronting the offerings and the god, and offers suppli- cations ; the holy women perform a posture dance ; the priests assemble two by two upon the square stone pavement between the offerings and the holy shrine, and, with much formal postur- ing in the open air, complete the presentation ceremonial. Meantime many servants move among the general throng, handing to each a neat package of food, — colored rice-cake and confections, — that all the multitude of worshippers may go away well fed. We hoped to be remembered in this churchly picnic ; but somehow, though we worshipped with the rest in rapt attention, and were sure we were quite as hungry as the others, we got no colored rice-cake. This was the only mistake we noticed in the whole performance. The ceremony over, the god no doubt well pleased with the devotions and liberal offer- ings of his dutiful people, the shrine was lifted up again by the many stalwart men and borne back in triumph to the other temple. The crowd dispersed, the many costumes and para- phernalia were returned to the sacristy, and the great annual feast we were so fortunate as to witness was duly finished. In all respects it was orderly, ample, and impressive. While we could understand but faintly its many aspects and meanings, yet surely the devotees were to all appearance earnest, prayerful, and devoted. Is this idolatry? So we call it. But are pagans the only ones who bow to shrines and pray and posture before efifigies? "Why do your people bow to these wooden things?" the duke asked of Matsuda, our native guide, — a sometime protege, he says, of Dr. Morgan Dix. "Why do Christians kneel before crucifix and crosses? " was the apt rejoinder. Matsuda says the Doctor wanted him to become a Christian. He was willing to be a Christian. But he was Shin-to man 4 50 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. too, and Buddha man too. " Shin-to religion good, Buddha re- ligion good. Christian religion good ; all three religions good if men be good." Matsuda is rather polytheistic ; but he is a good cook, a good guide, dresses like a white man, has a young wife and pretty baby, and so we don't try to disturb his peaceful mental poise. The next day after the procession, as arranged by one of the Mikado's ministers and the Mayor of Nikko, we set forth early, and in their company, to inspect the great temples and shrines not yet seen. I really cannot tell of the sanctuary glories that were opened up to us that morning. They far exceed my pow- ers of description. We stood and gazed and wondered, — dazed, like one in fairy dreamland. Gate after gate, terrace above terrace, stair succeeding stair, shrine, temple, and pagoda, fountains and rushing waters, stone and bronze lanterns, bur- nished gold work without and within, gorgeous gold bronze vases, plates and trimmings, costliest lacquered work and most deftly wrought ornaments and vessels were on either hand, — whole buildings one entire mass of carving and of precious metals inlaid in wood, from the stone foundation to the gilded gable griffin, perfect without as within. Whether we enter and visit the inmost shrines rarely trod by other than the high-priest's feet, or stand by the high-priest's side, as, with reverence most profound, he unlocks and discloses to our profane eyes the cen- tral golden Buddha, upon whose calm and impressive face not even common priests have ever looked ; whether we climb the several hundred broad and neat hewn steps through massive doors of old-time bronze, or view the golden storks, the golden potted rice, and the lotus plants ; whether we sit with the wor- shipping magnates of the state and church before the ever- lighted golden lamps, or smell the never-fading incense, — yet are we entranced in fairy land, among the glint and glamour of a state I know not of and cannot at all describe. For several hours we wandered about among those jewel buildings, — among vast walls of finely wrought unmortared stone, and monolithic monuments, and unique bronze ; amid swift-running mountain water sluices, and monstrous monolithic granite water-tanks, gazing at huge wrought lanterns, the great revolving Bible library, carven pillars, red pagodas, curious dragon heads ; until, becoming more and more bewildered at japan: 5 1 the magic scene, we bowed adieus, expressed our hearty thanks, and came away. Do you like figures, — • to know the cost of things ? Well, then, some curious calculator has been figuring upon the cost of these great structures, stone, wood, and metal work, in this little en- closure of sacred Buddha worship ; and even at the low price of labor here when the work was done, he makes the amount some fifteen millions of dollars. If it all were made to-day, the cost would be double that amount. And all this in delightful little Nikko, — gem of mountain temples, yet but a mere speck in the temple aggregation of this crooked little island so lately opened up to foreign gaze. 52 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER VI. JAPAN. A Jinrikisha Ride to Kof u. — A Bit of Earthquake Experience. — The Holy Mountain of Fuji. — Among the Silk-Workers. — A Boat-Ride down the Rapids. — A Japanese Pleasure Resort. — No Cattle on a Thousand Hills. — A Race of Vegetarians. AFTER travelling forty-two miles over a sticky road three hours in the morning, and an afternoon pull over Sasago Pass, 3,500 feet high, we might be excused for going early to our silken couch. Silken couches are what they have for distinguished guests at the tea-houses all the way from Hioji to Kofu, — one of the best-known silk-growing regions in all Japan. Upon the neatly matted guest-room floor they throw a thinnish mattress stuffed with raw cotton, with top of quilted silk, on which we should sleep were it not that we carry our own white sheets. Over the top sheet they throw a silken coverlet thickly padded and neatly quilted. It is a quilt, and yet not a quilt ; for it has short and flowing sleeves and velvet collar, and when worn as a dressing-gown it really trails the floor and in- creases one's circumference from forty-five to five-and-seventy inches ! That is the sort of thing all stylish landladies in this country bring out for a tourist's coverlet ; and aside from the mere gorgeousness of the outfit, it is rather comfortable, not to say impressive, and the fashion here withal. As stated, we retired early and slept rather late for men of enterprise. Crawling from beneath our silken robes at six o'clock, I sallied forth along the garden corridor to snifi" the open air and look for sunrise. Standing there in thin pyjamas, all of a sudden something seemed to give way beneath my naked feet, and to support myself I reached for a wooden col- umn. Then the floor began to lift and every joint of the house's frame and floor to squeal and squeak as if in sudden pain ; and as it rocked about, the people of the house, servants JAPAN. 53 and guests, were heard jumping from their rooms, — the old folks calling, young ones screaming, all hands running for the street. AMiile the hubbub was subsiding and things seemed in- clined to take a rest, our guide rushed in to say, " The earth- quake finish, sir; no danger now, sir; danger all ov^er ! " In an hour of madness, out upon the ocean, we had expressed the foolish hope that our ship might meet a typhoon. Of course we did n't mean it ; but the typhoon came and bounced us about for many a dubious hour. Later on, as some one spoke of the lively earthquakes Japan is wont to have in winter months, we hoped aloud that we might have an earthquake shock to put upon our string of odd experiences. But as the winter months were yet a good way off, and we should be in India ere they came, the wish seemed to be an idle one. How- ever, the spirits of the lower world must have heard it, for the earthquake came. It is a queer sensation. The ground does n't lift more than an inch or two, but the motion is so unusual that one does n't relish it. Sometimes earthquakes bring sad disaster here, causing great loss of life ; not that the earth opens wide and swallows people up, but it throws down houses, and they take fire from burning lamps and make a general wreck. Some twenty years ago, in the Oxaka quarter of Tokio, an earthquake shook down some hundreds of houses one dark night, causing the death, mostly by fire, of twenty thousand people. Hence, when the earth begins to quake, the people rush to the streets for safety. Since the introduction of kero- sene lamps and oil, fires arising from earthquakes have very much increased in number. As stated, we are in Kofu. We came all the way from Tokio — eighty-five miles — by jinrikisha. Our retinue is four ''riki- shas, — two for ourselves, one for our guide, and another for our baggage and provisions. For each carriage there are two brawny coolies, selected for their strength and endurance, — nine servants in all, and four extra ones to help us over the two high steep passes of Kobotoki and Sasago, usually made on kagos, borne on men's shoulders. We intended to make the distance in two and a half days, and very nearly did so ; indeed, we might have made it in less, but for a rainstorm that took place the second day, causing the first pass to be slow and difficult. These coolie men are powerful fellows, who, along a smooth, 54 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. hard road, will take you fifty miles in twelve hours. Starting on the trip, they were fairly clad, — cotton breeches reaching half way to the knee, a cotton spencer, open in front, lapping the breeches at the hips, a broad, flat bamboo hat three feet across to serve as protection from the sun and rain, straw sandals on their feet, and a tight blue cotton band about their heads. But as we got away from the city and reached the less exacting country regions, their clothes began to drop, — first hats, then jackets, lastly breeches, till our swarthy coolies. Mercury-like and jubilant, went racing over country roads and through the village streets with scarcely clothes enough on them to wad a gun. Though proud of their speed, we felt awfully scandalized, and expected to see the country folk run in and shut their doors ; but observing they cared nothing for it, we concluded not to enter any protest, especially as we noticed many more in the same state of open-air undress. These coolie fellows know no other kind of work than this. They eat rice and fish six or eight times a day, are tough as whip-cord, and, put to their best, with large pay, will make ninety miles in six-and-twenty hours, including stoppages. The second day of our journey they wore out six pairs each of straw sandals, so rough and stony was the mountain road ; yet not a fretful word or unwill- ing look or gesture escaped them. In the midst of the most trying difficulties they are cheerful and merry, chatting away, and giving each other a kindly lift ; they seem never off their good behavior, and are always ready to start or stop at the word. Falling and getting bruised upon the sharp stones is all the same as being on a smooth road, as far as any manifestation is noticed. " Why don't these fellows swear like Christian folks when they get hurt? " we foolishly ask our guide. " Buddhist not swear, sir, — Buddhist not like Christian to swear, sir," was his sensible answer ; for, with all their pagan practices, they have not to answer for that shameful habit which seems to attach mostly to the Latin race, — the habit of profanity. The way we came is full of picturesque interest. Mounting the first pass, the grand old Holy Mountain of Fuji bursts glo- riously into view. Fuji is a long extinct volcano, 15,700 feet above the sea, rising grandly far above the verdure-clad envi- JAPAN. 55 ronment of mountain steeps that form its noble foot-hills. All day long, and all the next, is Fuji boldly pictured, — an ever- present type of mountain grandeur. We dechned to undertake its tiresome ascent, counting it quite as well, and far more easy, to greet the rising sun and tell our beads on less exalted ground. To visit shrine-topped Fuji, however, either as toiling tourist or pious pilgrim, is said to be a special duty. It is really very hard work, as it can only be done on foot, and takes three days. The way to Kofu is lined with mulberry-trees and silk works. From nearly every wayside home or village house comes the click-clack of the busy loom. Here nimble fingers of mothers and daughters unwind the soft cocoons, prepare the warp and woof, and weave the long, bright, silken webs. The fabrics are varied in dye, design, and texture ; some are coarse, some me- dium, others soft and delicately fine and tasteful. Every stage of silk manipulation is managed here at home, from raising the cocoons to spinning, dyeing, and weaving. The people also raise their own cotton and make their own cotton goods. Wool and woollens are rather rare, as these people keep no sheep. To the extent of their apparel, no people are better dressed. Rags and squalor you will not see. At a country village on our way, a festival was being held to celebrate the opening of a fine new bridge across the furious mountain stream and gorge. From all about, the people came along the road in holiday attire ; and scarce a person could we see — from bright-eyed little babies carefully pocketed upon parental backs, to children afoot, and adults of both sexes — but was dressed in silken goods, varied in color, but otherwise of nearly uniform style, the stockings all of white, protected by straw or plain wooden clogs. Not a head was covered among the women, and only now and then a man wore a light braided hat of straw. Every head was jetty black and oiled, — the women's hair tricked out with pretty pins and combs. Some children wore very bright, fantastic 'hues, carefully arranged ; while among the women, young and old, the obi, or long and broad silken band worn about the waist and arranged in a broad square knot behind, was the chief at- traction of the costume, gayly lighting up the closely packed crowd. No jewelry is worn and no leather foot-gear ; the ears, nose, breast, and fingers are free from rings and trinkets so com- 56 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. mon among other peoples. They wear no mitts or gloves, and their small and shapely hands and plump fore-arms are quite exposed. Some bright young belles strive to improve nature with rouge upon their lips and white enamel upon their faces and necks ; but this is exceptional, and . is affected chiefly by the gasJm — dancing girls. Taken as a whole, a more neatly, cleanly, decently apparelled crowd is rare. Curious to see strangers from abroad, who rarely pass that way, they crowd around, full of keen-eyed wonder, modest and respectful; and if you jest with the children, they all seem ready for by-play sport, laugh- ing and dodging, full of merry glee. But pat a baby nestling on its mother's back, and call it pretty, and its proud parent beams her thanks and sweetest smiles. Be so impolite as to ask a neatly dressed damsel what her age may be, and, covering her face with both hands, she rushes away screaming with merry laughter, while the men look mildly on, chatting with eacli other. Kofu is a city of 20,000 people and many stores and shops. Here are several fine modern-looking public buildings, a normal school, an experimental garden in the queer old walled castle grounds, where apples, pears, grapes, peaches, and other fruits imported from the States are being tried and trained. Through these grounds and the wine house we were kindly shown, tast- ing the various fruits and wines. The Catawba grape was very luscious ; the winter apples were fair, but the trees seemed much assailed by moths. Cherries had been abundant, as also peaches. Pear-trees seemed to thrive, but were too thickly planted. The wines were only moderately good, but the peo- ple are just learning how to make them. At the silk works some two hundred girls were reeling off cocoons, — preparing silk in skeins for exportation, largely to the States. These and other industries are springing up at Kofu, a place walled in on every side by high, softly verdured mountain steeps, which stand aside only that the Fuji-gawa may bring its silver waters in and pass them out again. Most of the incoming commerce at this thrifty place must come from Tokio by road, through two narrow passes over which no laden cart can go ; all must be moved on pack horses, a full six days' tramp from market. Leaving Kofu, much freight goes down the rapid river, up which the boats, lightly laden, are wearily pulled again by tracking JAPAN. 57 along the pathless shore or wading the shallow waters. With all these drawbacks, and shut out from the world, Kofu is a very bright and clean and thrifty city, with well-kept streets and excellent improvements. A city it has been for full two thou- sand years or more, with a people proud of their good fortune and their happy seclusion. " Why not have a narrow-gauge railroad to Tokio?" we asked Matsyoro Otto, who showed us through his wine house. " Rail- road not good for Kofu," was all he had to say about it. Sev- eral thousand people in this mountain-walled city gain their living by freighting, by boat and pack horses, by bullock cart and kago ; and to deprive them of this would be counted as disaster. The boats which ply this rapid river are about thirty feet long and five feet beam, very slightly built, the better to stand the action of the stream. Each is manned by four boatmen, — one at each end and two in the waist. The bottoms are so thin and supple that the action of the rushing wave underneath causes them to rise and fall with some two or three inches of vibration. Long bamboo poles are laid on the bottom, and covered with coarse matting to stand or sit upon. Indeed, with so very slight a board between us and the angry current of the many rapids, it seems like something reckless to make the trip ; but boats that men and goods have been carried in for untold time may be safely trusted ; so away we go, our eight strong coolies squatting about us, our vehicles and baggage in a second boat. For one we pay eight dollars ; for another, equally large and well manned, only two. The stream for forty miles is walled in by the high, steep, green-clad mountains, along which none may ride, but which have kindly parted just enough to let ovcc gawa pass, and now and then afford a plat for the hardy boatmen's low thatched dwellings. All day long we pass the brawling rushing rapids, shaken up and sprayed by overleaping white-caps, until the sport becomes monotonous. Contenting ourselves with watching the ever-changing panoramic mountain views, the rocky rifts and curious stone formations brought forth by volcanic fires and forces in the long-gone ages, we while away the hours. The scenery is soft and picturesque, but even with its changing lights and shades one soon feels tired and longs to see a stretch of level land. 58 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. To sleep beside the mountain of Fuji, and see it in the glori- ous morning sunlight, so near and yet so far, was to us a great temptation to mount its back and brow ; but considering the weary way before us, we took seats behind our finely tattooed coolies and swiftly rolled away to the grand old Atami Pass by a new road that lifts us up several thousand feet, through fields and groves and mountain moors, and lets us down again, by countless zigzags, into the quiet little seaside and hot springs resort, the village of Atami, where the ocean view and near-by island gem and cosey-roomed hotel were very welcome. A really lovely place is this close-cooped Atami, a favorite resort of the JMikado ; and here we could have stayed and enjoyed ourselves for a whole week ; but the time-card pushed us on to Miya-no-shita, where, snuggled in among the loveliest and the steepest hills, amid the hot springs, bright cascades, and wildly rushing silver-threaded streams, we halted to rest and think and write in these early October days. Up here among these everlasting hills is a little village, — in fact, there are many little villages ; and here is a fine hotel, where, for the first time in a week's tramp, we sleep upon a proper bed, eat at table d'hote, and dress before a looking-glass. It really seems like getting home again to find so many luxuries together. The Hotel Fujiya is on a mixed plan, — native or for- eign, any way you like ; you may sleep on a mat or in a bed, eat with chopsticks or a silver fork, lounge on a rattan sofa, bathe in spring waters hot or cold, take a native shampoo or have a wash-stand, combs, and towels ; but you can't ride out on anything but chairs hung upon bamboo poles. For four- and-twenty hours the rain came down in torrents, as though it would never stop. Now it is cloudless, warm, and bright ; yet we stay within, and lounge and read and write. You might like to see my rooms in this great straggling, one- story new hotel. See ! This sitting-room overlooks the tidy ter- race above the queer garden park and bright plashing fountains. It is twelve feet square, has eight mats, and two sides filled with sliding window-screens, with eighty fine white paper panes in each. Sliding all these screens back, two sides of my corner room are opened to the outer world ; closing them, the light is shaded but abundant. These Japanese mats are about two inches thick, of regulation size, — oblong, two yards by one. JAPAN. 59 The rooms in every Japanese house must be built to fit the mats, — four, six, eight, ten, or any even number. This is a law strengthened by long custom. Over tlie sliding screens are transom openings. Outside the threshold is a four-foot walk, or endless porch, which is also closed in at night by unlighted wooden screens, leaving around the room a broad, close air- space. The furniture is a writing-table, two chairs, and a rattan lounge, none of which have really any right in this soft-matted room, but they are here to accommodate our sort of people. Adjoining, and separated by silver-papered sliding-doors, is my bedroom, of the same size, with bed and wash-stand, neither of which should have place in such a room. It has the same arrangement as to sliding screens and ventilation ; also a movable screen, clothes-rack, small mirror, some proverb cards of morals, welcome, and good cheer. These rooms have eight-feet ceil- ings and eight doors of exit. All are most scrupulously clean ; for does not their proverb say that " Hell is full of untidy housekeepers "? Braziers of charcoal are used when warmth is needed. Dirty foot-gear is not to come upon these polished floors or soft-textured mats, into which the feet of my alien chair sink cruelly. The chief annoyance one meets with here is the persistent pedler class, who seem infected with the insane idea that we should buy their wooden trash, — -boxes and dishes, skewers and chopsticks, queer cups and candlesticks. We scold them in ways they cannot understand, and drive them away with showers of admonition they will never profit by. The only thing that redeems these troublesome women is their native courtesy, which never seems to fail them. Rude though you may be in getting rid of them, they always keep their bland politeness, and in this teach us what we ought to profit by. Thousands of acres of these surrounding hills, which, steep as they are, have excellent soil and would make fine pasturage for sheep and cattle, are left to entire waste. For what need has the Buddhist of flesh of brute or bird, when they kill no living thing for any use, and such a thing as leather is very little wanted? One sect — for Buddhism, like Christianity, has sects — permits the use of fish and the marriage of priests ; and these permissions are more and more generally availed of. While travelling in the country it is sometimes difficult to pur- 6o A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. chase chickens to be killed for the table ; yet at several places cattle farms have been begun. Not far from here a Yokohama banking firm has opened up a fine stock-farm, to raise cattle for dairy and market purposes, and good success is met. Yet without the demand created by foreigners for beef and butter, cream and milk, there would be little use in cattle farming. The great mass of Japan farm and city people know not meat or butter, milk or cream ; and you may travel here for weeks and months and see no four-footed kind but quiet dogs and bob-tailed cats, and horses and bulls for burden or the thills, and these latter only on the thoroughfares. For hauling heavy loads in the city streets, or less frequented country roads, the human coolie comes always to the front. On his two-wheeled cart he will manage heavy bales, timbers, and stone that would cause some dray-horses to look back over their collars. It is wonderful, the strength these men possess, who live on rice and other vegetables alone, with sometimes a little fish. Let it never more be said that superior strength comes from eating flesh of animals. A Yokohama merchant wagered with an English officer on a test of strength between four coolies and four vigor- ous Highland soldier athletes. These brawny Scots were play- things in the coolies' hands. Their beef and brawn were powerless when matched with the nervy rice-fed heathen. The day may sometime come when these thick-verdured hills will not all run to waste. The better-educated class, who have been abroad, or learned among the foreign element that meat may be eaten with impunity ; that even the partaking of long- banned food does not, as they have been taught, entail disaster ; that the bodies of quadrupeds and fowls do not, after all, perhaps, contain the spirits of dear ones dead and gone, — will gradually work this needed change. The people are learning more and more to wear leather foot-gear ; leather is now used for uphol- stery work, for carriage work, and harness, too, and belting. All these uses are new to the Japanese, and will help develop cattle-raising. It is a fine grape country ; but there is among the farmer class a superstition that grapes bring bad luck, and a farmer will no more raise grapes than many a superstitious Christian would begin an important work or journey on Friday or on Sunday. We have superstitions, too, that no amount of Christian light or baptism has been potent to efface ; let us not, JAPAN. 6 1 then, think strange of our heathen brethren for having some, a trifle different though they be. Buddha and Mahomet were men of strong prohibitory views ; both taught, and bade their disciples teach, that wine of grapes wrought ruin on mankind ; and it is such teaching as this that bans grape-growing here to-day, and in China. India also classes it as baneful business, sure to bring ill-fortune. Buddha said to his followers : " Obey the law ; walk steadily in the path of purity ; touch not intoxi- cating drinks that fire the blood and disturb the reason." Ma- homet said : " O true believers, surely wine and lots (gaming) are an abomination, a snare of Satan ; therefore avoid them ; ab- stain ye from them." No word here about the " stomach's sake," or " for mine often infirmities." The Latin races produce the drunkards of the day, — even those called Christian. But even in these our improving latter days there are found such as quite agree with Buddha and Mahomet, that from the vine springs much of wrong and ruin. 62 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER VII. JAPAN. Kioto, the Western Capital. — Visit to an Old Japanese Castle. — Theatres and Wrestling-Matches. — A Visit to the Green-Room. — More Colossal Idols. — Temples and Museums. — The Contribution-Box. — Crema- tion in Japan. — A Religious Dance. — Champion Roosters and Native Swine. — Freaks of Female Beauty. — Tea-Making and Tea- Drinking. — Last Days in Japan. — Seven Hours at Nagasaki. — An Old-Time Yankee Merchant. — General Grant's Camphor Trees — Good-by to Japan. — Again at Sea. KIOTO is the western capital of Japan, — the home of the ISIikado previous to 1867. Between the eastern capital, Tokio, the present residence of the Emperor, and this point, there is no uninterrupted communication by vehicle. There are several ways of overland travel, but the numerous mountain passes bar all commerce save upon the backs of men or beasts of burden. There is, however, ample communication by water to Kobe, and thence fifty miles by rail. We came by these, and left the rail at Ozaka, to see the sights and resnme jinri/cis/ia rid- ing through the country. Ozaka is a wealthy business place of a quarter of a million peo- ple, with narrow streets abounding in shops, fine modern govern- ment buildings, armory, and mint, and a garrison for five thousand native troops. Japanese troops are dressed, as all officials are, in European costume, and armed with modern implements of warfare. To the traveller, Ozaka has some attractions. There is a single European hotel on the half-native plan, where you may keep your boots on, sleep on a bed, and eat with knife and fork from European plates. The fare is very good, and prices are high. The old-time prices, when one might travel on foot and live on tea-house fare for three or four cents a day, are among the things that were. Now these same cents have grown to dollars. JAPAN. 63 This was formerly the strongest military point in all Japan ; and to visit now its old dismantled castle, with its miles of high stone walls and broad deep moats, is worth a long ride. The castle was built on a low eminence, three hundred years ago, and presents a better idea of ancient native skill in warlike en- gineering than any place upon the island. Such massive granite blocks as were brought from distant quarries and piled into high walls of defence, I have never seen before. In Egypt and Asia Minor they handled, for religious buildings and expressions, much larger ones ; but when here in Japan we come face to face with wrought granite blocks that measure twenty by thirty feet, giving a measurement of more than two thousand solid cubic feet and a weight of one hundred and seventy tons, we gaze with real wonder ; for even now, among the very best of us, such feats in quarry-work and mural strength are rarely undertaken. Yet these simple dark-skinned Japs, with common iron tools, split out these massive stones, and with patient toil, slowly, inch by inch, pushed them for miles on wooden rollers, and reared these massive walls which could withstand every assault save that of modern warfare. Nowhere in well-walled Roman forts or among the cyclopean walls of Grecian citadels are such stones to be seen. The miles of moats are some two hundred feet in width at the foot of the outer walls that rise in gentle curve some sixty feet or more, angled with massive masonry, and all between filled in with rock of random size and shape, smooth- cut and closely jointed without mortar. It was a queer fancy of the wall-builders here to make no range-work in their masonry. Whether fine or coarse, every stone was used with as little waste as possible, making an odd but not ill-looking wall. Most masons destroy much of their stone to obtain perfect range- work. These men saved nearly all. Obtaining permission, we spent some time within the castle walls, — once castle and palace \ now, since fire has ruined all it could, a garrison for troops. Pity it is that a country so small as this, so much shut out from other lands, should have found it necessary to spend so much for feudal ambition. But be the country great or small, in olden time or new, the greatest end and aim of all is how best to defend and best offend ; how best to preserve lives and property ; how best to take our neighbors' lives and lands. Even little Japan to-day — Japan, a kingdom 64 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. whose chiefest strength is the good-will or common courtesy of the great powers, any of which might wipe her off the map in a month — sees fit to put on costly airs, taxing her people smartly to keep a useless standing array of sixty thousand men and a mimic navy at great expense, keeping up a whole system of war and diplomacy ten times beyond its needs. It seems a real shame ; and yet we are not here to prevent it. So long as there are high places to be filled, fat salaries and titles within reach, and ambitions to gratify, there will be no change in these affairs. Pagan or Christian, it is quite the same ; people's toil and treas- ure must stand the cost, and no religion yet has come that men will so embrace and ratify as forever to bury bloody war and safely float the banners of perpetual peace. We write and preach of such millennial times, and, while we talk or hear, plan some new means for more effective war. I quite forgot to say that there was mighty wrestling at Ozaka, which we went to see. A wrestling amphitheatre there seats two thousand people — on mats. It is a daily pastime in the season, employing a wrestling force of some six dozen brawny naked Japs. The show opens at six o'clock in the morning, and lasts till sunset. The people take their lunches and their pipes, and pay four cents' admission, and bargain for a vacant box inside. The house is slightly built of poles and boards and matting. The wrestling stage, some twelve feet square, is in the centre ; it is only a table of earth thrown up five feet, sloped at the sides, and covered with stout, coarse matting. Towards this stage the ground is sloped all around and floored with loose boards or matting. This space is divided up into little boxes, or pens, by bamboo poles tied together at the angles, making a fence about a foot high. Each pen accommodates four or five squatters, and costs according to position. A gallery some eight or nine feet high runs all around the room, and is penned off in the same way. Our " box " in the gallery cost us eighty cents, and gave us room enough for four, climbing the ladder and choosing our places. We were provided with stools to sit upon ; also a pot of tea and tea-cups ; likewise a tobacco hoan, — a lit- tle six-inch box fiirnished with an earthen bowl in which a lump of charcoal burns upon some ashes, and an ash-pan of bamboo, with a little water in the bottom into which to knock the pipe or cigar ashes. All this you must have and pay for, whether you japan: 65 will or not, as the smoking utensils' rent is the usher's profit, so he said. They brought us the bill, all made out in form, amounting, for our party, to $1.23 for a twelve hours' sitting. The floor-manager announces the match by hitting a board with a flat-faced club, which answers for ringing a bell. Two athletes — naked, except as to breech-cloth and belt — come on the stage and rub their hands with sand, squat half-way and smite their thighs, kneel face to face and study the chances for a " catch-as-catch-can " grip, waiting for the word. It comes after a while : they spring to their feet and catch at each otlier, aiming to get hold of the belt or to gain some other advantage. They grapple, tussle, and in an instant or a minute, as the case may be, one or the other is pushed or pitched from the level stage down the bank, which ends the match. They do not seek to throw each other, though a throw is a victory ; but rather try to clear the stage. A quick push and trip or butt will some- times do it without a clinch. Once in a while there is a peculiar ceremony, when twenty wrestlers, clad in richly embroidered fringed silk aprons bearing each one's arms or color, appear upon the stage and make slow motions with their upraised hands. Then they file off, and another squad files on, till the ceremony ends and wrestling begins again. The actors are men of vast muscular development, who go from city to city. Wrest- ling is a vastly popular national sport, w^hich draws the fullest houses. So we came to Kioto, with our swift-footed retinue of half- naked natives, and took up lodgings at this low-roofed hotel to spend some days in rest. Dinner over, then the theatre. Pass- ing a well-lighted show street, we entered a large pole and mat building boxed off like the wrestling-place, only the stage was on one side, — much like our theatres, yet running partly around three sides ; the actors making their entrance from the front, and passing along a platform in front of the seats, which are under the gallery. The play on this occasion was founded on a Jap- anese invasion into Corea in the far-off olden time. Landing there, the invaders got into a jungle of tigers, which made things rather lively for them. But before going on with the tiger story, let us with downcast eyes relate an episode, or something of that sort. Kimoto had forgotten something. Kimoto was our guide. Rising in haste, 5 66 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. just as we had lighted our cigars to take a quiet smoke with the rest of the Japs, he beckoned us to follow, and off he went to the green-room. Now there was nothing wrong, as we well knew, in going to a green-room in Japan, where the actors all are men. So we went; looked into the tigers' den and saw them ready for the fray ; then among the actors ; and turning to depart, he took us to another place back of the stage, — a rather roomy place, with lots of splashing water. Suffering Moses ! what a sight ! To get at the matter in decent order, let us repeat what we have said before : theatres here are for all-day business, — from six o'clock in the morning till twelve o'clock at night. There are plays and plays. People go with their picnic boxes and sit it out, — one, two, or all the plays. So they sit and look and chat and eat and drink and smoke ; gossip with their neigh- bors, and have a time of it generally. Well, they are great on bathing. Just as soon as a Jap gets tired, feels a little fagged and heated, he hunts for a bath. It may be a brook, a well and bucket, or a regular bath-house, — strip he will, and into the water he goes ! Now those all-day sitters must needs bathe. So when we took Kimoto's word and looked within — well, they were all there ! You might guess a hundred times on which plaguy cur- tain we drew first, and not guess wrong. You might take your oath that the folks behind that fated screen of print got out and ran and tore the air with screams, but you would make a large mistake : like museum marbles, they went about their business unconcerned. Returning sadly to my seat, I can't tell how, we were ready for pipe or tea or tiger-fight. The supes pulled upon the stage a painted den, from which sprang three large tigers and some cubs, which went into an act of frisky gambols in the bamboo brake. One furious old tiger climbed a tall bamboo pole, cut capers on it, jumped to another, smooth as a greased ramrod, climbed to the dizzy top, caught on a grape-vine, and swinging to and fro over the peo- ple's heads, got to the floor. The general of the invading Japs appears and takes his seat. The tigers rush at him. He lights his pipe and blows clouds of smoke into their astonished faces, burns their paws with his pipe paper, and finally converts them to a lamb-like peace with a religious emblem. The Coreans, dismayed at their savage allies' strange defeat, made bold to approach the beasts, which the triumphant Jap turned loose japan: 67 upon them. So, conquered, the Coreans submitted to have their heads shaved a la Japanese ; and the scene ended with a grand procession. ■ •••••• There is very Httle that is new in the world, — only variations of the same thoughts and expressions of thought, with now and then a change which seems better or worse than most fa- miliar things, just as one happens to have been educated. All people take to their beds as night comes on, — not necessarily on bedsteads and mattresses or feather-beds, yet all upon the floor or very near it, upon something more or less soft, and with covering according to the climate ; and all are liable to hear the same musical note of the cosmopolitan mosquito. We are now through with Japanese beds, but not through with the winged musician. We have taken the last tea-house meal, prone upon the floor, — eating about the same food that we eat at home, sitting on chairs, from tables two feet higher. Dressing- stands and mirrors have again come to the front, but no sounder is our sleep or more precise our toilet ; and though we still make bare our feet when looking over merchants' wares and peering through the temples, we do not miss the universal tricks of trade, nor yet the contribution-box. The merchant works for gain wherever goods are sold ; and the church has not been built whose coffers overflow. At Nara we saw the greatest idol in the world, — great Buddha. Two lofty gates, some hundreds of feet apart, each guarded by gigantic, grotesque, scowling figures, were safely passed before we reached the lofty portalled temple. Climbing the broad granite steps, we passed the temple threshold. De- voted to this great bronze cast is a building of vast proportions, — a hundred and seventy feet wide, two hundred and ninety feet long, one hundred and fifty-six feet high. Coming within the most holy pagan shrine, we had scarcely gazed aloft to greet the great reformer sitting composedly before his gilded glory, when the bald-pated sexton softly stepped afront and cour- teously presented his neatly bound and ruled subscription-book ! Though taken by surprise, the sensation was not new. Many a time and oft, in far-olT Christian lands, had the same pleading statement been made to us : " We are poor, our edifice is want- ing repairs ; whatever you can do, in proper frame of mind, to 68 A GIRDLE ROUXD THE EARTH. aid us in our pious work, we pray you do so, and may kind Heaven reward you." This is no new thing, we said ; so let us not turn churlishly aside, even though this paper be not Chris- tian. Adown the list of donors were names from all nations of those who had given something, and with ready pen we jotted down a hundred sen, and received the blessing of the brevet priest, who kindly told us that since we had been so good, all the gates should be opened to us, Buddha, museum, and all. Great Buddha ! Cast in solid bronze more than eleven hun- dred years ago, — paid for by subscription, — majestic still he sits upon lofty granite foundations which support a bronze lotus flower. The lotus rose on which this idol sits is nearly three hundred feet in circumference, with petals ten feet high. The idol rises fifty-three feet higher, a perfect giant, — the largest idol of the world, before whom more people bow in prayer than almost every other deity beside. The face, crowned with a noble forehead and close curling hair, is sixteen feet, the mouth three feet eight inches, ear eight feet six, and nostrils so large that you might crawl up into his head that way. The bronze that made this image weighs several hundred tons, and is of untold value. Once or twice the costly temple has been burned down over his head by lightning stroke, and twice the lightning demon of the air has melted the great head from its broad shoulders ; yet as often has it been restored. For the past hun- dred and seventy years its open eyes have gazed undisturbed upon a sinful world, the uplifted right hand and advanced mid- dle finger warning of time that must be short, and eternity of bliss or pain that must be everlasting. This great mass of costly metal, much figured over with pious lessons and illustrations, like Ghiberti's "gates of paradise," was thickly coated over with gold, the first discovered in this land. It is flanked on either side by two more colossal Buddhas, finely carved in wood and richly gilt. The museum contains many examples of Buddhistic warlike and domestic art ; Buddhas in moulded paper, painted and lacquered two hundred years before our era ; more gods and shrines, statues and paintings, war and peace trappings, that carry us back far away beyond the times when men of Christian lands used gunpowder for taking towns and ships and brothers' lives. This great temple has no spire or steeple ; but a little JAPAX. 69 way beyond, up a long flight of wide and easy-rising granite steps, is a bell worth seeing. Cast of rich bronze in the eighth century, when Nara was the Mikado's populous home, it has called more men to prayer than any bell that was ever hung. It has a height of thirteen and a half feet, a circumference of nearly thirty feet, a thickness of nine inches, and contains thirty- six tons of copper and one of tin. It is rung by means of a horizontal battering-ram swung upon ropes. Swing this long wooden beam back and forth two or three times to give it mo- mentum, and then let it butt against the bell. How it wakes the echoes ! Great, deep -sounding waves of richest tone vibrate through the air ; the whole metallic mass trembles and quivers, distributing far and wide the great and lesser notes, command- ing attention for miles and miles around. There are other very old and interesting temples at Nara, — some that have been the homes of prayerful souls for twice two hundred years, — and still the columned courts glisten in gold and lacquer ; still the people come and go, and kneel and pray, and weep over their sins, and long for happiness that is perpetual. Still they come and beseech good gifts, and toss their coppers into the contribution-box. These contribution-boxes are quite unlike the first one we ever saw, which was Deacon Aldrich's straw hat, that weekly went around the pews for dimes and cop- pers. Later, people took to using plates ; then to pouches on a pole ; but none of those contrivances would answer here. Im- agine now a box of plain unpainted pine, iron cornered, five feet long, — I measured one, — four feet wide, and four deep. Across the top are two-inch square slats, set bias, two inches apart. Just below are common louver slats. As you come to prayers this affair confronts you, often resting straight be- tween you and your deity's shrine ; and after you have cleansed your hands in the purifying waters, and before you have thrice clapped your palms to make known your presence at the throne of grace, you always toss in a coin. It strikes a slat, drops out of sight, and falls into the aching void. " How often are these boxes opened, and how much do they find? " we asked Kimoto, while loitering around a big Buddhistic contribution-box one day, watching the coppers' flight. "Twice a year; and sometimes much money — sometimes two, three thousand yen,'' was what he said. (A ye?i is about 70 A GIRDLE ROUAW THE EARTH. one dollar.) No shirking at these contribution-boxes. Men or women, many or singly, as they come to pray, toss in the piece of silver or the widow's mite. It may be much ; may be a copper disk, a hundred to the cent ; but in it goes before a word of prayer. The coin may bound and fall upon the floor or sand, but there it lies ; and hardened is the man who dares bestain his hand and soul by filching the devoted money. Who gets this money? Who gets the money given in this way in Christian lands? We stopped a day or two ago before a pretty and rather modest temple shrine, where sat a clean-polled, benevolent-looking priest, with big-rimmed spectacles astride his little nose. Be- fore and above and about the godly shrine hung little children's frocks, their tiny shoes, and pretty little belts and dolls and in- fant playthings. " What is this? " we asked our guide. " When little children come to die, their mothers bring their dresses and their playthings here and hang them up, and give a little money in the box ; and every day the priest makes prayers for little ones to be made happy after death, and have nice things and pretty playthings when they come to stay up there with God." Rather pretty idea, we thought ; and as we talked, a stricken-hearted mother came and tossed her little coin into the box ; and as she placed the little bundle of her dear and dead one's pretty clothes in the tender priestly hand, we thought there was but one thing better than this, — the saying of the One who said so many good things : " Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not." That same day we came to another temple, with squatting priest, and several women sitdng likewise at the holy shrine. On little tables fronting the gilded receptacle were several small urns. Inquiring, we were told that these contained the ashes of people that day burned. They cremate in Japan. Though in olden time, and to some extent now, bodies of the dead are buried in the ground, and rest beneath the plain or sculptured stone, many are burned to ashes, the ashes urned and deposited for a day or two before the special temple altar, and afterwards boxed up within the temple warehouse for safe-keeping. " How much, Kimoto, does it cost to be cremated here?" " Well, if he be rich man number one, it cost one dollar ; if number two man, then he pay seventy cents ; if he number JAPAN. yi three, like coolies, or very poor man who got no friend to help him, then he must pay thirty-five cents." " How long does it take to cremate here? " " In three hours they give you his ashes." Bearing in mind the cost of funerals in Christian lands, and even the cost of cremating there, it is evident that the price paid for preparing one's ashes here for the funeral urn is not exorbitant ; and we advise all such as are crematorily disposed to make a note of it. To pay one's passage here to be cremated would be money in the deceased's pocket almost every time. We rather like Nara. There we saw the first religious dance. We had eaten our breakfast of poached eggs on toast, broiled eels, boiled rice and jam, and coffee without cream, attended all the while by the silken-robed, straw-slippered widow-hostess of Hotel Musashino, who fluttered to and fro to see that naught was wanting, said our good-byes, and started ahead of our karnmas to see another temple service. \\'andering along through a perfect maze of tall granite lanterns, through a park of tame dwarfed spotted deer, who come to get a bite of cake sold us by their keepers, we presently, on rounding a corner, came upon a rather gorgeous little temple. Silken-robed priests were sitting about, smoking queer little pipes, and talking — about the weather, we supposed ; so down we sat upon a matted bench to join them in their smoke. Our curly-pated attend- ant, not Kimoto, brought us two blank books, — one for names of visitors, the other for subscriptions to a dance. We had noticed two rather gayly dressed, thickly painted girls crouched on mats near by, and the colonel, in the simplicity of his heart, had suggested they were saintly statues ; but as the subscription was put down and the music struck up, he was very properly disenchanted by seeing the overpainted figures rise to their feet and take position for a duet. It was the saintliest, quietest, thinnest sort of dance we ever saw. To the slowest and most plaintive music came the most listless dancing imagi- nable. But it was very modest, the costumes were neat and chastely elegant, and the smileless, expressionless girls went through the steps, swinging and posturing, ringing their clustered bells and waving their ivory fans in the most orthodox manner. It was all pretty enough ; but for a subscription dance, we thought it somewhat of a sell. It was another experience, how- 72 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. ever, and we enjoyed it. The girls are the priest's daughters, well trained, no doubt, but enamelled out of all possible expres- sion, and not able to play an engagement on American boards for a cent a month. I don't believe pious dancing is good dancing anyhow. " Piety " is but another way of spelling "pity," and what pity is there about a dance? From Nara and its ancient temples we took an early start, while yet the grand old bell was sounding forth its deep, rich voice, to tell the world, even as it has told it for all these long, eventful centuries, that the broad high portals of Ta-dai-ji are about to swing upon their thick bronze hinges, and again reveal unto the wondering land the solemn face and form of the great Buddha. With one more look upon the broad and beauteous landscape, rimmed in with the soft blue-tinted mountain range, we mounted our karumas, and leaving behind a most picturesque bit of scenery and many an ancient shrine, went rattling back into the narrow streets, with their close-packed, busy life, out into the country again, out among the rice-fields and yet more frequent tea tracts, along the pretty bamboo lanes, now riding, now walk- ing, now stopping at a tiny lanterned shrine. And thus we came away to Kioto, the western capital of Japan, and pitched our tent at Hotel Ya-Ami, overlooking the great tov\Ti. Speaking about roosters, they are quite as tough and not less noisy than their brethren of the same language away in prairie-land. Right across the little dwarf-tree garden that fronts my open-sided, over-matted room, is the hotel hennery ; and morning and evening, when those roosters crow or when the scullion comes to catch and kill them for the next day's pie, there is active bedlam in the air. I recall that a fellow on the ship, speaking of freaks in Oriental poultry, said Japanese roosters were known to have tail-feathers ten feet long ! My pen was ready to indorse him as a relative of Eli Perkins ; but he stubbornly refused to concede a single inch. Strolling through a sort of by-street menagerie in Tokio, we saw a dignified fowl that sported tail-feathers fully six feet long ; but the other four feet were missing. A day later, while killing time in the city museum at the same place, we found those extra four feet and another five feet added, — a real rooster with six tail-feathers measuring full fifteen feet ! Hereafter JAPAN. 73 I 'm not going to disbelieve any yarn I hear ; for it is better to have no end of faith than to find you have been accusing people of telling lies when they are really dispensing useful information. Americans and other foreigners are not much liked among the real Japanese when they ask for meat. For in their pro- found calculations on human destiny, they regard every bird that flies the air, and every beast that walks the earth, as the yet earthly habitation of the spirit of some possible ancestor or child that 's gone before. Travelling by some country roads, you might as well ask a woman for her youngest child to broil for breakfast as for a spring chicken. The guide sometimes man- ages to get hold of one by telling the woman that his master wants one of her fowls to take home with him to keep ; and then she is but too glad to grant the favor. Guides are heathen, too ; but rubbing against so many Christian pilgrims who pay them well for service, they waive the transmigration theory, and getting the fowl into the back yard, wring its pretty neck, and get it plucked and grilled as soon as possible. But for this theory, Japan might double her wealth in twenty years. But the masses are as much opposed to eating cattle-flesh as Christians are to eating horse-flesh, and with about the same lack of reason and weight of superstition. Sometime some pious fraud got this queer theory into Japanese heads, and at some other time some other human humbug put a kindred superstition into Hebrew- Christian minds, and neither one nor the other has independence enough to shake them ofl" and out. Our superstitions are about the most firmly rooted theories we have. One thing — we have not seen or heard of swine in all this kingdom. It is a great relief. Pork forms no part of their life or thought, so far as we can hear. Asking our guide about it, he declared that he would show us before noon. Passing through a sort of show street a black-teethed female invited us to spend a cent or two to see her beastly collection. She had some ugly birds and a restless fox. Kimoto said : — "You want to see a hog? Come here." It was a porcupine — a hedgehog. Was that the boasted hog, — the only hog in Japan ? It was the only one he knew of. Poor benighted heathen soul ! How we envied him his inno- cence ! May he never travel far, or meet a missionary, for there 74 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. is oftentimes a blessedness in ignorance. There are now and then some swine kept here ; but it is not the fashion. We spoke just now of black-teethed women, and have been trying to learn why such an odious fashion came to get a hold on these rather pretty heathen women. As soon as they get married, or pass the age when girls usually get husbands if they have any luck at all, out comes the blacking brush and stains the pearly teeth. Instead of dental pearls, a mouthful of dirty ebony ! Faugh ! fancy it, — ruby lips, shining hair and eyes, rather fine complexion, then rows of coal-black teeth, turning the gleaming facial cavity into a den of darkness. I hear the Emperor has interfered, on sanitary grounds, to check the use of nauseous oils with which the women smear their hair ; and if he would but go a little farther while he is about it, and recommend, in the customary way of despots, that women leave their teeth as nature made them, he would do a noble act. City women of the better class are already abandoning the hideous custom ; and as soon as the fashion for adult white teeth is set, they will all fall into line. Kimoto says he stopped it in his house ten years ago ; but he added : — " It seems European womens and American womens have bad customs too. I never go there but some I see she pinch 'em in her waist, some most like cut in two piece ; also I hear all fashions women do that. That 's very bad things that Government ought to make stop." Despite his impudence, the fellow was in the right. So we quit talking about unwholesome customs in Japan, reflecting that only to such as have no sins is reserved the right of stoning the offenders. Moreover, when a fashion really is a fashion, what is there in a general way that is dearer to a woman's heart ? Some men also are troubled that way. With women it is a passion ; with men, a scarcity of brains. This is a famous tea district. Of course you have heard it said over and over that teas are damaged by the ocean voyage, and that to taste that universal beverage at its best one must go where tea grows. There is some truth in this probably ; but yet we have found the average cup of tea at Japanese stores, tea- houses, and other public places, hardly better than the average cup at home. Coming through what is called the best tea tract in Japan, the other day, the nasan at a high-class tea-house JAPAN. 75 where we stopped to lunch on eels and rice brought the never- failing tea things. Taking a sip, we found it very choice. Testing some by chewing, it was delicious, — hardly astringent, gratify- ing to the taste, highly aromatic. Asking the girl if it was of the very best, she declared it was. Asking the price of so much as she brought, — an ounce, perhaps, in the little tin caddy, — she ciphered it over in her mind, and said, " Twenty cents." Asking her to go and buy us a sample, enough to fill a box like hers, she went away, and returning with another box, said it was icJii-bau, " first-class ; " that the first she brought was only shaisi-ban, " seventh-class." Then, with fresh teapot and cups, she sat upon the mat before us to brew aufait a cup of ichi-ban tea. Pouring hot water into a cup, she let it stand a moment, then turned it into the other, then in a moment more turned it into the empty teapot, testing with open hand placed over each, from time to time, the degree of heat to which the water brought each small vessel. Then we fancied she would throw that water away, but she did n't. Using it to warm the cups and teapot had cooled it sufficiently for brewing tea. Next she put as much as two tablespoonfuls of tea into the pot, making it deepest on the side of the spout, then with a steady hand poured the somewhat cooled water, — poured it not upon the tea, but at the side opposite the spout, and so carefully as to leave the top of the tea quite as dry as before the water was poured. Letting it stand a moment, she poured a teaspoonful into a cup to see if it had brewed enough. Dissatisfied, she threw it out, let the pot stand a moment more, then gently poured two tiny cups of tea, — cups not much larger than ordinary egg- shells, — three tablespoonfuls in each, perhaps. I never tasted tea before ! nor can I tell how it tasted, — how the aroma played upon the palate, how the bouquet of it stole into the nose, how every sense of taste and smell was taken captive by the savory draught. This, she said, was the best cup ; now she would brew the ne-ba/i, the " quality number two," which she did by carefully pouring from the now cooled water-pot more water down the side of the teapot, yet keeping the top of the tea dry. This in- fusion was a trifle darker, — delicious yet, but not so exquisite as the first. She then explained that every succeeding cup, ']6 A GIRDLE ROUXD THE EARTH. clear up to ju-ni-bati, " a dozen," would all be very good, but each succeeding one less so. By this time the package had come in from the merchants, closely sealed in tin that no part of the precious aroma should escape. It cost at the rate of five or six dollars a pound ; and we count on a good deal of tea- tippling comfort from it. There are other ways of tea-brewing. At Tokio, the other day, we stepped inside a fine tea-house, such as only aristocratic people and spendthrifts can afford to patronize. The nasan met us at the portal, and saying no word, kneeled, and bowed her face to the floor, then helped remove our shoes. Escort- ing us within, she opened several rooms that we might take a choice, kneeling at every door, or sliding screen, to open it, in that humble position, with eyes upon the ground. Of course we ordered refreshments. First, as we squatted on the pearly mats, the nasan brought the never-to-be- omitted tobacco boan. And, by the way, this piece of furniture — this bit of coal and ash box — is found everywhere. It is the first token of hos- pitality offered at tea-house, store, temple, or what not. It is in the office, the family room, the bedroom, on the student's desk, on the teacher's table, at the banker's elbow, at the actor's side upon the stage, in the opera boxes, at the temple gate and sacred altar, — everywhere ; for everybody smokes, regardless of sex or condition, whenever and wherever they like. Our nasan arose from her knees, went away, and returned with a handsome lacquered tray with cakes and confections, which, coming slowly to her knees, she placed upon the mat, bent low her forehead to the earth, gently rose again, retiring as she came, with modest mien and step. Next time she brought a rather pretty three-pint bowl with a greenish fluid in the bot- tom ; kneeling again, she placed it at our feet, again embraced the earth, arose and moved away once more. Again returning, with noiseless tread, another bowl was brought and left before another guest, with the same genuflections ; then she retired again, to return with still another bowl, which, with less postur- ing, she placed before our native guide, who for the first time then spoke. "This," said he, "is tea in high-class people's style, ground so fine — so very fine than coffee. You drink him this ways. Open both hands and clasp him round the top, — this ways ; JAPAN. yy just leave place on front side enough big for your mouth ; then pick him up this ways ; then take just one swallowing, then another time a swallowing, then third time a swallowing, then a half swallowing quick so you not leave not one little drop to go back in the bottoms of the cup. Every cup has just three and half swallowings. Now we drink." One, two, three, and then a sharp, swift sip ! Did it the first time ! Down went the water, tea and all. This was really drinking tea, as the Arabs drink their coffee, grounds and all. Yet were we not happy. The tea was very green and fresh and fine ; the 7iasafi dressed in pretty silks and rather gorgeous obi, modest, petite, hardly four feet six, and silent as a doll ; but wishing very much to see more of this mysterious process, when she came to take the dishes out, I followed her unbidden into the curious little kitchen, with its natty little charcoal fur- nace. Upon the brightly polished floor, with boan box by his side, squatted a coolie turning at a little stone mill. Into the least bit of a hopper he dropped with his right hand now and then a pinch of bright green tea-leaves, crisp and dry and ten- der. Around the bottom came forth the powdered tea. This is returned into the hopper, the mill set finer still, and over and over this grist of tea is ground, — ground and sifted several times, till ready for use, when it is an impalpable powder. This is steeped for an instant in hot but not boiling water, and served as we have tried to tell. It was good ; but when we want the very best of tea, commend us to the black-teethed nasan of the village inn near Nara. Not very handsome was this neat old maid ; but when it comes to making tea she was an angel. And I heard it said long ago in Yankee-land, and heard it again here beyond the sea, that your really neat and tidy spinster folk brew better tea than anybody else. These natives don't gulp down their tea, but sip it daintily. From a little teapot rarely holding more than a gill, they pour two large tablespoonfuls into tiny cups, filling them half full. Taking this from its little porcelain or metal tray, they sip and nurse it tenderly, — a sip, and a long breath indrawn approv- ingly, as connoisseurs treat their choicest golden sherry ; noth- ing is in haste, but all is done thoughtfully and gratefully. If I toss off some half dozen of these half-swallow cups, as some- times happens on a sweltering day, the people look on me with y8 . A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. open, pitying eyes, suggesting in their way my certain lack of proper education. As with their tea, so with tlieir pipe, — they take it in small doses, but very often. I have watched these people smoking time and again, but never saw them take more than three whiffs at a smoke. Their pipes are gauged to that extent j they smoke, inhale the vapor, blow it from their lungs, knock out the ashes, then wait till the next time. Their tobacco is of the mildest sort, — not at all like our old Virginia, so full of vim and paralysis. The tobacco crop of Japan is not large, but peculiar. It is almost wholly taken in London. It has the peculiarity of holding more water than any other kind. The local buyer here buys it well dried, then sorts and dampens it. If he gets in London the price per pound that it cost him here, he makes a good round profit, — as milkmen sometimes do, directly from the pump. It is to be hoped no such tricks in the tobacco trade exist in the States. Our last days in Japan were spent in her western cities. Closing our country travel at Kobe, the busiest of the western ports, we came away by water to the old and well-known port of Nagasaki. Kobe was taking her turn at cholera when we left ; and Nagasaki, which has suffered most severely during the past month, had quite recovered, though her port was not yet offi- cially reopened. Cholera here is often very virulent, but only among the natives. Of the several thousands that died about Nagasaki within six weeks, not a death was recorded among the foreign settlers. So, too, at the other ports. The cleanly sec- tions, native or foreign, need have no fear; the epidemic con- fines its work to the lower classes always, and ships may come and go regardless of its ravages. Nagasaki is the snuggest Httle gem of a harbor in the East, — land-locked, rimmed in by steep hills almost large enough to be mountains, upon one side of which is built the city. We en- tered the harbor in the morning. But litde shipping was seen, owing to the cholera scare ; but the city, templed hills, the palatial residences of the missionary and other foreign folk, built in the midst of spacious and well-kept gardens, made up a lovely picture. Prominent among the flags of the several nations represented here was that of Uncle Sam. Our friend, the consul, was on the ground, and being well apprised of our JAPAN. 79 coming, hung out his biggest banner. And there is more in this flag business than you may think. Wandering about the world, you find the flags of the nations floating everywhere ; and when you see that same old bunting, you feel quite near at home, and hail it as a friend, a powerful protector, a rainbow in the sky full of unfailing promise. The consul met us at the ship's stairs, with his neat gig and coolie crew, accompanied by Captain Powers, a long- time Yankee merchant there, and Captain Furbur, an old-time Yankee captain, who some years since had left the seas, and with his elder brother, the well-known Commodore, had chosen Nagasaki as the loveliest spot they knew in all the wide world, and here built their spacious bachelor home. To this home the consul took us. The Commodore, of whom we had heard so much from men of the sea, and whom we hoped to meet, had but a few weeks before, full of years and ripe in goodness, been called home to rest. The bereaved brother, quite overwhelmed by his great loss, finding the chosen home no more attractive, had decided to spend some years in travel ; so, to the great fortune of the consul of the States, this lovely house and grounds were placed at his disposal for a home and consulate. Surely no one in the service has such a comely place. We loitered through its rooms, furnished with such things as taste and luxury may command ; through its broad and well-kept gardens, abounding in the choicest trees and flowers ; into the cosey nooks and by the fountain-side ; along the well-kept bordering hedges, and beneath the shade of vine and fruited fig-tree, and felt ourselves quite at home again. " Here we lived," so the good old captain said, " brother and I, within this house and grounds for many a quiet year, in perfect homelike happiness. In all this house and grounds there was but a single lock and key, — that of the garden gate ; and that was seldom used. Our goods, our pretty things, our money, were all within reach of such as might come to take it ; but none such came. Our servants and their friends all came and went at pleasure ; not a penny's worth was ever missed. This was our earthly paradise, where what one has is safe with- out a lock or bolt or bar. What could be better ? Where could we have gone, into what city or village in our native Yankee- land, — our land of steady habits, as we say, — where mine and 8o A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. thine would be so well respected ? I am a Christian, as they say ; but in what Christian seaport might we have gone and housed ourselves in this safe and careless way, and been secure as here among these heathen? Heathen ! When paganism gives me such an asylum, so good and safe a home, so much relief from care and watch and labor, what must I say of it but good?" All too short are six little weeks for bright and beautiful Japan, — a country small in territory, yet abounding in interest; a recent hermit nation, now opened up, eager to follow the better ways of other lands and take her place among the more progressive nations. Though scarce a score of years upon her new course, yet faster than that of any other people of which history speaks has been her progress. A score of years ago almost unknown beyond her outer shores, her harbors closely shut, her government an enigma, her ruler a recluse, a sight of whom by ordinary eyes was counted instant death, her roads but paths, and all her peoples serfs to feudal lords ; now a place of progress, light, and bustle. New roads for country commerce ; railroad and steamer lines work through the land and pass from port to port ; army and navy ; modern adminis- tration of laws ; thorough courts and councils ; modern im- provements of almost every kind. Travel in Japan, by one who likes to see the outer world, is a constant round of pleasure. There are no broad expanses ; the scenery shifts at almost every moment, — now a mountain range, then a lovely, cultured val- ley ; here a mountain pass, from which are opened up to view yet other mimic mountains, villages, and valleys ; bright ocean views, studded with cosey islands ; the dashing river, the silver water-falls, — a busy form of nature, inhabited by a most mild- mannered, patient, peaceful people. Seven hours or so — it should have been as many sunny days — was all the time the Shanghai steamer gave us to visit Naga- saki. Chats and tiffin, rides about the solid granite streets, visits to the temples and bazaars, sipping tea, seeing the camphor- trees that were planted in the temple grounds by General and Mrs. Grant, hearing of many a drive and lovely spot we ought to go and see but could n't, — then to the ship again to say our last adieus. About those trees : General Grant's party was here some five JAPAN. 8 1 or six years ago, — the first point they reached in Japan. The greeting was most cordial. Americans, English, Germans, Rus- sians, French, were all alert, but not more so than the native powers ; and nothing was left undone to entertain and honor him. To make the memory lasting, the General and his wife were asked to plant some camphor-trees within the temple grounds ; and here they were growing sturdily, protected by a fence, near by a polished granite slab on which in gilded letters, in the General's own hand, was deeply cut the letter of dedica- tion, also its translation into Japanese, — a golden graven granite tie between the world's grandest republic and the brave and vigorous empire of Japan. Now off to sea again ; and now, Japan, " fountain of light," good-by ! Good-by to your curious cities and their sights ; to your pretty paddy-fields and picturesque scenery ; to your sofdy verdured mountains and silver-threaded valleys ; to your loveliest of lakes and wildly rushing rivers ; to your fields of tea and millet, and graceful bamboo groves ; to torii and to temple ; to school and shrine ; to karuma and tea-house ; to the most curious of countries and most unique of empires, — to all of these, and countless other things and ways and whiles and scenes and wiles, we bid a kind adieu, bidding all a hearty God- speed in ways of light and of prosperous progress. 82 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER VIII. CHINA. Shanghai, the Emporium of the East. — The Chinese Enigma. — Off for Pekin. — The Yankee Skipper Abroad. — Home Newspapers and Baked Beans. — Sunday at Sea. — Methods of xMaritime Commerce. — Up the Pel Ho River. — By Mule-cart to Pekin. — A Memorable Journey. — The Great Central City of the Middle Kingdom. SHANGHAI, the " Emporium of the East," is some miles up the Yangtse River. The word means " approaching the sea." The white man's quarter of the town is of the present century. Colonel Selden, my compagnon de voyage, was here just forty years ago, a sailor lad upon the " Panama," before a foreign house had been established here. Now there is a colony of nearly three thousand European and American residents. A fine city has sprung up on the Concession, with grand build- ings, public and private, noble bund and gardens, famous streets and drives ; with water, gas, and electric lights ; hotels and race-course, ball and tennis grounds, — a wealthy, strong, and very busy people. The colonel finds one memory here, — Cap- tain John Roberts, a lad some forty years ago. These ship- mates now renew their memories and build a bridge two-score years long, one end of which antedates the days of ocean steamships and telegraphs. We give Shanghai a single day; for winter comes, and Pekin is farther north, a thousand miles away. This China country is an enigma. It is the same China it always was, and though it has given the world many good things, it makes but little progress, save in ships, perhaps, and matters of defence. But its steamships are made abroad, and so are its arms ; while as to sailing ships, and dress, and general customs, it has not advanced in all these thousands of years. The Japa- nese are changing everything ; building railroads and engines, factories and houses ; changing their mode of dress and ways of doing up their hair ; and they want to throw aside the clumsy CHINA. 83 Chinese letters and bring in the Roman print. China does n't build railroads. She let one be built along the Shanghai shore by foreigners ; but it was altogether too much of a new thing, so she bought it in, then tore it up and moved it out of the country, rails and wheels, as something not good for China- men. She cuts and makes her clothes, does up her hair, and cramps her women's feet, just as she did in days of yore ; and when we get to port, some eighty miles short of the capital city of Pekin, we shall have to take a two days' ride upon a clumsy donkey-cart, without a seat save the floor, and without a spring save what a heavy axle makes as the trap goes jolting over the stony, rutted road. Yet, for all this, China printed with type two thousand years ago, when our forefathers lived in dens and caves, and swathed themselves with straw and untanned skins. Sixteen hundred years ago she built the great wall of defence, — the greatest mural work yet undertaken by human hands ; made printing paper while yet there was not a printed book in all Europe ; made gunpowder two thousand years ago ; made sugar and used it in her cooking before the time of Moses, — sugar, which was unknown even in England until the fifteenth century. Silks, too, and cottons she had made and used in plenty while Europe was barbarian ; and yet, while the later race has come swiftly to the front, she sits in quiet with her ancient thoughts and customs, conservatively content. So, too, in her religion : no change of form or thought is welcomed. It was Buddhistic thousands of years ago, and is Buddhistic still, — unchanged and unchanging through all the years and light. Confucius, her great man of wisdom, said twenty-three hundred years ago : — " What I do not wish men to do unto me, I also wish not to do to men." This, then, is their golden rule of human action ; not wishing to be disturbed in their manners and their ways ; not going forth or reaching out to molest other people's homes and ways and thought. They have not been permitted to rest in this way at every point ; yet China of yore is, in the main, the China of to-day, and of a truth our code of morals is taken more from them than we might like to admit ; for it was this same great saint who said : — 84 ^ GIRDLE ROUXD THE EARTH. " Recompense kindness with kindness ; recompense evil with justice." Talk as much as we may about returning good for evil, it is pretty much all talk ; and as to looking up a coat-thief to hand him your cloak, as our theology directs, we sooner hunt him with a shot-gun. The above quotation covers the ground, — is the foundation of all our social law and custom and all our criminal law, even among the Christian nations. Another drop of Chinese wisdom rather pleases me. Said one of the disciples of Confucius, — one who wished, like some others you may have met, to have the Scriptures reduced to their lowest terms : " Is there not some single word that would serve as a rule of prac- tice for all one's life? " Confucius replied : " Is not reciprocity that word ? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do unto others." Rather good sort of a doctrine, that. If these Chinamen live up to that sort of religion, what use is there in sending missionaries out to teach them different things? The steamer " Hae-Ting," Captain Wells, is bound for Tien- tsin, on the way to Pekin, — Pekin, the capital city of China ; China, — Chung Kow, "the middle kingdom," — the oldest of the nations, land of the tea-plant and the pig-tails, home of the printing-press, gunpowder, and silk-worm, source of much light and learning unto the nations of the West ; Pekin, the biggest city in the world. It was good old Peter Parley, some fifty years ago, who made so many little lads uncomfortable with his geography stuff, who told us that Pekin was such an enormous place. Up to that time I had honestly supposed Montpelier was ; and since then I have been learning lots of things only to have to unlearn them. It proved a fortunate chance that we took this ship, the steamer " Hae-Ting," "mild sea," commanded by a good old Yankee captain, who at his quiet office-desk makes me feel so much at home reading the old " Maine Farmer " and lots of other Yankee papers, as also the Chicago " Times." The colonel spins a yarn about a voyage of his, some two-score years ago, in these dark China waters, fishing for a shark. Catching the fish, they hauled him on deck, and cutting him open, found among other things a copy of the New York " Herald." Captain Wells seems to have been quite as fortu- CHINA. 85 nate as was the hungry shark in selecting newspapers. He is a Hallowell man, and rather likes to meet a wandering Yankee and have a quiet chat about farm-life and cattle ; and says when he gets enough to buy a farm he means to quit the sea and go straight away to Yankee-land and go to digging stone and build- ing wall. Natural Yankee ! Could n't be happy without stone wall and the Sunday-morning pot of baked beans. We think he '11 get back, for among his cherished treasures are a noble wife and three as pretty daughters as you ever saw. W^e know this, for has he not their well-kept photographs? He says when he is lonely he takes a good look at these, then goes aft and sits among the duck and chicken coops, and imagines he 's at home again, — an honest farmer there. This is Sunday, and Sunday on a Chinese merchantman is much like any other Oriental day ; no religious service further than the welcome loaf of brown bread and pot of baked beans, so dear to the universal Yankee's heart, — a substantial form of Christianity that Captain Wells has introduced with great suc- cess, and in whose grateful presence most other forms are quite forgotten, — taking the place of pheasants, roasts of beef and chicken, salads, and savory mutton stews. With thankful hearts and active knives and forks, forgetful of our privations, our rituals, and our Celestial surroundings, we appease our hunger on our old New-England dish ; for " Never our heart from our native land weans, When smokes on the table the pot of baked beans." How we pity the two hundred Celestials in the after part of the ship, whose "chow" is rice and fish! And what a sore mistake our missionaries make in not first converting these stub- born pagans to baked beans and bread ! This accomplished, how easy the things pertaining to the life which is to come ! Our passengers are twelve, — our Christian-speaking pas- sengers, — American, English, German, French, Russian, and Danish. Missionaries four, tourists two ; the rest on missions diplomatic and mercantile. Dropping anchor the third day out, for the first time, to spend some hours in discharging freight, we get our first good view of Chinese maritime hfe at Chee Foo, the fashionable summer resort, — the Saratoga of the mission folks, the captain says, — a place of mineral waters, fruit, and 86 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. cooling shade ; where silk-worms feed on oak-tree leaves instead of mulberry ; where is the sacred mount, — " Great Mount," Tai Shan fu, — to which come troops of pious pilgrims every year to solicit joys of heaven and happy transmigration of their souls. Small boats, sampans, come crowding round our ship to bring and carry passengers and wait for jobs ; bum-boats, with apples, grapes, persimmons, pears, dried fish, and sweet potatoes, — a trading, squalling, jabbering, motley mass ; then come the clumsy, deep, unpainted lighters, pushing in among and scattering the smaller boats, and taking off the freight. Three thousand packages are taken out, — of paper, cotton, hardware, and various kinds of stuff, — not one of which is boxed in wood, but mostly in plaited mats and bales of rattan- work and in coarse hemp or cotton covers. Lumber is scarce and dear in these parts, and boxes, such as other nations use to ship their goods in, are an unknown luxury. Monday dawns clear and bright, and at ten o'clock, out- side the Taku bar, at the mouth of the Pei Ho, which flows down past Pekin, we drop our anchor and discharge our coolie crowd of seven-score Shanghai ragamuffins, brought up for fire- men for the new Chinese men-of-war just arrived from Germany. Somehow, we don't know how, these German diplomats are beating all the rest in supplying these Oriental lands with iron- clads and heavy arms. England has monopolized this sort of thing for many years, and now, to her great chagrin, comes Ger- man skill to take the palm. America should have a hand in this ; but having handicapped herself with much protection, has to take a far-back seat and watches the ships of other nations swarming on the seas, with scarce a hull afloat to bear her name or flag in all this teeming, Oriental trade. And on this back seat America must sit and wait, sending her goods in foreign bot- toms, under foreign flags, until her Congress makes it possible for our capital to buy or build our ships wherever it can buy or build to best advantage. From ten o'clock till night, this bright October day, we sit here on the sunny deck, watching the tawny coolies lighten the ship of freight, that it may pass the shallow Taku bar and then go on its way to Tientsin, the last port this side the capital. The cargo is of brick tea, — a low-grade tea that is pressed into bricks or plugs, like plugs of tobacco. Forty-four make a pack- CHINA. %-] age of about six-score pounds' weight, securely cased in rattan matting, hooped about with many heavy, fibrous, bamboo straps. These are sHd from the ship into large lighters, not unlike a river wheat barge. To keep the count, a bamboo counting- stick is run into each case as it passes from the ship, to be pulled out the next instant by the tally clerk before dropping into the lighter. These counters are dropped on end, in packages of five, into a rack that has twenty meshes. Soon as a box is full of sticks, the hundred are passed inside and tallied off. So it takes three men to count the packages for each coolie squad. This tea goes on by cart and then by camel caravan, by sledges and then by river boat, over hill and dale, mountain and steppe, day after day and month after month, slowly working its way along, reaching its Siberian destination in a year or more. Among the nomad tribes to which it goes it is the common cur- rency, and they have no other. Horses, camels, wives, and other articles of traffic, are bought or sold for so many bricks of tea, as pelts among some Indian tribes. So all day long the merry coolies work and sing their working song, intoning a pe- culiar air with every case of brick they lift and slide away, — a happy, careless lot, who board and clothe themselves at twenty cents a day. Taku bar caught and held us fast; but the morning tide floated us off, and away we steamed up the Pei Ho, a narrow, muddy, very crooked stream, in which our long sea boat had too little working room and often gored the banks. The river has an average Avidth of three hundred feet ; and to one gliding along and observing from a high deck, the impression is rather curious, as if one were going out among broad fields of newly ploughed lands, turnip and cabbage crops, among houses and people, among the fishers at their nets, fruit-trees and villages, on a steamer, — going afield in a ship ; seeing the ploughmen with their little donkey-teams, the men at shadhoofs, lifting water as from a well to irrigate their second crop of garden truck ; among the mounded graves, looking for all the world like cocks of hay well scattered through the far-stretching fields ; among the trees of willow and ailantus, with here and there a syca- more and chestnut, — a really unique and imperial way of mak- ing an excursion into the country afloat. Till noon our steamer wandered in this field, and made its sixty miles to accomplish 88 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. a land distance of thirty from Taku bar to Tientsin, the end of steamer traffic and of the Grand Canal, a large and bustling place, the entrepot for the great mass of northern China goods. • •■•••■ By Yellow Sea, Pel Ho River, and mule-cart, eight hundred miles away to the northward from Shanghai finds us at Pekin, the imperial city of all the Chinas, — the best walled and dirtiest, the most interesting in its faded greatness, the most dilapidated as to its sometime improvements, in all the Asiatic land. From Tientsin, the head of ocean navigation on the Pei Ho, you may come two ways : by house-boat on the Pei Ho up to Tung Chow, then by cart or sedan chair, or litter suspended on poles between two tandem ponies, fifteen miles, — a trip of three or five days ; or you may make the eighty miles in eight- and-forty hours by covered cart. Take your choice. Seeking the best way to do it, some said, Take the river, as the easiest way. Hire your boat to come by sail or tracking, as wind may favor or not, lay in your store of canned provisions, for Chinese " chow " you will not care to eat, put in your mattresses and blankets, and sail away. Others said, You can go by cart. The road is simply awful, the ruts and drifting dust are some- thing frightful, the general shaking up and lodging at Chinese wayside inns are most annoying ; but take your guide, your bedding, and provisions, go your ways, and the Lord have mercy on your bones and grant you patience. Counting the time and trouble of both ways to the imperial city, we decided to economize the first and run the chances on the rest. At six in the morning, after a hasty breakfast eaten by candle-light, while our guide, Yu Che, was piling in our things, we climbed into our carts and tried to squat upon our mattresses. It would n't work. You can't mobilize your knee-joints, hips, and shanks quite so quickly as that at two-score years and twelve ; , so down we went as if upon the floor, pushing our feet across the whiffle-tree, pulled up our rugs, and gave the word to go. With two tandem mule-carts, drivers, and our guide, we rattled over the narrow, stony street before the break of day. Through the streets, along the miles of low-eaved, huddled shops ; along the quays, with close-packed river boats ; between the dingy mud walls, past mountains of piled-up salt ; jolting over long- neglected dikes and tottering bridges ; along through crowds of CHINA. 89 market-men and coolies, chewing their morning meal in clus- tered groups about the wayside chow-shops ; out past the huts and odors, into the open country air. Thank God for country fields, and trees, and fresh, crisp, open air ! Good-by to jostle, smells, and mangy dogs, to bruit and brawl, and rags and tangled hair ; good-by to offal, filth, and noisome fumes ; good- by to everything but rumble, rolling, and ever-present jolts and jars. We are off to Pekin in the north, just eighty miles away. We made it. Over the miserable roads, rutted and some- times sandy, we bumped and rode and walked by turns ; never a stone or stump, never out of sight of graves and graves and graves ; past fenceless, stoneless, almost treeless farms ; through villages of mud and walls of tile and thatch ; past men afoot and men afield ; past ploughmen, pedlers, and women turning at the mill ; skirting the dikes and cabbage-fields ; pushing along at walk or trudging trot over the never-repaired millennial road that leads on to Pekin, home of the Tartar and Chinese, — to the long-famed central city of the flowery middle kingdom. Twice at mid-day and once at night we halted for refreshment and sleep. These Chinese taverns are of the lowest grade of entertainment, — dusty and cold, reeking with dirt and filth. Coming to one along the streets, our tandem donkey-carts pass within the low-browed gate into a spacious, dirty court, filled with carts, donkeys, and mules, surrounded by low, one-storied lodging-rooms. Within the court the animals take their chow from raised troughs ; within the dirty, brick-floored rooms coohe and traveller betake themselves to eat what they may bring along or buy. Fresh eggs we found in plenty ; also roasted chestnuts, soft, golden persimmons shaped like large tomatoes, and once we got some grapes. At night we spread our blankets on a cold brick bed to try to sleep. These brick beds, or kangs, are elevated about two feet, have flues within where in winter time fires are kindled to warm the brick, on which travellers, or fam- ilies regardless of age or sex, pack themselves like sardines in a box, with such bedding as they may bring along. The landlord provides no bedding but the brick, no furniture but very dirty tables, and now and then a stool or chair for gingos, like our- selves. The doors shut very loosely, swinging on wooden pivots ; the windows were of paper; the lights for night a wick im- mersed in fatty oil within a filthy iron cup. But we ate and 90 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. slept close by the munching, kicking, squealing mules and yelp- ing dogs, and hourly watchman's clacking sticks or grumbling gong. From nine till one we made believe we slept. The mules were grinding their fodder for an early start, to make the city ere the gates should close. At half-past one Yu Che came in to say we would start at two. Bringing in some tea and eggs, we ate our cold duck, bread and eggs and jam, strapped up our bags, loaded in our beds, and amid the brawl of drivers, creaking wheels, and snarling of dogs, thumped and bumped away, out into the starlight and crisp country air, leaving a dollar or two behind and no regrets. How did we like our choice of travel? Looking the field over, we concluded the road was not as bad as stated, and we were glad we came that way. We made good time, rode in comparative comfort, gathered big bundles of experience, ate well, and counted ourselves fortunate. So in travelling here and there you find this much, at least, — that things are never quite as bad nor quite as good as represented. The Devil, they say, is not so black as he is painted ; and in the New Jerusalem that you sometimes hear about there may be fewer golden streets and less of diamond door-knobs than theological jewellers have vouched for. As the second day advanced and the imperial way became broader and meaner than before, the battlemented walls of Pekin came in view. Drawing near the southern gate, the rutted, dusky road became a broad-laid granite pavement, — a worn- out, topsy-turvy affair, that some two hundred years ago was doubtless a noble work, but is now a perfect wreck. Worn out and deeply rutted by the wheels of carts and those of time, whole slabs gone, and others mostly so or badly tilted, we banged and bumped across the humps and hollows, past the prodigious, heavy, and rusty iron-hinged armored gates, into the Chinese city. Then over disjointed blocks, through closely packed and long and narrow streets, — so narrow that no two donkey-carts yet built could meet and pass, — over humps and through deep ruts and thronging crowds of people and dogs, carts, chairs, and ISIongol camels, we worked our interesting way to the great and double-gated portal of the Tartar city, with its granite pavements worn into a rage of rut and roughness almost past belief. But it is the custom of the country to make \ CHINA. 91 roads but once in four hundred years, and to use strong granite pavement to obviate frequent repairs. If ruts and rents and holes appear in lesser time, then must the people make their wheels and axles strong enough to stand the shock. Now past yet thicker armored gates, underneath the raised portcullis, under the lofty watch-towers that stand aloft above the wall ; then through another yawning-gated chasm, over more outrageous pavement, we came within the town, and ere long stopped be- fore the outer wall and gate of the last alleged European hotel between Tientsin and the North Pole, — a cold, damp, uninvit- ing den close bv the citv wall. And this was Pekin, "northern capital," imperial city of the greatest empire of the world ! Noisome, dilapidated, foul ! This the city of the Flowery Kingdom, aged beyond all valid record ; walled and inter-walled with untold work and strength ; centre of four hundred million men ; gated and towered and templed ; granite and marble bridged ; home of the first type- printed newspaper ; seat through the centuries and ages of pride and pomp and power, — and yet a shabby, worn-out, unkempt, reeking wreck ! Tired and dirty beyond expression, we bathed and ate and slept, — slept by a New York stove and hard coal fire far into the morning, — then went to the legation. Colonel Denby, with whom we had made the voyage from America in August, gave us a warm greeting, — he and his wife and family, — and with a generous hospitality which marks such worthy people, they made their house our comfortable home, and our stay most pleasant and instructive. Of foreigners in Pekin there are about one hundred and fifty, diplomatists, customs-men, missionaries, merchants, — of the latter class but two. All these reside in " compounds," — the same being a large or small tract enclosed by a high brick wall. Within are dwellings, offices, schools, stores, servants' quarters, stables, and so forth. Our compound is rather small, — some three hundred feet square, — while that of the British legation has some six acres. Here are the several offices, the ministerial residence, the dwellings of the secretaries and interpreter, the servants' quarters, the gate-house, and the stables, with broad brick walks and various flower-beds and shade-trees. Lawn there is none ; and with very rare exceptions do you see a grass- plot anywhere within the city walls. The native has no use for 92 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. such, preferring the naked, dusty earth. Some legations have a tennis court, where grass is made to grow by irrigation. Be- yond the immediate regions of the native stores and shops the streets are fenced on either side by high and gloomy compound walls, making the prospect anything but pleasant. The streets are bad beyond polite description. Some day long past they were laid out broad, and well bridged, sewered, and paved ; but as the pavements wore out they seem never to have been replaced. The endless tide of travel wore out the stone or brick, then down into the ground beneath, down deeper than the sewers, until nearly every street through which you pass is a deep gutter, lowest in the middle and choked with jfinest dust, which the feet of man or beast, or slightest puff of air puts into lively motion ; and when the wind really blows, as it often does, the atmosphere is choked almost to suffocation, and locomotion, unless within a tightly closed cart, almost impossible. Here and there on some main thoroughfares the streets are partly sprinkled, — a strip down through the middle. Street-sprinkhng is curious, often odious. A two-wheeled donkey-cart brings large tubs ot water from a pool or well, and distributes them along the dusty street. Then comes a coolie, with a wooden dipper on the end of a long handle. Dipping out the water, he swishes it about. Other coolies may be seen dipping the noisome liquids from the bordering cesspools which front the thickly-planted houses, and with such vile stuff laying the dust and offending the foreign nose beyond expression. How peo- ple live amid such filth is marvellous ; yet live they do, and seem to thrive upon it ; for you would travel far before you find a better average of physical development than is found in northern China. The cities are filthy all alike, — this Tartar city alone the only one with wide and tree-planted streets. The habits, too, are very filthy ; yet the death-rate, so far as known, is not greater than that of places in more cleanly towns of Europe and the West. Japan, with all its cleanly habits, its perpetual bathing, has been this year more scourged with cholera than China. Small-pox, they say, is the severest ailment here ; and yet there is but little indication of its ravages among the people. But reason as you may, if cleanliness is close akin to godliness, and dirtiness the friend of deviltry, then this same Pekin city is the farthest point from heaven on the map. But CHINA. 93 there is a ray of hope ; for from a late morning edition of " Ching Pau " we furnish this translation of a much-needed imperial order. The Son of the Sun declares, — "The repairing of the sewers and water-courses in this my royal city of Pekin has been neglected for many years. The sewers have become stagnant and stopped up. As to how the necessary funds are to be derived yearly for their continual repairing and draining, let the minister under whose charge such work properly belongs carefully consider and report to us. Obey this." Let us hope he will, and that at no far distant day Pekin streets will resume their former excellence. 94 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER IX. CHINA. Life in Pekin. — The Missionary Question again. — Two Sides of the Case. — Catholics at the Front. — Curiosities of Chinese Journalism. — The American Legation in Pelvin. — Unpalatial Quarters. — Hard- ships of Official Life. — Some Much-Needed Reforms. IF I were somewhere else, it would be Sunday ; but here it is the 25th moon, whatever that may be ; and these four hundred and forty millions of heathen have no more regard for Sunday ways than has a railroad man. He is up just as early as on a week day ; goes about his business quite the same. No end of missionaries have made a stubborn fight for several hundred years, yet more pagans are born every minute here than are converted to Christianity in a century. This is a fact — discouraging perhaps, yet the work halts not ; more mission- aries come, more missions are planted, and the fight of faith and hope goes on. The Catholic is chiefest of them all. He puts his armor on and marches forth, burning every bridge behind him, — live if he may, die if he must, — counting massacre but martyrdom, defying peril, clinging to his faith and work. In Japan he shaves his head and adopts the costume of the land ; in China he partly shaves his head and dons a false pig-tail till he can grow a good one, puts on the flowing Oriental robe, shoes his feet in Chinese style, conquers the country's language and adopts its ways, — forgetting all but cross and crown. Does famine come, or pestilence, — he budges not a step, but pur- sues his steady, tireless, dangerous way, heedless of all but hope and heaven. In Nagasaki, this past season, raged the fell de- mon of destruction, cholera. Of five thousand miners, two thousand died. Many people fled in terror. I write it as it was told me there two weeks ago — and write it sorrowfully, hoping it is not true — that our Protestant missionaries fled with the CHINA. 95 frightened pagans, seeking safety from the scourge, or staying, lent no helping hand. I write, too, of the CathoHc, as it was told me, and hoping it is true, — that these bold warriors for the cross of Christ marshalled their forces, and standing before the viceroy, said : " This is your home and ours ; our people die be- neath the avenging scourge ; your people are our people ; may our faith be yours. Take us and use us ; we put ourselves in your hands ; send us when you will and where you will ; among the sick and dying ; into your hospitals or barracks, — where you want us most, we '11 stand or fall as heaven may decree ! " ^V"hat in all this world could be more truly noble ? The Cath- olic missionary has this field to himself so far as local senti- ment goes, our Protestant informant said, — and good reason for it. Before leaving home some one said to me, " Try and inform yourself about the missionary work abroad, and tell me what you find." This being Sunday, let us take that matter up. Are the missionaries doing any good? Yes, everywhere they go. Whether they teach schools and let theology alone, or are medical missionaries, ministering to the sick through hospitals and dispensaries ; whether they teach mathematics, engineering, literature, law, or logic, — they are doing good, putting good tools into the hands of such as need them, sometime to make a counting in this teeming, darkened land. Those who scatter the knowledge of Christian lands — their virtues, not their vices — sow good seed that must yield good crops. Here in Pekin, so my information is, our missionaries have quit teaching the English language, for the reason that as soon as a mission-taught boy gets fairly well along he is picked up for commercial needs. Surely he has been made a better and more useful man, but in a theological view his learning is counted lost ; so now, I 'm told, the missionary teaches only in Chinese. Being so taught, they are of no use in business ways, but they may with more certainty, if thoroughly converted, be counted on for future Christian work. This may be best in a purely theological sense, but in a general way it seems too short-sighted. How are missionaries situated in a worldly point of view? No people out here have better homes or lead an easier life. Go where you will to any mission-point, and it is quite safe to say that you will find that this class have the best of houses 96 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and live in luxury. In matters of houses, grounds, furniture, servants, and general outfit, no foreign class residing in the East are better supplied, and do so little work. As to the homes so spoken of, that is what I see ; as to the labor, that is what I hear, and hear on every hand. Personally I know not. Well, now, what of it ? That they should have bright homes — the best of houses in their towns, fine homes and furnish- ing, and servants in abundance — why not ? If any church or board should send me here to preach and teach, I 'd want no poorer mansion than I 'd leave behind. Good living and good appearance is a lesson of salvation in itself; and how could missionaries so thoroughly impress these mud-house pagans as by showing them how well-to-do Christian people can surround themselves with desirable effects, — with wholesome shelter, with furniture and pictures, servants, too, and curios? And has a missionary not as good a right to live in as good a house as a merchant ? Is not the spread of gospel light and love quite as deserving of home tastes and luxuries as dealing in tea and silk and opium? What we should say, if urged to do so to these good mission- aries, is this : When you come home to tell us of your work, and visit friends, don't mention your priv^ations, remembering all the while that you are, as a body, better fixed than a majority of those at home who pay to keep you here, — better housed and fed than are the merchant class. Place not so much stress on being separated from home and ties, and childhood scenes and friends, remembering the modest fact that the average mis- sionary in the cities here is so from physical choice, and prob- ably in better circumstances in worldly point of view than he would be at home. That they are so, I am glad. That our average mission folks would stay here on a level with the poor heathen riff-raff whom they seek to convert, we do not believe, and find no grounds for such belief. Missionaries who work have a right to good things even in this bright and lovely world ; and it is a pleasure I have often had to see them happily return- ing to their far-off homes and fields, willingly and glad-hearted. Their foreign living and display will help the world along. Bad ones there are among them, — men who only lightly wear the cloak, and turn their thoughts on gain, and so create a scan- dal among both saints and sinners ; but in the language of a CHINA. 97 missionary acquaintance, let us say, '' All shepherds find black sheep among their flocks." How are missionaries regarded among other foreign residents ? Too often with derision. Ask whom you may at Tokio, at Yo- kohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, Shanghai, ask of merchants, mariners, men of the civil service of all nations, and all too rarely you will find a man or woman who has a kind word for the mission- ary class. They call them drones and hypocrites, who make a fat living and pass easy lives by grace of friends and boards at home. This is often shocking, and I might write pages of these reports as to how these missionary folk disport themselves in this place and that ; but will not, for many of these things are almost past belief Asking a mission man one day why it was that there was not more amity and communion between them and the Protestant merchant and civil service class, he said it was mainly because missionary teachings contravened the plans and pleasures of these business people. The missionary, he said, declared for the Sabbath — the other did n't, to any great extent. The missionary spoke for virtue and social purity ; this other class too often went strange ways ; and so the line of difference between the two has become so well defined, the wall of separation built so high, that no good- will was borne toward the missionary. Which is right and which is wrong, let them decide among themselves. ^^■ hat real reason should exist for these statements on either side, we have been here too short a time to ascertain. In a general way of thinking, it would seem that one class should be a real benefit and support to the other ; the missionary who lives up to his profession must surely help to widen the field of com- merce and help open up new fields for commercial enterprise. Looking the missionary condition over, as far as I have been able to gain information, it seems that they are having a rather easy and comfortable time of it, being better housed and better paid than any other class abroad. I had formerly pitied them in their reputed isolation and poverty ; but all that has passed, and in future, when in mission meetings you hear that plaintive verse — "Jesus, I my cross have taken, All to leave and follow Thee, Naked, poor, despised, forsaken — Thou from hence my all shall be," 7 98 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. you may safely drop out all of the third line, and make a liberal discount on the second and fourth. The best thing I have seen in the missionary way among our people is Dr. Atterbury's hospital, dispensary, and medical school, here in Pekin. This bright young man, who could make himself popular and prosperous in any city, has come here for the very love of the thing and the compassion and duty he feels toward the poor sufferers here, and has made his plant, and aided by a near relative in New York, is a ministering angel to thousands of poor wretches who, without this aid, could not be free from pain and misery. These are treated and the others are educated without money or price ; and a most noble work it is, for he who ably ministers to the ills of physical nature plants flowers of joy and hope in otherwise dark and dreary places. " For I was sick, and ye ministered unto me," touches the case of Dr. Atterbury closely. He has just returned from a visit home, and comes prepared to build a larger hospital and increase his field of glorious usefulness. At St. Joseph's cathedral, which we visited yesterday, we found some fine improvements, — a large church edifice, fine old and modern library, a museum of minerals, stuffed animals and birds and butterflies. Two of the mission men were pleased to show us much friendly attention. Before the altar rail were Chinese at their devotions ; others we noticed coming and going in ways devout, old people and young, such as you would see in similar places anywhere. The Catholic missionary has been a long time here, and granting that most of their acces- sions are only from foundling infants, brought up in the faith, they might have, and probably do have, many thousand firm adherents. They have this cathedral church and two other commodious churches here, a nunnery, and several schools. It is said they came near making a convert of the Emperor, and so gaining the entire empire ; but some misunderstanding arose about the details, and Buddha kept his sway. Yet the Catholic makes no note of time ; men come and go ; battles are won and lost ; nations and thrones may rise and fall ; yet through all the din and dust, the smoke and clouds, rising grandly above it all is the glorious dome of great St. Peter's Church, bearing the never-changing globe and cross. To-day some work may fail, to-morrow it proceeds as though no lapse had happened, — CHINA. 99 a firm and steady flow of patient, sleepless power that knows no blight and no discouragement. Could Protestantism find a way to join its scattered forces thus beneath one dome and flag, far greater would its progress be in these and other lands. Strong unity beneath a never-dying generalship can conquo* what it will. • •••••• Before me is a fresh copy of the Pekin Gazette. That is to say, it looks fresh, yet I have had no time as yet to read it. Gazette is its foreign name — not its real name at all. It is a brochure, in yellow paper covers. Yellow is the imperial color in China. On the left-hand upper corner of the last cover are two tea-chest hieroglyphics, one below the other. Translated into your understanding, they read, " Capital Sheet." In the Chinese language they say " Ching Pau." Ching Pau, then, is the real name of this yellow-crusted daily, — the oldest news- paper of the world ! It has twenty leaves of printed matter — each leaf four by eight inches — printed in perpendicular lines in black letters between column lines in carmine. You read — provided you read Chinese at all — from top to bottom, from right-hand side to left ; so when vou have read from the last page to the first backwards, you will be through. The printed pages are very thin, a tough, tawny tissue-paper. The stitch- ing through the back is done with paper thread, — a strip of paper twisted. The number of printed leaves — they are printed on one side only — varies according to amount of copy fur- nished. Some have only eight or ten leaves, others twenty or more. It is by no means certain that you get your paper de- livered on the day of its publication. They are in no hurry, and you may not get your Sunday paper till Wednesday, and when you do get it you may find it a month old. Having full monopoly they can take their time ; besides, in engraving the blocks or setting the movable wooden type on which it is printed now as of yore, one man is allowed to do only so much work ; for if one be expert and can do twice as much as another, he must not do it, as that would be doing another man's work and so appropriating another man's bread. The press-work is done by hand, by brushing the form with ink, and then pressing the paper upon it with the palm of the hand, — a sufficient number of men being employed to do the work ; besides, as stated, it is not necessary that the edition should appear on the day of its lOO A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. date. The Chinese newspapers at other points use metal type, and print on machine presses. Strange as it may seem, it is no less true, that in printed book and small job work the cost of doing it on engraved blocks or pages is less than upon movable type and printed by machinery. They are rapid engravers, these Chinese, and turn out work faster than you would think ; and no matter how large your edition may be, you can have the copies made ten or a hundred at a time, at the same cost as though you ordered a thousand copies at once. This is advan- tageous in matter of paper and ink stock involved ; as also in the results, for if you find your book is not salable there is no waste of material beyond the wooden blocks, which cost only a " cash " or mill per character. Besides, you have a constant opportunity for making corrections in the next batch, — a privi- lege that not a few authors would like to have after once having read their own books in print. The " Ching Pau " is a daily paper, issued twice or thrice a day. The first edition is in yellow, contains court news, and tells the doings of the Emperor. To-day, this fifth day of the 2 6tli moon, or fifth moon of the 25th day, it doesn't matter which, His Royal Eminence has donned his wolf-skin cuffs ! It is get- ting cold up here. So all China dons cuffs. To-day, again, he has been pleased to put on his fur-lined cloak. Hence all good Chinamen rush to their pawnbrokers, get out their winter furs, pawn their summer raiment, pay differences, and cover their backs with fur. Once more : this son of the sun and brother of the moon has mounted his fur cap. All China says. Amen ! and is at liberty to thatch its shaven pate with fur. Farther on we read about the state of his royal health. Tlien other news of crown and court ; orders in regal council and such grave matters of state as China seems to need, but which you may not care to know. This edition comes out early, — the royal man- darins having met in early session, even as they do every night in the year, — one o'clock a. m. How long, think you, the Queen would live, or even our worthy President, should they inaugurate the nightly habit of calling in their cabinets at such a sleepy hour ? But that 's the Chinese way, and be not so sure that it is not the very thing. It inculcates early bedtime hours, and is it not very plainly written in our proverbs, — " Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise " ? CHINA. 1 01 This early morning edition of the " Ching Pau " is said to number eight thousand. That seems little enough, as it is the only newspaper of any sort printed north of Shanghai or for a distance of eight hundred miles around, and has the advantage of every mail, express, and news-dealer in all that broad circle populated by nearly a hundred million people. The rate per day, delivered by carrier at Pekin points, is one cent. Eight thousand cents ! Subtract the exchange and deadhead list, the expense of paper, press-work, editing, telegraph, and so forth, and the daily profits of the edition are not burdensome. The second edition, also in yellow, comes out in the forenoon ; has more official news and court-fashion news, — a small edition. The third is in red covers, issued in the evening, made up en- tirely of the two pre\ious editions. It circulates some fifteen hundred copies, entirely in the city, — the gates then being closed. The " Ching Pau " is the oldest newspaper in the world, — perhaps the driest. There is an editorial staff, but there are no reporters. Ambitious city editors need not apply, nor travelling correspondents who write up country towns. There is a tele- graph line to Pekin, tariff two cents per word per mile ; but it has no " specials," nor yet associated press reports. There are no press associations here, and no press rides, excursions, pic- nics, meetings. That 's a blessing. It has no city news, none from the country ; all comes from the palace of the Emperor. There are ambitious merchants here and specialists and theatres and festivals and confidence men ; but they don't advertise. — not in the " Ching Pau." No " Wants," no " Helps," no " Births," no " Deaths," no " Furnished Apart- ments in respectable families," nothing " Lost," nor " Found," nor '•' Personal," in Pekin. There is no election news. No one seems to want to run for viceroy, the office of tau-ti, niafoo, or for ting-chi ; nor yet for constable nor Congress. There 's comfort, too, in that. Ambitious men there are, right here in China; but they keep their projects to them- selves, — at least they don't advertise. One reason, maybe, is that they don't elect officials here. The people don't vote for anybody ; so there 's no sale of votes, no bargains for appoint- ments by the throne. But what does this ancient news-sheet have to read? What I02 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. first I told you, — news of crown and court. With this its read- ers seem right well content. Do not the courts of Europe do the same, — tell what their kings and queens are doing every day ; whether they walk, or ride, or drive ? These European court circulars do not monopohze all the newspaper space and circulation, as the " Ching Pau " does in northern China, and that makes the difference. They have schools and colleges ; many of its adult people read and write, — some seventy-three per cent ; only thirteen per cent less than in the United States, and three per cent ahead of England, and sixty-three ahead of Mexico, if tables are of any value. And if they are, how does the newspaper figure as a teacher of reading, simply? The " Ching Pau " was started in a small way in the year eight hundred and something of our Christian era. The first century's files have been lost or mislaid, so we have been unable to fix the actual date. It was first printed manually, but later on, on type ; and despite of the peculiarities of its manage- ment is said to be prosperous, rather popular, and fairly interest- ing, — the Nestor of the wide world's press ! I wanted to call upon its editor and see its printing facilities, tiffin with the manager, and make a note or two ; but was told that might not be, — in fact, never had been. The editor preserves as strict an incognita as the editor of the London " Times," for fear, no doubt, of consequential interviews and other troubles. We did n't press our wish, respecting editorial office rules. In many respects we like this "Ching Pau" editor's arrangement. It leaves him his time to read and write, and saves him from being bored when he wants to be at work. The " Ching Pau " is very old and very respectable, but can- not boast of being the first newspaper of the world, not by some fifteen hundred years. The first, the " Acta Diurna," or " Daily Doings," — much such a journal as is the " Ching Pau" of Pekin, with similar aims, and manually printed, — appeared in Rome two thousand five hundred and forty-six years ago this summer ; and but for some failure in management — not with the paper, but among the Ccesars — would no doubt have come down to us without a break. As it is, this China sheet bears off the palm, — and it isn't nmch of a newspaper, either. The more you read it the less you will know about the great world's doings. In the estimation of the Chinese Emperor there is no CHINA. 103 place worth thinking of but China ; no city worth his hving in but Pekin ; certainly no monarch so great and good as he ; no paper so well worth his royal subscription as this same Pekin Gazette. But should the " Ching Pau," for even one edition, forget to praise him, or to give note of his doings, great or small, he would have the editor discharged, — most likely drawn and quartered. In this, the imperial power of China is not at all singular. The commonest kind of office-hunters have the same instincts elsewhere, and only lack the power. At Shang- hai there is a Chinese daily or two, one or two at Hong Kong, one, they say, at Canton. These six are all, — all the papers printed for this four hundred and fifty millions of people ! How they have managed to get along and live all these several thou- sand years is past the common ways of comprehension. That it is possible to have too many of these blessings may be ad- mitted. The newer world may have a supply of papers beyond its real needs ; this old one has too few. If a careful system of averages could be arranged, no doubt both hemispheres would gain. The " Acta Diurna " of Rome, the " Ching Pau " of China, the " Gazetta " of Venice, the "Affiche" of France, the " News of the Present Week " of London, and " Public Occurrences" of Boston (1690), contained the germs from which sprang forth the newspaper of to-day. The first is sup- posed to have had more length of years, more publication days, than any journal now extant, save and except this grave "Ching Pau" of this imperial city of the middle kingdom, — and this, the oldest and second of that noble enterprise, the greatest failure ; for in its millennium it should have illuminated China. Alas ! it has only served, by its feeble and almost darkened ray, to prove its country's degradation. Hidden lights are worthless. Our minister here is one of the few who luxuriate in the enigmatic columns of this old Pekin paper. Early every day his interpreter brings him a transcript of all its important news, and so he is kept well posted on the Chinese court events. There are several legations here in Pekin, — our own, the British, French, German, Russian, and Belgian, — all of whose " compounds " we have visited, and with pain have to record this fact : that the American is the smallest, poorest, most ill-provided of them all. So marked and plainly manifest is the difference, that ours appears really mean and shabby. Of course we are a 104 "^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. plain republican people, eschewing the pomp and glare of kingly courts ; but we have a good right to be comfortable and decent in the places where our lots are cast. Oriental people put our case in this way : " America is the richest and meanest nation in the world." By meanest they mean the stingiest. In making his report of the condition of the buildings in this " com- pound," our late minister, Hon. J. Russell Young, who preceded Col. Charles Denby, said that they were barns. They are not exactly that, though by comparison fairly made with the build- ings, rooms, furnishing, and general outfit of the other legations, the statement is not at all misleading. The buildings are old and poor and out of order. They never were fine, well-arranged, or spacious ; and after long service and lack of repairs, they have become what I have already said they are, — the worst I have seen anywhere, whether of our own or of other nations. This is not right. The United States government is abun- dantly able to house its ministers decently. The ministerial office here and those of the secretaries would be torn down and given away as rubbish and kindling-wood in Washington. Officials there or at other leading points would not live in such barracks, nor should any respectable government expect its offi- cials to do so. Not only are the buildings and furnishing dis- graceful to our land, but there are no domestic accommodations, — not even a cistern here to catch good water, in a city where every drop has to be bought from bucket-carriers, and twice boiled and filtered before it can be safely drunk. I have not tasted water here until it has been cooked, and would not like to take the risk of doing otherwise. I have travelled now and then, and been at most of our for- eign legations the world over ; but never have I seen, or im- agined possible, such a development of positive discomfort as this. For even as I write these lines the rank November winds play mischief in the secretary's room. Thrice have the doors and windows been forced open by the breeze. Through countless cracks around shrunken worn-out doors and windows the wind and dust come charging in, filling the room with filth. And this is the American legation in the central city of this great nation ! How long would Mr. Bayard or any home offi- cial content himself with such a hovel to do his work in ? Mr. Bayard is in no way responsible for this dilapidation and CHINA. 105 discomfort ; but he is our Secretary of State, and ought to know the facts. Colonel Denby would not thank me for writing in this way, for he is disposed to make the best of this woful situa- tion ; and his ingenious wife, well skilled in household ways, goes about doing all the good she can, — getting things fixed up, covering worn-out crippled chairs, arranging curtains out of well-worn stuff, and making the place as comfortable as possible. Fancy the wives of our Washington officials tinkering up their husbands' offices to make them barely comfortable ! More than this, the official library here, where the minister is required to become conversant with many and varied points of international law, would disgrace the garret office of a police- court shyster. Fortunate it is, of course, that ministers like Colonel Denby have great experience in the law and a great fund of legal common-sense, else the case would be worse even. But with Colonel Denby here, many questions arise with which the ablest legal practitioners in the States are not on familiar terms, and even at home these gentlemen of the bar must have large libraries for constant reference ; yet here at this legation all the books of real use could be packed on one of the rickety shelves of the coarse deal library case. What is to be done ? Why, do the best he can. If he does n't know and has no books of information as to form or precedent, he must guess at it, or write or telegraph to ^^'ashington. This is a shame ; but so it is. Pekin is a long way off, and Congress furnishes but little means to do these things, and what is appropriated gets used up at nearer points before Pekin can be heard from. These things, and such as these, are not calculated to make that favorable impression here that ought to be made. Ameri- cans ought to be doing more and making more impression in the East than they are doing, and Congress should see to it that help is given. We cannot afford to take back seats in this way, — advertise ourselves as mean and niggardly, — but should in our foreign policy come close up to par with other nations ; provide our diplomats with impressive surroundings and such working tools as they need. This would have its effect. These people are not well impressed by mean display and poor surroundings ; for by what they see they are often apt to judge. Adverse opin- ion as to our headquarters induces adverse judgment as to other matters ; and this we do not want. I06 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. This Pekin mission is peculiar. Our government sends a minister to London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, or other point, with instructions to rent the necessary rooms or building for the accommodation of their office. Such instructions as to Pekin would be nonsense. There are no rooms nor houses for rent in Pekin. The minister must rent a "compound," within whose walls are the houses, offices, servants' quarters, stables, etc. This means an army of servants. You may say that you will not have more servants than you want ; but you must have them. The division of labor here is very minute and distract- ing. You must have a gate-keeper, who will do nothing else ; a messenger, who will do nothing else ; a cook and assistant, who will do nothing else ; table-waiters, who will do nothing else. Then come the lamp-servant and fire-servant, and these will do nothing else ; then " boys," or body-servants, one for each person, who will do nothing but see to your clothes and rooms ; then the minister must have for his riding a pony (there are no horses here), and with this pony a mafoo, or groom, and the groom must have a pony ; and if another pony has to be added for another member of the family, then a second groom has to be employed, and these servants have to be provided with official suits twice a year. To make a long story short, a ministerial office and family residence has not less than fifteen to twenty servants attached to the "compound." All these are to be paid and fed, and part of them to be clothed. But why not get along with fewer servants ? Right glad would the minister and family be to do so ; but the very nature of affairs forbids, and the minister succumbs to the inevitable and stands the expense. True, the pay of servants is less than with us ; but the wages, the perquisites, and the small amount of service rendered, account for the supposed difference. Then there is much official calling to be done. Here inex- orable custom comes again to the front. The minister may pre- fer to walk. He must not. He might like to go with his pony and mafoo. He must not. He might choose to drive in his mule-cart. He must not. He must accept the inevitable, — get a sedan chair and four stout coolies to carry him to the place, wait for him, and tote him safely home again, at a round expense. Then there is entertaining to be done. Unlike all other nations, our government provides no facilities for this, — no CHINA. 107 dining-room, tables, chairs, table-ware, nor provisions. But to maintain the dignity of the position and the glory of the stars and stripes, the minister must provide the food and champagne out of his own purse. A smart sum, too, it costs. These ex- tra expenses, for which the British minister here is provided, amount to ten thousand dollars annually, aside from rooms and table equipment. Champagne? Yes. When the minister goes to visit the Chinese officials, he is entertained in Chinese style. If he visits the other officials, in European style. The drink is champagne. When Chinese officials call, they expect and get champagne, and they like it very much. You may say you would not furnish the costly wines, or any wines ; but the usage is inexorable. You must do as the Romans do. You must accept the official and social code of the post to which you are assigned, or some one will be sent there who will. The result of all this is that the living and entertaining and travelling expenses use up every dollar of the salary as fast as it is paid, and the minister to China enjoys the position of one who gives his time and labor merely for his hving. He stays here four years, runs a servants' boarding-house, has no end of labor to perform, lives in barracks, and goes home not one cent better off" than when he came. To be sure, there are hundreds of men ready to jump at the chance of coming here on a twelve thousand dollar salary ; but for the man with sufficient mental equipment to fill the place as it should be filled, to forward the interests of our country as they should be forwarded, the compensation is much less than it should be. The main trouble is that our people, our Con- gress, and our Cabinet know too little of this region and city, and the peculiarities of the customs and surroundings. Our Congressman or our Cabinet-man really knows as much about this place as about a Mongolian village ; and even when the mat- ter has been presented to him, as time and again it has been and will be, it is passed by unheeded, and this is classed with inferior missions. This is the result of ignorance. Men who have to do with material machinery must know their trade. Men charged with the duty of managing the diplomatic machinery of a great nation ought, among other requisites, to have some personal knowledge of the lands in which the machinery is to be set up and operated. The man who never goes from his I08 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. house is not much bigger than his house ; the Secretary of State and Congressmen form no exception. To legislate well for a school district a man should have some local knowledge of it ; so, too, for a county, state, or country. The same rule applies to a secretary of state, who, to manage well the diplomatic affairs of foreign lands, to administer justly and advise skilfully, ought to have travelled f.ir and wide and studiously. Information as to this great empire is only in small part to be gained from books. To-day China is on the verge of a great change. Daylight is dawning. Vigorous, far-seeing men are working their way to the front ; railroads are to be built, and corporations and persons will soon be on the alert to figure in these vast enterprises. Our every official here should be of vigorous cast, zealous to promote the interests of our land. If America meets the opportunities now or soon to be presented, she will be laying foundations for increased prosperity, creating new markets for her surplus manufactures, extending her influ- ence and power in prosperous ways. But a few weeks ago was exhibited before the Emperor and the governing powers of China a working model of an American railway operated by clock-work. The model was one hundred feet long, and comprised track, switches, sidings, locomotive? tender, baggage, postal, express and freight cars, day coach and Pullman car, — perfect in miniature equipment. It was operated and explained by competent native mechanics, and met with great approval. It was the first time these much-secluded peo- ple had ever seen anything of the sort, — their first object- lesson in railroad matters. The Chinese are very impressionable people, — not so much by what you say as by what you do. Telling them about railroads makes no impression, for they can- not conceive such a thing. But shown in a model, they under- stand what it is, and fully grasp the idea. Those who have the best means of knowing say it is highly probable that an imperial order will soon be issued for building a line of road in this part of China, and that when once this great ball is put in motion, it will roll on with great force. Our minister to China takes a lively interest in this proposed enterprise, and though beyond the line of strictly ministerial duty, will most gladly extend to his countrymen all the aid he can in connection with it. He is regarded with favor by the brightest native officials here, and CHINA. 109 may be in a position to render important servace to American capital and labor in China. This is very important, and should encourage strong effort on the part of eminent railroad men in the States. Of course England and Germany are watching for this same plum, and both of these powers have been doing everything to impress these people with an idea of their great- ness and superiority, and have in some measure succeeded ; while our own country has been all too lax and listless as to its material interests here. It is time for a change ; for putting on the harness ; for getting our legation here in perfect order and equipment ; and to this new field and bright possibilities the attention of our government and people should be very plainly called. "We are manufacturing largely. We talk of over- production, and declare — truly, no doubt — that we are pre- pared to manufacture in six or eight months all that we can market or consume in twelve ; that we need a foreign market for our products. It is true we do ; but how are we to get it but by effort ? In this the government can give much proper aid. no A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER X. CHINA. The Great Wall of China. — Perilous Roads through Mountain Gorges. — A Wonder of the World. — Other Chinese Walls. — The Great Ming Tombs. — Good-by to Pekin. — Off to the Southward. — Down Stream in a "House-Boat." — A Chilly Journey. — From a River- Boat to a Cow-Cart. — Discomforts of Chinese Travelling. — A Land of Conservative Decay. — Progressive Influences. — The Outlook for China. OF course we had to go to the great wall of China. China abounds in great canals and walls. Her mural defences are most extensiv^ e, — walled country, walled cities, walled vil- lages, walled palaces and temples, • — wall after wall, and wall within wall. But grandest of all is the great wall of China, which crests a long mountain range sometimes five thousand feet in height, from Pekin some fifty miles away. To come to Pekin and not go out to the wall would be unpardonable. It matters not that the Pekin wall is higher and wider, nor that the way is cold and rough and often perilous ; you must go and see the great, great wall. The road to Nan Kow, "south gate," was horrible, — the last ten miles of the first thirty made by jolting cart, a real torture. We went in carts — Pekin carts, — lumbering, jolting, gloomy carts, the only spring their thick wooden axles — over roads packed full of bowlders, — stones of every size and shape, — a perfect bedlam of tips and tilts, bumps and bruises, until human flesh and bones rebelled, and I got out and walked in self- defence. Nan Kow is in a mountain gorge, — the first of the watch-tower stations in the great cordon of defence against the hated Tartar. Nan Kow is a place of taverns, — Chinese inns, — • the more so because it is on the great highway of the caravans that go and come between Siberia and Mongolia and China, — those slowly moving, heavily laden camels, mules, and donkeys, that bring the products of the steppes and the farther frozen CHINA. 1 1 I regions to the south, and carry northward tea and rice and fabrics. It is situated at the opening of the great mountain gorge, — the Chinese Thermopyte, the way of danger and of toil that leads up to the wall and many miles beyond. Reaching Nan Kow at nightfall, we found the streets packed with mules and people, not to mention dogs and donkeys. Turning into an inner court, we found it full, and left it. The landlord of the next inn demanded ten dollars for room to stay one night. There were six of us, to be sure, not counting the mules ; but we furnished our own food. The third landlord took us in for less than half that sum, — and such a place ! The court was large, but crammed with mules and donkeys. Their packs of tea were taken off and stowed in piles and rows. Hundreds of mule and donkey jaws were munching coarse-cut hay and millet-seed ; drivers were hurrying to and fro, yelling their wants, and dodging kicking mules ; dogs were yelping, bells were jingling, lanterns flashing to and fro, — a jargon of sounds and a motley mass of people, animals, carts, and goods. Our room was a large and dirty kaug opening upon this mule yard. Off from it was a smaller one where we might sleep. Fearing lest other animal life than that already mentioned might be warmed into activity, no fire was ordered placed beneath our beds of brick ; but wrapping us in our furs and blankets, we soon found peace and rest. They get out early, these mule- drivers, for by three o'clock the loading up begins, making further sleep impossible. The men, the dogs, and donkey bells are in a state of frantic uproar; and when the sun came up and we had had our chow and tea, the final long-eared squad had passed the outer gate. No more carts go in this direction. The fifteen miles out, and the thirty or so coming back, are ways of tribulation over which no wheel may roll, and only men and beasts of surest tread may safely pass. We took beasts of burden. The colo- nel bestrode a dainty little donkey, gray, bright of eye, with expansive ear, and hardly three feet high ; I chose a mule, creamy white, and with a spacious, thoughtful ear. From Nan Kow to the wall is a continuous gorge walled in by rugged mountain steeps, serrated, cleft with chasms and rutted with ravines, quite verdureless at this season of the year, and largely so at others. At points where the peaks are highest 112 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and the gap narrowest are walls and gates of mighty masonry, — gates and crenellated walls, and watch-towers reached by tiresome walled-in steps that climb the mountain giddily to reach its topmost crest. Cyclopean rocks and masonry of giants, massive in height, of untold strength and unconquer- able thickness ; wooden gates, thickly mailed with iron plates and bossed with countless clinched nails, — repetition of such as these would seem to have made the pass impregnable — and did make it so. But the road or roads, the path and paths, the devious, dan- gerous tracks through which we picked our way along, — these were something awful. Imagine the deepest, narrowest, crook- edest mountain gorge, sometimes a thousand feet wide, then again a hundred. Fill its floor with granite bowlders of every size and shape ; old arctic porphyritic rock brought here and dumped by icebergs and by glaciers when the earth was young, — brought here and left to be ground and jammed about, worn by resistless mountain torrents, piled and crowded into rows and heaps, covering deep the ground with their constant baffling chaos. That is something like it. In ages past, through this the great highway between the north and south, a paved road was built with untold toil and patience. Great round stones were worked into line, their tops hewn off, the interspaces filled ; bridges were built, the stream was walled out, a broad road was made from gate to gate for carts and troops and caravans to pass. But in this nation's great decline, and by the resistless rage of cumulating floods, this giant scheme was routed. Most of this great work has been torn up and tossed about and turned to chaos. Only here and there you catch its thread and see the rutted lines cut deep into the traffic-polished granite ; and here and there among the piled-up pathless rocks you find these ponderous rutted stones carried far out of place by war- ring mountain floods. The noble road is gone. Except in higher places and near protected gates, no trace is left. Up through this tedious torment of a road and path you have to pick your way. This was the more tedious and dangerous by reason of the caravans. For all that day long trains of laden camels, ponies, mules, and donkeys, going up and down, choked up the passage more and more, — not by hundreds, but by thou- sands, — working their slow and cautious-footed way along ; CHINA. 1 1 3 Mongolian dromedaries, droves of black-headed, fat Siberian sheep, mules, donkeys, and ponies j the clanking of camel bells, tinkling of donkey bells, ratde of bells on mules and asses, the noise of shouting drivers, the grunting growls of cam- els, braying of mules and donkeys, — a general crush and push and clatter all the way along. Men of various faces and speech, goods of many lands, and beasts of many sorts find close focus in this deep-cut gorge, with its narrow funnel of teeming lands on either side. Slowly and laboriously we plodded on, more watchful of the mule than of the country. A good litUe boy of some Sunday- school education sat whittling a shingle. Of his mother he asked if she knew what he was making. " No," said she, "I can't tell." "I know you can't," said he, '"cos you don't know what I 'm making ; nobody don't know what I 'm mak- ing; God don't know, 'cos I 've just changed my mind ! " All the way I watched my mule's ears. The turn-outs were many and often necessary to dodge the thronging freighters, or for other reasons of his own. I watched his ears to get his mind as to which path he would be pleased to take, for the only bridle he had was a rope halter about his neck, and I was in- terested in knowing his mulish methods as to tacks, that a sud- den lurch to the right or left might not pitch me off. I knew how pitching off felt, and braced myself accordingly. But I never found out the working of his mulish mind. For when I was full sure he 'd take the right, and swayed myself to meet the movement, he almost surely changed his mind, and almost surely pitched me off. But I never got his mind ; nobody knew it ; the powers of creation did n't know, because he changed it so often. In despair of finding out, I changed my tactics, — unbraced my spinal column, as politicians do, ready to catch the veer the very instant it was made ; so fairly kept my seat. It took six mortal hours to make that fifteen miles. Squeez- ing through the last deep gorge, and a deep rut in the solid rock cut out by ages of rolling wheels and tramping feet full six feet into it, there we found the wall and gate, — the great, frowning, double, armored, bastioned gate of stone and hard-burned brick, with one archway tumbled in. This was the object of our mission, — the great wall of China, built two hundred and fifteen years before our era ; built of great 8 114 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. slabs of well-hewn stone, laid in regular courses some twenty feet high, and then topped out with large hard-burned brick, filled in with earth, and closely paved on top with more dark tawny brick ; the ramparts high and thick, castled, and crenel- lated for arms. Right and left the great wall sprung far up the mountain side, — now straight, now curved to meet the mountain ridge, turreted every three hundred feet, — a frowning mass of masonry. No need to tell you of this wall, — how it was built to keep the warlike Tartars out, — twenty-five feet high by forty thick, fifteen hundred miles long, with room on top for six horses to be ridden abreast. Nor need you to be told that for fourteen hundred years it kept those hordes at bay; nor that in the main the material used is just as good and firm and strong as when first put in place. To try to tell you how one feels while stand- ing on this vast work, scrutinizing its old masonry, its queer old cannon, and ambitious sweep along the mountain crest, were only folly. In speechless awe we strolled, or sat and gazed in silent wonder. Fifteen hundred miles of this gigantic work built on the rugged, craggy mountain tops, vaulting over gorges, spanning wild streams, netting the river archways with huge hard bars of copper ; swelling out in double gates, with swinging doors and bars set thick with iron armor, — a wonder of the world before which the old-time classic seven wonders — all gone now save the great pyramid — were merest toys. The great pyramid has 85,000,000 cubic feet ; the great wall 6,350,000,000 cubic feet ! An engineer in Mr. Seward's party here five years ago gave it as his opinion that the cost of this wall, figuring labor and material at present rates, would more than equal that of all the one hundred thousand miles of railroad in the United States ! The material would build a wall six feet high and two feet thick right straight around the globe. Yet this was done in only twenty years, without a trace of debt or bond, by Che Hwang-ti, " first emperor," first Manchu king, 209 b. c. To this great work was drafted every third man in the kingdom, who were kept at work for " board wages." It is called the Wan-li Chang Ching, "myriad-mile wall." In 1793 the members of the English embassy estimated that the main wall contained as much masonry as all the dwellings of England and Scotland together, and the fortresses and towers as mucli brick and stone work as all London did at that time. It extended along the CHINA. 1 1 5 entire northern border of the empire, and was and is the great- est human effort the world has ever known. You stand before it as before the great Omnipotent, — bowed and silent. China has other and heavier walls than this, but none so great in length. The one about the old city of Pekin, now called the Tartar city, is sixteen miles in length, fifty-nine feet high, and forty feet thick, which with its bastions measures some 225,000,000 cubic feet. Within this, about the imperial city, is another wall six miles in length ; and within is another around the forbidden grounds of the imperial palace, beyond whose gates no foreigner can pass. Then a ten-mile smaller wall encloses the Chinese city, abutting on the Tartar city. All the other olden Chinese cities are well walled in ; so if you undertake to count the extent of the defensive walls of China, you plunge into a maze of figures that none can com- prehend. And after all, it is not quite certain that could one mass the walls and stone-heaps of New England, they would not quite outstrip all this Chinese greatness. Moses Ellis, a ciphering Yankee farmer, has shown, among other curious facts, that the stone walls of Massachusetts cost more than all the buildings in Boston. Figure it and see ! Some juicy steaks, a royal mutton stew, some pears and grapes, a botde of claret and seltzer, a good cigar, another good look round, and back we sped for Nan Kow, another weary fif- teen miles, to sleep again in the same noisome, busy, brawling inn we had slept in the night before. In caps and coats and boots, unwashed and barely fed, we threw our weary bones on the cold brick kang that night and slept ten wakeless hours. Next day, by cart and many miles of donkey ride, we visited the great Ming tombs, — a miracle of heathen work in brick and tile, in stone and marble, — with their famous granite and marble bridges, six straight miles of paved road skii-ted by marble statues of men and elephants, horses and camels, lions and griffins ; col- umns, too, and mighty marble arches, — an overwhelming won- der, whose very existence, even, is to most of us unknown, — a stately wonder in this far-off wonderland. Another night on a kang; a hurried trip to the imperial sum- mer palace, with its ruined and unruined palaces, then to the temple, with its gigantic bell of bronze, some seventy tons in weight, its surface all a story or a sermon in finely raised Chinese Il6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. characters ; then back again, tired and hungry, more dirty than ever, to our restful old legation compound. Three nights and four days absent ; some hundred miles on mules and in mule carts ; without uncoating, washing, or having seen a bed, a lamp, or a looking-glass. " Master, when you going to Tientsin? " *' Never you mind, Yu Che ; clean up these clothes, and wait in the servants' room till we get ready." He stayed there just three days. We wander on the streets and on the wall ; among the tem- ples, the palaces, the halls, and pigtails. Pigtails everywhere. Whence came the curious custom of these long-braided queues ? Previous to the Manchu Tartar invasion in 1627, the Chinese wore their hair bound up on the top of the head ; but after- wards came the imperial order from Lian-tung to shave the front part of their heads and adopt the Mongol queue as a sign of ser- vitude, — to become in time a badge of honor ; its absence, deg- radation. How came the conquering Mongol by it? Search far back among the historic brick of Assyrian days, four thousand years ago, and graven upon her clay and vitreous seals you will find these same braided queues. The trace of braided queues ends there ; the fashion is an old and honored one. • •••••• Pekin is left behind us, like a dream. City of dust and dirt, donkeys and dogs, dilapidation and decay, — city of the old reghjie and old customs, good-by ! City of a million people, without a newspaper, without a gas lamp or a telephone or a sewing-circle, not even a whiskey-shop ! As it was when Moses was fished out of the bulrushes, when Herodotus read history on the polished face of the great pyramid, when riotous Romans robbed the Sabines of their social comforts, when Eng- land was in savagery, and America slept in oblivion, — much the same city is it to-day. We have shaken its dust from our feet, — we can never shake it from our clothing, — and have moved on farther south. It happened thus : We had seen her wall and her temples, broken bread with her Chinese city pagans, cheapened goods with her pedlers, and considered her drowsy destitution ; and winter was coming on. Longer might we have stayed, tres- passers on the hospitable patience of the good people at the CHINA. WJ legation ; but we mustered our mules on Monday, paid all debts but those of gratitude to our kind host and hostess, packed up our purchases, said last good-byes, and drove bump- ingly away. Over the reeling streets, through the time-beaten gate, do^\^l through the narrowest, strangest, dirtiest streets in all the world, out into the dusty, deep-rutted country roads, and off to Tung Kau. This last is on the Pei Ho, "White River." Here was our boat, our house-boat, which was to take us down stream to Tientsin, four hundred // away. We had ridden in Chinese carts, whose every wheel and pin dates back to Confucian days ; ridden the same class of mules and donkeys that Noah by some mistake admitted to the ark ; slept on kangs, and eaten our peck of dirt. We would now try a Chinese house-boat. One of these things is about thirty feet long, with a little house amid- ship, — a house just twelve feet long. Coming on deck you step into a well-hole five by five, and six feet high almost, full of cracks and covered with a mat. This is the reception-room. Back of this, six feet by five, and four feet to the matted roof, is the shaky sort of bedroom, into which you crawl on hands and knees, make up your bed, and go to sleep. Behind this, five by three, is your kitchen, where your "boy " cooks your meals on a charcoal pan, and sleeps there, — shutting himself up like a jack-knife. Supper or any other meal being ready, he puts a six-inch table by your recumbent shoulders, and ser\-es you there upon your couch, just raised upon one elbow. Down in the dismal hold, both fore and aft, the captain sleeps ; also his crew, — three tawny coolies. That 's a house-boat, — a sort of floating, restless coffin. The first night out was cold. Ice formed, but the boat was poled along awhile and then tied up. Captain and crew lifted a deck plank, dropped down out of sight among their coarse straw, replaced the plank from underneath, and went to sleep. These coolies don't care much for bed-clothes. They go to sleep upon the floor or straw, first taking off their outer garments, then piling the same upon themselves, and are quite content. No pillow, sheet, or blanket; no washing-bills to pay. Next day was colder. Siberian winds came howling down, a raging, snowless blizzard. It does n't snow here ; there is a Il8 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. little flurry now and then, but not enough to whiten the ground. The coolies poled awhile in the morning, but the ice was getting thick. The wind was foul, or they would have raised their little mast and sail that lay along the ridge-pole of the house, and so gained speed. They hitched their tracking-line and went on shore to pull the boat along ; but so strong was the wind and ice they broke their half-inch line, and all was stopped. All day the fierce wind blew ; the ice grew stronger. Wrapped in our thick fur robes outside our overcoats, we stretched ourselves upon the mattresses we had brought along, and ate and slept, or slept and read, with mittens on, trying to kill the very dreary time. Through the wide cracks on either side the biting winds came whistling in and tussled with our sables, without which we must have frozen. Night-time again was no better. The wind increased in fury as the sun went down. We ate at six, then went to sleep, and slept by spells till morning. The boat was frozen in ice four inches thick. That had been our worst fear. We were almost out of food, — but one day's ration left. We were some thirty miles from our starting-port, and a hundred from Tientsin. Should we walk back? But then our baggage could not be trusted in that thieving crowd. We could n't stay and starve. Something must be done, and right away. Our guide was in his kitchen den close by. " Hello, Yu Che ! Awake?" " Yes, master ; what want ? " " You get up ; go out and see if you can find a cart to take us somewhere." And off he went. The wind was yet aglee ; we wrapped our furs about us closer yet, and waited his return. The fellow had been lucky. Not far away he hailed a countryman who had started to market with a load of charcoal. With him he bar- gained to take our bedding and boxes on top of his coals. A hurried bowl of tea, some omelet and steak and toasted bread, and we were ready. There was no dressing to be done. We had n't pulled off a coat or washed a face or finger for eight-and- forty hours. The colonel stepped ashore to see the goods taken out. "You stay in boat, master, till everything is out. These fellows might make steal." Yu Che knows his business and his countrymen's CHINA. I 19 habits. Watching well the goods at both points, we got them out, got them to the cart, piled them on, and away we went on foot, — our guide watching the baggage. The outfit was the usual two-wheeled cart, with frame, on which ten four-bushel baskets of charcoal rested. A very lean mule stood in the shafts to steer. Before him, all abreast, and yoked to the cart by ropes running back around the axle, were a brownish cow with crumpled horns, a yearling steer, and a sober aged donkey. Any port in a storm ! We trudged along across the level country, hour after hour, wondering when we 'd stop ; and finally, at three o'clock, reached the village and a Chinese inn, — the very one we had slept at fifteen days before on our way up to Pekin. We were safe, anyhow, and in a land of plenty. Taking a hearty meal, we went off to bed. Morning came. Our faithful " guide, philosopher, and friend " had been fortu- nate once more. Upon the street he found three carts just then returning from Pekin to Tientsin, empty. We filled them at an early hour next morning, after a hasty breakfast by candle-light, and gladly rolled out of the court-yard — or barn-yard, rather — of the last Chinese inn we might patronize in 1SS5. Over the deeply rutted road, and through the piercing wind and clouds of dust, we moved along, doing the forty miles at a mule's walking speed, in just fifteen hours. Warm rooms and soap and water waited on our needs here at "The Astor ; " good food, soft beds, and full ten hours' sleep made us forget the hardships we had passed, and anxious for a boat to take us farther on. There are no good modes of travel in China, as we regard such things, when once you bid good-by to ocean-going steam- ers or their private launches. The country roads are invariably bad. The canals, once fine, when China was better ruled, are now in a state of wreck, and many are quite abandoned ; the Chinese city streets for the most part are miserable. Rivers are long and deep and plenty, but not at all improved. A bar is a bar forever, so far as China goes. Dredging and jettying is unthought of; all is left to luck and chance. The wear and tear and unrepair has made .the roads and rivers, canals and dikes and streets, marvels of discomfort. If a country thor- oughfare gets washed or worn away, they leave it, and beat out 120 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. another track. If canals get filled with mud and need some dredging, they let them go, and pack or cart the freight around. If parts of brick or granite pavements get the worse for wear or wholly disappear, never mind ; let the carts bump and break, or work along as best they can. The street commissioner is dead for at least two hundred years, and no one comes to take his place. The ruin here is past belief. Alongside these squalid scenes are the foreign Concessions with fine bunds or wharves, and well-made, well-kept streets, with sewers, light, and water- works, perhaps. But what are these to China? Nothing, you might truly think ; yet it is hoped that this commercial missionary work will have its effect, as no doubt it must. In the Chinese streets of the Concession in Shanghai there is an immense difference when compared with those within the walls of the old Shanghai city. In the former you may walk or drive with comfort; in the latter — don't men- tion it ! As with the land and water ways, so with the temples, gates, walls, and public buildings. Not yet has appeared a temple in repair. They were doubtless very fine when built, and were well kept up, no doubt, for many hundred years ; but the blight that struck the roads has come upon everything. Grand gate and temple roofs, built of imperishable tiling, are allowed to grow up to grass and weeds, the tiles pried off and loosened up by frozen earth which there accumulates and finally works its ruin. At Pekin they close the city gates with as much care as they did a thousand years ago, when there was reason for it ; but in this same wall they let seeds take root and grow to trees that destroy large sections. Men are paid to tend the gate, but no one to protect the wall. The wall is forty feet wide on top, but no one is permitted to ascend the grass-grown ramparts save those who watch and such as go up to cut the weedy grass which is steadily destroying the solid pavement, — far more speedily than would the tramp of feet, which, if permitted, would keep the stuff from growing. But civilians were not allowed there a thousand years ago, when vigilant watch and ward was kept, and are not permitted now. These are but few of the thousand examples that might be quoted of ruinous Chinese conservatism. But what is there to do about it ? The missionary says, Con- vert them ! The commercial man says, Railroad them ! The CHINA. 121 linguist says, Confound them ! To the more philosophic mind it is evident that the Flood, which was to have produced a general water-cure, stopped short of China ; but that another hydropathic effort, especially created for this hide-bound, stand- still land, might work its sure salvation. There are progressive men in China, — progressive Chinamen who have caught the spirit of the world's progress, and are try- ing as much as they dare to kick off the antique shackles and bring the country into the open sunlight of activity. At Tien- tsin, for instance, lives Li Hung Chang, — the foremost man in China in this progressive movement. But great and valuable as he might be to China and his people, he dares not push him- self to the front, lest a mere four-line letter from the imperial pen might blot him out entirely. This old-time, old-thought incubus at Pekin is jealous of men with progressive ideas, even as have been the kingly and churchly powers of many other lands. The Emperor here, or his regent, is as absolute a monarch as ever lived, — head of church and state, high-priest and king, absolute. The man is a bold man, if not surely doomed, who dares become conspicuously great in China. He must go. This is the curse of bigotry, — of church and state combined. We see this withering ban not alone in China, but everywhere where men who claim alliance to Heaven assume dictation over thoughts of other men. Should this progressive party haply win the new boy Empe- ror's ear, then railroads will be built, and old barriers and hindrances be swept away, and China put in the way of great advancement. The instrumentalities must be foreign ; and so for our young men of proper education and enterprise a very wide and prosperous field would be opened up. China has all the natural resources of a great and powerful nation, — second to none in climate, soil, mineral resources of every kind, copi- ous streams, and teeming millions of easily governed people, now cursed from end to end by bigoted conservatism. But it is said that it is darkest just before the dawn ; so let us hope that progressive men will gain the front, and that this great hulking power, so long dormant, will emerge from its darkness and take a place among the enlightened powers. Na- poleon prophesied sore things for Europe should China once be taught her real strength. But it is hardly possible, in fact 1-22 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. or logic, that Europe's thrift is to be based on Asiatic ignorance. If this is the theory, then it is high time that it were exploded. China ought to be a nobler and better country than she is. With iron mines and coal equal to any in the world, she buys old scraps of every sort from European junk shops, and freights them here to hammer out nails, bolts, wagon tires, tools, and such other small needs for iron as must be filled. With mines of gold and silver full of richest ores, China coins no money but her dirty copper "cash," — a hundred for ten cents; a dol- lar five pounds weight. With wealth enough and resources of almost every sort save active brains, China "totes" coals and goods long stretches upon the backs of brute and human ani- mals ; degrading men and women to the state of beasts of burden. With abundant means and credit the country has no national banking system, and leaves such affairs in the hands of foreigners at seaports, or individuals at other points ; yet in the St. Petersburg museum you may see a bank-note of the Impe- rial Bank of China, issued, as its date shows, 3,344 years ago ; showing, as far as can be shown, that China was the first coun- try of the world to have a national bank of issue. This country has long been sinking from a point of lofty superiority to one of low degradation. In days of old her internal improvements were excellent. Fine roads, superior stone and marble and suspension bridges, vast networks of canals connecting her many rivers, gave ready ways for easy transportation ; her mural de- fences are even yet the wonder of the world. Paper, printing, gunpowder, German silver, sugar, tea, and many other things she gave us. Even her proselyting priests, no doubt, discovered America and peopled much of its western shores. Old, China surely is ; great in light and enterprise she surely too has been ; cast down she truly is to-day, — a great and lumbering hulk for all to come and pick at. Here and there are spasmodic signs of latent energy, — either the dying gasps and quivers, or an awakening into new life and sense and energy. At all events, injecting of new blood and vim from other lands will surely work a change when properly applied. For the past hundred years — more notably the last fifty — commercial sharks have counted this great hulk a mere place of plunder, — a place to come to and trade for a dozen years, and then retire laden with wealth. In this attempt were CHINA. 123 countless failures ; so men have stayed here, made such Euro- pean cities as Shanghai and Hong-Kong; taught the natives many a way of foreign trade, — taught them so well as to find themselves too often overmatched by their students. But so soon as other nations make this a real point for colonizing, — come here not to grasp some gain and run away home with it, but to build up cities and foster internal enterprises, — when they come to stay, things will be different. We of America complain of the Chinaman that he doesn't come to stay, — comes only to get money enough to make himself comfortable for life in his own land, and then hurry back to it. But we for- get that this is the very thing Europeans and Americans have been doing, or trying to do, in China for many years. Our young men and merchants didn't go out to China to stay; they had no such thought. They heard of it as a place for probable fortunes in ten or twenty years at most ; intending as they came to make their '' pile " in China and spend it in their homes, among their friends. I have not met a skipper on the sea, or a merchant on the street, who did not come with that intent. Many, no doubt, achieved their purpose ; but this does n't build up China. China has gained more impetus, per- haps, from those who failed than from those who were success- ful. The former had to stay; they made homes, and such improvements as we find. There is room almost anywhere here for real enterprise and talent. The best seats are never full. The struggle may be great, but when you make your way through the crowd there is a place reserved. The schools are turning out more teachers, officers, engineers, and mariners than there is any room for in the States. There is some room here for those of the right sort, — those who are willing to abandon home and country to find both elsewhere. Come here and learn the peoj^le's ways, and in some measure adopt them ; come here to make a living and some progress for the land, rather than make a fortune. But don't come out here penniless ; that were folly, unless you have strong pre-arrangements. You need five hundred or a thousand dollars to live on carefully after you arrive, while you are waiting and working for a mere foothold. Don't forget this, for there is no money on bushes here that you can reach right off. 124 "^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. The climate here does not vary much from that of the States, — cold in the north, warm in the south; snow on the moun- tains, ice on the northern rivers, — healthy as any other country. If this effort, which now seems pushing to the front, to inaugu- rate railroads and mining interests succeeds, — if Li Hung Chang and his party don't get snuffed out by the mossbacks around the throne, — there will be a vast field here for the young and ready workers of the world. CHINA. 125 CHAPTER XI. CHINA. Hong-Kong, the " Valley of Fragrant Waters." — Iron-clad Peacemakers in the Harbor. — Canton, "Great Eastern City." — Its Floating Pop- ulation. — Aspects of the Place. — Streets, Houses, Temples, and Pagodas. — A Chinese Cemetery. — Silk- Weavers at Home. — A Water-Clock. — A Police Court in Canton. — Extorting Confessions from Prisoners. — Savage Proceedings. — Methods of Punishment in China. — A Chapter of Horrors. — Thanksgiving Day in Canton. — A Home-like Feast. — An American-Chinese Merchant of the Olden Time. ON this middle day of November we climb the gang-plank of the good steamer " Fung Chun," and steam away to Shanghai. To turn herself around, the steamer backs below the wharf, and swings carefully, scraping the banks both fore and aft, so narrow is the stream. Navigation of these waters is not easy ; yet it is a rather pleasant way of passing a tourist's time. We were very glad to get away from the wintry winds and the frozen streams of the north country, and exchange the chill and dust for the warmth and quiet of this pleasant ocean voy- age. The travellers are mostly going south. One comes to Hong-Kong — "valley of fragrant waters " — to go somewhere else, — to make of it a stepping-stone to Canton, the largest and best-known city of the East. Hong-Kong is parvenu. Two- score years ago it did not exist ; to-day it is the third port, perhaps, of all the commercial maritime. The man who first hoisted the British flag here lives here yet. The docks are new, and so are the streets and roads and houses. Hong-Kong is on an island ninety miles below Canton. It belongs to England ; is as much British in ownership and ad- ministration as Malta is, or Gibraltar. From the harbor's shore to the top of the granitic mountain, some 2,000 feet, the rise is most abrupt, — terrace upon terrace, plain and zigzag, — each row of dwellings overlooking roofs of the row in front, down upon the broad and placid harbor where rest at dock or anchor 126 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the vessels of peace and war of every nation of the earth; lying here for freights, or waiting to see what may turn up, or to keep the peace intact. As a rule, gunboats and gunboatmen don't do much but repair their boats and draw pay for the men ; but that is as it should be. Their power is in their presence more than in their deeds. China and other nations may be well- disposed, — no doubt they are ; but there is virtue in the presence of these burly warships that loiter about, rusting out and holding aloft the switch that might sometime fall and hit a transgressor hard. So here and elsewhere in these ports you see their dark and ugly hulks lazily at rest beneath their unclad masts and smokeless funnels, waiting and warning. But Hong-Kong is all modern, all bright and new and ex- pensive, and has cost the home government many millions sterling. The buildings are of brick and granite, the roads of stone work and macadam or concrete, — all very good, as there is n't much to wear them out. Maybe there are a dozen car- riages here, not more ; for all the street work, you may safely say, is done by human cattle. They carry you in sedan chairs, open and covered; roll you about in ji?inkishas ; tote the freight on bamboo poles ; tote the iron, stone, brick, boards, — everything. They make the streets, and forty coolies haul the great stone roller that smooths them down. Draught-horses or mules or oxen have no footing here. Above the city, creeping about the steeps and gorges of the mountain, great gangs of men are working on the aqueduct. All the cement and other ma- terial is packed up there by coolies ; all the iron, all the heavy burdens that we are wont to pull about with horses, oxen, or steam, are here laboriously handled by sunburned, pigtailed images of their Maker. Canton is a great city, greatest and best in all the Chinas. (The word is pronounced Kwang-tung, and means " great east- ern city.") Steaming up the broad Pearl River, the first indica- tions of urban presence are two tall pagodas, massive and handsome structures, with bushy sides and tops, — trees growing on them and out of them, bringing them to ruin. Grand forti- fications, also, dispute the way, or might do so ; and here across the channel are stout rows of piling lately driven deep into the mud to thwart invasion during the war with France. Other channels were also choked, but only this has been reopened. CHINA. \2J Next comes in sight the low-built city, its rivers, wharves, canals, and landing places broad-fringed with native boats of every sort and size, — whole fields of boats interlocked, teeming with human life and noise and motion. These are the floating homes of full three hundred thousand Cantonese, — people who rarely step on land. These boats, large, high-pooped junks or tiny sampans, are the houses, homes, and everlasting abiding- places of all their generations. They were born here on these boats, reared here, educated here ; here they do their house- keeping, fishing, ferrying, trading, and trafficking ; raise their children, ducks, and pigs ; peddle fish and flowers ; serve dinners if you please, with dancing and music, too ; cook, wash, eat, drink, live, marry, and die, on these coarse, unpainted, rocking, crowding, brawling boats. There are thousands of them, fringing every approach to land, choking the canals, contending at the water steps, — a crushing, bustling mass of human life afloat. They have advantages, to be sure, that landsmen know not of. They seem a well-fed, rather happy people, — a real floating population. No wheels turn in Canton streets. If the Emperor were to come he could n't drive an inch, — not in a carriage larger than a wheelbarrow. So we took sedans ; and seated in spacious bamboo chairs suspended upon two long brass-tipped poles sup- ported by the brawny shoulders of three coolies garbed in the white and red uniforms of the consulate, we proceeded to see the town. My three coolies made some remarks as they lifted the sedan, but no rebellion. They had been trained to bearing burdens, and it was only their national pride that kept them from dropping the chair and taking to the jungle. We should have volunteered to furnish two or three more, but had heard so much about human endurance, especially that of Chinese coolies, that we really wanted to know just how many pounds per man would kill one on the spot. Canton is walled and not walled. The unwalled suburbs along the river bank are quite extensive. Then come a first and a second wall, both quite useless, and so obscure that we knew not when we passed them. The streets are clean, well- paved, and narrow, — say seven feet on an average. The stores and shops are built of good brown brick, two stories high, the dwellings in the rear and overhead. The aspect of the place 128 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. is that of earnest business ; the stores are clean and rather spa- cious, — eighteen feet ceihngs and six to ten feet wide upon an average ; the jobbing houses larger, but all two stories, with no two ridge-poles joining on a level. The merchants' club- houses are large and clean, and, like the better stores, present much well-carved wood in gold and lacquered works, with finely- chiselled granite floors and marble steps and counters, show- ing many a costly sign or text or dangling ornament. No fetid smells annoy the nose ; and though in the market-places you may have a tender juicy pussy-cat or well-jerked rat to eat, the meats or fish displayed are very neat and tempting. The city has no sewer system, but offensive matter is kept removed, and the water that they drink is boiled and served with tea. And it has been observed and well established in China that cholera makes no ravages here. It comes, but gains no foothold, and all because, as they believe, the night-soil is kept removed with- out the aid of sewers, and the masses drink boiled water. This is worth thinking of, — that fine sewerage may not contribute to health as much as daily removal by cart or bucket ; and that boiled water is the safest of all drinks. Not only as to her trade, but as to her temples. Canton looks prosperous. In no other Chinese city have we seen the places of public worship so well and neatly kept, so generally pat- ronized and looked after. The buildings are clean, the pave- ments and altars fine ; the gilded gods look bright and sleek and rather well-contented with their devotees ; the carved, stuc- coed, frescoed saints and wooden watchmen at the shrines and gates seem fresh and frisky, always well fixed up, and rather proud and business-like. This is about right. If you are going to worship in front of stocks and stones, the stocks and stones ought to be good, — the best of their class. Congregations — be they pagan, Christian, or mixed — can't afford to worship second-hand misfit gods. To have weather-beaten meeting- houses of any sort, with walls, floors, ceilings, altars, pulpits, or other properties, out of order, tells too loudly of decaying faith. In northern China temple worship is a good deal neglected ; in Canton it is most vigorous. So, too, Canton is the most thrifty commercially. The moral goes without telling. At noon we reached the northern wall, and lunched in the top of the great five-story pagoda, in the presence of swarthy CHINA. 1 2 9 newly gilded gods, and some forty soldiers and coolies who looked on with satisfaction as we stowed away cold meats and bread and claret. The outlook northward revealed some twenty thousand acres of closely packed ancestral graves, — a cemetery dating back to Abraham's time or farther ; and yet in all this field of bones and skulls, which on the resurrection day will marshal fifty million souls, there is n't a monument that would be fairly worth six bits in any second-hand shop in the country. The Chinese don't take much pride in post-mortem marbles. As such marbles are of but a few generations, and are then broken up for lime or macadam, who shall say that these heathen are not right in putting their money to other uses ? Still in Canton. Would we visit the police court ? Yes. We had been to the temple of terrors and given heed to the manner of trial and punishment in what seemed to be a tolerably well-organized Chinese hell, — of which farther on ; so it seemed proper and fitting that we should look in upon the Cantonese police court, because, as we now know, there is a sort of close relationship between the two — in China. Being carried into the court-house yard, which is rather clean and spacious, we were attended by the general rabble of men and children, curious to see the strangers. Court was not in session. The magistrate had gone out to lunch. Several frowzy- looking subjects were lying about the skirts of the square, chained and dirty, waiting for justice and soap and water, and needing all three, no doubt. We adjourned a block or two to see some silk -weaving and rummage about the streets and shops till the judge should have his cJww and return to business. Silk-weaving shops are small, obscure places, with little looms in little rooms on a dirt floor, the weaver's feet upon the very earth ; the gleaming fabric that he weaves, scarce a foot above it. The looms have no gleam of polished iron or steel or brass ; all are of wood. There is no hiss of steam or whirr of wheels; no superintendent moving here and there. The rooms have no fine glass windows anywhere ; only some unglazed skylights in the matting overhead. Everything is cheap and dingy, — everything but the growing webs, which fairly gleam with silken sheen of varied patterns,, managed, not by automatic machinery, but only by a boy stand- 9 130 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. ing aloft upon a pole watching some numbers on hanks of warp, according to his slate. He and the shuttle-man below were making, in that dingy, stuffy room, such finery as might cause ball-rooms to shine, and many a dame o\ girl to toss her head a bit while sweeping down the middle aisle. Strange that such pretentious, costly, pocket-wearying stuff should hail from such a squalid den ! Canton drug-stores we found were very good, — not bulging out with colored water globes, but gorgeous in their gilded signs and countless gleaming packages and rows of pots and jars, with lotions, potions, powders, pills, and sirups, — a thousand things on tables, shelves, and counters, all native goods, all patent, — everything put up in order and sold for cash at high prices. These fellows have been in the patent-medicine business since the Witch of Endor's time ; and if there is a single disease for which they cannot supply a remedy, then they don't know it. There is no phase of human nature they are not prepared to meet. The colonel could n't make them understand his pet disorder, so they got out a pill, — a rather pretty pill, an inch in diameter at least, made up of dried and ground hard-boiled eggs and deer horns. This would make him strong as Samson and Goliath ! No doubt ; but remembering the police court and the water-clock, we could n't wait to hear the directions. The water-clock, so the guide claims, is older than Moses and Abraham. It has a solid brick four-story building close by the temples of Buddha, the temple of the god of war, and the police court. Its originality consists of six metallic tubs on six steps, one above the other, the water from the bottom of the highest one dripping, a drop at a time, into the top of its nearest neighbor, and so on down. In the last tub rests a wooden float, bearing a vertically graduated rule that runs up through a slotted board and rests across the top. The figures as they rise above this slot indicate the time, and the time is marked every quarter hour upon a broad board, which is hung conspicuously upon the outer wall, that all who will may know the time o'day. We found the clock an hour and twenty minutes wrong ; but that does n't matter where there are no trains to make, no bank to close at three, no prayer-meetings, theatres, or lodges, to be jun on time. What was the matter with it? " Well," so said our guide, " the French and English when CHINA. 1 3 1 they made the war, he stole 'em all these things. He steal 'em six, he bring back three ! " So it was ; only three tanks where they once had six. Of course the clock could n't run right. But it is the only native clock we saw in China ; and in the days before Ramses and Seth Thomas, it doubtless did good work, — better far than the hour-glass of our forefathers., which had to be turned every sixty minutes. This water-clock is perpetual ; for as the bottom tank gets full, it sets a siphon off, the water drops out in a jiffy, the graduated stick goes down with the float, and a new day's work begins again. But the judge had taken tifhn ; the court was in full blast ; so back we went, and were admitted. It was a roundabout way to get in, — round two right-hand corners, three left-hand ones, and several alleys, back from the court-yard and noisy streets. There were no spectators besides our two selves and our guide. Three prisoners already were in limbo, and one was upon his knees before the big fat judge. As near as we could see, prisoners don't have much fun in Chinese courts. When the police run them in, their friends or neighbors can come and speak in their behalf J but woe to the prisoner who has no character in court, — " no friends to speaky him good." The prisoner is arraigned to answer to the charge, whatever it may be. If he pleads guilty, it is a sad day for him. If he refuses to talk, it 's no fun either. Before we entered three had been on their knees before the stern old squire in red and yellow silken robes, and had re- fused to speak. They were left upon their knees, framed to a narrow upright board placed close behind them. Right through a convenient hole in this board were reeved their pigtail queues ; their feet were snatched up from the ground and tied by each great toe upon the frame, and left dangling. The hands were caught as far back as they would stretch, each thumb tied to the frame. So our prisoner was kneeling on the tips of his knees, his feet and hands suspended by big toes and thumbs, his head caught by his hair. It was torture most acute. To move the head or feet or arms was only to increase it. Only the eyes were unrestrained, and these were fronted to the judge. " Who is this man on his knees before the court? " we asked Afu, our guide. " He b'long pilate." 132 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. "• Pirate, eh ! What is the judge saying to him? " " He speaky him nobody speaky good ; al]a speaky him bad, speaky him pilate. He tellee him must speaky something. He speaky nothing. Judge say if not speaky proper he make him trouble. Man say if he speaky then killee he ; cut head off." The plain case was, the fellow was up for piracy, and had no one to testify in his behalf. If he pleaded guilty it was death ; if he didn't it was torture, — no sixty days and costs, or six months in a cosey jail. From his back a loose coat was removed ; then, naked to the waist, he knelt towards the court. In mildly earnest tones the judge and his assistant besought the kneeling culprit to tell the truth, warning him that otherwise he must suffer, as he was an old offender, and no one would come to speak for him. The prisoner said nothing. So to speak, he was between the devil and the deep sea, — which way he turned was trouble. Refusing still to speak, two policemen took his hands from off the ground and stretched them out ; another seized his pig- tail and jerked his head well forward ; and another yet, with a dry split bamboo wand as sharp and tough as steel, stood close behind. Again the court implored him to speak the truth ; but truth was sudden death, and he was dumb. A motion from the judge, and the savage bamboo rained ten stinging stripes athwart his naked back. No word. Then came ten more a-whistling through the air, making a livid track across his shoulder blades ; and where the biting bamboo knout came down upon the back of his right arm, great drops of blood came out and fell in clots upon the bricks. Again the judge asked the prisoner, howling now with pain, to speak the truth. No answer. A fresh hand caught the sting- ing bamboo, and rained upon the livid flesh ten fiery, biting blows, followed by streams of blood and shrieks for mercy. Once more the judge, without a change of voice, besought the writhing culprit to confess the truth, on penalty of more pain ; but not a single word came from the man. Again his arms were stretched, and a third man took the scourge. Like strokes of livid lightning hissing through the air, fell ten wither- ing blows upon the now swollen and blackened flesh. But there was not a wince, or scream, or word. The culprit's ner\-es and CHINA. 133 tongue seemed paralyzed. He knew it was death to speak the truth. His chance was all on the other side. The judge then parleyed once again, but getting no response, another burly brute, the biggest of the lot, caught up the bloody bamboo, and fairly hurled upon the reeking, galled flesh full twenty blighting blows which broomed the bamboo ends and sent the blood a-trickling down the wiry victim's back in twenty crimson streams. Another parley. Sixty blows had fallen, and these were but mere boy's play to the tortures yet in store, — the knouting of the legs and feet ; the beating of the face and mouth with tawny rawhide thongs ; the distorting pressure of the wrists and hands beneath the torturing screw, which, with other implements, were hanging on the walls. But we had seen enough, and feeing the guard who kindly let us in and out, off we went, fully satis- fied that getting caught at piracy in Canton fails to contribute to personal comfort. We did not go to the public execution ground, for there was nothing going on that week in the beheading line. Occasionally they cut off a few dozen heads, and they say it is really worth a stranger's while to see how straight and swift and sure the broadsword descends upon the doomed neck and sends the head a-spinning to the ground ; but one can't stand everything. There are many pleasant things in Canton ; but having at- tended a temple of horrors, and being in a rather horrible state of mind, growing out of recalling the police court scene, per- haps I might as well dish up more tribulation. The general bent of theology, pagan or Christian, is to extremes, espe- cially in those countries beyond the gates of death, — places we have no real knowledge of. The theologist, pagan or Christian, could formulate no heaven if hell were counted out, could conceive of no " land of pure delight, where saints immortal reign," without the other element of speechless torture ; so in the texts and in the sermons, in the arts and in the temples, there is given ample taste of both. The old Egyptian at the tombs of the Kings painted heavenly scenes and flames of hell six thousand years ago, with purgatorial chances ; the Chinese artist set those things forth some little farther on ; and then the Buddhist ; next the Christian authors followed suit, copyists quite of ancient thought ; the Mohammedan took the same 134 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. course ; so the same stale story is wrapped about the entire globe, all copied from earliest pagan religions. But this temple of horrors. It has many rooms filled with statuary, — judgment-day scenes, if you please. Tlie judges are seated there in royal state, austere and business-like. The good are going their joyful ways unhurt; but the bad — well, to put the words exact, they are having a devil of a time. The devils are out in full force, skipping about, very black of face and red of e3'e and mouth, cutting and slashing right and left. One unfortunate is hanng his eyes gouged out ; all are weeping tears of blood ; blood comes trickling from their nostrils, ears, and eyes ; one is cleft from top of skull to neck ; others hang dis- embowelled, have their limbs chopped off, heads burned off in fire, feet stuck into pots to boil, flesh sliced off, heads pierced through with nails, tongues torn out with red-hot forked hooks ; others run head-first into the hopper of a mill and coming out be- low in human sausage-meat, — these and other nameless tortures are here sculptured quite as large as life. This is but a poor sketch, only a hint in weakly ink, of the heathen Chinee's idea of post-mortan punishments, — a little more naturalistic perhaps than ours ; but ours is revelation, and of course there can be no mistake about it. Theirs is mere pagan guesswork ; but, after all, the two don't differ much, for it makes small odds whether one comes to be made into eternal grill or everlasting sausage- meat. After having studied Dante and Milton, Michael Angelo and the Pisan school, it is not amiss to come to Canton temples or Tientsin, and take a look at Chinese art as it forecasts events of the great last day. The day before yesterday was Thanksgiving day at home. They don't know or care much about our great American holiday out here in China. They will take a good strong hand at Christmas and New Year's ; but Thanksgiving day and Fourth of July are maskee," wo account." Yet we intended to have the day of thanks anyhow ; and on landing here we straightway despatched a note up the river to our consul, Mr. Seymour, requesting his aid in securing comfortable quarters and his attendance upon a thankful jubilee that we intended to give in Canton on the last Thursday in November, according to the customs of the fathers. Next day but one we were there. Looking up this man of CHINA. 135 foreign service, it turned out that while he had received our very reasonable request, he had ignored our plans, declared his private house our home, and assigned us chairs and plates at a spread for forty. Remonstrance was rebellion ; for on this little isle of Shameen, separated from Canton city by a bridged canal, this useful consul man has absolute control, — ■ a sort of human gunboat that has to be obeyed. He is keeper of the American half-way station on this long and too often pathless way that leads around the globe. Within his heart are many welcomes, and in his bungalow are many apartments prepared for wanderers, where the weary pilgrim from the States may ever find a wel- come and a crust, lay aside his dusty shoon and staff, and bide and rest in peace. So after such unexpected welcome and a day or two of streets and shops, towers and temples, the sun went down upon our toil, and twilight hours brought hungry thankful ones within the portals of our generous host. Covers were laid for nearly forty guests, and no one bidden stayed away. The Americans numbered twenty-six ; others were from England, Scotland, Ireland ; and some of them, though of American par- entage, were natives of Canton, one of Siam. Such was our Cantonese Thanksgiving party at Mr. Consul Seymour's house, half-way around the world. But what do people find to eat half-way around the world, and who prepares the food ? At eight o'clock the seats were filled and formal grace invoked. Looking over the rows of faces at the two long tables, it seemed to be a well-organized meeting of merchants, diplomats, mis- sionaries, men of customs, and a pair of worldly tourists. Behind the chairs, with covered heads and silken robes of blue, the nim- ble waiters stood dispensing food. Soups, fish, and meats, of various kinds, course after course of beef and mutton, fish and fowl, vegetables, roasts and stews, pork and beans, puddings and jellies, fruits and cake and wine, all served in perfect order, and eaten with much chat and appetite. The cookery was all Chinese, yet you would not have known it ; for the man of pots and kettles had been for many years in American employ, and knew just how to prepare each dish the worthy host had asked for. The dinner was bounteous and excellent, and followed by such post-prandial talk as calls to mind not only those who sit about the board, but those who were not present, but on the 136 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Other hemisphere, — those who were not, as we were, feasting in the early stages of the night, but who had just then thanked and dined and slept, and were eating breakfast underneath our very feet. Thanksgiving dinners here are much the same as at home, — a social, happy gathering of old and young. Turkeys and pump- kin pies they sometimes have this way, but it is a matter of much pure calculation. Turkeys are raised to some extent in north- ern China, but in Canton, when they can be had at all, they cost a dollar or two per pound. We saw one — only one — at Tientsin. A lad in silken raiment held him in his lap and fed him from a bowl, and the captain bought him for the price of a good-sized bullock on the plains, to fill an order for a Shanghai man. So we ate no turkey, for the reason that there was none in Canton. It is rather strange that, with all the christianizing influences that have been brought to bear upon tliese Cantonese for quite two hundred years, this emblem of our feasting and the well-trusted subject of so many thanks has been so little popularized in China. The guests were from many lands and States, yet there was one I think of more than others. He had passed the mark of threescore years and ten, yet were his days not dark or dreary. He had come to China in his early manhood, more than fifty years ago, — came out to Canton and entered on his work ; came and conquered fortune, and went home again a millionnaire ; still kept on his work, sent fleets of ships to sea, and gathered wealth and luxuries, taking his rightfiil rank among the foremost merchants of the world. But fickle fortune thought to break him down. His ships went down at sea ; cargoes were lost ; ventures were blighted ; goods sacrificed in many ports to meet maturing claims ; and as the gale swept on, and piled the land and sea with merchants' wrecks, in that frightful storm of thirty years ago, nothing was left to Gideon Nye but hope and faith and honor. If fortune seemed to smile again after that well- remembered tempest, it was only seeming ; and to-day, if you come to visit Canton, you will find him here, living in quiet rooms on the Honan side, among the dark old hongs, where once great wealth in teas and silks were stored, — a short and trim old man, bright-eyed and silver-haired, polite, intelligent, well- schooled, — a clear-cut, polished gentleman of the olden time, CHINA. 137 at whose feet you may sit for hours and be well entertained. He sits among the desolation, yet speaks no plaintive word ; talks of his ships, his houses, and his noble gallery of art, — the best New York then had ; chats of the men he knew, — the mighty men of England and the statesmen with whom his great com- mercial scope brought him in yearly contact ; but no complaint escapes his lips. Philosopher as he is, he takes as his maxim — " 'T is better to have won and lost Than never to have won at all." And here in selfimposed banishment, among his old Chinese and European friends, he leads a quiet, wholesome, happy life. Happy, I say, for his conduct plainly shows it. All who win and hold great stakes are not the happiest of men ; all who win and lose great wealth are not miserable. For there is that good quality in men, — that sterling mental metal that rises superior to all distraint and ills, and, like the storm-swept mountain peaks, gathers much radiance from the heavenly sun. Almost twoscore years have come and gone since Gideon Nye stood crowned a merchant prince. How many could you count on the wide world's books who then stood high in wealth, that are so well off to-day as he? Many are the wrecks, and with the wreck came mental death and physical ruin ; but if you meet this fair old man in Canton streets to-day you will see no sign of wreck of mind or body, but a most courteous, useful, interesting man. The day after Thanksgiving we spent among the shops and temples, visiting the better class of Chinese gentlemen, — such as have made their money, they or their parents, and now live outside the rush of trade and take their tea and comfort. These China mission hospitals are well worth seeing. All the mission work of the East does not consist of Bible stories and teaching, of ministering to souls distraught, and turning people from the ways of the special wrath of an offended God ; but there are those, God bless them too ! who minister constantly to the aches and pains and ills of flesh and blood and bone. Here at Canton, as at Pekin and several other points, are hospitals under the management of men of tact and skill, who, with the knife or potion, try to make sick men whole. Grand men are these, and women, too, who thus devote their hearts and lives to such as cannot help themselves. Great good is done by this 138 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. practical Christianity that makes the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the sick to smile again. These and those who teach are doing something that the world must surely know in time ; something that appeals more to the supporting purse of the Chinaman than all else could do beside. It is coming upon these heathen in no mean way. They come to these hospitals, and many find the relief they seek. It may not make them Christians, but neither Christianity nor money forms a condition precedent ; it is a free gift to needy physical nature, and as such will produce in time, as it does so even now, a happy harvest. THE ISLE OF JAVA. 139 CHAPTER XII. THE ISLE OF JAVA. Voyaging on the China Sea. — Life on a French Mail Steamer. — Eating, Drinking, and Resting. — Skirting the Sumatra Coast. — Crossing the Equator. — A Night at Singapore. — Climate and Costume. — A Talk about Tea. — The Cup that may Liebriate. — Some Facts for Tea- Drinkers at Home. — A Tarry at Batavia. — Gridiron Experiences. — A Flight to the Cooler Uplands. HONG-KONG was left behind December 2, and eight days by this swift French mail boat, the " Peiho," count- ing a hot day at Saigon, will set us down in Singapore — " lion city " — on the damp Malacca coast. Ship days are good days, provided always the ship is clean, fast, and well-provisioned, all of which this one was. As to society, it is pretty much as you always find it — mixed. We have the American, the English- man, the voluble sons of France, the German, Russian, and Ori- ental people generally ; passengers in blue suits, gray suits, black suits, and white suits, and those farther afore whose raiment is like unto that which the old version says Joseph wore, while others more nearly imitate the closer-fitting vestments so much the rage in early Eden days. Considering this torrid climate, — the thermometer having a fondness for the upper nineties, — it is evident to my mind and sense that the nearer one can come to woven thinness and not invade the realm of naked truth, the better he is clad. Life on these extremely Oriental steamers runs about this way : You can get up when you like, get your coffee when you please, — have it in your state-room, or sit in your pyjamas at the common table, and sip your coffee, eat your piece of bread and butter, and take things easy. You are allowed to luxuriate in your night-dress and slippers till eight o'clock, at which time the ladies are supposed to get about, and then the lords of creation have to renounce their airy costumes for the lesser comforts of trousers and shirt and coat. The easy comfortable morning slipper, also, 140 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. gives way to boots or shoes. Real breakfast is served at half- past nine, a generous breakfast a la table d'hote, — course after course of meats and fish and vegetables, with bread and wine and fruits at pleasure. This consumes an hour or more ; for no one orders what he wants and has it all brought on at once, but has to take just what is on the bill of fare, — take it or leave it, as he likes, — and wait while others eat, or eat while others wait ; winding up with a small cup of vigorous French coffee, with a petite verre du cognac, singly or mixed, just as one feels inclined. Your French bon vivant does n't care for coffee slops, but prefers it concentrated, as the colonel likes his cigars, — with a little touch of paralysis. When breakfast is over it is nearly eleven o'clock ; then we lounge or walk about the spacious deck in the thick awning's shade ; read, chat, smoke, or watch the deep blue sea. The passengers are clannish. French bide with French, and Ger- mans with Germans ; the Britons like themselves pretty well ; and it is usually the careless Yankee wlio cuts away red tape and mixes generally in society, — flies the robust eagle, and gets what new ideas he can. But don't forget the tiffin. "Tiffin " is a semi-barbarous substi- tute for that better word, " luncheon." But don't forget it. It comes, as sure as hunger, every day at half-past twelve. The bell rings but once ; and if you wait to be urged by a second bell, you '11 get left. Tiffin has its rather goodish cup of bouillon, a weak, hot, pleasant sort of soup, served in large handled cof- fee-cups, with a spoon and soup-plate, — you may pour it in the plate and eat it with your spoon, or be more dilatory and sip it quietly, as though it were a cup of right hot tea ; viands im- paled in cress ; bread, onions, wine, and beer ; fruits, too, and coffee, — that same delightful, tiny china cup, and that same glistening, teasing litde glass of cognac. Then we mount to the deck again, — the broad, long, well- scrubbed teak deck, upon which you might sit as cleanly as upon your chair, the great white awning overhead baffling the sun's sharp rays. Behind the awning curtains on the sunward side, protected all around, you sit and smoke and chat, or read and sleep, fanned by the soft salt breeze that the swiftly moving ship wakes up and sets astir. It is midday ; the torrid sun is out, and in an open boat would make your skin look like the THE ISLE OF JAVA. I4I coolies' hides, — like well-cured bacon rind. In the shade it's very different ; you need not fret or suffer. So, with this lazy sort of life you pass four hours more, till five o'clock, the French ship's dinner-hour. Hungry? Well, rather ! A healthy, good- dispositioned fellow is almost always hungry on the sea. He has nothing else to do. At peace with the world, with no re- spect for the Devil ; a careful eater, with perfect digestion, why should n't he be hungry several times a day ? Table iVIidte again ; session ninety minutes ; four Chinese coolies tugging at the punkas, — long white-winged fans that stir the stagnant air into refreshing ripples, putting one at per- fect ease. The bill of fare is long, and of French ingenuity. You may not always know exactly what you are eating ; but as it is all good, you go ahead and ask no questions. For the first five minutes of the Frenchman's dinner, he utters not a word ; inclines himself to internal communion. His soup swallowed by silent spoonfuls, he breaks a bit of bread, pours forth a glass of wine, then tastes his bread and sips his wine, and then begins to chat, — at first slowly, then in faster, snatchy sentences ; and as the food comes on and ruby claret flows, so come his words and flows his speech in rapid, constant, almost breathless ratde. All talk together ; no one man knows or can know what the others say ; and it does n't matter much, for dinner talk is only din- ner talk, done for digestion, not for use. The courses come and go ; the punkas cool the air ; the little rill of chat becomes a flowing river. The menu spent, appetites gone, and the orange and banana rinds, with skins of grapes and shells of nuts, heaped upon your plate, then for the third time in the day comes that dainty little china cup, that glistening condensed coffee-pot ; and on its silver salver, tiptoeing on behind, the little crystal thimble glass, — the Frenchy, glinting petite verre du cognac. The deck, the cigars, the quiet after-dinner promenade be- neath the southern sky ; the pole-star dipping low, the southern cross abreast; the pale new moon just sinking in the west, — right over your right shoulder there, lying as you never saw it lie before, full flat upon its back, a tiny silver boat upon a sea of lazuline. From half-past six to eight o'clock is ninety minutes more. Then the table bell rings again. More food is served below, — this time come cake and tea and lemonade. Choose which you like, and sip another little while, and the day's work 142 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH, is done. You pace the deck, or stretch yourself and talk or biooze, or burn Virginia incense, till the starlight hours creep on towards next day ; you think of the good day's work you 've done ; of the good friends beneath your chair who are just get- ting out of bed to get their morning meal ; and wishing them good-night and good luck, turn down your light and turn your- self in for a good eight hours' sleep. Such is our life upon the China Sea. A month ago to-day we were frozen in upon the Pei Ho River, clad in overcoats and double wraps of thick Siberian fur ; to-day in ten-ounce garbs we sit and wonder if there is real winter anywhere. Two hours ago we left Saigon, the French colony of Cochin China, some sixty miles from the ocean, up a wide and crooked river, — a place where only French and natives live ; a city of neat streets, houses, shops, and gardens. It revels in luxuriant vegetation, — a turf that never pales, trees that never lose their robes of green, and fruits and flowers perennial ; here even mildest frost or least suggestive wintry breath is never known to come. The people swarm in millions — so do mosquitoes ; but it is a land of plenty and of nakedness. Rarest flowers bloom perennially ; fuel nor clothing figures much in the family calculations, — a sort of dreamy, luscious, tropic land, where real want stands a good way off". Of course we all pity these black-and-tan genera- tions because they don't pile on more clothes and believe in our sort of heaven and hell ; but that does n't seem to fret them much. The big, round, generous sun smiles down upon his naked ones, and places within their easy reach such things as we call luxuries. Happy children of the sun ! we '11 sail away, nor leave on your account a single tear behind. Thirty hours skirting the Sumatra coast brings our good French ship into the straits of Eanka, — half-way from Singapore to the isle of Java, best known of the Malay Isles, perhaps be- cause our coffee comes from there. Yesterday at four o'clock we crossed the equatorial line, — the line that splits the globe in two, and fences the northern from the southern half. Though watching attentively, none saw it ; but then the tide was high, and it must have been quite underwater. Temperature at cross- ing, eighty-four degrees, a close, damp heat, the sun obscured by soft and fleecy clouds, which here and there within our easy sight had darkened into showery masses. Water, grayish green. THE ISLE OF JAVA. 1 43 showing its shallowness. Here, in the centre of the watery world, the sun shines less, perhaps, than you would think. Days and nights are much the same in heat and length ; and as to real comfort it matters very little whether night comes on or not, for unless there comes a squall of rain, the same amount of clothing serves for both. We go to bed in compliment to usage ; go be- low, and between open door and open port stretch out upon a couch, because it is a couch ; but just as well, and better, too, we sleep on deck among the stars upon a lounging chair beneath the wide-stretched awning, — sleeping and waking, listening to the mild seething of the phosphorescent sea, or quietly burning there some incense to the sleepless and lustrous stars. • ••••** Last night but one we slept at Singapore, the city of the straits, — a pretty English-Indo-Chinese town, with bright green grassy lawns enshrined in luscious foliage ; eternal, buoyant leaf- age, living forever on the soft, warm breath of an undying tropic summer, apart from wintry blasts, beyond the thought of frost, beyond the lack of flowers and fruit. Dinner done at eight, — and bad enough at that, — my bare-headed boy in calico, with gayly harnessed pony, squatted upon the whiffletree, and drove me in his coolly latticed four-wheeled cab to this neatly furnished ship, that in the early morning would sail six hundred miles away, — a sixty-hour voyage to Batavia, in Java. The land was pleasant, but the sea was better ; and at full length on a long, cool, rattan chair, the night was spent among softly soothing zephyrs and in sweetest sleep. The hot and sleepless tropic nights they told us of were certainly not here. The blistering days in which people gasp for air most surely are somewhere else ; and the vigilant mosquito — he does n't seem to live here half as much as in the northern zone. Altogether, we found this equatorial region far better than represented. You don't want lots of clothes at eighty-five degrees, — pantaloons and a coat close-buttoned to the chin are quite enough. That horrid, bald-faced, stiff and starchy shirt and stiff annoying collar are much unfavored here, and ought to be, — here and everywhere. We talk of women's sla- very to fashion, as though men were not enslaved. Nonsense ! Go to a stylish ball, as we did at Saint Andrew's Festival at Hong-Kong one night last week. Ladies were there in white, or cream, or black, or colored silks and stuffs to suit their 144 -^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. own good taste ; with corsage high, or yet decollete ; ruches or fichus ; sleeves quite long, or short, or none ; short skirts or trained ; shoes of various shades, heels high or low, — in short, they know no law in these fine party suits. They made upon the floor a real flower-garden of many a fine conceit and tint. But now bring out your man. Stand him up ; turn him around, — a hundred of them if you like, — no two different, as if the tailors knew no other way to get them up : feet cased in black and hands in white ; legs, arms, and trunk in glossy black ; a spade-tailed rear for every one ; and plastered o'er the upper front a broad triangled space of glistening, dreary white, with white cravat and white unyielding collar, — the whole devoid of sense or taste ; a doleful-looking lot, dressed in that stupid way because it is the fashion, poor, helpless souls ! — a fashion that they do not dare to break. They seem a lot of dapper table waiters who forgot to bring their napkins, come to disport themselves a little in a ball-room. All the way upon our right we skirt Sumatra's jagged coast, sometimes lying flat and low, then rising high, but always richly green. Here on the left is Banka, a long and narrow fruit and coffee bearing isle. Between the two for many an hour we glide along, as down a broad, clear river, the sun obscured, the heat but eighty-five, — the common heat, they say, for all the year round. Sumatra and these other isles of Borneo and Java, and the lesser ones, are the land of the coca, mango, mangosteen, and cocoa-nut ; land of rare spices and perfumes ; land of coffee and quinine ; land, too, of reptiles and ferocious beasts, — a real play-ground of the earthquake, volcano, and typhoon. Worst of all these is Borneo, perhaps, — about as large as Texas, — abounding in savages, — a godless race, they say, with whom the missionary disciples of Buddha, Christ, or INIahomet have made as yet no progress. Diamonds and discovery are said to tempt men there, but often to destruction. But suppose we change the subject, and as the ship ploughs through the watery waste and warmth, we chat of something else. Do you drink tea? Some people do, and call it good, — a cup that cheers but does n't inebriate. Let us see about that. A month ago or so, on the " Fung Chun," we were running from the frozen north to catch up with the summer sun, when there arose THE ISLE OF JAVA. 1 45 some talk of tea. A Chinese admiral, with his train of more than thirty servants, was along, and tea flowed rather freely. You may have heard the fiction — most tea-drinkers have — that we get no good teas in America, very little in Europe, for the stupid reason that the sea voyage spoils the flavor, odor, or some- thing, of the precious herb ; that if you really want good tea, tea in all its glory, you must drink it hot in China or in those east- ern Europe lands to which the herb comes overland by steppe, sledge, and caravan. That is a whopper ! It is said that you can invent a lie and tell it so often that it will seem to you, in time, like truth. This tea lie is one of that stamp, and not only the teller, but half the world has really caught it up for truth. Tea is no more injured by a sea voyage than tapioca is. It crosses the sea hermetically sealed in lead or tin, and if it had any fra- grance when it started — which much of it has not — it holds it through the voyage ; but when the seal is broken, and air and light get in, the evanescent aroma speedily takes flight. The best way is to buy the best brands, — provided always that you know what they are, — buy in smallest packages, and use it as soon as you can after it is broken. Large packages, long ex- posed in grocery stores, lose very much of their flavor before the lot is sold. But which are the best of teas, — those of greatest local charm and value ? They are such as you would not have or drink. Taste in tea is something like taste in whiskey, tobacco, or Lim- burger cheese. A toper addicted to cheap rum would die of thirst on ripe champagne ; a sailor clinging to his jet-black, vit- riolic, and vicious plug would throw away true natural golden- leaf; and he who bides by rank Limburger cheese would thank you little for a creamy curd. So, too, in teas, people like the stuff they have got used to, without reference to its real merit; as, for instance, a large share of Americans are now, and long have been, drinking what the Chinaman calls " lie " tea. " Lie " tea is recast tea. Suppose we are in Shanghai. It 's the same anywhere ; but we will take Shanghai. In old and new Shanghai a million people live, all of whom drink good fair aver- age tea, five millions of cups a day. This takes several thousand pounds of first-hand tea, and makes a lot of " grounds." The houses, tea-shops, restaurants, hotels, or what not, save their " grounds," have a leaky-bottom dish or two into which the wet 10 146 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. tea-grounds are cast. The water drains off, and every day or two the tea-grounds man comes round, as it is his business to do, and gathers up this stuff, sells it to the "lie" tea-makers, who dry it out in broad spaces in the sun, mix in a little un- used tea, add coloring, and recast and nicely box it up for for- eign markets. The Chinaman does n't use this tea. He knows better. If he is poor he gets the cheap stem tea, worth about five dollars a bushel, and uses that. The " lie " tea goes to you, and you, and you, to drink at morning, noon, and night. How has this come to pass? Because people will have cheap tea. To enable first hands to sell it cheaply it must be cheap, and second-hand goods of almost any kind are always cheaper than new. Hyson means "before the rain." Tea picked before the rain has washed the leaf is better than tea picked after rain. " Young " or " Old " Hyson only relates to the age of the leaf, — the new or young and tender leaf being preferred, and it should bear a better price. Among black teas (and blacks are more often " proper " tea than greens) , Oolong ranks high. The word means " black dryer," — that is, it dries black. Souchong means " small leaf" Conyon means prepared or " doctored " teas. The word " tea " is unknown in China, save in Amoy, where it is pronounced much as the French pronounce it, — not " tea," but " th6," the final e like a. In Pekinese it is cha; in Cantonese it is cho ; in Japanese it is cha, again. But the fat old admiral has been kept sitting long enough. Let us call him up. We were, as I have said, on our way from Tien- tsin to Shanghai, on the good ship " Fung Chun." Among other things brought forth was a sample of choice Japan tea which the moosme had bought for me near Nara. The Chinese interpreter tasted it and had a sample brewed, and liked it ; but he was Eng- lish. The admiral got interested and took a taste, but did n't care for it ; he was a mandarin, rich, and knew of better things. So, later on, by the interpreter, he sent me a sample of his tea, — a tablespoonful of greenish-yellow stuff that looked more like leaves of sage than tea. Breathing hard upon it, there came a smell — an herbish sort of odor — not much like tea. Eating some leaves, it seemed like eating herbs, not tea. At dinner, calling the steward and handing him the little package the admiral had kindly sent, I asked him to make me a large THE ISLE OF JAVA. 1 47 cup of tea, Chinese fashion, — " proper." He brought it on in time, the leaves swimming on the top and all through it. Re- moving the little earthen lid which rests atop of real China cups, I took a sip. It surely was n't tea, but herb-drink of some un- known sort. The leaves were large and perfect, and looked like sage, but they were not green or black, but very light. I kept on drinking, and by the time I had swallowed one half the cup my head swam with such sensations as one gets from rapid whirl- ing. Speaking to the interpreter about it, he was astonished that it had all been brewed at once. \Miy, there was enougli for at least ten times, " and if you drink that cup of tea you can't sleep for ten hours ! " My head spun merrily, but eating on and sipping now and then, I drank it all and took the chances. My blood tingled from top to toe ; but after two hours' rest I went off to bed, and slept eight hours. " Well," said the lingster man next morn- ing, " you 've simply got no nerves. I would not have taken that tea for anything. It would have kept me awake four nights, and I advise you not to repeat what you have done. That tea is Mandarin, and costs not less than fifty dollars a pound. Not ranch of it is raised, and none exported." I had heard these big stories of the cost of tea. The " Fung Chun " engineer, a snarly little Scotchman, told me how he had sent to his good old mother on the Clyde a Christmas gift of forty- dollar tea ; and others had talked of such like precious pounds, but — well, in travel, the best way is to dispute with none, as- sent to all you hear, and let it go for truth. But for my own drinking, none the less, ten cents a pound would have been too much for Mandarin tea, for it had little tea-taste about it. But it teaches this : that tea not only cheers, but may inebriate. It teaches more : that tastes most widely differ ; and more than this, the triteness of that old-time adage that declares to us that where ignorance bringeth satisfaction, wisdom is dear at any price. But possibly having detected at the roots of my nose an un- believing sneer at his fifty-dollar-a- pound story, the interpreter went on to emphasize what he had said, to lead us deeper still into the maze of wonderment, by saying : " There is a kind called Pun Cha, raised in small quantity in a single province, that is most dear of all. Pun Cha is the imperial tea, — is drunk within the ' forbidden city ' by the imperial family, where it is taken 148 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. in gilded sacred boxes once every year with solemn step and serious music, to be laid at the feet of majesty. This tea, this mundane essence of the golden sun, costs twenty dollars an ounce ! " Taking a fresh cigar, we went forth on the deck among the boreal zephyrs and the twinkling stars. The man in the moon had no remark to make ; the Pleiadiac sisters uttered not a word ; the Dipper's handle swung toward the restless brine ; but to my distraught mind came forth the scriptural words with cogent weight : " All men are liars." I don't much care for tea of any sort, — surely not for fifty- dollar tea ; the stuff, by parity of reasoning, worth almost seven times that sum, would make of me a drivelling maniac, ^^'hat then? Take what the gods and grocers give you, and wisely rest content. No matter how good or bad a man your grocer may be, poor soul, he sells tea as you drink it — in igno- rance. He will not change his ways, nor will you yours. You will go on soaking yourselves with " lie " tea and Oolong, and count your board well served. Be ignorant; be happy. In China, drink tea ; in Java, coffee. That may do in theory. The practice is questionable ; for in China they don't always brew the sort of tea you might care to drink ; and in Ja\a I have had as poor a cup of coffee as ever outraged human lips. . • • • We came to Java because it is the best of all the Malay islands, — owned by the Dutch, as most of them are. Java is about the size of Iowa, — picturesque in scenery, violent as to volcanoes and earthquakes, abounding in nuts, fruits, spices, cof- fee, tea, Dutch tiles, and Dutch enterprise. The name is not derived from the coffee of that name, nor is coffee derived from Java, except by adoption. The jSIalay word is jayah, and means "nutmeg." The island is said to contain twenty millions of natives, who permit themselves to be governed by some twenty thousand Dutch and thirty thousand soldiers, who do it very well, and manage to send home to the " mother country" about $5,000,000 yearly, besides what they add to their own ex- tensive possessions. Java has fine railroads and not a beggar. As to religion, the natives are Buddhistic and Mohammedan, few Christians, and the Dutch mostly moneytheistic. No mis- THE ISLE OF JAVA. 1 49 sion folks arc tolerated ; the rulers let their subjects believe in their old religion. It is the home, is Java, of the deadly upas- tree, which, if you care to credit the legend, grows in the valley of death, and has such malignant properties that none care to venture there, or tell you where it is ; but they do say that all who lay them down to rest beneath its thick shade arise no more in sound mind ; that the birds that skim the air above its branches fall dead upon the ground. If this is all fiction, I am glad of it ; yet, like many a fable, it has some ground in fact. For over there on the mountain range is an extinct crater, in the bowl of which is a lake of acid water — sulphuric acid — in which, of course, no life exists. And from this lake flows forth a river which contains no life, and at its confluence with the ocean the fish that swim within it die. It is two days' steam from Singapore to Batavia, say sixty hours. Our ship was rather fast, and brought us here in fifty, — to her anchorage, out in the open sea, called a harbor, whence a lighter takes us through several miles of shallow water between two stout brick sea walls, on by canal right up into the city. Batavia, the chief port, is a dead level, — a place of thrift, with fine streets, steam tramways, canals, good houses, Chinese ped- lers, and no end of the most vigorous tropical vegetation. The grounds and yards abound in noble cocoa-palms, the broad- leaved banana, the kingly sycamore and tamarind, and flowering trees and shrubs, fruit-trees and bamboo, rose-bushes, parasites, and vines, — a very paradise to look upon. But it is hot ! — not as the mercury marks it, — it was only eighty-eight last night at six, — but a damp and lifeless suffocating heat that makes us think of home. Our hotel was charming, but to keep on terms with comfort you must keep still. At night, I really didn't think sleep possible, but getting inside the curtains of the big four- posted bed and tumbling about awhile upon a mattress seven feet square, I went off" before I knew it into a solid seven hours' sleep. These tropical Dutch beds are marvels of comfort. Seven feet square is the size of a single bed. What a family bed would be, you may imagine. There are a matti-ess and a linen sheet, two pillows, and a " Dutch wife." This latter is round and three feet long, and if you feel too warm and want more venti- lation, why, skid yourself upon it at any point you like. It is said to be a cooling comfort, but I did very well without it. 150 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. To tarry in Batavia was to be grilled alive. So, hearing of high land and cool breezes two hundred miles away, and having to stay in this volcanic land an even week before the " Godavery " would come to take us back to Singapore, we travelled early ; took the train for Bandong town, two thousand feet above the sea. These trains run upon a smooth, narrow track, over a well- ballasted bed, and comprise a low but strong engine with cab, — no air brakes, — - coaches for three classes, and women by them- selves, — that is, the native women, except only Dutchmen's wives. The third class have wooden benches, and are open all around, like a shed. The second class have rattan seats across one side of the car, with a long bench upon the other. First- class accommodations are furnished for only eight persons on this train, showing that very few are expected to go that way. Our compartment was twelve feet long. The seats along the sides, beneath two spacious windows, were upholstered in stiff tawny leather, and furnished with six round leather pillows. The floor had rubber matting. Off one end was a toilet-room. The middle compartment was for native women ; the third for second-class passengers. The entire car was thirty-six feet long, and weighed three and a half tons. It was mounted on six wheels, — a pair at each end and at the middle. How this plan of wheels admitted of making sharp curves is difficult to tell ; but it did, and that was enough. The midway station, called Tjian- joer, gave us a nice dinner, — curry, and eight kinds of condi- ments of various kinds along with it ; nice broiled chicken, tender beefsteak, bananas, pine-apple, and the famous mangosteen. The colonel had been longing for a bite of this rare tropic fruit ; and tasting it with tenderest regards, like one who had sought his dearest wish and found it, he declared that life was well worth living after all ; that typhoon tempests, earthquakes, northern ice and frosts, bad fare, hard beds, mosquitoes, fleas, and even cheese, were all worth enduring for the sake of one ecstatic feast of the rare mangosteen. For my part, while there may be less poetry in a big golden Bellfleur apple or juicy Florida orange, I 'd rather have either, or a plate of strawberries and cream, than any foreign fruit within my present knowledge. Bandong is an upland city in a forest of palms, bananas, and flowering trees. Fine level streets, neat dwellings, countless na- tive stores, are embowered within these bewitching palms and THE ISLE OF JAVA. I5I sycamores, among the flowery bowers and lawns and natty hedges, among the wealth of fruit and nuts and gorgeous foliage. It is difficult to realize that this is really winter, — that here, while northern lands are chained in ice, these trees have all the ram- pant luxuriance of jovial June, bearing luscious ripe and ripen- ing fruits and buds and blossoms ; and yet the air is cool, and brings, if one keeps fairly still, no sensation of over-heat. The native dwellings here are set up a foot or so from the ground, for better ventilation. They are slightly framed of bamboo, walled with plaited basket-work, and roofed with pale-red tiles or thatch, having every look of cool comfort. The people dress modestly, in rather gay, bright-colored prints, and seem to en- joy themselves in quiet work and ways. Turbans of gayly col- ored cotton stuff wrapped about the head are worn by the men. The women go bare-headed, or wear a scarf of silk or print thrown carelessly above their hair. All go with naked feet. At Tjianjoer we took a cart, — a two-wheeled, double-seated, low top, three-horse trap, — and cramping our long limbs within the meagre space, drove off to Sindanglaya, up among the cool green hills, to spend the Sunday at this old Dutch sanitarium. And here we are, embowered among the trees, in cool matted rooms, with four-post beds enclosing forty-nine square feet of actual sleeping space within their white lace curtains, — -high, spa- cious rooms, opening on a porch full twenty feet in width, and furnished with most roomy easy-chairs. And here we come to rest beneath the shade, and stretch our limbs, and sleep within the sound of pure and plashing water. It rained at dark, as is the winter fashion here ; and at the early dawn, when the bare- footed Malay boy brought in a morning cup of tea, the sky was leaking yet. It had been a real wintry night, — temperature as low as sixty-seven degrees ; but as the day wears on it gets back again to eighty. Down in Batavia it is ninety or more, without a breath of air. Sindanglaya is a cool resort for invalids. Here mothers come to nurse their puny babes ; consumptives, too, find here a drier, safer air than on the coast ; and now and then travellers, like ourselves, unused to such a hot and sodden air as the low lands give, come up to see the country, and to wait their ship's return to Singapore. The trees are full of singing birds of rich and varied note ; about the dwellings are flocks of hens and ducks, — 152 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the crowing roosters waking us with the day ; the tree-toad and the bat get in their time right well ; the Malay folk, in gayly printed stuff and shoeless feet, move noiselessly about, and when they come or when they go is all a mystery. These people do all the household work, cook the food and serve it, do up the chamber-work, drive you out, see to your every want, and feed themselves, for thirty dollars a year. Service is the cheap- est thing in the East. Hotels and railroad fares are higher than in the States, and steamer rates enormous. The fare from Singa- pore to Batavia, say sixty hours, — we came in fifty, — is $45, or a round-trip ticket for $67.50. An eight hours' ride by rail this week cost about a dollar an hour. The railroad eating:- houses charge two rupees, or ninety cents, a meal. You can get a pair of ponies, with carriage and driver, for six rupees a day. The same outfit charges you six rupees to take you from the wharf to the hotel ; but you may keep it and use it till six o'clock, and pay no more. So when you come this way you will save money by arriving in the morning. We came back as far as Buitzenzorg, an inland town six hundred feet above the sea. From the broad porch of our domicile is such a sweeping view of tropic garden forest, of river, bridge, and native hut and mountain land, as might make one clap his hands and shout aloud for joy. We had found the right place for easy, listless, satisfying idleness. Next door to ours lived a Yankee, — a native of New York, a three years' hermit on these tropic shores. He and two others are all the Americans now upon the island. So we sat and talked, chatted and read, and sipped the usual drinks, and felt at home. People who have not wandered far away beyond the limit of their kith and tongue can poorly appreciate the hunger a traveller feels for some one to talk to of home and home affairs. Java is well worth seeing, and the proper regi-et is that we can't stay here four weeks instead of one. It is a rare land, — a land without seasons ; there is no summ.er, for there is no win- ter ; no autumn, for spring never comes. Nights and days are of the same length and the same warmth all the bright year round. There is no seed-time and no harvest, but continual planting and gathering. There are no mornings, no evenings, no hearthstone, no family fireside. There is safety in indolence, death in exertion. Nature distributes tropical favors with lavish THE ISLE OF JAVA. 1 53 abundance. The land reeks with fatness, and the whole country teems with children. We live on the finest of tropical fruits, on bread, meat, and vegetables. The hotels are good, the service abundant. You can revel in tropical scenery, and wonder at the ways of the w^orld ; but you must dress coolly and keep quiet. A few minutes of active exercise opens a thousand pores you feel sure you never had before, and you fairly rain with perspi- ration. Even writing is too much exertion ; so I will stop until beyond this Javan climate a thousand miles at least. 154 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER XIII. CEYLON'S ISLE. Across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon. — A Public Garden in the Tropics. — Among the Floral Wonders. — The Temple of the Sacred Tooth of Buddha. — Venerable Shrines and Relics. — Questions of Faith.— Sights and Scenes in Columbo. —Jewels and Jewel Merchants. — Churches in Ceylon. CHRISTMAS came and went without a sign as we steamed from Singapore across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon. This inland Kandy town, to which we came by rail from Columbo, is quite a gem, — delightful roads and shades, charming walks and drives, picturesque lakes and waterfalls, and such a public garden, — the famous Peradeniya ! Would you like to look into it? An easy four-wheeled carriage, driven by a tawny, red-tur- baned, barefooted native, bowls you over four miles of perfect road, bordered by native huts beneath the overshadowing palms and tamarinds, right up to the garden gate, where you write your names, obtain a guide, and ride or stroll about among the garden glories. The day is perfect, temperature seventy-eight. Your guides are rather chatty. This matter of guides is curious. Over in Java you cannot get one. It has never entered the native Javan nor yet the thick Dutch skull, that any living mortal needs to know any language but Dutch or Malay ; so they have no local guides, and travellers ignorant of these tongues must bring guides with them, or go about unaided, as we did, losing more than half the value of the trip. But it is different here in Ceylon. If you go out to walk or ride, a guide or guides appear as from the ground, and, unbidden and often unwanted, attach themselves to you like parasites. It is useless to tell them they are not needed ; they know better. So they keep along, politely chatting, pointing out objects of interest, making themselves of real use — a sort of long- felt want — in spite of you. Starting for the garden, a brightly calicoed native sprang into the cart, and faithfully, as if on a CEYLON'S ISLE. I 55 larf^e salary, began to spin his yarn. The first impulse was to put him out ; but calmer thoughts prevailed. His face was a fine piece of bronze work ; his teeth pearly white, his eyes deep and languid; and as he chatted about the natives flocking past, pointing out the Buddhist and the Mohammedan, showing the coffee patches beneath the broad-leaved cocoa shade, the tea-shrubs and the quinine-trees, it soon became apparent that he was no intruder. Never drive a native back when he shows good talking powers ; for though he may talk too much, yet there are good kernels enough in his chaff to vastly overpay his modest charge. So with this carriage guide, and another from the garden, we were well provided. The garden has two hundred acres, planted with trees and shrubs, vines and flowers, towering forest giants and the tiniest flowering bush. It is a garden of fine roads and drives, lakes and wondrous palms and bamboo groups, snakes and fearful poisons. But was not Eden quite the same? Looking about for curiosities, we found, right at hand, a towering Honduras mahogany-tree, — the best of woods, — a long way from home, but doing finely. Farther on we saw some cocoa-trees with tawny pods, cassia, allspice, and black pepper vines ; and such glorious clumps of bamboo, each stalk a hundred feet in height and six or eight inches in diameter, and so closely crowded together as to make your getting in or seeing in alike impossible, — seeming a vast, com- pact sheaf. Their growth almost exceeds belief, — shooting up in the rainy season half an inch an hour. The rain here means something, falling two hundred days in the year, measuring eighty-six inches. No wonder the giant bamboo grass makes rapid growth. Within this compact mass the deadly cobra Hves, whose bite is death. By day he coils himself within, where no one may molest him, coming forth at night. But the trees : here is the deadly upas piihn (poison tree) famous in legend ; in reality a gray, smooth-barked, clean, and slowly tapering tree, with meagre branches, harming no one if you do not touch its milky juices. Farther on is an old rheumatic cinnamon-tree, with thick and odorous bark. And here are the great rubber-trees of Assam, whose uncovered roots wander weirdly about the ground like contorted serpents, reminding one of that phase of Dante's hell in which Dor«§ 1S6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. depicts the toes and fingers of the doomed as sprouting forth in wandering roots and hmbs of trees, with their tortured trunks. You stand before them spell-bound ; yet these horrid arboreal giants are the same rubber-trees that you pet in flower- pots, and fondle as rare botanic curiosities. The palms are myriad, from all parts of the palm-producing world, ~ those that give fruit, food, oil, nuts, milk, water, flowers. Some yield the nasty betel that the natives chew, turning red their teeth and lips ; others yield the date fruit and the veg- etable ivory, sago, cabbage, rattan, and panama straw. Here, too, dying, is the noted Talipot palm, — dying because it has lived its fifty years and bloomed. It blooms but once, then dies. Not far away are the cassia and the gamboge trees ; the lordly banyan with its living buttresses ; the resin-tree, giving demmar varnish; rattan-trees, or chmbing palms, that climb the highest trees, holding by their sharp grappling-hooks ; the tallow-candle tree, nutmeg, cacti, tea, coff'ee, and the won- derful coca shrub that gives forth an alkaloid famous as an anaesthetic. And so you wander about among sweet-scented leafage, gigan- tic fig-trees, guavas, tamarinds, Indian cedar, varnish trees, in- cense wood, the stinking-fruited durian, and the tolu-bearing tree ; camphor-trees, and the papery-barked oil-trees, the rich- fruited rambutan. You linger beneath the masses of richly flowered Burmese creepers, the curious cochineal and lovely satinwood, or Himalayan cypress, and the curious tanning trees. It is a wonderland of tree and vine ; place of the double cocoa-nut, the calabash, crimson and orange tinted foliage, the rain-tree, the tonga, or neuralgia-curing tree, climbing ferns, the death- dealing mix vomica, the rare muruta, with its mauve- pink blossoms, the sacred pepul, and trees that bear the choicest incense gums. There is, indeed, no end of arboreal curiosities ; and having loitered lovingly about the botanic paradise, and become dazed with the names and offices of the noted produc- tions, what should come to dispel your happy day-dream and curdle your warm blood, but a hideous, poisonous cobra gliding across your path ! Let him go. Extremes meet, — the best and worst ; for where all seems so never-dying, death lurks ; and where life is most luxuriant, one must needs be reminded of its absolute uncertainty. CEYLON'S ISLE. 1 57 " Do these snakes sometimes kill your people ? " I asked Siron, the guide. "Yes, master, sometimes do ; but cannot help. The God he hold the key ; he can lock or unlock ; man he cannot help it."- You are right, my dusky, barefoot heathen. Enjoy life while you may ; loiter among the lovely-tinted gardens of your sunny, sensuous life ; but remember well that ever within the loveliest buds of life lurks the deadening poison. " The God he hold the key ; " no man can help or heal. The public garden is the great feature of Ceylon. The vast fields of tea are interesting ; but one tea-plant is much like another. The coffee plague has nearly destroyed that industry ; and on those once rich plantations, where men lived among their male and female peons like nabobs, tossing their wealth by handfuls, now sober calculation comes to follow upon the heels of bankruptcy. Ceylon is no longer the Cey- lon of yore. The voracious coffee-plant has sapped the land as the tobacco-plant sapped the Virginia soil ; and now the tug of war is made all the more severe by the luxurious habits acquired during the island's days of opulence. True, — " the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle, And every prospect pleases," save that of rapidly coining wealth in Ceylon. Trade is dull ; her young men go away. The eminence forming the background to this lovely loitering- place is lined with drives and shady walks, with many resting- points and comprehensive outlooks upon the town and temples, lake and villa seats, with rich plantations stretching far beyond, even to the mountain peaks. To each of us a native guide attached himself, and pointed out the interesting places, — the tea estates, the homes of this or that celebrity, the curious trees, and the spot where a child was lately killed by wildcats. " Nonsense, Dara, there are no wildcats here." "There is no end of them," he said ; "these woods are full of cats and snakes, and we must be back before dark." Dara was a student of the Industrial School, and now a teacher. His English was fluent. He talked of many inter- esting things, and though somewhat anglicized, deplored the 158 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. custom of men and women whom we met mixing as tliey did in drives and walks and churches, counting it better that only men should appear in public. Two hundred years of European customs, teaching, and example have not sufficed to elevate the other sex in India. Ending the pleasant walk at the portals of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth of Buddha, and hearing the inviting music of the holy drum, we passed within the outer gate. The lower steps leading to the holy shrines were flanked with pools of sparkling water, from the lovely little lake that gems the town, enclosed with the same Hindu gothic wall that quite sur- rounds the very ancient temple. The granite steps lead to the main portal, on either side of which, in rather crude and vigorous art, a spacious hell is pictured. In general effect and well-selected horrors the hells of all religions vary but little. This one had a well-assorted stock of black and rampant devils skipping about among much lurid flame, mak- ing their human victims inhumanly uncomfortable. This was, so the guide explained, the well-known doom of thieves and liars ; those who oppressed the poor and denied- the faith ; those who do impure and forbidden tilings, — all these were counted in, and they appeared to be having a very tough time of it. Within the temple were clean and spacious halls, decorated with carved stone and curious implements of worship. Upon the walls and by the portals of the shrines were frescoed saints and gods, — the managers of life and death, of all the earth and heavens. Through several brazen doors which opened up before us was the golden shrine, — shrine of the seven richly wrought golden bells, one within the other, the in- most one containing one of Buddha's teeth, — a real tooth, picked from the ashes of his crematory pyre at Kusinara, B. c. 543, so said the guide, for he had seen it, as also the \-ery cup from which our father Adam drank. Once a year it is shown to the faithful few. In another costl)' shrine is seen a Buddha footprint, made three thousand years ago, when he came to Kandy. Rubbish, do we say? And yet, do not we, as Christian folk, believe in saintly relics, and keep them safe in costly golden shrines, and show them to the faithful now and then? If we may revere the skulls of CEYLON'S ISLE. 1 59 saints, and vial up the bloody sweat of Christ, and Mary's milk, why call this Buddha tooth and footprint rubbish? He had teeth and footprints too, no doubt, and \i his myriad fol- lowers find comfort in owning some, as we do shin-bones of our saints, why, let them have it. Another shrine encloses a fine crystal Buddha, which the venerable and hatted high-priest showed with evident satis- faction, then held out his plate for a fee. Then we went to the library, — a rather good collection of old and modern books ; then to the great stone Buddha, seated on his lotus throne, like one in deepest thought. At all the shrines were silver tables, covered deep with lovely, odorous flowers, the pious offerings of the worshippers. As we stopped to take a closer look at the graven silver casings of the bell shrine door, two nuns advanced, each bearing silver plates laden with fresh and aromatic flowers to place upon the altar. Seeing that they — the flowers — were admired, one white-robed, barefoot sister picked from her plate a fragrant little lily, and placed it in my hand. Thanking her as I turned to go, she gently mur- mured, " Please make me a gift, my master." At every door and shrine, at every interesting point, a little collection is taken up to keep the church in order, and help pay the current expenses. Some make unkind remarks about it, and call it beggary ; but why should one not pay for pagan entertainment as well as for any other? This richly carved old temple has stood here fifteen hundred years, and, though much re- paired, shows good original work. Ceylon (the word is from sela, " precious stone ") was a favored spot of Buddha, and contains no end of grand old temple ruins, — carven stone, long since overgrown with forest jungles, relics of the dim religious past. Ceylon is only forty miles from heaven. This is the Buddhistic belief. Right over there, in plain sight, is Adam's peak, seven thousand feet above the sea. It is a most holy place ; for there upon the solid stone are prints of Buddha's feet, enclosed with bronze, beset with gems. The Buddhist pilgrims come here in crowds to worship, as Japs go to Fuji- yama, or Christians unto Sinai. They call the mountain Seipada, " footprint of fortune. " The Moslem says that it is Adam's mount, because when Adam fell from Paradise his fall was l6o A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. broken by landing on this glorious spot ; and that though from this mount he first lamented his sad fate, the change from the garden* to earth was really not so great as it might have been, — such the result of God's mercy to the erring one. We like Columbo. The Indian name is Kalambu ; but the Portuguese changed it to its present form in honor of the great navigator. The sun rises here at six and sets at six — a trifle more or less — the whole year round. When it comes in sight, night vanishes; as it sinks beyond the ocean wave, night-time is here. Coming from east or west, coming ashore in native boats, one is glad to find here a good hotel, — a vast stone structure near the landing-place, with broad and cool verandas and spacious lounging-chairs, clean, cool rooms with well waxed floors, lofty and bright, with perfect ventilation. Hot nights these are ; but what with the partition walls stopping short of reaching the ceiling, the broad punka fans of the spacious dining-hall, cool floors, and open doors and windows, one who keeps quiet may be perfectly comfortable ; and as you take your cosey early breakfast, in or out of bed, some curious crow lights upon your window-sill, hops down upon the floor, and asks you for a friendly crumb or two to pay him for his early morning song. They call them rooks here ; but in color, language, and dishonesty they are veritable crows. ^Vhen you are out they come into your room and steal small articles, tear up your photographs, taste your ink, and do other disreputable acts. Columbo is the principal port of Ceylon, the stopping-place of all the ships that pass the Suez Canal and go beyond Bom- bay, and all that go from China, Australia, and Calcutta to the west. Hundreds of people come and go almost every day ; great stocks of coals are kept, and here is a harbor made by artificial walls. The streets are fine. You ride about in four- seated carriages, drawn by a single horse ; while all goods are handled in bamboo-covered carts, drawn by straight- horned native cattle. There is yet another passenger conveyance that strikes one as rather queer, — a two-wheeled covered cart, to whicli nimble-footed steers or heifers are hitched, and these are brought to trot almost as fast as horses ; that is to CEYLON'S ISLE. l6l say, a brisk bull-cart will pass your slow- trotting hack horse with ease, the driver sitting close behind and keeping his animal well in hand with rope lines, which lead not to a bit, but to a ring through the nostril cartilage. When yoked in pairs, a straight bamboo pole is tied to the tongue and upon the neck. The cattle are not large or well bred; yet they do good work, — as good as any cattle could in such a raging climate. In these light and almost comfortless bull-carts, long journeys are taken through the country, — journeys of hundreds of miles, — travelling by night to avoid the great heat, and resting by day in some shady retreat. Though quite a large place — this Columbo, — this meeting- place of the nations that go down to the sea in ships, — there is not much here to attract the travelled visitor. The Euro- peans' houses are encased in breezy arcades ; the native huts are low beneath their tile or thatch ; the native people are dressed, half-dressed, and in a state of nature ; and above all and around all picturesque and thickly fruited palm-trees stand friendly guard and cast a generous shade. The best drive takes you along between the bright green lawns and the long sea-wall, in front of which the white-maned waves roll and break in perfect rhythm, again and again repeating the never- ending story of the sleepless sea. It is a delightful beach of smooth and solid sand; but enter not, for within those lovely waters, that roll and toss and tell such luring stories of far-off isles and sea, lurks the keen-toothed shark, waiting to take his long-expected meal. These sharks are great con- noisseurs in meats ; they will not decline flesh of any sort^ but much prefer the human ; and even in this they have a preference, choosing the European. When there is a chance for choice, your well-bred shark will skip a black man for a copper-colored Indian ; and if a white man floats within his reach, he '11 skip both black and yellow to get the best. We concluded not to indulge in surf-bathing, but to enj'oy an hour in the rather interesting museum, and a drive in the cinnamon garden and on the borders of the lovely lake. Here at Columbo lives Arabi Pasha, who made so bold a dash to free his native land from Turkish rule a year or two ago. Instead of losing his head as a common rebel, he was pensioned off at Columbo, — an exile here within his pleasant II 1 62 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and spacious villa, with a retinue of servants and well-selected harem. He receives no visits in a general way; but at this safe distance from his native land, which he had hoped to win and free, he meditates upon the ways of fate, hoping, no doubt, in spite of strictest guard, he may some day appear once more upon Egyptian sands to battle for his country, ^^'e call such fellows traitors, he and El Mahdi ; but is there not a nobler, better, truer name for such daring men who boldly offer up their lives for their people, kin, and homes ? The native shops are interesting; the men who deal in precious stones and rings and Indian silver things most per- sistent in their attentions. No sooner have you come to a halt in your hotel than these suave, keen-eyed Indian sharps produce their glittering goods, — their rubies, cat's-eyes, sap- phires, amethysts, and many other sorts, loose, or set in golden rings, to tempt a trade ; and woe be to the man who makes an unguarded offer ! Before your admiring gaze flashes a triple set of beauteous rings, — a flaming row of sapphires, rubies, and pearls. '' How much? " you ask. " Fifty rupees," is the quick answer. "Fifty for all?" "Beg your pardon, sir, these are real stones in real gold, — fifty for each, sir. " You look at them. They are really pretty ; not so finely set, but well and strongly. Fifty rupees. Four times five are tvvent)-. Twenty dollars a ring. Surely the price is not so very dear. You think to get them cheap, and are inclined to offer half his price. But don't you do it ; offer something very much below, — say fifty rupees for the lot, — not the price of unset stones. Or go lower yet. Six times five are thirty. " I '11 give you thirty rupees for the lot. " " I beg your pardon, my master. How can you give me thirty rupees — thirty rupees! — for the lot? The gold cost more ; the stones cost more than that." " Very well, take your rings and go ! " But he does n't. He lingers — begins the battle anew. " Do you know Mr. Tiffany?" CEYLON'S ISLE. 1 63 "What then?" " I sell him many rings ; fine stones like these." "Well, what of it?" "What you going to give me for these rings? You speak some fair price, my master." "Thirty rupees." " You know Mr. Jordan? " "What then?" " What you going to give me for these rings ? You make offer. " " Twenty-five rupees ! " " O my master, how can you say twenty-five rupees when you just say thirty and I not take him ! How can you say twenty- five rupees 1 What you say now? " " Twenty-five. " The rings are yet upon your little finger. Very pretty stones they are, — fifteen stones in rather clumsy setting ; and the talk goes on, the lively, silk-robed dealer every moment more alert and earnest. Others see a chance for a possible trade ; and before your eyes are flashing fifty gems, set and unset. Questions and answers fly like rain-drops. You admire others most ; go to pull off the three much-favored ones to hand them back, when he whispers in your ear : — " Keep them, master — keep them at thirty ; but talk me fifty before these fellows, because I lose too much. Give me your card, master, for my profit." Hour after hour these mild-eyed Indian merchants talk and trade. Stones are very cheap at Columbo. The soil of Cey- lon abounds in them ; the natives cut them for next to nothing ; and though many deceptions are practised, yet if you buy with ordinary care you need not pay too much. Ceylon is the supposable Ophir of Jewish history, and the rich supply of precious things is not exhausted yet. There are churches and churches in Columbo ; but here, as elsewhere, the Catholic takes the lead in vim and push and progress. He was here two hundred and fifty years ago, and stays here yet. The English church here is very old too, and full of interest. The edifice is old and grim, with mellow- tinted walls, with nave and aisles, altar and choir, pulpit and lectern, candles too, withal, and service carefully intoned. 164 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Gliding along the smoothly worn stone floor you drop into a seat and wait for the service. The chimes are done ; a copper- colored lad goes to the organ. The people drop in quietly, but sparsely; the great bell taps, and from the waiting-rooms come parson and choir to open up the solemn service beneath the slowly swinging punka fans that cool the worshippers and those who read the rites. The proceedings are those of all the meetings past ; the sermon the oft-repeated, wonderful story that no mistake was made as to the time of the Saviour's coming. But the choir — the dozen black-haired, white-teethed, white-robed, handsome half-caste Indian boys — gave us vocal music that must have stirred all hearts, — fluent, plaintive, plead- ing as only children's voices can plead ; rich in quality, round and full in volume. Such charming choral service as these bright Eurasian singers gave one may not hear in a lifetime. It was worth all, and more than all, the rest ; and the golden symphony of these boyish voices rings in the ears and vibrates among the heart-strings long after the reading and the preaching are forgotten. INDIA. 165 CHAPTER XIV. INDIA. Madras and the Bay of Bengal. — Indian Water-Craft. — A Look about Madras. — Calcutta. — Its Gardens and Banyan-Trees. — The Burn- ing Ghats of India. — A Native Funeral. — Climbing the Himalayas. — Among the Lofty Peaics. — Benares, Birthplace of Buddha — Scenes on the Ganges. — Cawnpore and Lucknow. — Cities of Dreadful Memories. INDIA ! land of nabobs and the Ganges ; home of ancient religions and story ; treasury of knowledge and wealth ; centre of far-spreading thought and world-wide superstition ; battlefield of the world's armies and of the world's creeds ; land of never-failing fatness ; den of the plagues and the fiercest men and beasts. Not elsewhere upon the face of the earth have there been such contrasts of weal and woe, — wealth so uncountable, display so rich and so bewildering, corruption so universal and deep-seated. India is an enigma in its faiths, its castes, its customs ; its inexhaustible resources in food and in things most precious ; its exalted power, its deepest degradation. Its people never wander from their home to seek out other homes and lands. It is the object of the world's cupidity. Coming to India by way of Ceylon, — most charming sea- girt outer gate, — the broad mainland was first approached at Madras, on the western shore of the bay of Bengal. Madras (the name is Madrasa, Arabic for " a university ") is an ancient Indian town without a harbor, on a shore where rest- less ocean waves come rolling in, defiant of the artificial scheme they call a harbor. Casting anchor a hundred rods from shore, the native boats — full six feet deep, and sewed together with twine to give them flexibility to withstand the angry waves — came off to take the freight and passengers. These tossing, dancing shells, each managed by ten or twelve almost naked natives, sitting on poles laid crosswise, seem a most dangerous craft as they come alongside at the bottom of the steamer's 1 66 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Stair. They pitch and toss and jam about ; the oarsmen shout and yell, plying their spoon-shaped paddles ; and as you step aboard, down goes the boat full six feet from your feet, — down into the troughy sea as if it would go under ; up again it bounds ; and as it falls and leaps, with most perplexing lurch and toss, you watch your chance and make a plunge into the little pas- senger pen at the bow, and gain your seat by the aid of two half-naked coolies. By their united force they bring you to the landing pier, and with another pitch and lurch and toss and struggle you get your feet on solid ground. It is not so danger- ous as it looks, for all its noise and bother. Here are first seen those curious catamarans, — boats made of little palm-stem logs, slightly upcurved at the bow. Two of these — sometimes with one or two smaller logs between — corded together complete the boat. Out over the angry surf, riding the waves like chips, come these small craft manned by naked natives, who squat or stand, and paddle themselves about in seeming perfect safety. They come out to these ships when no other sort of craft could live a moment, gliding over the billowy waters, now upon the top, now deep in the trough ; always on the surface, always drenched. You watch them, hoping for an upset to see what the crew will do. But it would be as easy to upset a fish. Once in a great while a single lascar is pitched into the brine ; but like a lively fish he darts towards his tossing craft, and in a jiffy stands on top again. So easy does it seem that one feels tempted to try this primitive way of boating, and go ashore on a catamaran ; but it is like too many other things you see — not half so easy as you think. These lithe and wiry slim-legged little men who do this sort of thing are half amphibious, — they live upon these never-sleeping waves ; rest upon them like the flocks of ocean birds that fly or float about your boat ; and, like them, are thoughtless of fear or danger. While these go here and there, and the deep surf boats leap and lurch and pound about, the angry sea so moves our great iron craft about as to make her part from her anchor. Off she puts to sea again to keep from fouling other ships, and stays outside the puny break- water until another anchor has been lifted from the hold and rigged for service, when she goes back to her place to take another tussle. This time the anchor holds its grip, and we ride and sleep in safety. IXDIA. 167 Ashore in Madras. It is a large and thrifty towTi, full of fine large buildings, native huts, and broad and dusty streets, — streets gravelled with pounded brick for want of stone, which here is very scarce. Father Meyer, vicar general of Madras, had come aboard to meet and conduct us to the bishop's palace. Here stood a grand old cathedral church of aged brick and stucco, built away back in 1640, when America was almost unknown and very little settled. All these two hundred and forty-five years had Chris- tians worked and worshipped here ; and here, close by, the sister nuns had lived and worked to teach and guide these native folk, — to bring them to a better life and light and love of truth. A visit to these earthly saints was full of real comfort. By per- mission of the Mother Superior, they took a recess and came to us in the cool reception room, — these white-robed, bright- eyed Irish girls, w'ho had come out from County Clare and Limerick, forever leaving land and home to toil in this hot, unhealthy climate among the homeless outcast class that comes unbidden, certainly unwelcomed, to this troubled Avorld. In a gladsome, chatty way they talked with us, speaking of homes now far away, showing us their airy school-rooms and their cosey chapel, pointing out their pictures and their pretty altars, ask- ing a thousand questions, chatting, laughing, giving us songs and music, — not once speaking of their trials or their days of toil or loneliness in this burning land so far away from home. The no-caste foundlings are their constant care. These they train up to educated womanhood, saved from a fearful doom. " And what becomes of these when you are done with them ? " we asked. " Oh, thev find husbands and homes, mostlv amonir the soldiers," was the answer. The bishop was absent on a visitation in the country. He travels, as must be here, by bullock-cart, over many hundred miles of country paths, visiting his people, strengthening the weak places, founding new missions, travelling by night and resting in some shady spot during the heated day-time when travel is most uncomfortable. Taking some refreshments and saying good-by, we left the sturdy vicar and the noble nuns to their life-long toil, and rode away in covered carts to see the great, wide, straggling city. The gardens are rather pretty, — the botanical, full of noble palm, 1 68 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. banyan, and many curious trees and shrubs and plants ; the zoological, with its wild animals and snakes and birds ; the museum, with its unique collections of ancient stone and wood carvings, implements of war and peace, its gems and idols, curious books and manufactures. Here to Madras the British forces had just brought the ferocious Theobaw, the murderous Burmah king, a prisoner. He and his large harem were domi- ciled in a spacious bungalow palace in one of the city squares, under strong military guard. Like the old king of Oudh, another princely captive in Calcutta, he will have his palace pleasures and his prison life, but sit no more upon his throne. These eastern monarchs, once beneath the British lion's paw, have freedom nevermore. Like caged tigers they beat against the bars, but only harm themselves. Our steamer — "Brindisi" — reached Calcutta on the 8th. It is a place of some six hundred thousand people, and contains as little that is interesting to the traveller as could well be im- agined. It is a city of vast open spaces, poor hotels, and swarming native life ; and about the best thing the traveller can do, after seeing the botanical garden, with its great banyan- tree and avenues of palm, the bathing and the burning ghats, is to get away as soon as possible. Speaking of the banyan- tree, you have all seen it, and, as children, stared and wondered at it ; for it is the same that has been pictured in all the geographies that have been printed in the last hundred years. I distinctly remember having seen it almost fifty years ago, and it was an old picture then. But it has kept on growing ever since. Yet when the carriage stopped before" its shade, it was recognized in a moment as a familiar friend of our early school-day youth. But such a monster, with so many hundred trunks ! Of course we sized it up. From the main trunk, which very likely antedates the deluge, springs forth a sturdy horizontal limb, one of many. Just pace it : full fifty strides, — a hundred and fifty feet ! Supported all along with other lesser trunks that have taken root, and keep it safely from the ground, what is there to hinder such an enter- prising limb from encircling the globe ? Nothing but water. It will grow and grow, add trunk to trunk, and become an arboreal procession miles and miles, if so permitted. Pace the whole INDIA. 169 tree round about the tips of its outer foliage : almost nine hundred feet. At its greatest, the diameter of its shade is quite three hundred feet. Count its many trunks : the big and little are one hundred and seventy-five, and more are coming. The girth of the main trunk is fifty-one feet. This noble Indian tree stands in a broad green park. Beneath its thick, cool shade there is no grass, but many seats, where people come and sit to rest and knit and wonder. The banyan is of the fig-tree species, but its fruit is small and worthless, its sap a sort of sticky, creamy stuff. Picking a leaf, we drove away through long avenues of fine Palmyra palms, past lovely ponds and glittering pools, past monuments and lovely bamboo plats and flowering shrubs and casuarania- trees, back to the banyan- flanked gateway again. It is the finest thing in Calcutta, — the wonder of the world in shape of trees. But we must see the burning ghats. The Hindus burn their dead. The burning ghats, or steps, are by the Ganges. Driving there we find a long brick and stucco wall, or low building of stuccoed brick, and passing through the open gate, stand in a long court, open above, with an arcaded river front, and steps of brick leading to the water's edge. Within this court, a hundred and fifty by thirty feet, were some native attendants, and many ash spots on the uneven earth floor. One plat of ashes was yet hot with recent burning. The wood was all consumed ; so, too, the body. The attendant was raking the yet burning embers to a central heap, revealing among the ashes bits of larger bones of thigh or arm ; the rest were all consumed, and these slight fragments would soon be but ashes. Further on was a pile of green split sapling wood, — three- foot wood in the first tier, laid across a slight depression in the ground, for kindling and draught. The second tier was of four-foot wood laid crosswise ; and thus was the pyre piled up in five full tiers, the sixth having but two pieces, one on each outer side, between which the dead body, just brought in on a coarse bamboo litter, was soon to be laid. The corpse was that of a young man ; its single attendant mourner a brother, who sat beside the lifeless clay in deep grief, now and then raising the single cerement cloth and passing his hand beneath, gently patting the dead one on the face and chest, and sobbing I/O ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. bitterly. Soon was brought the funeral cloth, a long white strip of cotton fabric, which was spread upon the body, which an attendant priest then sprinkled with holy Ganges water. The half-naked attendants, aided by the moaning relative, then gently lifted the dead body, and carefully placed it on the funeral pyre, on which more sticks of wood were placed until the body was buried out of sight, — all save the head and feet and lower limbs, which extended from the heap. Over all this was sprinkled more water, and upon the dead man's lips the mourner placed some bits of bread; then removing his common clothes, he put on a robe of white, and while the officiating priest said some ceremonials, the sorrowing brother, saying not a word, or making any moan, but quivering in every muscle, took from the hands of an attendant a bunch of slowly burning reeds, a rank, coarse grass, and three times walking around the pyre, touched the mouth and feet of the body, and the sides of the pyre, with his funeral torch. This done, he placed the burning fagots in the space below the pyre, then fell exhausted on the earth, bursting into a paroxysm of grief most piteous to hear, moaning and often sobbing out, "My brother ! oh, my poor dear brother ! " The priest retired. The attendants plied the long dry reeds below and above ; and in ten minutes' time, despite the green- ness of the wood, the pile was hot and red with flame. In two hours the entire mass would be a little heap of ashes, to be gathered up and scattered on the placid bosom of the ever- sacred Ganges. The expense of this primitive sort of cremation is two rupees eight annas, — an even dollar in our coin. This is what the ghat is paid. The cerement cloth and priestly attendance bring it up to about five rupees, or two dollars. But the priestly aid is unnecessary, — being a mere matter of desire and financial abil- ity on the part of the bereaved. We waited half an hour longer, then went away. Leaving the ghat, a man came sobbing up the river steps bearing a little white-muslin-covered bundle in his arms, which he tenderly deposited upon the earth. Seeing we were strangers and took a kindly interest, he bade an attendant open it. The untying of the thin white covering revealed the not yet rigid form of a little girl of two years of age, brought there for quick cremation ; INDIA. 171 and as the attendants prepared the funeral pyre, the dampened eyes of sturdy men turned from the httle one. Such is a burning ghat in Hindostan ; a blessing to its people. Every city and village has a place to burn its dead, cheap and efficient. Something like it all other lands should have. The process is a clean one. I have stood in the smoke of the funeral pyre some iifty feet away, but could detect no odor beyond that of burning wood. . Calcutta is no place to stay in long. Let us flee to the mountains — attack the Himalayas. The word is Sanskrit — Jihna, snow, and alaja, an abode, — "an abode of snow." Up there by easy rail these wealthy Calcuttans go to rid themselves of torrid heat, returning with the later autumn months. Darjeeling means "up in the clouds;" that is where we are, — too many of them. They drift round about us. They make a litde rift now and then to tantalize with glimpses of the gleaming far-off heights of snow and ice and sunset rays, way off there in the sky like frosted silver, rim-tinged with golden glint. There is but one road to Darjeeling, and while that leads from Calcutta, it also leads back there again, for which no thanks. But it is a curious sort of road, having three stages. First, up the Ganges valley, over a good common railroad with a gauge of five and one half feet ; second, still up the Ganges valley, after crossing that river by a steam ferry, by railroad with a gauge of two and one half feet ; third, seven miles further of level road to the foot-walls of the mountain, and thence up- wards on a toy-train over a gauge of two feet. The entire dis- tance is three hundred and sixty-seven miles. Now we are at the very foot of the Himalayas, and forty miles from the highest point, which is some six miles short of Darjeeling. From this mountain-foot station to the summit, on a horizontal line, is just ten miles. To make that summit point we must rise seven thousand feet. To make this rise we must travel at a speed of seven miles an hour a distance of forty miles. We have a toy engine, a toy train ; the toy cars accommodate six persons each ; the car trucks are about eighteen inches in diameter, and the distance from the lower edge of the car to the to]) of the ties is nine inches. The average grade per mile is one hundred and seventy-five feet. And such curves ! We are on the rear 172 A GIRDLE ROUXD THE EARTH. seat of the rear observation car, and sometimes the engine is uncomfortably near ; then it darts around a curve and is out of sight, with ha]f the train with it ; then it comes out of a Iiole or round a sharp corner on the other side, and we can ahiiost get a square loolc into the face of the engineer ; then it bolts off the other way and pulls the train under a bridge which it gets us atop of in less than two minutes, having made an almost perfect circle on a radius of fifty feet ; then it goes squirming along, cutting a good figure 8, making loop after loop, '■ slab- bing" the mountain-sides, but finding itself short on its distance, stops, backs the train up a " reverse," then pushes ahead again, then reverses again and backs us up another "reverse," goes ahead, makes some more loops not so round, " slabs " more hills, then makes a long detour, and at the end of sixteen miles finds it has made only half a mile ; throws another loop or two and some more " reverses ; " fills the water jacket several times through a bit of hose from an iron tank ; then gets a little more coal ; and so keeps on pulling and pufiing, turning and twisting, looping and reversing, — now on light grades, now on stiff ones, — till at last we have cleared the hill, and there we are, — seven thousand feet above the little station down below, and only ten miles or less away from it on a horizontal line. But look down. What dizzy places ! Do\vn the steepest of ravines, down into jungles of thickest vegetation ; down, down, till your very head seems slipping from your shoulders, and your whole body, train and all, seem ready to rush away from land and catch a track on the fleecy back of an abutting cloud. The very earth feels unsteady beneath you ; and yet you have not lost sight of palm-trees and the broad banana leaves ; tree ferns abound ; and sleeping in the jungled thicket not ten rods away are tigers, snakes, and none know what. The mountain streams go rushing past, and you slip by some lovely silver cascades ; the wide old mountain cart road leading over to Nepaul, on which the iron rail is laid, is filled with carts of produce drawn by tall-horned, mild-eyed mountain oxen and cows ; people with basket packs ; men with horses ; women with ankles, arms and ears and noses well loaded down with silver rings and balls, brace- lets and metal spangles, litde ankle bells and bangles, fingers clogged with silver rings, and rings on their great toes ; stout mountaineer men and women and children, all on their way INDIA. 173 up and down the steep Himalaya mountain road, — a wild and curiously picturesque Asiatic mountain scene ! It is a day of days, a ride of rides, a scene of scenes, all the way to Darjeeling. Fortune had been very kind, but she gave us the slip afterwards. From Darjeeling next morning we wished to go by ponies farther up to Tiger Point, and feast our eyes on Mount Everest, the highest Himalayan peak, — the most ambitious mountain in the world. Ponies were ordered for early dawn, and guides were engaged for the enterprise. Then we went to bed, and slept by a very slow wood fire of sappy moun- tain oak, and dreamed of grades and rocks, and mountain peaks of frosted silver edged with burnished gold. Then morning came. Great masses of dark, dense clouds came rolling inward from the north, obscuring everything. At a quarter to seven a rift broke in, and all the tops of the mighty range before were opened out, headed by lordly Kinchinjanga, 28,136 feet high, a burning golden rim paled into snowy silver ; Janu, Kabru, Chu- malari, Pauhankin, and Donkia, — the lowest more than twenty- tliree thousand feet, — a glowing crest upon the world's great roof, gorgeous beyond comparison. Then came another cloudy phalanx shutting off the view, burying the glorious mountain sheen far out of sight, drowning the fairy mountain dream in most opaque oblivion. How did we wish these Lama-priests would hang out their prayer-rags on the mountain-tops instead of upon poles from shanty-tops, to paralyze the evil spirits of the air that bring us so much disappointment. I went back into my low-ceiled room and drank a cup of wretched coffee. Then for two long hours I paced the gravel terrace, hoping for relief; then I climbed a zigzag path behind the house, seeking to overlook the pressing troops of clouds and thus outwit the piling vapors. But as they slowly moved southward, the fleecy regiments were followed up by murky legions. Eating a scant breakfast in clouded silence, gazing forth again upon the thick- ening gloom, in deep disgust at fortune's freaky treatment, I said, "Let's pack our kit and take the train." But others said, "Wait and win," I said, " Go and find better luck else- where." My governor was more evenly poised, and proposed to gamble on the move. All right. Take the rupee : heads, we go ; tails, we stay all day. The empress-queen was on my side, — her face fell towards the sky ; and in twenty minutes 1^4 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. we had placed two large " holdalls " and a hand valise on the shoulders of a ten-year-old mountain girl, and away she ran down the steep footpath ; while we great hulking men, of sixteen stone at least, went following after, musing on the dignity of labor. Right stalwart these Himalayan mountaineers, — the six-feet Nepaulese and Bhotans, these Thibet-Chinese folks with braided queues, and iron frames inured to hardest labor. Their easy, swinging gait and self-reliant air are reassuring. They are a mighty people, but don't know it. The women are most masculine, and loaded down with brass and silver jewelry, and coral, stone and glass, bangles and chains, brace- lets, anklets, armlets, and rings in great array, — great brazen- looking women peddling fruits and curios, chatting and laughing at each other's jokes. Such as these they say have several husbands ; for such the custom is in Thibet, where the wife of one brother is the wife of all. It is the border land of Buddha and Lama, — place of prayer-wheels and prayer- rags tied to sticks ! The road led on to curious lands ; but we reluctantly turned back. The clouds kept rolling in and on, and the toy train had rolled itself, by gravity, half down the dizzy mountain road before we left the murky hosts behind and took a peep at clear, pure atmosphere. But I don't care much for mountain work and mountain peaks and snowy crests. It is far more sociable in the deep-cut vales, where one may sit and read and chat and gaze aloft from easy cush- ions. Let others do the climbing ; we can look at them and be content. But these India cars, — these sleeping-cars, — we rather like them. Two wide fore-and-aft wall seats in the day coaches, with top shelves to let down, make four good, soft, leather-cushioned couches in the same compartment, with- out money or price. Only this — you must not forget to bring along your own bedding. In the summer you will not need any ; but in these winter months in northern India you will need a quilt, or rug, also a pillow for )'Our head. So we bought quilts and pillows, which we pack about from town to town as others do, to make our beds withal in these com- modious, closet-equipped, first-class Indian cars. It was a little queer at first, but it was all right presently, without the aid of sleeping-car conductor, porters, or other nonsense. Not INDIA. 175 alone in cars are these pieces of baggage needful in India ; but as the people here go off to see their friends, or to hotels, to stay all night, they needs must take not only bedding stuff along, but the plainest etiquette demands that they should take at least one servant for each two persons. It makes some extra trouble and expense for the visitor, to be sure ; but then the visited have riglits, and this is where they are regarded. Perhaps an improvement or two of this sort from this far-off heathen country might fill a long-felt want in such a place as America. Benares ! birthplace of Buddha ; centre of that faith dear to so many million people. What Mecca is to Mussulmans, what Bethlehem was and is to Christendom, Benares is to the five hundred millions of that old faith, — the faith that bows to Buddha. For are not here the holy ghats that lead down to the sanctifying Ganges? Is not here the well most holy, where pilgrims by the hundreds of thousands come wearily each year to purify themselves before they cleave the Ganges flood? Are not here the tree of knowledge, here the sacred cattle, and the noble golden temple and the temple of the sacred monkeys? Here, indeed, are there not seen the sacred footprints of the sainted Buddha, and even those of Vishnu? Here are the holy doves and the holy pepul tree, — these and many other precious things ; precious at least to more of the children of the Great Father of us all than own to any other form of worship, — more than to all other forms. Here is the copious, ever-flowing Ganges, whose waters touch but to purify and wash away all taint of sin, — river most broad and deep and wonderful ! Of course we scoff at this and call it pagan superstition, claiming that other waters, other forms of ablu- tion, only can absolve from sinful ways ; but still the years roll on, as still roll on the ages, and yet the Ganges faith is bright within the simple souls of almost countless millions. Thou- sands of millions have washed their bodies in this wondrous stream, and come up from it satisfied and happy. Millions of millions of bodies burned in fire have had their ashes strewn upon its placid wave in hope of rest eternal ; and still the stream gathers its forces, and its devotees gather by its banks, and may do so in all the ages yet to come. 1/6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Benares is a place most foul in many of its aspects ; and as you wander to and fro and watch the workings of its native thought and people, its peculiar forms of worship, its sculp- tured saints and shrines and devils, its worship of beasts and faculties obscene, you can but stop and wonder how these things can be, and how these serious-looking, bright-eyed, clever men can grovel in such things of filth as one sees here. Mere washing in the Ganges, — " great river," — or in any other water, is a good thing to do ; and as we ride by boat in the early morning up and down the miles of bathing ghats, and see the masses modestly at their bathing, we find no room for fault ; for do not all good people believe in personal clean- hness? And do not almost all religions somehow or other connect the use of water by immersion, or by sprinkling, with their holiest rites? The Egyptian did it twice three thousand years ago. The Assyrian did it none the less ; the Jew, too, did it in the puny Jordan ; the followers of Islam ha\'e the self-same faith ; and even the olden priests of ancient Mexico, the Persian, and the Peruvian, held the same idea in one form or another. Whence came the curious, all-pervading thought? Coming to Benares, you cross the bridge of boats, drive past the city of the natives to the European quarters, and stop at Mrs. Clark's Hotel. Mrs. Clark is an Eurasian. "Eu- rasian " is a made-up word, the first three letters standing for an European, the latter five for an Asian. It is applied to the progeny of an European father and an Asian mother. Mrs. Clark is a rather bright and tidy-looking matron ; she keeps a fairly good hotel, and sells curious things in beaten brass and gilded sih^er to such of her customers as choose to buy. The dark-skinned lady met us at the door, and gave our number to the Hindu serf, who led us to our rooms. They were large, high, and airy. Joined to each room was a lavatory, washing basins, closets, but no baths. The beds have iron frames made in Birmingham, mosquito bars, sheets, and blankets. The dining-hall is spacious, — plenty of air and light and whitewash. The food was fair and quite sufficient ; and as to guests — a houseful ; for all wayfarers have heard of Mrs. Clark and her fine things in chased Be- nares brass and golden woven fabrics from Benares looms, and here they surely come. INDIA. I 'J'J Excuse a diversion. These Hindu woven goods in silk and gleaming gold and silver are truly magical. The house is dirty — maybe foul. The loom is worth, in all its wood and strings and knotted twine, say sixty-seven cents, not more. And yet, within that unswept, dirty room, squatted upon the floor, facing his cheap and simple trap, the weaver weaves these costly fabrics, — silks that stand on edge, so stiff they are with golden thread ; silken goods in such wondrous patterns that kings and princes stop to buy ; goods that by the yard will cost you many a sterling pound ; goods that in pattern, gleam, and pure effect will put to shame the richest goods of most enlightened nations, all made by the deft Indian hand upon this cheap and simple loom. After a good night's rest, an early rising, a hasty cup of tea and toast, we take an open carriage to the bathing places and the burning ghats. Arriving at the water side, a native boat awaits our coming. Stepping aboard, we climb a little stair and take an easy rattan chair upon the upper deck. Four men with oars propel us up the river. The Ganges ghats are all on the right side as you face up-stream. The left side is without virtue. To die on the left-hand side, to be burned on the left-hand side, or to have one's ashes strewn upon the left-hand side, is a serious happening. We row along the ghat. The word means " the steps." A lot of people are out bathing, — bathing and praying, — their faces to the east. They come down the stone steps ; plunge in, immerse themselves ; go through many motions you can't understand ; wash their clothes, dry them out, and go about their business. All is modest, feir, and decorous. Not many women are present ; but such as are, observe the strictest rules of feminine modesty. Most women come at three o'clock — a very early hour — to bathe, that they may do so unobserved by eyes profane. We pull far up the stream, then turn around and float much farther down, seeing all that may be seen. The people come and go, go and come, as they have been doing several thou- sand years, bathing in the fluent Ganges. Great rows of long stone steps come to the water's brink. Great rows of tall stone houses rise behind — built by rich kings and rajahs as the spacious places where countless pilgrims find both roof 12 178 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and rest ; where pious men may eome to live and think ; where dying men may come and breathe their last and have their bodies burned upon the sacred Ganges shore. Queer rambling buildings these, built of brick veneered with red sandstones, with steps and towers and battlemented tops, domes and carved temples, shrines and lofty minarets, the whole set forth in very much confusion. Some are rather new ; others go sliding down upon their undermined founda- tions ; and here and there great gaps are seen where sumptuous ghat temples and shrines and caravansaries have slid down into the watery flood and passed quite out of sight, save where a single turret top still keeps its chiselled head above the sweep- ing wave. Most treacherous Ganges, thus to undermine and drag away the costly structures built to do it honor. Leaving the boat, we wandered on the bank, about the sacred steps and pious wells, beneath the overhanging limbs of shady sycamore and pepul tree, around the awful temple Nepaul, and among the ponderous implements of the rare old observa- tory, followed everywhere by would-be guides and long-since graduated beggars clamoring for " bakshish." Curious amid this throng of worshippers and loutish hangers-on are the small, plump, and gentle sacred cows and heifers, wandering about up and down the steps and stairs and on the banks and ter- races, fed by every one, petted and worshipped as the sacred cattle, all fat and sleek as pigs in clover. The bulls we saw within their marble stalls inside another temple, — a richly built affair within the native city. Upon a central marble platform floored with white and colored marble, railed about with marble screens, stood a most sacred cow. Just the full extent of sanctity of this small, solid, black-pointed heifer we cannot say ; but she was surely eating rose-leaves, tender grass, leaves, and sweetmeats tossed upon the floor by earnest worshippers ; while down by her fore-feet, and upon bended knees, there crouched a richly dressed woman, patting Miss Bossy's wrinkled velvet neck as if she sought and hoped to gain some much-prized special good or favor. Seeing the rampant sacred bulls beyond, we leaped down from the steps and went upon the sloppy marble floor to where they stood to get a better view. This action being noticed by the attendant priests, they raised their hands in holy horror, and with opened INDIA. 179 outstretched palms they motioned fast as if to push us back, shouting many unknown words. Another priest jumped down in front and put his opened hands before our eyes, barring up the way. Seeing there was loud and earnest objection to our farther progress, we returned to the door. Our guide said we had better go away, for over there among the sacred stock some high-toned inmates of somebody's harem had come to do some curious acts of worship, which made it improper for gentile strangers to hnger about. But for that we might have seen tlie temple stock at our leisure. Even as it was, without having had half a sight, an eager priest followed us forth and bravely begged for bakshish, which we did n't give at all, but went straight away to take a peep into the deep Well of Knowledge. It stood within a marble canopy. Mounting a marble platform to get a good square look into its depths, we found it mostly covered with a screen of cloth placed there to catch the many sacred rose-leaves that were constantly being tossed over the rim by ardent devotees, leav- ing only room enough to let down a brazen bucket to bring up brackish water, of which the people drank, and dipping in their fingers, rubbed them on their lips and eyes, as though it were possessed of some rare untold virtue. Oh, the infinite disgust of all this sort of stuff! Dupes of the lazy, well-fed priests, this people grovel in the deepest dirt, and call it sanc- tity. Worship of sacred cows, sanctified bulls, and holy hogs is no new thing. The old Egyptians and Jews were worshippers of cattle ; and in a Chinese temple some few months ago we saw some sacred swine so fat and old and lazy they could hardly move to eat their food. k. quaint old city is Benares, and full of all forms of lively worship, — sometimes of cows and bulls, again of idol forms and mischief-making monkeys ; one thing and another, — things that may be written of and others that may not. IMaybe it pays the traveller to stop there longer than Ave did, and look more carefully into these curious proceedings ; but a few hours among them seemed to us quite enough, so off we went to Lucknow by the fastest evening train. Five thousand Europeans, including soldiers, now make their home in Benares. Across the Ganges here a noble iron railway bridge is being built; and several Christian churches l8o A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. raise their spires to heaven, but they are mostly used by white folks. The Hindu or Islam worshippers stick close to their own forms and customs. As already said, pilgrims by the hundreds of thousands flock annually to Benares as to a spot most holy ; and these fanatic hordes who come to see the birthplace of Buddha spend large amounts, and so Benares pagan piety is made to pay a rich per cent. The native streets and shops show thrift and skill. Their skill in working gold and silver table ware is excellent ; while in the work of brass there is nothing like the rich Benares goods in any clime or country. With them it is a specialty which no one else seems to invade. But Benares is a dirty place, and now that we have seen it we almost wish we had skipped the town and looked up better ones. There may be wisdom here yet underlying all this rot and rubbish, and no doubt there is ; but life is much too short to learn the language and become a pundit, so we pack up and ride away. • • • • . • • Cawnpore, — "hotel city." Memorable in history is the mutiny of the Sepoy troops of India in the never-to-be-for- gotten summer of 1857, when the bulk of the native military turned their guns and drew their swords against the British troops and residents. At Lucknow and Cawnpore were the results most terrible. The older people of to-day well remem- ber with what anxiety they looked for the latest news from these two points, where the lives of hundreds of men, women, and children — ay, the lives of thousands — hung by a single hair ; how they looked for the advance of Havelock and Colin Campbell with their troops of succor ; how that wail of anguish rent the air of the whole civilized world on hearing of the acts of savage outrage and of brutal murder perpetrated by the friends of that accursed human tiger, Nena Sahib, worse, more treach- erous, and devilish than any which the world has ever known. And to this day the most sadly interesting points in all this Indian land are those of which I write, for here are yet the scars of furious, brutal warfare and most fiendish outrage ; here yet beat some hearts that once were chilled by the fearful doom that overhung them all those awful summer months like a pall of blackest darkness. At all points but the Residency at Luck- now are the war furrows much effaced, and monuments and INDIA. 1 8 1 markings only attest the clays and deeds of long-continued horrors. The surrender of Cawnpore, under the oft-repeated promises of Nena Sahib to give safe conduct to a place of safety, is all a matter of history. So, too, the breaking of that oft-repeated pledge, and the scenes of carnage and outrage \ the murder of defenceless women and their children ; the filling of a well with their mangled bodies. We spent a few sadly interesting hours among the places of these deeds of death, — the fine memorial church erected to the memory of those who laid down their lives in defence x>f other lives they held more dear; the house of Nena Sahib, whence he gave his false assurances and whence the treacherous orders came to mur- der every one now made defenceless by his promises. Then we visited the memorial tomb erected above the fatal well where in mangled confusion rest the remains of some hundreds of fair English dames and their precious children. The me- morial is on a slight artificial eminence in the centre of a lovely garden, and near where stood the house in the cellars of which this frightful murdering was done. On a massive brown-stone base stands a noble marble statue, — a sorrowing angel by a cross. The whole is surrounded by a handsome screen of stone, within which you enter by a door which the attendant soldier opens. No native Indian is permitted to place his foot within this hallowed ground where rest the murdered ones, and where the bright-robed angel stands saintly guard. It is most holy ground, on which you tread witli gentlest care and speak in tones of tempered cadence ; for none come here without drop- ping tears. The point of real interest here at Lucknow is the Residency, within whose outer walls and inner rooms the besieged held out for months, or till the Campbells came. The Residential palace, the great banqueting hall, in the deep cellar of which two hundred and fifty women and children spent all those awfiil months, the hospital and the Baillie gate, are all in a state of ruin, having been fired by the mutineers during the fight, and after the women had been removed to safer quarters. But the ball and bullet marks, the rents of shot and shell, are all too plain upon the dreary walls and towers, the gates and columns, telling more plainly than words can tell of fierce beleaguerment, 1 82 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. of days and weeks and months of brave defence, and prolonged mental torment. Here are the battered rooms in which brave men died ; here too the monuments erected to their name and fame by friends and country so well served. And here, too, is the ground of fearful retribution. In dark- est hour, when life was ebbing out, and hope long-strained grew dim and dark, the succor came. The slogan's distant sound came first upon their ears, the crack of musketry, and longed for cannon's boom, and dawn was breaking, — a gleam of hap- piest daylight. Campbell came, and Havelock, with their veteran troops, who mowed the m.utineers like weeds. Here is the high-walled garden ail de sac, where eighteen hundred baffled Indian troops were cut down in an hour by Campbell's furious men. Here, too, on the terrace, were the deep-mouthed cannon from before whose well-charged throats full many a fiend was blown to atoms, and so far as possible the mutinous treachery avenged. You will go about full many an hour in this fair city of Luck- now, and read no end of interesting story. Temple and old fantastic gates, well-walled harem and round-domed mosque, all contribute their share of interest. The great Imambara is a noble Oriental palace, extensive, lofty, lavish in decoration. It is a pile comprising temple, tomb, harem, and spacious mosque, covering, with its curious gates and stables, servants' quarters, gardens, many an acre, — a sumptuous mass of architectural grace in brick and stone, without the aid of a single iron beam or plank of wood, in a building with a hall one hundred and sixty-seven feet by fifty-two. The use of brick in these central Indian places, where stone was only to be obtained from far away, wood scarcer still, and iron not in use for building purposes, was carried to the highest pitch of excellence. We wander through the spacious halls and dusky corridors, through the now denuded pilgrim rooms and harem quarters ; climb up the lofty minarets and view the level city far and wide, — its mosques and Hindu temples, noble gates and shrines, its modern churches where the Christians worship, its founded schools and hospitals, its fair broad roads and shady groves, its palaces, domes, and slender minarets, — a scene of great magnificence. Descending from this tower of observation we drive away INDIA. 1 83 to Hosenabad, or lesser Imambara, to see the marble glories gathered there by King Mohamed Ali. Hosenabad is the most lustrous marble gem in this old city, — built with gorgeous gate and marble halls when precious stones were used with lavish hands to furnish decorations for the columns and walls and caskets that surround and encase the dust of these old princes. Here is one of the Indian attempts to imitate the Taj Mahal of Agra ; and though very rich in inlaid marble work, it is but a feeble effort. This, and the inlaid marble bathing rooms that form the opposite of the fair garden quad- rangle, are something very fair, — a dreamy Oriental luxury ; and yet, to compare these jewelled wonders with some at other cities of this Indian land is as matching night with day, good things with far better ones, the common with the best. The halls are decorated with crystal chandeliers, tazzias, and much of gilt and gewgaw glitter, — hooks for placing twenty thousand candles, with which on great occasions it is illumi- nated ; marble groves ; hot Turkish baths, with sculptured marble vats large enough to hold a dozen people, — these and countless other things engage attention, and we go away well cloyed with sights of curious things. It is of no use to go farther. The traveller who takes in all these kingly Indian towns in only a few weeks, their temples and tombs, their gates and ghats, their mosques and palaces and domes, their gardens, forts, zenanas, groves, and all, must leave them in a state of mental maze. 184 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER XV. INDIA. Agra Fort. — The Glories of Taj Mahal. — A Marble Paradise. — Delhi, City of Indian Potentates. — The Story of Minar Tower. — Shah Jehan's Masterpiece. — Among the Jewelled Temples. — A Day at Jeypore. — The Horses of an Indian Prince. — A Ride on an Ele- phant. — Bombay. — The Worst Hotels in the World. — The Caves of Elephanta. — The Towers of Silence. — Parsee Burial Customs. — A Bombay Hospital for Animals. AGRA FORT and perfect full-moon nights, — a precious paradise ! I am not going to write from Agra. To be able to do so, and paint with pen and ink a vivid picture of the Taj Mahal, might satisfy a Milton or a B}Ton, neither of whom am I ; and so I wipe my pen and fold my paper and bow to the inevitable. You have all heard of Agra, city of the mighty Akbar, " most powerful," and of Shah Jehan, " king of the world," — men of illustrious birth, of kingly traits, mighty in war, \\Tapped up in love of Saracenic art and beauteous women. It was the former who founded Agra by the noble Jumna River, founded the fort, planned it on a most titanic scale, and finished it with varied skill, — he and his son, the Shah Jehan, and his son Aurangzeb. The Akbar tomb is a walled-in space of ninety acres, four-gated, glowing with bright red sandstone and Jeypore marbles interlaid with white and black and green and other colored precious stone. Its lofty gates are crowned with bubbling domes and gently tapering minarets, cornice, pavilions, and airy-like kiosks that crowd the wondering gaze. I do not care to speak of dis- tances or figures ; the former are magnificent, the latter too confusing. The inlaid creamy marbles that make the old mon- arch's tomb, — tombs of his Christian and his pagan wives, tombs of some children dear unto his stern and kingly heart ; the airy, well-secured chambers for his treasures and the noble ladies of his choice ; the grand wTOUght marble-lace pavilion rising INDIA. 185 supreme above the tomb-house roof, enclosing the mausoleum and marble pedestal where now may rest old Akbar's bones, where once he kept his precious Kohinoor, now of the Kritish crown, — these are all chiselled pictures or poems in the loveliest of stone. But no one comes to Agra to see great Akbar's tomb. No one comes here to see the pure Pearl Mosque ; none to muse among the jewelled glories of the gemmed zenanas, whose fairy jasmine pavilion and the carven, gilded, sensuous marble bed- room seem like a bright dream ; no one comes to see the stately Hall of Audience, with its dual marble columns, base and shaft and Saracenic capitals enriched with vine and leaf and fragrant flowers wrought out in precious stone ; none come to stand within the genii-fashioned bath-rooms of the harem, flashing with myriad mirrorettes within the carven spaces, re- flecting at ten thousand points the glinting of the silver cascade where it falls, a jewelled bridal veil of inwrought rippled marbles, with tinted flash lights set behind ; none come here to sit within the many-columned hall of justice where kings and princes have had their royal seats, — within that kingly niche of pillared marble richly set with vines and lilies, roses too, and violets, in patiently wrought carnelian and various colored lapis work ; none come here to see these clustered marbled glories, nor yet the mimic fishing pond where kings on sculptured seats have lounged and loitered to see their fair court beauties disport themselves within the perfumed wave, or catch from tiny boats the gold-finned fish, or dive from lotus pedestals like so many sporting mer- maids ; none come here to see the gi-eat black blood-stained throne with jester's seat in front ; the broad floor checker-board, upon which these Oriental monarchs played long games with beautiful women standing on the squares as chessmen, and moving at their noble lords' behest ; none come to see the arena where the wild beasts fought beneath these dizzy balco- nies, nor yet to see the tinted sandstone Hindu palaces ; for are not all of these — all, and far more than I have merely hinted at — within these daring walls of Agra Fort? Verily, it is not Akbar's tomb nor Agra Fort that you come here to see ; that men and women wander here to see and marvel at, come here to weep and ponder over ; not these, nor such as these, but lovely, heavenly, Taj Mahal. 1 86 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. To see this thrice lovely marble thought, — dedicated at its threshold "To the Memory of an Undying Love," — they come from every nation, every clime, to feast upon it by the sparkling daylight, to adore it by the softened silver moonlight ; come to its presence with an eager, softened step, to wonder and to wor- ship, worship and wonder, or to brush away the quite unbidden tear, to wander about its richly tessellated courts, or stand enrapt within its screens of glorious marble lace, admiring its lovely lines and fairy grace, then lingeringly walking away. But to describe it : there 's the rub ! You may have read many descriptions of it, — those of Taylor, Bernier, Butler, or of Fergusson, — and have, as I had, after reading them, no more conception of this Taj Mahal than you would have of some goodly edifice on some conspicuous corner place of the New Jerusalem. Its simple grandeur in the distance, with its pure white minarets and bubbling roof, delights your eye, but only makes suggestions. I know you will expect to know from me just what the Taj looks like, and yet I dare not make the trial ; for if it should be told you in so many figured feet and inches, in so many tons of stone, and in so many years of work by twenty thousand men, and had you all the plans and scales and elevations, sections, and perspectives, still you could not grasp it. It is like unto it- self and nothing else. I have stood at Karnak in the moonlight and seen the titanic columns of its hypostylic miracle ; by the Parthenon and Baalbec's wondrous piles when the bright moon was full, and been overwhelmed by these grand spectacles ; but this is not that ponderous Egyptian, Greek, or Roman effort, but more rare, luxurious. Oriental, — the house that came down out of heaven and stood here among the lovely garden trees and plashing water jets, as when Aladdin rubbed his magic lamp ! The fine, resplendent marbles stand out a-gleam against the soft blue sky, the magic home of fairies, profusely lavished o'er with gems of many lands. You watcli the softly tinted shades that linger round its deftly carven screens, and the great white bul- bous figure up above that seems about to rise and cleave the upper air ; you wonder if the cut-off deep-niched corners are not the outlook stands of flitting fairies, or long-lost spirits of the grand harem ; you fancy that the inlaid marbles are but pic- tures in your present dream, and wonder if when you awake the INDIA. 187 light and shade and tint and gleam of that most queenly of all fagades will vanish into air ! I speak of dreams ; for every time I stand before that marble revelation I seem to fancy that I dream, and I pinch my arms to gain true sense of my condition. The building is not large. St. Peter's church could take it in its nave. Before some ancient stone and marble piles it would become a pretty, glitter- ing toy. The rich raised marble terrace upon which it stands is not much larger than your city squares, and this marbled elegance stands on a little less than a full acre ; yet for all that its beauty is a mystery. You view it on the lower terrace, — a space of half a dozen acres floored with red sandstone and white marble work in starry pattern, — and every line is perfect, every screen a miracle. AValk out into the lovely tropic garden full of richest, never-fading foliage, and turning, catch new par- tial glimpses through the leafy frame-work of the tamarinds, and every marble patch outspread against the star-set azure depths becomes a present vision of the ethereal paradise ; and as you stand there breathless, if broad-winged angels should swoop down from the star-gemmed vault and come within its hallowed screen, you could not be surprised. You dream awake of soft beclouded glories, — evanescent joys. This is the Taj Mahal ! They say the gilded finial of its egg-shaped dome stands more than seven- score feet. You well may doubt the measure : it pierces to the heavens. They say that twenty thousand unfed men wrought upon it a full score of years. Your faith would doubt the figures, for it arose by magic. They say that ten millions of minted dollars were expended on its workmanship. You don't believe a single dollar. Aladdin did not work for pay ; his ready lamp was all-sufiicient. They say that one and one third million carts of red rock and marble were handled to make this fair display of gates and tombs, fountains, walks, and pilgrim's caravansary galleries, within this broad and cultured space. You know the tongue is false that tells the tale : there are no stones ; you walk in space ; the vision is of heaven. As well might John of Patmos prate of bullock-carts and stone and cost of craft when writing the x-^pocalypse ! But no man's pen can tell you what one sees and what one feels while in this magic presence. Description is a beggar in these mystic grounds, and all assertion of mere earthy fact a 1 88 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. sacrilege. A trinity of times we wait and wonder by this queenly Taj ; then, speechless, rapt, and dazed, we seem to walk away, hoping for yet another moonlight dream of this fair paradise. The brightest and fairest edifice of all the world was built by a pagan ruler to enshrine his best-loved wife. Such a compli- ment might all womankind full well esteem. The grandest of all towers of the world was begun as an expression of a pagan father's love for a thoughtful and loving daughter. Taj Mahal at Agra ; Kutab Minar at Delhi ; most beloved Arjaraand, Moomtaz-i-Mahal, wife of Shah Jehan ; devoted Firoza, the darling daughter of the ancient Hindu king. Noble wife and well-beloved daughter — what on earth more worthy of such special recognition ! As the Christian pilgrim yearns to see the Holy Sepulchre before he breathes his last ; as the devoted Hindu prays he may not die until the Ganges flood has damp- ened his parched feet and washed his sins away ; as pious sons of Islam yearly yearn to rest within the Meccan temple of the precious Kaaba stone, — so too may women from all the world long for the day when they may stand within the great Taj's lofty gate, behold their jewelled temple's glory, drop a silent tear, stand speechless in the presence of the great Minar, and bless the fulness of that sacred love that gave these lasting monuments to mother, wife, and daughter. This is the old and far-famed Mogul city of Delhi, city from time immemorial of the Indian potentates ; place of great strength and power, its great treasures at once the pride and envy of the Oriental world. You will find it often in the history of wars of olden times and new. City of thrones and palaces, the glittering peacock throne was here, — a chair of state that in its gorgeous display of gems and precious things created cupidity enough to wreck a kingdom. But many of its gorgeous things have been removed by lust and loot and decay of power ; yet enough remain to fasten your attention for many days and fill your brain with thoughts and dreams of paradise. The great attraction here, however, is not its noble walls and gates erected by a great nation's pride to breast the tide of fierce invasion ; not its grand old defiant fort, with its display of palace, hall, and jewelled mosque ; nor yet its noble tombs, gardens, bulbed mosques, and Oriental INDIA. 1 89 baths ; but the grand old Kutab Minar, — that towering edifice of red sandstone and marble that rears its stately form upon the now deserted plains of ancient Delhi. It stands out in the country ten miles from the present city walls, amid a mass of ancient Hindu temple colonnades some fifteen hundred years of age ; among many later Moslem arches now in solemn ruin ; amid the crumbling Islam tombs which stud the country round about, the solemn remnant of a once great and noble capital. The ruins of a grand old city present one of the saddest of all serious pictures. Their time-gnawed frag- ments of walls, the crumbling bastions and toppling towers and domes, their gray old tombs of the illustrious dead, and dilapi- dated walls and grass-grown moats, tell of the strong defence of jealous guardians. These palace ruins, grassy mounds, and bits of sculptured stone so scattered here, tell us of kings and courts ; of princely pleasures, pride, and power ; of wars and certain decadence. Such is the plain suggestion as, riding forth to view the central points of this once famous Delhi city, we see the great Minar. The Minar is a lofty tapering tower, built by Rai Pithora so many centuries ago that no one seems to care to fix a date. Its story is like this : The mighty prince — for so this old-time Hindu romance runs — had a lovely daughter, name now unknown. He was very fond of her and granted her every wish. It was a way they had in those good old Oriental times, and is a way that even modern fathers sometimes have when they can afford it, and when their daughters manage matters well. Suppose we call her Miss Firoza. She was a lovely little Hindu princess, much attached to her religion. Daily, as the sun came forth to bless her father's fair domain, this pretty, pious pagan went down, attended by her maidens, to the spa- cious marble temple, — the marble ghat that faced the Jumna as it rolled its bright blue waters past the gardens of the palace, — gardens more exceeding rare than even those of Shalimar. Every day she went to the Jumna, a branch of the sacred Ganges, bathed within its holy waters, and said her prayers within the temple. From her lovely harem lattice, where she sat and watched the fountains, read the rolls of Hindu wisdom, slept, or chatted with her maidens, no view of the sacred waters was possible. So one day when she had pleased her father very much and said her prayers with much precision, counting her I go A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. beads with rapt attention, he asked her what he should do to increase her daily round of pleasure. There are some girls who would have remembered then and there about a lovel)' spray of diamonds, or some laces, velvets, silks, or satins ; but this young pagan princess mentioned nothing of the sort. She stood up by her kingly father, placed her hand upon his forehead, told him that she loved the Jumna above all things earthly, next to him. She loved its ever-cleansing current, its ever-pure and holy waters, and wished there were about the palace grounds some elevated safe pavilion where she might sit among her maidens overlooking all the temples, all the domes and palace gardens, and see at will the lovely Jumna. The wish was granted. Straightway the king's architect produced a plan for such a tower as the world had never seen, — bold, graceful, and artistic. It was built of fine pink-tinted sandstone, circular in shape, — a seeming mass of convergent clustered columns, com- posed of alternate round and rectangular faces, belted about with broad plain bands on which are now seen in encircling verses from the Koran the nine-and-ninety names of the Almighty, the praise of the caliphs and nobles, cut there in after ages by the conquering Moslems. This, the now lower section of the Minar, is ninety-five feet in height, and has a bold and richly orna- mented projecting balcony. On the top of this was fair Firoza's fine pavilion, where she was pleased to while away her pleasant daytime hours in full view of the lovely Jumna. Sometime farther on, when Rai Pithora's reign had long since passed away and Saint Firoza slumbered in the tomb, came here in warlike hordes the Islam conquerors, planting the crescent faith with fire and sword. Old Delhi came into their hungry grasp, the Hindu idol forms were smashed, their gorgeous tem- ples transformed into mosques, the faith in Chrishna stamped out to make room for that of fierce Mahomet. Then Kutb-ud-din, most ambitious Arab ruler, sought to exalt this noble column and make it a minar, — a lofty appendage to the great mosque close by. He raised it another story, added fifty feet, put out another ornamental balcony, on which the holy muezzin might daily stand and call the faithful ones to prayer. This story is also like to clustered columns, — columns round, smooth, and belted. On the bands we read more Koran verses concerning Friday prayers, and some flowing sentences of self-laudation of INDIA. 191 King Altamash, who is said to have added the two more upper stories. The third story, unlike the second but partly like the first, is of clustered rectangles without the rounded flutes, and on its bands or belts the fierce old ruler sounds forth the praises of himself in choice Arabic characters. This story mounts some forty feet, and has a florescent cornice supporting a fair red stone balcony, on which you step with rather cautious feet lest your unusual weight might topple down the mass. Here holy men have stood, and, closer to the gates of paradise, implored the faithful that they leave their houses, stores, and shops, and come forth to make prayers to Allah- Akbar, the only living God, all-powerful. The fourth and fifth stories are alike in outward show, but are unhappily different in material, being crusted with white marble and divided by a rather cramped bal- cony, quite unused. Atop of this some years ago there was a fair pavilion, the crown of all. This long since has disappeared, demolished by a lightning stroke that sent it crashing down, and it has not been restored, but one much like it has been set up below. The entire height of the tower was probably about two hun- dred and sixty feet, now two hundred and thirty-eight, with a base diameter of forty-eight and a top one of nine, — the most impressive structure of the sort the world has ever seen. The Campanile of Giotto at Florence is thirty feet higher, but is not so impressive, being dwarfed by its contiguity to the great cathedral. The porphyry minarets at Cairo, the obelisks at Karnak, the minarets of Benares or of Lucknow, are rather weak and tame when compared with this at Delhi. It absorbs you, controls you, calls you back again. As with the great St. Peter's church, or old St. Mark's at Venice, the cathedral at Toledo, the hypostyle at Thebes, the Parthenon, the Coliseum, you are quite overwhelmed and know not what to say or think. Language loses force ; you gaze and wonder, spellbound, go and come again and again, regardless of volition. An easy stair within the tower conducts you to the top, which has a stout protecting metal rail, and affords a free view of the wide-spread ruins of the ancient cities, the modern city quite ten miles away, and the wide-spreading lovely Jumna valley. You reach the Kutab Minar by a well-kept carriage-way that leads across the plain past the grand old tomb of Humayun, the anti- 192 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. type of the fairer Taj Mahal at Agra ; the rich and interesting tombs of Nizamudin, the ruined city of Firozabad, a sometime gorgeous place ; then along the clean, smooth road, the Appian Way of Delhi, beneath the grateful shade of avenues of neem and pepul trees, and sress and frass and goolas, all the time in sight of low-domed tombs and ruined walls of many a noble mosque and palace, — remnant ruins of the grand and gone old Hindu city of Rai, the mighty king, the father of Firoza. Near by the towering Kutab stands the crumbling foundation of another great minar begun on a much grander scale, planned to rise five liundred feet, but stopped at eighty ; some conqueror having come along, or else the general manager died, or the imperial bank had failed ; at all events, the tower was not completed ; so there is one less minar in the world for aspiring travellers to see and climb. The great old iron pillar also stands near by, the most re- markable piece of real ancient iron-work in the wide world. We read of those of brass or bronze, but they are gone long since ; but here is set up a cylinder of well- wrought hammered iron bronze, nearly sixty feet in height and sixteen inches through. It rises nearly thirty feet from the surface, and marks show that it has been excavated to the depth of six and twenty feet without destroying its stability. They say that it was set up here by Bilian Deo, a Hindu prince, some seventeen hundred years ago ; that it is of nearly pure iron, with bronze enough to keep it from rusting, and weighs some seventeen tons. How it came to be made, how it was possible at so early a date, or even in Europe sixty years ago, to do such a ponderous piece of forging, is not so well understood. At all events, it is there, with its old Sanskrit inscriptions and capital ; there in the midst of a most rare old Hindu temple ruin, whose many scores of richly sculptured crimson columns and curiously built ancient domes are now the wonder of the world. Another curious columnar feature of this day's pilgrimage to the Minar is the monolithic pillar at Firozabad, the column of Azoka. It is a plain round shaft of pinkish sandstone, Wghly polished, forty-eight feet high, brought here from Jobra, where it was set up by a king whose name it bears, some two thousand years ago. It has some sentences engraved upon it in native Palt, the true meaning of which is ciuite unknown. The history INDIA. 193 of its pulling down and bringing here and setting up again is curious, as it furnishes an idea of how these things were done in ancient times. Around the huge column vast quantities of silky tree-cotton were spread and piled for it to fall upon when it should be digged about. It fell upon its pillows without harm ; and a carriage of forty-two low wheels was made, and many thousand harnessed men with ropes pulled the load upon it. To each axle-end a strong rope was fixed, and two hundred men at each rope pulled the laden cart to the river, where it was placed on boats and brought in triumph to Firozabad. Then a series of long steps was built, up which, one at a time, the pillar, cased in tree-cotton wrapped about with rams' skins, was rolled by unlimited man-power, and thus in time it reached its proper elevation, and, turned upon the steps, was slid to its footing, and stout ropes with blocks manned by several thousand natives brought it to its perpendicular, where it has since stood, a most noted monument. But the city round about, the noble walled and stoutly gated city, — city of many a palace fair and beauteous garden, city of wondrous temples, tombs, and teem- ing population, — is now no more, except in wide-spread mas- sive ruin. The grand old courts of Firozabad are gone ; gone its myriad people ; gone its halls and walls and marts and princely piles, — all gone but this pillar of Azoka, with its time- worn toppling ruins. Camels and goats, country ox-carts, men in quaint barbaric clothes, were scattered here and there ; while hard by was a gypsy camp witli over-jewelled dancing girls, playing such musical instruments as were here in use long centuries ago. Here in this neighborhood of fifteen miles' circumference have been some mighty and most populous cities, first founded long before our era. One after another was built and met its doom ; once or twice the Jumna has changed its course, and the city followed it ; many a time, and rather too often for com- fort, half-barbaric kings, attracted by the immense wealth that centred here, have swooped down and looted it. The Islam armies planted the standard of Mahomet here, and have kept their hold pretty well ever since ; and later on the fearful Per- sian general, Nadir Shah, plundered its palaces, mosques, and tombs of four hundred million dollars' worth of gems and gold and other precious things ; then more and more it was con- 194 ^ GIRDLE ROUiVD THE EARTH, quered, moved about, and looted, until to-day it is a mere skeleton of what it was. But there are many very pretty things in Delhi yet, as we shall see later on. The streets are broad and clean ; the bazaars and shops and little factories make show of thrift and decency ; the crowds of people thronging the streets and market-places, dressed in their robes of white and every bright warm color you can mention, form a most interesting moving picture. None are better dressed than these people, as the fashion goes ; none bear more earnest and serious looks ; and none are more polite. Whether in shop or store or on the street, these dark- skinned heathen teach us politeness. In going to the Kutab you may see quite a lot of beggars, but even these were fairly decent in their begging, — a better-dressed beggar class than is often seen. A few more days in Delhi. (Pronounce it " Del-le," accent on the first syllable.) The word means " loose." When the priests and king dug down to the bottom of the tall iron column at the old Hindu temple, near this charming Oriental city, to see if it indeed rested yet upon the serpent's head, and blood was found instead, they all took fright and straightway filled the hole, but so loosely that ever afterward the ponderous shaft stood very dim, "loosely," in the ground; so from the ''dilli" column was Delhi city named. There have been several cities here, and close upon this spot the ancient city was founded some 2,200 years ago by Hindu folks ; then two or three more modern ones, of two or more different names, all of which have mostly disap- peared save wasting chunks of fortresses, within whose crum- bling vaults the farmers keep their oxen and their goats ; some towering, moatless walls, now too long quarried to make sub- stantial showing. But the tombs ! the country is covered all over with them for miles and miles around. The tombs remain, — Hindu and Moslem. The Moslem inters his dead as Christians do ; the Hindu cremates, but also builds memorial tombs. So, though the dwellings, shops, and palaces of living men were demolished and removed, or left to crumble there for want of care, the houses of the dead were well respected and so kept in fair repair that they remain intact. The sight of so many round-topped Saracenic tombs, scattered broadcast near and far, INDIA. 195 at first is quite confusing. You wonder how it came they had so large a burial-ground. Whatever these long-lost cities might have been, the living is crowded full of interest. Shah Jehan was a man of vast expe- rience in city engineering, as well as in making war and ruling over empires. Warrior and statesman though he was, he in- dulged his taste for planning palaces and forts and gates and fairest mosques and tombs and shrines. The best of archi- tects, cunning carvers of marble, workers in hard and precious stones, he called from his and other lands. These skilful workers would fill the sides of their clear marble blocks with vines and leaves and loveliest flowers, in closest imitation of the living fact, and coat the spaces over with thick sheets of beaten gold so well laid on that centuries have not effaced their pre- cious gleam. Of raw material and men to bring it here and do the work, unlimited supply was at his beck. If thousands per- ished working at their tasks, still thousands more were ordered to their place. So after he had made Agra a most beautiful city, crusting its halls and palaces, its noble tombs and gates, with richly inlaid marbles, he seemed to tire of it ; at least he looked for other urban fields to conquer. Besides, his favorite wife had died, and was laid within her catafalque in lovely Taj Mahal. It is said he tired of the spot, and, as if to blunt the keen sense of his loss, turned his attention elsewhere. He came to Delhi ; came here and put his energies to work to build another city, — something that would outshine all former effort, and stamp his name and skill forever on the world. To this end the new city he vainly named Shahjehanabad, " City of Shah Jehan." Vain hope ! The new city was populated by those who had lived in old Delhi, close by, which was fast falling into ruin, and as they persisted in calling the new city by the same name, the other one wore out and came to be discarded altogether ; so, in defi- ance of a monarch's vanity and power, this place he built to perpetuate his own name is known by another. But to fourtd this place he chose most spacious ground, laid out broad streets and airy open spaces on a sumptuous scale. The fort he built is large and belted round with thick and frowning crenellated walls, with moats and ponderous gates of iron cased with figured bronze and bossed with many nails, 1 96 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the whole detached from mosques and city streets ; and so it comes to-day that Delhi is the fairest and most attractive of all these so-called half-barbaric cities. Its main thoroughfare — Chandnee Chovvk, "the Street of Silver" — is tenscore feet in width. It has a wide elevated walk along its centre, shaded with handsome pepul-trees, dotted with wells and fountains. On either side of this are broad, smooth carriage-ways all lined with stores and shops teeming with wares of Oriental make, amidst which the thrifty merchant squats upon the well-clad floor, smoking his pipe or bargaining with his customers, 'i'he residence streets are narrow. The houses are well built, with numerous httle stalls niched into their fronts, where artisans in curious goods sit at their work and sell their, stuffs. Among these are many a pretty mosque and Hindu temple, some made of well-wrought marbles overlaid with deftly gilded work, with costly shrines where sit enrobed in gold and precious stones their silent heathen gods. To see these people work on gold embroidery, forming fine fabrics, beating gold and silver leaves and precious metal wire, to see them moulding vessels, pound- ing brass and steel, inlaying copper and making leather things, is a perpetual feast which we enjoy from day to day. The choicest edifices of court and state are found within the fort. The mosque is a perfect gem ; small, of purest Saracenic mould, of rarest Jeypore marble ; its floors inlaid with precious stone and metals ; fair columns crusted over with feats of lapi- dary art, supporting foliated arches and inwrought marble domes of rare conception. All the floor is spaced and figured off in Mecca domes, — one for each royal worshipper and the members of the courtly train. No plebeian worshipped here. The priestly chairs and rostra are in open work of carven marble, cut in vine and stem and leafage, interstrewn with many precious stones. The holy water fonts within the tessellated court, where devotees may dip their hands and feet in pious thought before they kneel to pray, are very spacious, rimmed about with lovely fretted marbles, the whole court inwalled with sculptured panels, and gated with solid marble leaves hinged on with figured bronze. But the grandest work of all is the Dewan-i-Khas, " hall of private audience," — great Hall of Ambassadors that overlooks the rolling Jumna. It and its outer rooms and baths are more perfect, more elaborate and fair, more costly in garnishment INDIA. 197 of inlaid flowers with jewelled leafage, fruit, and precious work, than one could well conceive. This room, or cluster of rooms, was great Shah Jehan's proud masterpiece. The gold he lav- ished on its stout and graceful pillars, piers, arches, and niches would make a country rich ; and so perfect and so richly pro- fuse the work that although twelve scores of years have passed, and plundering hands have robbed it of its most precious things, yet is the picture one of unspeakable grandeur, and you wonder more and more how such embellishment should thus have lasted. The ceiling was of solid silver plates, moulded, en- graved, and gemmed with flashing stones ; the rails and doors and furniture were wrought in the same metal ; and in the midst of all this gorgeous display of creamy marbles, lapidary work, and hangings of silk inwrought with flowers of pure beaten threads of gold, — amidst all this sublime array stood Shah Jehan's far-famed peacock throne. Only the grand marble pedestal remains. Upon it stood that regal chair, — a throne of solid gold and gems, — four feet by six, and on its curious canopy two full-sized peacocks strutted, the variant colors of their gorgeous plumes made up of costliest precious stones of every tint and shaiie, the like of which the world had never seen. Alack-a-day ! The Persian spoiler came. You may read how he came with mighty hordes, captured the city and the fort, bore away the costly throne that experts of that day valued at six million sterling pounds, stripped off the silver ceiling, wrenched away the silver doors and gates and screens, tore down the gorgeous golden hangings, dug out the myriad em- bedded gems, looted the shops and palaces and mosques, then marched away in triumph home. You may see this self-same throne to-day in the Shah's treasury, at Tehran. The wealth the Shah removed that day, the precious metals and more pre- cious gems, loaded a thousand carts and camels : four hundred million dollars' worth of metals, gems, and precious bric-a-brac. Such the cool irony of fate. Such the result of wringing all the people's wealth to pile it up in this constrained seclusion. Such things must meet tlieir doom. In this same way has fallen many a treasure-gleaming princely palace. So fell the temple of the Jews ; so fell the great Ephesian fane ; the poem Parthenon ; the Olympian wonder of the world ; the palaces of Rome. Built in pride of power, built in defiance of the masses' rights. 198 A GIRDLE ROUXD THE EARTH. coined out of subjects' sweat and blood, the result of warrior rapacity, — who shall gainsay God's verdicts on these ways ? For several precious days we loiter here among these things of wonderland ; stand among these many graceful columns of the Hall of Judgment, where moguls sat among their nobles and their armed satraps, dispensing edicts, hearing suppliants for fair adjudication of their wrongs, reports of officers and agents far and near. At the rear stands now, as then, the grand old marble throne, channelled with carving and rich inlaid work, canopied with thin wrought lucent marbles veined with gold and flowers in all the art of princely jewellers, and furnitured with marble div'an chairs carved with great patience from solid blocks of precious stone. But it is of little use to try to put on paper a just idea of these most gorgeous scenes. They must be seen to gain a proper estimate of what they truly are. Those marble screens alone are each a charming study. See this one : first a slab of creamy close-grained Jeypore marble, say six feet square and two inches thick. This is set into its thicker marble framework, making a fair panel in the partition wall between the rooms of court and harem corridor, between the mosque and the ladies' promenade. They cannot see through this polished slab, and so the artist comes and lays it off in beauteous pattern, — lace work, if you please. Then comes the patient sculptor, bores this marble through and through, cuts out the minute spaces, files and rubs and polishes, and, when finished, behold a panel of fine lace, figured meshes, vines, and leaves and flowers. This marble screening is one of the quiet glories of all this tomb and mosque and palace work. No other artists seem to have gained for it such filmy perfection ; no climate could be more tender of its meshed and fretted fancies : this at Akbar's tomb and at the royal palaces, those at a thousand tombs and shiines, most wonderful of all, perhaps, at lovely Taj Mahal. Again the irony of fate. This noble Shah Jehan, who filled these cities with these lovely things, before whom all peoples worship, became a gray-haired man. His countless pleasures o'er, his loves decayed, his faculties declined, he became a prisoner of an ambitious son within the Agra fortress. Within the fairy screens and jewelled rooms, within plain sight of that marble miracle, the lustrous Taj Mahal, he spent in theoretic INDIA. 199 chains the poisoned twilight of Iiis many days, — a dim-eyed, sorrowing prisoner. One day the last hour came, as come it must to one and all. His servant keepers, granting his request, bore liim on his death-couch from the golden chamber of his long-dead dearest wife, to the close-by golden-domed paviHon near his treasure-house, from which his glazing eyes might view, as the last object he should see on earth, the grand-domed dream, the tomb of Taj jMahal. So passed the builder king of Delhi, — noble old mogul, whose word had been the moving force of millions. The tomb he would have built for his own sepulchre — twin tomb of the Taj, with silver bridge between the two across the Jumna stream, and which he had collected gold to build — was only but begun. Ambitious sons died struggling for their father's priceless crown ; and Aurangzeb, the last one left, had other ways to use this wealth, so buried his father by his mother's side, beneath the glorious echoing dome, within the screen of marble lace that gems the Taj Mahal. "Going to Jeypore, I suppose?" " Don't know," we said. " What can one see there ? " " Well, not so very much ; but Jeypore, you know, is one of the native cities, — capital of a native province, ruled by a Maha- rajah, no English shops, no banks, everything native, — quite different from the European places like Calcutta, Bombay, and the rest ; rather uncommon, you know." That is what the friendly Britisher said ; and as the native city of Jeypore was right on the way from Delhi to Bombay, it was decided to stop over a day and take in the sights, peer into the palaces and the palace gardens, visit the bazaars and go out to the dead-and-gone city of Amber, see the tombs, temples, the wild beasts and curious things, said to be seen at Jeypore, the city of the great Jey Singh, " lion king," who founded it and ruled over its great and productive province, he and his descendants, for several hundred years. At early daybreak the stuffy narrow-gauge train let us off at a well-built station. Being in the city of a native prince, it first became a duty to announce our presence and beg the privilege of viewing his kingly stables, his princely audience halls, his gardens and his Amber palace. With unexpected promptness 200 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the minion of his highness despatched a red-turbaned messenger, granting all we asked. We were glad, yet almost sorry that we had not asked for more. The ruling princes here are very good, they say, and very glad to have the people of the outer world come and see the city and compare it with other cities of this Indian land. The stables of the prince cover many acres, — a large ten- acre square, perhaps, with rows of stables on three sides, with yards for colts, and exercising grounds for the whole establish- ment. The prince is fond of horses, one would think ; for there are three hundred of them there, and for every horse a groom, and another hundred men are there as managers and helpers. The horses are of choicest Asian blood, gathered from many provinces, best of the best, various in build and color, from the finely spotted Arab to the graceful-limbed Deccan, the fleet- footed Punjaub mares, and the blood bay English troopers. All were very fine, but all too warmly clothed in double-quilted blankets, too much blinded and hampered, and every one most ruinously fat. They stood upon the clean dirt in rather spa- cious stalls with very few partitions, tethered at every foot, — some of the more restive ones twice roped and fully hooded. Around the fetlocks are leather bands, to which strong cords are fastened, so the animal can neither paw, strike, nor kick. The ropes from the hinder feet pass through an iron ring some four feet aft his heels, then run back about a rod and pass around a headed stone peg or post. If, in spite of this, the horse will surge about, two other lateral ropes some four feet long keep him in close control ; he can go neither forwards, backwards, or sidewise, over six inches. We voted it right cowardly thus to hamper such noble animals ; but the horses are pampered, and the attendants cowardly. The animals are fed with hay in the stalls ; but their richest food is a compound of meal mixed with butter and brown sugar, all well stirred and moistened. This mess no horse would eat voluntarily. The groom takes him away to the feeding station, hampers and, if necessary, blindfolds him, passes a cord under the upper lip and back over the crest to the surcingle, and having got the noble victim thus at disadvantage, proceeds to cram the crea- ture's mouth with balls of buttered food. The entire contents of the bright brass pan are taken under protest, just so much INDIA. 201 every time. A flock of goats is kept within the yard, a place where doves congregate in clouds. The grooms were very kind, each assuming to take pleasure in turning up the heavy wool-stuffed blankets to display their horses ; but these were all too fat, — a real roly-poly lot, unused to labor. Several are kept richly saddled, to be ready on a moment's notice from the prince, who, when he wants a mount, brooks no delay. The values of these noble steeds, as given by the interpreter, were rather high, we thought; none save the little ponies were less than two thousand rupees, and many were priced at five thousand. The four hundred attendants are paid four rupees a month, about ^i.6o, and board themselves. Speaking of these men's wages, we might as well digress to mention those of others. Stone-cutters — sculptors, if you please — get six annas per day, about twenty-five cents ; masons, sixteen to seventeen cents ; excavators, six to seven ; carpenters, seventeen ; water-carriers, eight ; coolies, or com- mon laborers, about four and one half cents. There seems to be nothing exorbitant in these prices. In fact, the margin of profit, after paying expenses of living and raising a large family, which most of them do, would not seem to be burdensome. Yet we heard of no strikes or trades unions even. Food is cheap and abundant ; and as to clothing, we have seen no native people better dressed. The palace powers were very kind. We could visit the pal- aces and gardens, the royal billiard halls, fine-arts rooms and lapidary works, look through the colleges and courts, the tombs and temples, to our hearts' content ; and, more than this, one of the rajah's largest elephants, fully caparisoned and attended, had already been placed at our disposal to ride about that day, — an enormous hulk, with jewelled tusks and gayly frescoed head and trunk and ears. His broad back was covered with a spacious saddle, made to accommodate four, the driver sitting outside just above the monster's ears. As he knelt to receive us, we scrambled up a six-foot ladder and got ourselves in place, held tightly on as he gained his feet, then looked down. Such a monster ! The rajah has a stable of seventy-five of this sort, big and little, but probably had somehow learned our size and sent his biggest. He was twelve feet high at least ; and when he settled to his gait it seemed as if the very earth were moving 202 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. under us. The trappings were in red ; a gayly dressed driver and two red-turbaned attendants on foot made up the service. An hour of easy swaying motion brought us past the artificial lake, with its royal hanging gardens ; past the ancient walls and temples ; past noble trees and many a dome and shrine ; past the elephant pens and ruined keep and outer walls and gates ; through the great entrance gate within the court of that vast fortress palace, with ramparts, glittering domes, and frowning walls and towers, amid the half-barbaric splendor long almost unused, a noble relic of the ancient days, of centuries long since gone, the stronghold of a race of powerful Hindu kings, — the palace of Amber. Dismounting beneath an aged sycamore, we ascended by a very broad and easy ramp, and stood within the vast marble audience hall columned and corniced with most elaborate stone carvings, roofed with well-cut slabs of massive freestone. Here upon the marble floor, overlooking the spacious court once bustling with life, — the scene of many a royal tilt and elephant or tiger fight, here where mogul, nabob, shah, and prince and noble courts had met and talked for peace or plotted war, — we poor hungry mortals spread and ate our frugal lunch ; ate cold bread and meats, and drank German beer and burned cheroots, where great Jey Singh had stood amidst his crouching courtiers. Then we wandered — upstairs, downstairs — through gor- geous marble corridors and halls ; through sumptuous bathing- rooms and deep cool palace caverns where in hottest days kings and queens might well defy the sun ; about the noble ramparts and pavilion outlooks ; down through the harem courts and halls and cells, where Jey Singh ruled supreme among his forty-score of carefully chosen wives and women ; into the holy temple, upon whose richly matted altar floor no foreigner may step ; before whose altar every day, in times of yore, a human being yielded up his life, but now a goat suffices. Then we rode away. Palace of Jey Singh, great Hindu prince, palace and city long years ago forsaken ! Why so ? The priests did it. They told the king that it was set down in their books of pious lore that should a capital city be peopled over a thousand years disaster would surely follow. Believing what his preachers said, — and INDIA. 203 what 's the good of having a minister unless you heed his state- ments? — Jey Singh laid out Jeypore, walled it, built it up. moved into it, — moved here his myriad wives and men of war, leav- ing Amber and all its palaces and courts, its temples, hanging gardens, fountains, tanks, and streets, to dusty desolation. The single day we had set apart to see this city in was not enough by half; so we took another. A week would be too short to see Jeypore and get it well in mind, — to see the schools, the old ways of doing things, the adaptation of new features, struggling for improvements ; the old and new ways blended, ox-carts and ox-carriages alongside bretts and victo- rias ; turbans and robes gradually giving way to hats and trousers ; women grinding at the mill within sight of a flour- mill smoke-stack. Bombay ! The name means " good harbor." Perhaps it is. Its docks are splendid. Two days of February gone ; we sail away next week. You would hardly think of coming here for good living or amusements, certainly not for matters of extraor- dinary interest. It is a large and thrifty seaport ; has a very fair harbor, spacious bund, and a goodly number of very fine public buildings. These latter have grown up during the last thirty years, and largely upon the commercial impetus achieved durin? the civil war in America. In those dark davs of our history the cotton industry of India made great strides. Prices advanced ; the acreage was largely multiplied. Bombay was the chief market : the rapidly increasing demand, even for a very inferior article, rolled a vast tide of unexpected wealth upon this population ; speculation took root ; vast investments were made in lands and buildings, and all Bombay was on a rampant boom. Short the duration, however ; and no darker day has Bombay ever seen than that which closed the bloody strife and set the cotton States again to work. But though the cotton business suddenly fell off, the city got a start in ways of enterprise that has given it advantage and made it the best-built town of India. Unlike Calcutta, it has no end of fine building material. Bom- bay luxuriates in stone ; Calcutta glorifies herself with brick and mortar plastered over with yellow-tinted stucco, giving a warmth of color without a sense of much stability. Bombay has many railroads leading out in all directions, 204 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. centring much trade. The streets are sewered, street-cars run here and there, and there are some handsome, well-kept market- places, delightful drives, and clubs ; but in the matter of hotels, the less said the better. You might expect to find at least some fair second-class hotels in a place of such size and pretension ; but there are none even of that class. Some of the hotel build- ings are good enough, but they are dirty, frowzy, ill-kept dens. It is said that poor cooks are a special invention of the Devil, for his own purposes. If this be true, he must have planned a rare harvest in Bombay ; for in naost respects you will find here the worst-cooked food in all the circle round the earth where there is any pretension to hotel-keeping. In this respect, all India is bad enough ; but somehow Bombay tries to earn a reputation for being worst of all, and notably succeeds. These Indian louts have neither taste nor education for hotel-keeping. Dirt is their normal condition ; and as to preparing other food than Indian curry, they are most unfit. These Indian and Indo-European hotels are curiosities. You arrive at a city, — Bombay, or where else you please. The plat- form coolies gather up your baggage and place it on a hack. These must be paid five cents, or ten, it does n't matter which ; no sum will keep them from asking something more. You drive away, and arrive at your hotel ; another lot of coolies will take your luggage off the cab, and these also must be paid. You get your room ; another lot of coolies bring your baggage up, and wait for pay. So every time your baggage moves, going or coming, there is a fee to settle. The hotel takes no charge of anything but to furnish poor food and make out bills ; does n't even furnish you a blanket, quilt, or room attendant, if they can get you to furnish such yourself. A room, — a dirty, gusty, dusty, unkept room ; a bedstead, a sort of mattress, and a mos- quito-bar, one sheet, sometimes one limpsy pillow, — that is all. The furniture is bad, the carpets dirty ; the doors, the fur- niture, and everything in sight, unused to water, brush, or soap. Dirty towels are not changed, but hung up to dry for you to use again ; baths are vile with dirt and smells, and nothing speaks of care or cleanliness or comfort. Such we found the much-known Bombay hotel, the Esplanade, and this is no ex- ception to the general run ; some may be better than others, generally worse. INDIA. 205 There are some few things in and about Bombay worth seeing, — enough for a day or two, — Caves of Elephanta, done by half- past ten ; the drive to Malabar Hill, to see the Towers of Silence, that 's two hours more ; then coming back you look in upon the museum, if you want to waste an hour there ; an hour more at the Animal Hospital, or infirmary for cows and cats. The first two and the last are rather queer. The Caves of Elephanta are on an island a few miles out, to get to which the hotel sends its launch, at an exorbitant rate. It is called Elephanta, because a sculptured elephant, long since gone, was once stationed there. A large cave cut out of the black lava rock, leaving massive col- umns to support the mountain roof, covers an area of several thousand square feet, and is approached from the sea by a long stretch of inwalled walk and steps. Beneath the black and beetling brow of the unlettered portico you come within the sombre scene. The quaintly fashioned columns and their queer- shaped capitals attract your close attention. Some of them have crumbled away, leaving only the puffed and fluted capitals hang- ing to the blackened roof Round about within the panels of the walls, wrought out in high relief, are sculptured figures, large and small, of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, or Mahadeva ; the slaughter of the innocents ; and in three side chapels are the emblems of Phallic worship, which is not yet obsolete among these Eastern people. The principal figure in the cave is that opposite the portal, — a triple-headed idol, a bust some twenty feet in height. The faces are rather well executed and well worth careful study, — fine faces, mild and loving, you might say, or meditating on the lives and fates of all earth's children, — thinking in stone of Whence and Why and Whither. The figures all are rude but fairly posed. Here you see Parvatee, the beauteous wife of Siva, leaning on his arm ; here a towering, single-breasted god- dess gazing out beyond into the open world, once worshipped as some Amazon ; and all about are hints of pagan art and bits of curious carving that once had meaning in the other, older days of mystic Phallic worship. How old this patiently wrought- out cavern, with its fifteen thousand square feet of floor space, with its water chapel and its mystic shrines, may be, no one can tell. India has many such, and so have Egypt, Persia, Pales- tine, — great temples, tombs, and shrines hewn from the living 206 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. mountain, the space cleared out, leaving the columns, carvings, halls, and roofs and walls a mass of never-moved stone most curious to see, each one the growth of some religious thought, something connected with this short life here on earth and that eternity of life that stretches out beyond. Each creed and sect and schism has bridged this space that intervenes between the last-drawn human breath and the first breath drawn beyond, and pointed out the way and told the steps, the staff and shoon and fee ; yet down these bridges crash, or come into disuse, while new ones rise upon the old ones' piers to help across a groping, restless world. The Towers of Silence are on IMalabar Hill, — a lovely range of bluffs that overlook the town and sea. These are the Parsee towers, their funereal ground, their walled and vulture-guarded cemetery. The Parsee is the ancient Persian, a most valiant people in King Cyrus's time. But from Arabia came that fierce Moslem force, half-savage men of war, fanatics in religion, a Bible in one hand and a bloody sword in the other, forcing their creed upon the world. The Persian had his own faith, as you have yours ; and he held it sacred. The conqueror came ; pure men died rather than flee or change their faith ; some fled, — and such are the Parsees of the East, with Bombay their chiefest home. Now, as of old, they neither burn nor bury their dead : to burn would pollute the fire and air ; to bury pollutes the earth ; but as a loved one dies its corse is brought in fair white-robed procession, parts of the Ahurian hymn are chanted to combat the power of death which has come from hell to seize the corpse and threaten the living. The prayers are said and the Avesta texts before the sacred fires of sandal-wood ; the mourners turn away, as on an iron bier the dead is borne away unto the dakhma, " tower of silence." Once within the wall they put it in its place, and all retire but one. Then with averted face he pulls away the last and only ceremental cloth that hid the lifeless form, and quickly passes out and shuts the door. The tower is a circular wall of ninety feet diameter and thirty feet high. Upon the curb of this surrounding wall sit scores of sharp-beaked, tawny- feathered vultures. As the last attendant flees and leaves the dead behind, naked as it came into the world, down swoop these waiting birds of prey. In two short hours the corse is only bones. The birds have flown away ; the bones are left to INDIA. 207 dry and whiten in the sun and air, and then in time are raked into a deep and spacious pit, there left forevermore. Pure water trickles over them, then passes through thick charcoal beds, and so is pure again. So is their religion carried out, — dust given back to dust, and neither earth nor water, fire nor air, befouled. Close by is a beauteous garden, a belvedere and chapel. A model of the tower is shown within the garden wall, but within the temple chapel the sacred fire burns and goes not out ; but this you must not look upon, for, like unto the tower-enclosed space, it is most holy gi-ound. The attendant priest, with whitened hair and flowing Parsee robes and staff in hand, con- ducts the visitors around, tells them how near (some eiglity feet) they may approach the several towers, conducts them to the belvedere, shows the model, takes their names, then kindly passes briglit bouquets of charming flowers, and waves forth his kind adieu. This is the way the Parsee lays away his dead. Do those who burn their friends upon the funeral pyre, or bury them within the ground to be the food of crawling worms, do better? All peoples have their ways peculiar to themselves, and they who question others' funeral rites only waste their time. Yours is a religious rite ? Of course ; but so is theirs. How came they by this rite, and you, my friend, by yours ? Go, ask your education. You have cattle, sheep, and goats, cats and dogs and fowls. When your cattle get their legs broken, feet frosted, get old, lame, and decrepit, what do you do with them ? Oh, you fatten them and eat them, or send them to the soap-man. If your faithful dog gets past his days of use, or helplessly hurt, you repay his long service with a fatal blow or bullet, or get some one else to do it. So too with all your animals, your pets about the house or place ; so soon as old age or misfortune overtakes them, you eat them if you may, or get them murdered. It is not so everywhere. These Bombay people have a hospital for such, and take great care of these unfortunates. Suppose we go and see it. In the midst of the native quarter we stop within an outer yard where men are handling bales of grass and piles of beets and other roots. A guide appears and takes us through a gate within a large five-acre yard all built about with pens and 208 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Stables, stalls and coops, for birds, cattle, sheep, goats, fowls, cats, dogs, — swarms of animal life sent here for kindly treatment, nurture, and good care. There are cattle with no feet, some with three legs, with great dislocations, blind, withered of limb, dis- torted joints and spine ; cattle and sheep and goats all being cared for, cleaned and fed abundandy, and looking mildly grate- ful as you watch them at their evening meal. The cats and ducks and chicks were jolly and most quietly content, — all ex- cept the dogs ; they barked and snarled. But it was a touching scene ; for many of these mild-eyed cows seemed full of real gratitude, and petting them they kindly licked my hand as if in hearty thanks. Who has done all this ? Well, he was a heathen, and he is dead. But he had a lot of money and could n't take it with him, and had a great big human heart that overflowed with kind- ness to men and good-will to suffering brutes ; and he left his bonds and cash and all he had to found a home for poor and needy kine and cats and other animals ; and here they live and have their food and care, with no cross word or blow, till nat- ural death comes round to take them. What have you to say about this awful heathen man and his bequest? The Spartan people, so we read, destroyed all maimed and aged ones as cumberers of the state, drowning them in the Eurotas. We treat our brutes as they treated their brethren. They developed a race of mighty men that made the noblest armies tremble ; but they are gone, and none do them hom- age. The kind old Parsee looked the other way, and now, among his people, and the dumb, decrepit ones, if they could but speak, he is canonized a saint. ARABIA AND EGYPT. 2O9 CHAPTER XVI. ARABIA AND EGYPT. Again at Sea. — Aboard an Indo-European Grain Vessel. — The Indian Wlieat Question. — A Warning to American Farmers. — Across the Arabian Ocean. — Up the Red Sea. — Visions of Araby the Curst — A Great Nation and its Downfall. — Red Sea Memories. — Mount Sinai and its Monasteries. — The Gulf and City of Suez.— Alexandria, a City of Romantic History. — Cairo. — The Mingling of West and East. WE left Bombay the eighth day of this second month, and now we plough the far-off Aden Sea in this Clan Line " cotton boat," " Clan Ogilvie." It is the eleventh ocean steamer of the tour. We count it fair to try them all, — the States, Japan, and Chinese ships, the merchantmen and " opium boats," the French and English mails, and now a regular long sea-voyage freighter. It is like taking different classes on the foreign trains, to see how things are run and done and what the world 's a-doing. These passenger mail-boats are about the same, — spacious, not always over-crowded, with much of form in hours and dress and table service, lighting up and putting out of lamps. There are special morning hours for getting into line of dress parade, and special places for your incense-burning hours, and for reading, walking, general " swap- ping lies," and gossip ; and when you 've made the rounds, spun your usual yarns, and got the run of the bill of fare, then, if the voyage holds out much longer, you get rather tired of it. So here and there, as chances come, we skip the standard way of doing it, ship on some good, clean mer- chantman, and have things more to ourselves ; have time to read and write and sing and whistle ; go mousing round the ship, smoking where and when we please, wearing slippers or shoes, turning in when we get sleepy and turning out when we feel like it ; dressing when we get ready ; and with sheep and poultry on the deck, and cats and dogs about, and plenty of 14 2IO A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. good things to eat, — it's real, solid comfort. Tliis voyage of twelve or thirteen days might be made a day or two quicker at twice the price, in cramped-up rooms, thick as boxed sar- dines ; but this is better. Our cabins are large and clean and airy ; the ofificers pleasant ; the cuisine excellent. We sit and read and write or play at games, and take our rest right royally. Just now our ship is in the Babelmandeb Straits, — a rather narrow passage, walled with blistered mountains, studded with steep and sunken rocks and coral reefs, teethed with barren threatening capes, and spitted here and there with sand. There are no trees, no shrubs, no genial turf or kindly foliage in sight ; all is seared and burned with the unrelenting sun. To-day we have a kindly breeze, thermometer at eighty ; we sit upon the deck beneath a single awning, with ordinary summer cloth- ing, and find no discomfort. Last night was full of rest inside the sheets ; and after to-day we make such rapid northing there will be no more sign or talk of sultry weather. Our ship is laden with wheat. The wheat question is a growing one in British India, and our American farmers and business men must not lose sight of the fact. The Indiaman does n't eat much wheat himself, but he is very glad to raise it, since it brings him ready money. The soil is very fine for wheat, the climate excellent ; and as for labor, why, the wage of twenty-five farm coolies here is not in excess of that of one good farm hand in the States. More than this, on his four or five annas a day he not only works but boards himself, — five cents a day and find his own bed and board ! Talk about Chinese cheap labor : a Chinaman can get pretty low down on the scale of cheap living, but these Indian coolies will so far discount his wages that the pigtailed fellow can't get a foothold here. And this, my American farmer friend, this is one of the con- ditions you have now in some measure to contend with, and will have to contend with more and more. For the wheat resources of this India country are enormous. The wheat raised here is ex- cellent. It goes into Europe in competition with the very best of California wheat, and I am told it is vastly preferable to American spring wheat. It competes favorably with the best Italian maca- roni wheats, and makes the best of bread. More than all this, ARABIA AXD EGYPT. 211 India is not so far from the bread-markets of Europe as Cali- fornia or Dakota. Twenty-eight days' sea-voyage places Indian wheat in Liverpool, eighteen in soutliern Europe. England is interested in encouraging the farming business of India ; and aside from all that, England and the world of bread-consumers at large take a very lively interest in buying wheat or any other stuff where they can get it the cheapest. With this in- crease of Indian wheat, we need expect no more wheat booms in the States. These are things that should be known and understood by American farmers, so that they may not too much set their hearts upon wheat crops ; for with their expen- sive ways of farming there is little chance for export competi- tion with the four-cent Indian coolie, — the same fellow that, it seems to me, is to-day doing more to clog the wheels of industry in American agricultural districts than is the Chinaman. Straight away across the Arabian Ocean for seven days, and we pass the Babelmandeb Straits between the isles of igneous rocks, and enter the long Red Sea. Bab-el-mandeb means " The Gate of Tears," since at this narrow opening many a goodly craft has sunk, and many thousands of men have left their bones at the foundations of this treacherous portal ; for it has been the track of ships ever since ships went forth to sea. Just why this present sea is labelled " Red " remains an open question. The Blue Sea is blue, the Yellow Sea is yellow with alluvial mud ; the Adriatic comes from adria, meaning " black ; " the Black Sea got its name, not from its color, but from the deep, dark forests that in very early times surrounded it ; the Sea of Marniora was named from its marble ; and thus these names of seas have cogent meanings, all but this Red Sea. A German delver in Egyptian lore declares the name misspelled, — that it should be Reed Sea, by reason of the vast reedy swamps that once occupied most of the space between its head and the Mediterranean. But as he goes on to show that it was through these reeds, and not through the watery depths of the real sea, that Moses led his people forth from Egypt, those Orthodox brethren who would sooner lose an eye than give up a miracle denounce the German's theory as a sceptic fraud. However, the Red Sea, which it certainly is not, or Reed Sea, which it may not be, is a most dismal bit of water. So long as you 212 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. see land, the land is bleak and desolate. The islands of the Babelmandeb Straits, and the rocky shores along the entire length of the straits, bear nothing green. No hardy patch of moss or wire-grass, no sterile leaf, no tender root or branch has footing on these coasts. Flora is dead ; the rocks are black with everlasting heat ; the blasting simoon breath enwraps these lands in death. And not alone the shores, but on the right, beyond the Arabian mountain-chain, and on the left, across the Libyan sands, are great arid spaces that permit no breath of floral life. And yet within that strip of emerald setting a little distance on, watered by the Nile, you find the fattest farming soil the world has ever seen. Thus do extremes nestle closely together ; even heaven and hell are parted by a narrow gulf across which saint and sinner may hold speech. We now are straight off Mecca, where countless pious pil- grims crowd round Mahomet's tomb to kiss the Kaaba and thus gain pious strength. Just how it comes you may not know \ but then you are not Moslems. Despised country this Arabia (the word is ercb, "the west"), ignorant, bigoted, steeped in dirt and darkness. Yet wait. Try and remember something good of her. Come down to facts. Arabia gave us alcohol ; and as nine hundred million dollars' worth of it is consumed in the United States in one form and another every year, — more in money value than all our bread and meat and schools, — surely there must be some sense of obligation among us towards Arabia. She gave us our numerals, — our i, 2, 3, 4, — the figures that the entire commercial world now use. That is about as great a gift as any people ever gave the world of literature and trade. She gave the world algebra and chemistry and much astronomy. Her scholars of yore combined astronomy with mathematics, making the heavenly computations easy. She gave us, too, the almanac, — a book that the farming world has consulted more than it has the Bible, and is likely to continue doing so. She gave us much of medicine, — of medicinal botany ; and the works of Arabian scholars upon surgery, long centuries ago, have shed bright rays of light upon a suffering world. Even while Christendom held to miraculous cures of disease by faith in Christ, — cures by touch of saintly relics, cures by holy oils and thrice-blessed waters, — the Arab professor in his cell or university was evolving the curative ARABIA AND EGYPT. 213 virtues of the floral kingdom, and teaching how rightly to wield the surgeon's searching blade. While our forefathers were mend- ing broken arms and legs by a touch of Saint Oswald's cross ; while the stone virgin of Saragossa was benignly busy in restor- ing amputated feet and hands ; while bishops and priests and saintly frauds were throwing dust into the suffering people's eyes and damming up the puny rivulets of human knowledge, — the great Arabic Cordovan school was boldly battling back the waves of superstition, eager to help in reason's way to stanch the tide of pain ; doing her work despite dogmatic threats. Though branded as heretic, a goodly number of English schol- ars were sent to drink at this Cordovan fountain, bringing back their mental gains to take root and bloom to a never-ending harvest. But if alcohol and almanacs came from Arabia, so did our coffee. The very name is Arabic, — ka/iwa/i, corrupted into " coffee." It came first into the outer world from Mokka, a now almost defunct port we passed a clay or two ago. And to this time your bon vivant will tell you that of all the coffees known to trade the Mokka (Mocha) is the best. Some day, if you will come with me to an old Caireme Arab coffee-room, you shall taste such a cup as you have never tasted before. The small fair kernels shall be counted out and roasted before your eyes. The richly browned beans shall be reduced to floury powder while you look on ; then the beverage shall be gently brewed and sugared, and handed you within a tiny cup upon a '=A\'QxJingan, and you may eat it even while great Allah's bless- ing rests upon its deeply soothing, aromatic wave. Eat it ! You do not drink this most delightful food. They pound it to fine dust that you may taste the coffee's most inherent flavor in its very grounds. There is an inner art in making coffee, that you must come far East to learn. And more than all this, the Arabians made books ; and they made paper out of cotton, and introduced it into Europe. Their books they made of brains. Some, of course, were rubbish, as some books are to-day ; but there was, after all, great light in them, that has come down to modern times. They gave us books on logic, metaphysics, arithmetic and algebra, on chemistry and astronomy, on trigonometry and special measurements, on fine arts in architecture, on the 214 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. handling of coarse and precious metals ; they furnished us books of rhetoric, poetry, and romance ; they gave us our globe, — at all events, the first recorded proof of the earth's rotundity. This last a noble caliph did. Over there beyond the eastern shore of this great sea on which I ride to-day and write. Caliph Al Manum, on the desert Shinar plains, more than a thousand years ago, by the aid of astrolabe and polar elevation, determined at two points, set two degrees apart on one meridian line, the earth's sphericity, and fixed its circumference at twenty-four thousand miles. Doubting his work, he made another test out on the Mesopotamian plain, and amended the first figure by the fourth part of a mile. This now despised people mapped the starry vault, calculated eclipses while Europe counted them the Devil's work, determined sol- stices and conjunctions of the stars and their occupations ; made great improvements, too, in water-clocks and dials of the sun. And what did the Moslem priests do about it? Pretty much as Christian ones did some half dozen centuries later. They roundly cursed the caliph, declaring that God would surely punish his defiant blasphemy. They said the world was square, bordered about by mountains over-roofed with crystal. But the caliph fared rather better than poor old murdered Bruno, or the less defiant Galileo, and went on about his work. Of the Cordovan library no catalogue remains. It held six hundred thousand volumes, all heretical, — more books of real knowledge than all of Christendom then owned, a thousand to one; for in those times all books beyond the pale of the Church were under fearful ban. So these now despised men are descendants of literary and scientific giants, after all \ they translated the grand old Grecian classics and the books of the Old Testament ; produced the best of reference books, geographical, medical, statistical ; made copious dictionaries and abridgments of them, and encyclopaedias of all the sciences. At their great medi- cal school at Cairo many good works were written. The first college of medicine in Europe these Saracens established at Salerno, and at Seville the first astronomical observatory. At all these schools the examinations were most rigid, — copied in the main by our best schools of to-day. Nor was the relig- ious faith of the student questioned. Strict and unyielding ARABIA AND EGYPT. 215 as these people were and are, they did not close their doors and books to those of other creeds. The fountain of knowl- edge was unobstructed then, and all who came athirst might stop and freely drink. Tihs yarn may have been spun too long ; but you will bear in mind that this is written in Arabia, on the warm waters of this old, old sea. More might be said of this now half-barbar- ous race, of their queer religious forms and bigotry ; but it is better to remember the good things men have done. These people are not what they once were ; but in those early days, — even in those days of darkness when so-called Christian bigotry and hate stamped out as much as it could the learning of the East, tore down the noble temples of the golden age, burned the rare libraries, drove teachers from their schools, and welcomed ignorance and faith instead of light and reason, — even in those sad days of darkness that blurred the earth for several hundred years, who but these Arab scholars main- tained the love of science and kept its altar fires aglow? True in some sense it now may be that these people are poor and full of sin and wretchedness ; but what people are not ? They love their country against all odds ; they love their flocks and herds and unfenced pasture-grounds ; they love their families and friends, and think no lands or homes as good as theirs. They love their faith, and in its defence they will yield up every doit and give their very lives. They hate the Christian. Very likely ; and not without some cause. For many hundred years no arms were forged on Christian anvils but to pierce the Saracen ; not to hold him in check so much as to fight him on his own ground. The fairly written history of the world does not belitde these swarthy men, or place them low upon the scale of the world's brave and earnest workers. Even in their decline, with Turk and Christian foot upon their necks, I like their daring pluck and fervent love of home. As guest of Sheik Mustapha amid his sandy waste, I said : " You have lived at courts and been in many lands ; have seen the cities, palaces, and thrones of many nations. Say, now, where in all the world would you most like to live ? " " Right here in Luqsor." Yet he lived in a hovel on the burning sands ! But you rather like a patriotic man, wherever his home may be, and shun the one who sees 2l6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. no good in his own country. The Arab loves his home, his flocks, his faith. What lies beyond has no temptation for him. How came this present Arabian decadence? Why has the Saracen stood still while Christian nations have climbed into the light and gained the mastery of the commercial world ? Kismet ! Ask the same question of the other nations, tribes, and kingdoms, those that have come and gone from earUest dawn till now. You may say that it is her religion. But her worship was the same even in her days of might. \\'hen did her faith count more followers than now? Two hundred millions of people pray five times a day, faced toward Mecca. • • • • • ■ • Our ship sails well to-day, and passes Jedda, seaport of Mecca. If you should stop there you would find a thrifty village, and the tomb of good old Mother Eve, which the people show with pride. Adam was buried at Jerusalem, they say, but Eve rests at Jedda. A day or two hence — I don't know just when or where — we shall cross the track where Moses and his people tramped the ocean's solid floor between two watery walls, held firm and pulseless by the all- powerful will of God ; where Pharaoh and his hosts, ventur- ing too rashly on their fleeing prey, were caught between the unfettered briny walls and strangled in the wave. A most historic place, the like of which no other water knows. I have read somewhere that a goodly sum is being raised in Christian lands to dredge this great Red Sea, to find, if pos- sible, something of the wreck of Pharaoh's fierce army; and I should count myself most fortunate if upon this trip we might mention somewhat of sea-gnawed chariot wheels, helmets, horses' bits, or anything fished up from underneath this flood that will forever establish the good old miracle. These Arabs are strong believers in the Mosaic narrative, and say the day will come when every word that Moses wrote and spake will be made plain to the living and the dead. If our good Christian people had as much solid Bible faith, they would let Red Sea rummaging alone, and use the fund to help some easier enterprises nearer home. Although the wind has been against us for the past few days, yet our ship makes good progress in the Gulf of Suez, and to- morrow morning will set us down in Suez, after a very comfort- ARABIA AND EGYPT. 21/ able passage of twelve and a half days from Bombay. The Gulf of Suez is much narrower than the Red Sea, — so narrow that the yellow sandy shores and hungry mountain ranges which wall it in on either hand are plainly visible ; painfully so, in fact, for such utter desolation you will rarely see. The broad plains that come down to the salty beach, that should be meadows fair, with houses, villages, farms, and trees and cattle, are only arid, barren wastes, where lives no blade of grass, where life or help or welcome there is none. Beyond these rise the mountains in long-continued ranges, picturesque, undulating, full of sloping valleys, ridges, and fair plateaus. These should be clad with soft green verdure, trees and vines and thrifty shrubs and mosses, catching moisture from the passing clouds, sending down sparkling brooks and many a silver cascade ; the home of cooling springs and lovely ferns and flowers, gladdening the eye and framing the vales and deep blue waters of the gulf like a noble picture. But these moun- tains are a vaunting desolation, — petrified bhsters which op- press the eye and stifle every happy thought. Parched and sere, they lift their bold burnt peaks against the sky as if to blast it. Down upon the waters of the sea they frown, as though they would dry them up and wither every fair object within their sight. Right over there upon our starboard beam is Sinai, — moun- tain of the conversation, mountain supreme ; the only spot on earth, 't is said, where God has stooped from the clouds and with His own bared hand placed in the hand of puny man the statutes He had made to govern men on this fair earth. There is Sinai Mount, just behind this foremost range, only some twenty miles away from where I sit to-day. I cannot see it, and am glad I cannot, for of that most noted mount of all the earth one would like to have the purest thoughts. But it 's like all the rest, — bare and bleak, desolate as raging heat and want of floral garnishment can make it. By it is the monastery of St. Katherine, built there by Justinian many hundred years ago, with chapel fair, and motley monks who drone about there several years, then go away to pose as martyrs, — I can't just tell you why, — and make room for others. In olden times, when Christians made pilgrim tours to Sinai, this monastic pile was prosperous, — had some several 21 8 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. hundred occupants, who delved among the ancient tomes and entertained the pious ones who came here, foot-sore and weary, to see the spot where God came down to earth, and Moses read the law unto his people from off the stone en- graved in heaven. Those were rather palmy days for this old quiet monkish place. But it is different now. No weary sandalled troops of Christians now come with crucifix and banners fair to worship in the holy mount and offer prayers at this cloud-capped granitic shrine. Now and then some ardent Christians slowly wander here, — mostly Greek in faith, members of that army of secular tramps who visit Sinai or Jerusalem, as they see Yosemite or meander round Buddh- istic shrine or swelter in the raging India sun, lest nothing famous or peculiar should escape their observation. What do these Greek church monks at Sinai? They stay there, as I have said, a certain number of years, then go away. They entertain the few travellers that come here, and draw the dues belonging to the place. They go to chapel twice each day and night, and each time say the things they said each previous time ; go through the motions, count their prayers and beads, hold fasts, and so the time goes on. In olden times women and cats and hens were not admitted here. I don't know the reason why this diverse trinity should have been banned ; but so it was. But in these latter and better times the pious or the curious of either sex may go and see and have a chance to rest in good St. Katherine's. How it is with the cats and hens, there is no present statement ; but it is fair to think that these, too, find a place in that dismal mountain barrack, over there beyond the parched sands across the desolate rocks. The monks are ignorant, it is said, — don't have much out-door work to do, yet make their own bread and clothes and shoes, and do their garden work, except the portion that is done by slaves. Slaves? Well, in Justinian's time, after he had built the place, and chopped the head off from the architect who had some words with him about the site, he made to this monastery a present — so the history runs — of two hundred slaves, with all their wives and children ; and their descendants still, though Moslems all, do service for these monks. They call themselves Jebliyeh, or " moim- taineers;" the others call them Nazarenes. A specialty here ARABIA AND EGYPT. 219 among these monks is brandy-making. If you go there, and like such stuff, you will no doubt have a taste ; for they do say it is not bad to take, and the brethren seem to like it very much. Yet none the less it seems a shame that holy ordered wardens of such holy ground should be so ill-employed as to be making wicked drinks to fire men's blood and brains, away up there, five thousand feet in air, like mountain moonshiners. But as they drink no wine or beer, and eat no meat, it may not be too much to let them have a little good date brandy for their stomachs' sake. In old times here, when an abbot died, — so Herr Scheh- berger's account sets it down, — a great wonder took place ; for when a monk began to die, his lamp began to wane ; when it went out, he died. And when the abbot died, the monk who sat and sang his praise after the proper mass was done found there upon the altar, as though some angelic hand had brought it straight from heaven, a written letter, which when opened revealed the name of him who must succeed the departed one in office. This is not important now, as they do not have any more abbots at St. Katherine's ; but it is a holy sort of antique legend that is well worth knowing as touching the easy manner in which important vacancies were filled at this rather noted spot some fleeting years ago. The monastery is a sort of fortress also, and contains some rather harmless cannon. But a better protection than this is the Moslem church or mosque within its walls. Rather curious it seems to us that these two great religions should be both rep- resented here, — the church of the Transfiguration and a Moslem mosque standing peacefully side by side. But it was a compro- mise. The Arab wouldn't let the Christian rest without this fraternal sort of forced partnership ; so disciples both of Christ and Mahomet may come here to St. Katherine's and worship close together, cross and crescent side by side. Well, that 's better than fighting. Yet perhaps it wouldn't work so well were Christians to ask to have a church of theirs reared near the Kaaba stone at Mecca. But one will be, some day. We can wait. Leaving Bombay February 8, we reach Suez twelve days later, — six months from San Francisco. Two full months have 220 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. we spent in ships. We protest that it is too large a percent- age to devote to them, but it will not always be so. We will prophesy ; but as the prediction will not be verified in our life- time or yours, you can safely take which side of it you like, my patient reader, without much damage to your reputation either way. The time is coming when you may consign your happiness to the porter of a Pullman palace car in Chicago, glide to the far Northwest, — up through Manitoba, on to and through Alaska, crossing Behring Strait by boat or ice track ; pass down through Siberia and Mongolia to China, taking in Pekin, Tien- tsin, Shanghai, Canton ; across through northern Burmah to Calcutta, whence, taking the present roads as far as they go, you go on to the Herat valley, striking the road just now almost complete, which forms a continuous rail to Moscow, Paris, Liverpool. Suez is not much of a place. It is old and ugly, full of sailors, dirt, and dogs ; but as an antique, it is rather interesting. It was founded about the time Adam was a boy, and was an old Egyptian seaport town thousands of years ago. Here Necho's ships set sail to circumnavigate Africa, from which early nautical enterprise it has been partly proved and partly supposed that this most noted people came to believe in the earth's rotundity. For it is asserted that in the great Alexandrian library, some centuries before this era, there existed a terrestrial globe, — something like those we now use. From Suez, too, in very olden time, almost before the discovery of Europe, ran the broad canal built by Seti I. and Ramses II., that floated ships of Egypt to Phoenician ports ; that floated ships of Tyre, — King Hiram's ships, — and ships of Solomon, that traded oft with Ophir, — now, perhaps, Ceylon, — bringing home rich stores of spices, gums, and precious stones. The Pharaoh, Seti, lived thirty-four centuries ago. This ancient water-way becoming choked with sand, De Lesseps cleared it out some twenty years ago, and other ships now pass here to and fro. None come from Tyrian ports nor Judc-ean Jaffa ; Hiram has long been dead, and Solomon lives but in his proverbs and his widely scattered sons of trade. Some years before that time — about forty-one centuries since — a bright young Hebrew youth they called Moses (the word ARABIA AND EGYPT. 221 is )no, "water," and uses, "drawn out") was here on a flying trip to Midian. The story goes — you may never have read it — that as a baby he was picked up one day from among the alders, where his good mother had deposited him for safe-keep- ing, by one Miss Pharaoh, who took a fancy to the Httle fellow and had him sent to school, — the University at On, where Joseph hitherto had been, and married Miss Asenath Potipera, a lovely daughter of a professor there. Moses, it would seem, got a good education at Pharaoh's expense. When he came to the front he was rather a testy man. At all events, not long after his graduation he mixed in a broil between a Hebrew and Egyptian man, and brained one of the antagonists. It would n't do to stay around there and get arrested, and possibly hung for murder, — for that was what it was, — so he did as many a fellow has done since : he quit the country, came to Suez, and crossed right over into Midian and hired out on Jethro's ranch. Why this seems certain is that only an hour or two away from here is Moses' Well, or Springs of Moses, where Jethro's flocks were watered, and which for several thousand years supplied Suez with most of the fresh water its people had ; and to these copious springs full many a pilgrim from afar now goes and stands and drinks where the self-exiled Moses stood and drank and watched his flocks beneath the graceful palms. Still later on, when Moses had repented his sudden rashness and become a chosen force to move the Israelitish horde from the Egyptian land and the galling yoke of bondage, he returned to Suez and to Egypt ; and when he started eastward with his plunder-laden tribes and came unto the borders of the sea, his outstretched rod here spread apart these deep blue waters just below Suez, and quite in sight of it, you may believe, and let his people pass dry-shod, while their pursuers found a watery grave. There is a legend here that at this spring the tribes gathered and sang their songs of praise to God for their delivery. Another legend runs that this is the very place where Moses smote the rock and brought a gushing stream that quenched all their thirst ; but as no rock is at or near this old mud-walled oasis spring, you may be inclined to place that miracle farther on, and to hke your own version best. Stirring times were those in Suez. How the citizens ran about the streets and shouted and stared and wondered ! How 222 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the people of all Egypt hurried to the spot and looked on amazed ! How the boats and skiffs put out and sailed and sculled about the much-disturbed waters, gathering up the floating ones who could n't swim ashore ! And how the swift reporters prowled about the spot and made up column after column here of happenings and interviews ; and how the then narrow world heard of this grand deliverance, this punishment condign of those who dared the power of the Almiglity One who bade His suffering people go ! As to there being newspapers here in those days, I take that much in the way of hcense. It was a land of great intelligence, — a land of paper, books, and noble schools of learning ; and these without the daily press seem past our comprehension. Close down to Suez grew the great papyrus marshes, whence came all the paper that the world then knew, — the same we see to-day in big rolls delivered from the long-closed tombs ; the same that went to Tyre and Babylon for uses there ; the same on which the first part of the great Pergamos library, that Antony gave his petted Cleopatra, was written. I say the first, for that is true. The other part was written on tanned goat-skins, and this is how it came about : Egypt ran to making many books. Her library was her pride. A Pergamean prince, Attains Philadelphus, had the same failing ; and it came one day to sharp Pharaonic ears that the Pergamean books were over- matching his. The monarch gave the order : " Close the account with that presuming prince at Pergamos. Ship not another ounce of paper to his stupid town, or, by my throne and beard, you die on sight ! Obey ! " The old emperor knew he had a corner on the paper market, for it was all made in his dominions. He argued to himself that without papyrus no books could be made ; and if no books could be made at upstart Pergamos, why, that was the end of the library competition. But he was mistaken. Full many a mighty man has found his match before and since. Men who make books have brains ; leastwise they ought to have. The man at Pergamos proved it. Finding his jxiper supply thus summarily cut off, he called a messenger. " Go forth into the tanners' street," he said, "and summon every master tanner here ! " They came. He said : "A talent of fine gold to him who brings me leather so prepared as to be good to write my ARABIA AND EGYPT. 223 books upon. Go ! " The samples came in time, and they were perfect. Since then the world has had no end of parch- ment. The very name is but an altered form of the word Pergamos. What became of this papyrus-parchment library will be told farther on. The Suez of to-day is not the stirring paper-making place it was in ages past and gone, but quite a common smutty seaport town, with small bazaars and narrow streets, and a population devoted to catching fish and eking a living out of passing ships and travellers. The old-time industry of bringing fresh water from Moses' spring to supply the town withal is now quite gone, for by the enterprise of the late khedive sweet water comes here from old Father Nile in great abundance. It seems as though some cities cannot die. Such is Suez. Older than any history, — stirring at times, then dropping into centuries of rot and ruin, — she now seems to have got a perma- nent lease of life from the great canal which finds the Red Sea here. This calls for docks and wharves and harbor walls, hotels and offices, and a large force of foreign servants who stay be- cause they want the wage they get. Here now the Indian mail- bags land, which, while the vessels poke at snail pace through the dirty ditch, catch here the Alexandria train and rush across the delta. At Alexandria a swift mail-boat waits to steam away, — three days to Brindisi, in Italy, where waits a fast express to shoot across the continent, reaching London without stop in fifty-six hours ; then on again to Holyhead, across to Dublin by a twenty-knot steamer, then by the mail express again to Queenstown, — about six days and a half from Suez to the deck of an Atlantic steamer bound for New York ; from Suez to America in about fifteen days ; but seventeen days from the Mississippi to the Nile ! So close are the ends of the earth now brought together. • •••••• There is very little here in Alexandria to interest the traveller. The monuments are all gone save one, and that is of mediaeval times. The walls that Alexander built are dust. His noble temples and gymnasia no longer have a place. The libraries founded here, and museums of the Old World's art and progress, were long since swept away by furious war and yet more cruel bigotry. The grand harbor Alexander built to safely hold his 224 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. wrathful ships and welcome merchantmen is now filled up with mud and silt ; and Pharos, too, that towering lighthouse of the Orient that nearer pierced the clouds than any work of man has ever done before or since its time, is gone, and not a vestige left. Here, in the place of all these works and scenes, amid which Alexander, Pompey, Cfesar, and Mark Antony stood ; this home of Cleopatra and the Ptolemies and their wicked loves ; this precious studying-place of the grand Greek schools, where Euchd taught his theorems and Strabo studied long, where Hip- parchus and Ptolemseus lived with the stars and made the astral vault familiar to the world, where Archimedes developed grand mechanic schemes, and Erasistratus taught his scholars the won- ders of the human anatomy, where Zenodotus and Callimachus told of the power of words and arranged books for students' use, where students of the world came by tens of thousands to study the ways and works of old and new and dawning science, and catch in cadmic grove and shady terraces the honeyed words of wisdom falling from the lips of studious sages of that day, — here 1 stand to-day and gaze and meditate. Before me lies the map of this ancient city, made as Alexander planned it. The streets are wide and airy, — rectangular. The open spaces are broad ; thick walls enclose it round about ; there are safe gates and harbors, docks, moles, and canals. To-day the noble site is overrun with tangled, narrow, fetid streets, — mere dirty hovelled lanes without a plot or plan, straggling about as if lost and dazed in a dark night of bigotry and ignorance, not knowing where to go. So indeed were fair plans and scenes all trampled under foot by human swine ; so were the lights of studious men blown out by such as claimed to be the sons of light ; so were the stars pulled down and trodden into the mire, and the fair prog- ress of the world held back and swamped in idiotic fog for quite a thousand years. This is not a theory, a sophic speculation, but a solemn, sorry fact ; and they who come here where the world's best minds in ages past were wont to come, stand here in sorrow, sorrowing for the loved and lost, the light of ages that was here stamped out, — light of the museum, the world's first full-fledged university ; light of the Bruchion library, with forty thousand books of Oriental lore, burned in a single day by Coesar's troops ; light of the Serapion collection, larger still, destroyed at one fell swoop ARABIA AND EGYPT. 225 from off the green earth's face by Theophilus, Archbishop of the Alexandrian See, acting under the withering order of Christian Emperor Tlieodosius, a. d. 391. So died the hght. Then came the days and centuries of gloom. Why were these schools and books destroyed ? The destruction of the Bruchion was a result of war. Ccesar fought his hated son-in-law, Pompey, at Pharsalia, and conquered him. Pompey fled to Egypt. Caesar pursued him, landed, fought more fights right there, and somehow in the furious fray of fire and sword the library was burned, — a loss more mourned than loss of crowns and kingdoms. The great Pergamean library, competitor of the Bruchion, had fallen into Roman hands, — Mark Antony's. This sometimes right and often wrong headed man, charmed by Cleopatra, the then bewitching, wayward Egypt queen, brought all the library of Pergamos to Alexandria and gave it to the queen, and thus was founded on the ashes of the lost Serapion a larger library still, — the largest, brightest, best the world had ever seen. Then arose that golden age of scholarship. Here thronged the scholars of the world to read, to teach, to learn and lecture, — to drink their fill of all the world's wisdom in science, arts, philosophy. These men learned geography, — sought to solve the mysteries of earth ; here they sought the starry depths and made astronomy their care ; here sought the mysteries of the human frame, — made medicine and surgery their careful quest ; and here amid the reading-halls and silent groves, or in the presence of their lecturers, they walked and sat, they read and thought, discussed and heard, and gained great mental strength. They were breaking the world's thick crust of ignorance. They were letting in the sunlight, planting good seed, and watering their tender shoots, that the world of man might know the knowable and be better for it. What fault did Theodosius find with this? The story is a long one, but you will find it in the books. It will not be much told you in the schools, nor told you from the pulpit ; yet in those far-off early Christian da5^s some men were very mean as well as before and after. I much dislike to term them Chris- tians, for there was so little of Christ or Christianity about them that the name is a sad misnomer ; and still we have to use it. The emperor and his archbishops made the laws of the Church, 15 226 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and the Church was everything. Its managers directed the preaching and the teaching, and styling themselves the chosen ones of God to rule the earth's afifairs, decided all beyond their line and ken was heathen, and all that heathendom could do was wrong and wicked, hateful in the sight of God : what was hateful in His sight must be wiped out. So went down the Alexandrian schools and library, to rise no more forever. So were the teachers murdered in the streets ; so was the quivering flesh torn from Hypatia's bones because she taught her scholars useful ways and arts ; so were the school-rooms levelled to the ground, and so the museum sacked, here in this city, now so clothed with ignorance and dirt. To the student of history there is no sadder spot on earth than this. Here commerce and art combined with science and literature to conquer ignorance. The librarian was required to collect all writings, near or far ; and to the task Demetrius Phalerius directed every effort, and every court and kingdom yielded up its store. Professors, too, of the ripest and most prosperous schools were called here to teach and to direct, and this far-off spot became the great arena of intellectual giants who met in friendly contest. Not less than fourteen thousand stu- dents at one time were here enrolled within these noble school and lecture rooms and halls, gathering their scientific harvest. Here Aristotle's followers, here the disciples of Plato, here the flower of all the world, discussed material and ethereal things, aided by the best of books brought in from near and far, — seven hundred thousand volumes ; a wealth of garnered thought the like of which the world has since then never seen. Here mind met mind, as steel strikes adamant, emitting brightest sparks of dazzling thought illuminating the darkness all around. There were astronomers, geographers, mechanics, and engineers ; phi- losophers met geometers ; zoologists met botanists ; here were gardens of zoology and botany, and every means then known for the anatomical dissection of the human body. Nothing that wealth could buy or power bring was neglected to make this school the lighthouse of the world, — the earthly fountain-head of every branch of knowledge. And while these labors thus went on, and learning here had reached the highest point of present possibility, then came and fell the fatal blow. Dragged from its orbit was the sun of ARABIA AND EGYPT. 22/ science ; burned and dispersed all these collected books ; driven out by fire and mob the teachers and their students ; denuded were their halls and courts, and laid waste their gardens, groves, and walks. The sun went down, — set behind clouds of bigotry and darkness, behind the waters of a deep and muddy sea of ignorance and superstition. The learned men were branded as sorcerers closely leagued with hell. Those who would heal the sick by herb or draught were cut down as dogs. The Church assumed all knowledge and administered all law ; settled all points of science with chosen Bible texts ; cured all disease with pious relics. What could not be done by prayer, or laying on of pious hands, or bits of sainted dead, or splinters from Calvary's cross or crib of Bethlehem, was past all cure, and all attempt to accomplish cure by doctors' ways was but defiant blasphemy. No wonder that the sun went down in blackest of all nights, when such an ignorant crew as that which then had gained power in this fair land could exercise its strength. No wonder the dark age came on and overcast the East and all European states wherever this sort of thought — or, rather, lack of thought — prevailed. No wonder that for a thousand years thereafter no physician's life was safe in Rome. No wonder that a thou- sand years later good men were burned alive for saying this globe was round and stars were only other worlds ; no wonder Jews were slaughtered, witches hung, and dumb brute horses burned at stakes as the hiding-place of devils. But the cloud has partly lifted, God be thanked ! and this defiling rot of bigotry is relegated to its proper place. But poor old Alexandria never regained her feet, and perhaps never will. The very streets are full of the decay that covers the old city's ways. The monuments are gone ; gone the temples fair and obelisks ; gone the monumental Pharos, wonder of the world, whose topmost stone was five hundred and ninety feet in air ; gone all semblance of power ; and only left a dirty seaport town, — a station on the highway to the East, to which you come to get away again as quickly as you can. An hour or two here is enough. You take a hasty drive to Pompey's Pillar,- — a handsome granite shaft sixty-seven feet high and nine feet in diameter, with handsome granite base and partly ruined capital, one hundred and four feet in all. The 228 A GIRDLE HOUND THE EARTH. world in general thinks of it as referring to Pompey the Great, whose sun went down at Pharsalia and whose trunkless head was handed Julius Caesar at Pelusium ; but it was raised to Diocletian's memory for certain gifts of corn made by that emperor during a famine here, and should be called Diocletian's column. Here, to Alexandria, came good Saint Mark to preach the new doctrine. Here he died ; and here the Venetian merchants came and stole away his dust, and hiding it beneath some chunks of pork, succeeded in passing the customs gate, and bearing it, securely tied up, high among the rigging, even to Venice, where the beauteous St. Mark's church was raised to receive it. It is said that a storm arose during this piratical craft's passage to Venice, but so promptly did Saint Mark come forth and bid the sea be still, and so meekly did the sea obey, that no harm ensued. There is a bronze statue here of Mohammed Ali, despite the Moslem opposition to such things ; but these fierce religionists, who once in Mecca broke in pieces the statues of their fathers, Abraham and Ishmael, have not now the courage to smite down the figure of the great monarch Ali, either here or at Cairo. The Catacombs are meagre and choked up, containing some early Christian frescos, but nothing worth the traveller's while. You spend your hours of necessary waiting among the shops and much-infested wharves, then take your leave, not hoping to return. • •••••• In Cairo. My girdle round the earth is half completed. I have travelled west for fully half a year, by land and sea, by rail and ship, by karuma and cart, by sedan chair and gharry, by horse and mule and camel and donkey and elephant, and here I am among this curious Cairo crowd once more, revisiting my tracks of other years. I have had good luck : have not been sick an hour, nor missed a call to meals ; have been hearty, happy, busy, and contented every day and hour. The sun and moon have kept along with us, — sometimes in front, sometimes behind a little way, — a ball of fire by day, a changing silver disk by night. The nightly stars we knew so well at home came with us all the while, — a cheery, glittering guard ; and if at times some old familiar ones were lost from sight beneath the ocean's ARABIA AND EGYPT. 229 northern rim, full many a new one, strangers to our crisp north- ern zones, came forth from southern horizons to cheer us on our way. Now I know the world is round and fair ; that stars surround it everywhere ; that He who framed and gemmed the azure vault, and set the sun and gave the moon her rounds, was most impartial. Some say He has for many, many years been partial to His earthly children here and there, giving to some with liberal hand, and holding most of them in bonds of dark- ness, sin, and dreary life and death. Believe them not. These are mostly tales of egoistic men, and are as current and held in as strong conceit among these pagan hordes as with the Hebrew or the Christian. You can't avoid being charmed with Cairo. True, the British red-coats are here, self-invited, self-imposed ; true, the Arab army wears the European uniform and shoots with Remington rifles ; true, some streets and coats and boots are of Parisian style, and Europe gains apace on ancient Africa ; yet it is old Cairo still, for here the West and East do meet and mix some- what, mingle and amalgamate, perhaps. But here is Cairo as of yore, with its crowded, narrow, covered streets, long streets and short ones interlaced, — a perfect labyrinth, with little bazaar cells like honeycomb, and, like the comb, well filled with valued store. Here the blackest of all blacks meet with the Circassian race ; here come the swarthy Moor and copper-colored casteless Hindu ; here trades the Persian with the Prussian ; and Nubians bring tusks to sell for Yankee calicoes and pretty nose and ankle rings made over there in Birmingham. Here dickers the Ger- man with the Greek, and here the Frenchman buys and sells with Bagdad men, and buys much goods from Delhi and from Samarcand. The Barb and Arab horses jostle here the red- morocco saddled donkey ; and liveried landaus give the laden camel room to pass. The languid Turk lives here, the harem flourishes, and men with single wives are rarities. Here come the Paris opera troupes and German female music bands ; but the audiences are a sort of masculine desert, — rarely is a woman seen. The British red-coats are everywhere ; on street and square, in hotel, hall, kiosk, or at evening entertainments, they come and fill the spaces. They may be here to stay ; for England has a longing eye on this Egyptian tract, and but for 230 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Other powers would have plucked it long ago, — would do it to- morrow if she dared. But there sits Bismarck, there the French ; and farther yet that horrid Russian bear that lately made the lion hunt his den at Herat. It is a very busy place, this grand old Cairo, Avith its Nile and palms and pyramids. The trains and boats go rushing to and fro ; the wealth of many a nation centres here. The roadway to the south, the sugar, cotton, grain, and provender for man and beast, must pass its gates and pay their toll. No land beneath the sun has greater wealth of soil than this same country round about this noisy, bustling, polyglottous people. For more than sixty centuries this self-same land has been tilled and not manured, and yet its strength is just the same as when Adam turned his first furrow and good old Mother Eve came out to drop the corn. Not manured, but enriched in equal annual instalments, as Father Nile expands itself from year to year, and pours its tawny waters on the land. Yet are its plodding people slaves who eat the bread of poverty. They raise much grain and crops, and delve from year to year, but taxes eat almost all. American farmers complain of high taxes, and honestly think that the burden is too great to bear, and that the legislature or the supervisor boards should make the burden less ; but only look at Egypt. For every hundred dollars' worth these toiling farmers make, not two or three per cent, not ten or twenty per cent, not forty or fifty per cent, for that would be perfectly satis- factory, but fully eighty per cent must go for rents or tax ! The twenty per cent that is left, the farmer must live upon or die. There is no road tax, either, no school nor insane tax, no tax for blind or deaf or dumb, no university or normal schools to keep, no poor-house tax nor bridge nor court-house tax, but all a sweeping simoon tax that sweeps the earnings of the land into the wide official maw. You see the royal roads and pal- aces, the harem stock, the omnipresent troops that loaf about and eat the substance of the land ; you see a busy, patriotic people cramped and fettered, yet who would not exchange their country and their lot for any land or condition other countries have. Shall we pity them, or envy them ? They are most op- pressed of nations, yet most content. Is it better than this to be the freest of all nations, yet most discontented ? To where do these two paths lead ? Some day — some inevitable day — ARABIA AND EGYPT. 23 I they must meet. The latter will find the former. Discontent, lack of patriotism, is the bane of any people, and in time will work its ruin. I have not been very busy in Cairo, and have made but few excursions ; for the fact is that in sight-seeing the first sight is generally the best. Only the pyramids are changeless. They still stand out against the sky, a mountain miracle. I went to see the Sphinx again, to ask him for his story of this tapering pile of stone ; but he was too much preoccupied. Indeed, he never took his eyes from the outspread western map, but looked above my head, — looked grimly out towards the far, far west, as if expecting some prince or power to come and deliver all his land, and give back to Egypt its Pharaohs and its once prosper- ous times. He never turns toward the east. He knows not Mecca, nothing knows of Nazareth ; for these are all too x\^\\. He looks not to the north or south, but with an eager, hopeful eye and face looks westward, as if from there alone the light and power would come to reinstate his native land. No use to send up word or card ; he never notices them. A crowd of lazy Bedouin louts — contractors they said they were — were whip- ping fifty boys and girls to and fro, as they carried little baskets of sand away from the new-made pit down there by the Sphinx's paws. They dug them out some years ago, but the Sphinx in- voked the western winds to cover them again with drifting sand, — them and the sacred little chapel shrine that stands between, which he has safely guarded all these many years. It seems almost a pity to be digging out the sand again ; yet something must be done to keep people busy. But I wanted very much to thrash the taskmasters ; for every time these litde boys and girls came struggling from the pit, up through the running sand in which the foot slipped backward half the distance, one of these ruffians smote them with a leather thong to make them hurry on. And farther on another burly villain stood with leathern switch in hand to make them scamper back. In this way con- tract work is done in Egypt. All the embankments made to hold the Nile in check, all railroad fillings, — and these great works are myriad, — are done with human hands ; children and coolies packing the dirt in little baskets on their heads. Horses and carts might be used, but then what would the low-class people do to get their ten to fifteen cents a day which goes to 232 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. buy their daily bread and cotton drilling shirt ? To clothe these people costs a dollar or two a year. To feed them, say five cents a day, but that is rather high. Some greens, a very little coarsest bread, some sugar-cane to chew, makes up the measure of the daily food. You think this state of things severe ; but have you never thought, in your great land of peace and plenty, that the time will come when America will be overpopulated, when wages will fall off and land get very dear, and people will fare no better than these same fellaheen? To be as densely populated as this land, Iowa should have seven hundred and twenty million people, instead of the million and three quarters that she has now. Figure on that awhile, and you will find no space for wages beyond what are paid here ; nothing but huts to live in, and cheapest, coarsest sort of food. But what 's the use ? Those who live now — they and all their generations — will long have been at rest. This figuring for so many years to come is only tiring, and helps neither the present nor the future. BIBLE LANDS. 233 CHAPTER XVII. BIBLE LANDS. From Jaffa to Jerusalem. — Sharon, Ajalon, and Ramleh. — Tent-Life in the Holy Land. — Jerusalem the Golden. — A Valley of Humiliation. — Zion's Desolation. — The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. — A Place of Sacred Memories. — Going up to Jericho. — The Valley of Jordan. — By the Shores of the Dead Sea. — The Pengistence of the Jews. — Jordan's Stream in Poetry and in Fact. — Lazarus' Tomb, and some Reflections. — Gardens of Gethsemane. — A Bit of Monastery Life. — The Fictions of Sacred Places. OUR tents are pitched at the walls of Jerusalem, nigh unto the Jaffa Gate ; we look upon these sacred hills, — Zion, Moriah, and the overlooking Mount of Olives. At our feet is the lovely vale of Hinnom, decked with fields and gardens, marked with walls and pools, and dotted with fruitful olive- trees. We rest here for some days, with now and then ex- cursions round about. Our party now is four, — a Philadelphian and his wife out on their wedding tour, the colonel, and my- self, — two Catholics, one Presbyterian, and a Christian ; each one intent on spying out the things which pertain to the an- tiquities of this much-cited, much-abused old Jewish town and the places that surround it. But, to begin with, don't think to hear new things. There is not a road from here to Christendom, not a hill or vale, mount or plain, not a wall or tomb or church or house or street, — nothing that has not been written up, measured with scriptural texts, explained a hundred thousand times by men of books, by the pulpit to the pews ; discussed in Bible-class from year to year ; explained by parson, superintendent, teachers in the Sunday-schools ; discussed and settled, settled and discussed, by commentators and specialists in Bible lore, until the Chris- tian world, at least, knows everything there is to know about it. What then can you expect, you who have been so many times on Sunday excursions to these gates and walls, to Bethlehem 234 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and Bethany, to Jordan's stormy banks to stand with wishful eyes, — what can I do to make the sights and scenes more bright and clear? Nothing. But how do people get here? This may be of interest, as some of you may some day make this long and weary pilgrimage. There are several ways to do it. The first requisites are money and a will to go. Then, if you don't feel able to go alone or in some independent way, you put your money and yourself in some contractors' hands, and they will mix you up with a pro- miscuous lot of other pious pilgrims, and put. you through on stated speed and time, regardless quite of wind or weather. Very many go that way ; some are glad, some mad. But you can go by yourselves, — you and the party of friends made up at home, — and any of these contractors will take your money, provide a dragoman and all the outfit you may need, and send you through alone in right good style. Or you may take no thought of them, but come straight on alone to Jaffa, call on Rolla Floyd, the Maine Yankee contractor, who has lived there twenty years and has a cosey sort of a New England home to which he will take you and make you very comfortable indeed, then go with you through Palestine or Syria, or down to Egypt, — where you like, — or send a good guide with you. We took an independent dragoman in Cairo, — Louis Monsour, a famous Syrian of Beirut, — got our tents and made arrangements there, and then came on to Jaffa. You cannot always land at Jaffa. The poor old place where Noah built his ark has no harbor; never had any; and in stormy or windy weather the waves make such a stir along the dangerous front that not a landing boat can live. But we landed safely from the Russian ship, — we and some hun- dred Christian Russian pilgrims, packed and frowzy, bound for Palestine. The Russian is the most devout of pilgrims. His Church has many holy places here, more than any other ; and here he comes in flocks and herds to worship at the tombs and shrines. It costs him very little, and on reaching here he finds a hospice home provided for him by his Government. No Christian Government takes so much pains to help its pil- grims as Russia does. The British do a good deal in this way to help their Indo-Moslem subjects on to Mecca, but nothing that I hear of is done for Christian travellers to the Holy BIBLE LANDS. 235 Sepulchre. This is not strange, either ; for the pious pilgrim sentiment that many years ago had such a hold on Roman Catholic and Protestant people has largely faded out, and few there are who now are self-impelled to go to Palestine. With the Greek Catholics and Moslems, these pilgrimages to their holy central shrines mean almost everything. We came on to Jerusalem a week ago, — down through the land of Goshen ; along, maybe, the very path the fleeing Jews once trod, to find a promised land ; along the sweet canal and past the bloody battle-fields of Zagazig and Tel el Kabir, where the British troops met Arabi ; then steaming up the great Suez canal from new Ismailia, came to Port Said, the fortunate guests of Mr. John Cook, in his private launch. We landed in time to get some sleep and see the frowzy town, and go on board the Russian vessel that was to set us down at Jaffa. Jaffa is the ancient Joppa. The word means "beautiful." It is the prin- cipal port of Palestine. Here Noah built his ark ; here Hiram sent his rafts of cedar logs that Solomon bought with land and slaves to roof his Temple with. It is an ancient-looking town ; yet not a stone rests where it did when Jonah came here to sail for Tarshish, or Saint Paul came unto the tanner's house. In fact, there are older houses in Boston than in Jaffa. Time and again has it been blown up by warring powers, pulled down, wiped out, then built up again, till not an old-time wall or house remains. The ancient castle leaves a mark among the angry waves ; the rock from which fair Andromeda was un- chained and saved from the monster's maw by gallant Perseus yet withstands the sea ; the inner harbor of King Solomon, where he kept some little ships and received the rafts of cedar logs, is now almost filled up and long unused ; the house where Simon the tanner lived, and Saint Paul slept, has passed away. But, for all that, the site is shown in a dirty, narrow street, and that is quite as well. It is a goodly site, with a fine view of the sea and part of the Sharon vale. The place has some twenty thousand people. From Jaffa went forth Jonah in a ship to be swallowed by an unfortunate whale ; and forth from here — so the churchly legend runs — sailed Lazarus in a boat along with Mary and Martha, Magdalenes, to safely land in Southern France, where they converted many a sinful pagan and founded many a 236 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Christian church. But this was long ago. The streets and shops are far from pleasing now ; the walls are torn down, the bazaars dark and poor. About the city, on the borders of the lovely Sharon vale, are many noble gardens, fenced about with enor- mous cactus-trees. I call them trees, for the trunks of some we saw were fully six feet round. The orange and lemon fruit- age here is a sight. The trees were thick and heavily laden with most luscious fruit, gleaming like globes of gold among the dark-green leaves — oranges in clusters of eight and ten and twelve, the largest, fairest, most delicious of fruit. Here grow the sweet lemons, — a large, fair fruit, in color, shape, and habit like the common sort, but without the least acidity. The soil is very rich and quite productive all about the town, and people seem to hve and die Uke other folks. We visited Miss Arnott's Dorcas mission school, and found her Syrian girls quite busy, some at their books, some at their needlework, or other useful duties. This good woman is attached to no mission board, but planted her school here independently some twenty years ago, and picks up little girls, teaches them, guides them, — is a mother, sister, friend, and prepares for wifely duties full many a pagan waif, and does great good. The venture was suc- cessful from the start ; a fine building, neatly furnished, has arisen by the magic of friendly sympathy and admiration of a noble woman's work. The girls must needs marry at the proper age, and must needs marry heathen husbands ; but while some drift into other ways, the average result is excellent. Our cavalcade was ready next morning. Five white sprightly Syrian saddle-horses, with ornamented bridles, silky manes and tails half dyed in saffron ; six baggage-mules, with tents and trunks and cooking traps, and stores of bread and meats and fruits ; one sumpter mule, with luncheon and jugs of water to serv^e us at our midday rest, while the tents and beds and furniture were to go straight along without a stop to the more distant camping ground. We moved away at half-past nine, and leaving the streets and garden places far behind, went forth into the lovely Sharon vale, among the fields of growing grass and wheat ; among the farmers ploughing with the same old plough that Moses' people used ; out among pretty slopes besprinkled with bright flowers, — a glorious scene upon a glorious morning. To the right of us, not far away, looked forth the hungry desert, BIBLE LANDS. 237 its heated sands threatening to approach and swallow up this lovely region with its happy fields and homes. For several hours we rode along a ^Yell-kept carriage-road, traversing fields and pastures, meeting the laden donkey, the slow-paced swaying camel, taking their loads to town ; past laboring men and wo- men and boys and girls afield in various occupations, — husband and wife planting their crop or pulling weeds, as happy, to all appearance, as any people. The forenoon ride took us through the Sharon vale into that of Ajalon, and at Ramleh we stopped within an ancient wall, close by a lofty Saracenic tower, to sit within the friendly shade of a low stone arch and eat our first day's lunch and rub away the numbness from limbs unused to the saddle. The ruined walls about enclose some acres' space, with ruined arches and subterranean vaults, with hints of cloister, kahn, and cistern wells of mosque or church of Saracenic days. Suppose we mount this buttressed tower and use its eyes awhile and see what it has been looking at a thousand years or so. The steps are very old and deeply worn and flanked with many a niche and win- dow loop. The upper stair is circular and made of porous marble, and leads to a rather spacious and unguarded landing in the open air. The view is glorious. Look 1 There are the vales of Sharon and of lovely Ajalon, with dirty Ramleh near at hand, then broad, bright fields, with waving green and darker patchwork shades of sturdy olive orchards, with thrifty farm scenes far and near framed in by desert sands, the blue and barren Judsean mountains, and the bright blue waters of the Mediterranean. Off there are Jaffa and long-lost Lydda ; old Ashdod in the distance ; and over there are Askalon and Gath, and to the south is Gaza. Westward again, you see the Sama- rian mountains, and Caesarea in the north ; and farther on are Jamsee, Ajalon, and Latrun. Here within our sight fought Joshua, beneath a patiently waiting sun that once, they say, stood still above those distant flowery fields to give the Israel- ites good time to kill the Amoritish men who dared defend their wives and homes. Along that road toiled the lumber teams of Solomon, and stores of stuff from Ophir and from Egypt ; here tramped the armed Pharaonic troops and those of many a Caesar ; down this way came heavy-hearted Hebrew captives trudging on to Memphis or to Rome, to grace a Roman 238 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. triumph, to die in Roman fields and quarries and arenas. Here passed the temple's sacred robes and screens and vessels, and the seven-branched candlestick, no more to pass the Judaean hills ; here with crushed spirit came the Amazonian queen, the fierce and fair Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, terror of Phi- listia, to spend her captive life in Rome ; here, too, in later days, came stern and fearless Peter on his new-found mission, preaching Christ and confronting pagans ; here in these fields the same plough turns the shallow furrow, and tawny Arab girls go gleaning among the reapers, — the modern Ruths in Boaz's fields ; and over there at Gaza, Samson carried off the brazen gates of the fierce Philistine city, the city fair which a Pharaoh gave unto his daughter when Solomon added an Egyptian prin- cess to his already lengthy list of comely wives. These and countless other scenes crowd in upon the mind while standing here atop this old-time tower from which the views are so de- lightful, which you so regretfully leave behind. The afternoon was passed along the road that leads to the Judsean mountains. We see more fields, more people toiling in them, more camel trains and watch-towers by the way ; then we reach stony ground, and getting more and more without the plain of Ajalon, we come to Latrun and to our first night's camping place. Our tents are up, our dinner cooking, the burden-mules are grazing near dark Bedouin tents, the sun goes down beyond the distant sea, as we alight to eat and rest. Would you see our outfit ? Two fine new round wall tents, lined with picturesque needlework, with rather pretty floral scenes and clean mosaic-work. Our beds are made. The bedsteads are of light wrought iron, made to fold and pack ; the mattresses and snowy linen sheets and pillowcases are cov- ered with soft warm woollen blankets. We have a table, cane- seat chairs, and camping stools, with hooks to hang our clothes on, wash-bowls and pitchers, — everything for comfort. Another spacious tent contains our stores and holds the pantry stock and table-ware. The cooking-stove stands out in front where good old Abou Nokleh, famous Syrian cook, is wrestling with the pots and pans and cooking things. Dinner is served at half-past six. Sit down with us. Observe our table-ware : our spotless damask, real china plates, with silver service and brightly polished silver knives. These silver spoons and gold-rimmed BIBLE LANDS. 239 cut-glass tumblers are rather jaunty out here in the Arab wilds, with crystal carafe, and light thin china cups for tea. Nothing is too good for pilgrims ; our bright new tents are floored with Persian rugs, and clean soft beds and well-provided table ; these are the compensations of our days of toil. Every dish is a perfect one. Louis Monsour, our worthy dragoman, and Sol- omon the servant serve the table well. The service and the food quite take us by surprise, so far do they surpass in excel- lence the usual hotel accommodations. We eat beneath our cosey tent, which flies the stars and stripes, fold our napkins and place them in broad silver rings, sip the celestial mokka from the tiniest china cups, light our pipes, recline on chairs or couch, and talk and smoke, while the same stars that you see every night at home look down upon us wandering ones ; while the jackals and rich-toned Syrian donkeys, which you don't hear every night, chant forth their vigorous vespers. Our chatting and smoking ended, our baggage is piled about the tent pole, and through the handle of each piece is passed a small iron chain, with padlock and bells. This is to baffle the thievish Bedouin. Our beds are then moved away from the tent walls, to keep the thieves from lugging off our blankets or ourselves. Then the watch is set, our tent doors are buttoned up, the lights are blown out, and off we float into the land of sleep and dreams. The morning comes, and brings us Abou with his water-jugs, his towels, and breakfast ; the tents are folded up and placed upon the loud-belled, patient mules, and mounting our steeds again we push on for the city of David. We find mountain, rocks, and barrenness, nearly all the way. At Kirjeth-Jarem we looked in upon a deserted Christian church of the middle centuries, which the Moslem turned into a spacious stable ; we stood beneath its water-dripping vault, climbed down into its mouldy crypt, and finding there no echo of the past, no tomb or graven word or monument, we slowly rode out through the olive orchard, past the men who, Yankee-like, were piling up stone wall, then on along the road the Roman legions trod, past Soba, old home of the Maccabees, and on through the desolation, reheved only here and there by single or several olive or fig trees ; down into the valley where flows a rainy- season stream, where David found the rocks with which he slew 240 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Goliath; and at Ain Dilb, a wayside Arab coffee-shop, we stopped to eat our noonday lunch. It had rained a little on the way, — a gusty sort of rain, that laid the dust ; and having climbed another mountain ridge and toiled along the stony way they call a carriage-road, we came at three o'clock in sight of the walls of old Jerusalem. As to Jerusalem, — all have heard of it, some have seen it, and no one will expect much that is new concerning it. You know that it is a very old place, — was hoary with age and wickedness when David captured it from the heathen ; you know that it has been captured since and sacked for plunder nearly forty times ; that thirteen times or more its temples, houses, synagogues, and walls have been torn down and scattered here and there ; that several times its inhabitants have been brought forth in droves, and, like the herds upon the hills, driven forth to bondage ; you know its site has been sown with salt and none allowed to live upon its holy hills ; you know that it has been made a den for wolves, and that goats have fed upon the herbage round about, and jackals had their holes where once the girls of Israel sang and Judah's sons arrayed themselves for worship or for war ; you know that they who lived here were God's chosen people, — so the Bible says ; that when they were rather good the Lord gave unto them peace and rest and length of years ; and when they turned aside into those ways in which the wicked tread, the Gentile and Philistine came, even the Egyptian, Persian, and Assyrian hosts, and drove them forth like sheep. No city has been more extolled, none more besieged ; none more lifted up, none made more desolate. And here I am to-day looking about, trying to get some clew to what the city was in David's day, and what it was in Herod's time, and what it was when the bright Golden Gate was strewn with palms, and Jesus entered in to claim his right, but came to be reviled and spat upon, to be derided, crowned with thorns, and suffer death upon a convict's cross. Let us take a quiet look about, and try and get some under- standing of the place. Of course we shall make many a blunder as to time and place and circumstance ; but some things we can do to pass a morning hour. Before we enter in let us look about awhile. This is the Jaffa Gate ; below, in front of us, is the lovely, narrow, rock-rifted, olive-planted Hinnom vale, half filled BIBLE LANDS. 24 1 with city rubbish emptied here in all these myriad years. Down in the gulch is Hezekiah's Pool, or, as some say, the Pool of Solomon, made there by throwing a strong wall or dam across the narrow vale to stop the waters for summer use, when all the hills were dry and parched. Beyond the vale are walls and hills and many a modern dwelling, and a long hospice row erected there by noble Moses ISIontefiore, — a home for He- brew pilgrims who might come journeying here to see their fathers' home and weep here at the remnant temple walls, praying, amid their groans and tears, for the time to come when God again should call His people back, and rear again His earthly throne upon Moriah's mount. Let us take a walk. The city is not large, the walls not very long ; suppose we pass them on our left, and see how long it takes to come back again. The way about the walls is first by the well-made modern road that leads to Bethle- hem, by the deep dry moat, and by the rim of Hinnom vale ; then by a donkey- path it takes the left, now up, now down, now by the burying-ground, past Gihon pool, and by old dung gate and older stones ; now skirting Kedron vale, and then Gehenna's gulch ; then by a narrow footpath, past the garden patches, past old knotted and gnarled olive-trees ; past Siloam's pool, and mud houses clinging to the dreary, blistered crags ; past the towering walls and past the Golden Gate ; skirting the valley of Jehosaphat, with his rock tomb, and that of Absalom and Zachariah ; past the St. Stephen Gate, that gives a view of sad Gethsemane and Olivet ; then among the Moslem graves and tombs where waiting women sit and mourn their dead ; past the Damascus Gate, in view of Jeremiah's cave, where erst he sat so many recluse years and pondered o'er the past, and prophesied of future woes ; then past more walls and heaps of rubbish, stones, and aged olive-trees that have seen the tears and heard the sighs of centuries ; then, past the village of the leprous ones, we come back to the modern homes and streets, and on a modern pavement by a lot of modern traders' shops we stand by Jaffa Gate again. Look at your watch : not quite sixty minutes since we stood here before ; yet we have compassed all these walls about, been clear around the present Jewish city, which now is twice as large as it was when the Saviour died on Calvary. Now these walls are two 16 242 A GIRDLE ROUA^D THE EARTH. miles and a half about ; then perhaps a fraction more than one, — a city built upon a walled space, with Zion's Hill, Moriah, all its temples, houses, streets, about the size of six modern city blocks ! Such was the magnitude of the great city of David, — a mere speck upon this Judsean mountain range ; a barren place amid more barren places ; a city with- out sewerage, gas, or aqueducts ; without streets where car- riage wheels could roll ; merely a hornet's nest hanging to a rock, an eagle's nest among the mountain crags ; and yet, for so the sacred story runs, the only home on earth of Him who made the world and set the sun and stars above. The story must be true, for it is vouched for by many millions of Chris- tians and Moslems. And more than this, within the sanctuary of the Holy Sepulchre is that well-preserved and much-revered stone that in the olden time and now marks the very centre of this great flat world. But let us pass the gate and step within — within Jerusalem. How your blood tingles ! How your nerves play ! The very senses throb as you come in where David came, and stand upon the place where stood the priests and prophet men of old ; where stood and taught the Saviour of the world ; where stood the Jewish kings, and those who came with fire and sword and dragged them forth to grace the Assyrian or Roman holiday. You are within the walls that surround the centre of the world ; within the city unto which all Christendom bows low ; upon the spot whence Mahomet mounted to the courts of heaven ; upon the spot of the great Christian world's most hallowed associations. Near by is the great Jewish temple's site, where God was pleased to come and sit within the holiest of holy places ; where He sent down His heavenly fire to burn the altar-offerings at the dedication day. But it is the city of God no more. As we came in you noticed that bearded Turk standing at the gate, with uniform and cimeter; you saw the star and crescent on the gate. You came here only by permission of the Moslem infidel. City of David no more, though the great draughted stones of David's house range up before you. No more the city of Baldwin or the Crusade knights, nor of the Christian world, save by permission of the turbaned Turk. Where is the Chris- tian world — where sleep in sloth the Christian kings and BIBLE LANDS. 243 princes, all the Christian liosts — that they permit themselves to stoop beneath the Moslem rod on coming to this spot? Shade of Peter the Hermit and the Crusade hosts ! why stands it so to-day, while in the grasp of Christian men and kings rests most of human might? Think you, if rested here the Kaaba stone and ashes of Mahomet, and swarthy Moslems held the conquering sword, that they would stoop beneath the Christian crook to enter in? Well, we will go beyond the gates and pace the streets of David and his generations. For ten or twenty rods we find them fairly good. A carriage might come in to that extent, not more. The street that leads still farther on is steep and narrow. Follow it ; come down the dirty, slippery stone. Take heed here lest you fall. The lining shops are low and small, and reek with noisome odors. But come along ; yet mind the mud and filth, — it thickens every step. The crowd of hurrying people chokes up the way ; so do the donkeys, laden with goods and city sculch and filth, that graze your raiment. We give it up. The mud and filth increase at every step. Our boots are wet and foul, our clothes are splashed with filthy mire. Enough of this ; we turn about, retrace our dubious steps, and hunt another street, — the one called Christian. This Christian street — there 's nothing in a name — is a valley of humiliation, — wet, muddy, filthy still, and paved with random rocks that hurt your feet clear through thick leather soles. The shops are low and very badly kept ; the windows dirty ; floors and walls a crying, muddy shame ; the whole a den of desolation. Ambitious tradesmen beck and call you in. They shout their wares, and tell of photographs for sale, and things of olive-wood ; swing rosaries before your face, and flaunt tlie crucifix as though they dealt in herrings. But you have little care to look above your feet, lest they should slip and let you down. Disgusted at every step, you turn not to the right to seek the Holy Sepulchre, but take the left and climb for higher land and dryer soil. And this is Jerusalem. The thrill you felt at coming through the gate is gone. Gone is the exaltation, the pious thought, the sentiment that captured you withal ; gone are your hopes of peace and thoughtful rest within these time-stained walls, as 244 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. back you take your way to your hotel without the walls to gain your room, where you invoke a fire to warm yourself before, scrape off the mud, and dry your well-wet boots. "Jerusalem, my happy home ; name ever dear to me ! " — perhaps in fancy, as we go through its streets and see its shrines while sitting in our soft arm-chairs at home ; but here we pause and reflect. To-morrow we may have courage to try again. Without the city walls are many modern buildings, — hotels and hospitals, offices of the government, and many a pretty private house and shop. All these have been built within a score of years ; ambitious Jews have sent some money here to help on this revival work, to help renew the city's life ; ambi- tious churches make a show of enterprise, one vying with the other ; and hopeful hotel-keepers seek to thrive upon the tourist's purse. Outside the gates the city is looking up again. Within — well, you know my opinion of the place. The Hebrew seeks the Wailing Wall and mourns in open air the desolation of Zion. The Moslem makes prostrate prayer in Omar's grand old mosque, where rests the rocky crest where Abraham would have slain his son, where Mahomet passed from earth to heaven ; the Christian turns his steps to Calvary and offers orisons within the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. We will go out to see this latter place. The streets have not dried up from last night's rain. We pass the gate ; salute the mar- tial Turk ; pass David's house, now a place of soldiery, with worthless old rusty cannon at the battlemented top ; pass through the lines of hucksters' shops, past mangy donkeys bearing mud and filth and baskets filled with garden truck and oranges ; past Jew and Gentile, Turk and Bedouin ; past men with unshorn locks and women thickly veiled ; past men who shout their wares, and monks and mud and mire ; picking our penitential way along the slippery rocks and sloppy Chris- tian street ; then, turning to the right, we pass down a short and narrow street and come into the open space — garnished with much pedlers' stuff — fronting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The facade of the edifice is rather lofty, time-worn, melan- choly. One portal — that one on the right — has been walled up, marring the effect ; giving an unsatisfactory feeling, as though the influx here of worshippers had lately fallen off, and one door BIBLE LANDS. 245 was deemed enough for such as now might come. This o]:)en door is flanked on either side with triple columns of antique marble. The three upon the left are often kissed, the middle one the oftenest. It has an ugly crack adown the shaft ; and from this rift, in the last day, when all shall reappear upon the earth to stand before the fateful Judge, shall flash that sacred flame which shall consume this sinful earth and light afresh the lurid fires of Lucifer. This is the story of the cloven column which so many men and women — mostly women — clasp and kiss, until their close-pressed lips have worn away and polished deep the cold gray stone. Just why this waste of deep affection, it is rather hard to guess. But kissing here seems to be a passion all around. The beggars catch and kiss your hands, or kneel and kiss, your boots ; the worshipful fall down and kiss the floors where patriarchs have walked ; the children kiss the pavements. The women sometimes brush away the dust before the labial touch ; but most will kiss the stone, the boards, the carpeting — these, or the plates of brass that tell where something has been said or done or dropped — without a rub or brush. But the left-hand door of the temple of the Sepulchre is open ; we will enter there. Who opens now and shuts this door? Who admits this crowd of pious ones — these Latins, Greeks, Armenians, Protestants — within the clumsy wooden gates ? The turbaned Turk. The Moslem holds the key and opens when he may. If you come before his time you may await his will. If you stop within too long, you may stay till morning, as many a pilgrim does rather than stifle his orisons. On a raised platform, just at the left as we enter, sit the Moslem janitors and guard. Squatting on their matting, there they sit, brewing their coffee, smoking their pipes, chatting to entertain their chums, singing their songs, within the very gates that open to the Holy Sepulchre. Shame! Whose shame? Christian shame. Shame to wear this servile yoke and be thus spat upon by such a feeble, putrid, soulless government. And yet how comes it so? Largely through Christian's hate of Chrisdan. The Latin and the Greek, the Protestant, Armenian, and Copt bow to the same Father, adore the same Saviour, yet wrangle for the precedence ; agree to love their neighbors as themselves, and turn the other cheek, the first being smitten. Yet within these very walls that enshrine the holy tomb, around this very 246 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. tomb that once enshrined the Son of God, have these brethren fought with fists and feet and knives, till blood has flowed and corses lay in death upon the marble floor. Then, said the Moslem, if these chosen ones will fight and slay, we will set a watch upon their ways, will ourselves keep the peace with ever- present guard. Shame to men who profess better things, that their own necks pass daily here beneath this Moslem yoke ! The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not so very large, but it is very comprehensive. It has been built at various times and ways, and destroyed again and then rebuilt. The most you see of floors and columns, domes and shrines, of altar, stair, and ever-burning lamps, is of this century. You will go about its holy places and be told what happened here and there. Of course you will believe ; at least will wish you could, because so many people do. As said before, the building is very com- prehensive. Here is Adam's tomb. Down through the riven rocks on crucifixion day the blood of Jesus trickled ; it entered Adam's tomb ; it touched his skull ; he came to life again. Here in this room you stand on Calvary's mount ; here, under- neath this glittering, ever-lighted altar, you see the very place where stood the sacrificial cross. Five feet away is the cross of one of the thieves, — the one impenitent ; four feet and one half away is the place of the other's cross, — the then re- pentant Dimas. A trifle close they are, perhaps ; but that is not important. Here were they found, two hundred years after the momentous day ; and the Churches all agree, or nearly all, that these localities are correct. Here flock the pious pil- grims from afar, here bend the willing knee, and creeping in they kiss the well-marked spots with reverence profound. Not far away from here you see the place, well marked, of Abraham's sacrifice. The Moslems claim to have it, too ; but they are only heathen, and so they can't know as well as we. And close by, and very much bekissed and very much renewed, is the anointment-stone, where Christ was laid when prepared for the tomb. Here worship every day, swinging their incense lamps and chanting their doleful songs, the Latin, Greek, Armenian, and Copt ; each, kneeling, kisses this blessed stone, and each teaches his little ones that the others will never get a seat m heaven. A step or two away you see a simple stone that marks the BIBLE LANDS. 247 very centre of the world. You may not have heard that such a point had ever been fixed upon undisputed authority ; but so it is, and you must be glad to know it. Around about are many chapels, — Greek and Latin, Armenian and Abyssinian and Coptic, — the chapel where the angels stood ; the place of the footprints of Our Lord ; the place where the women stood apart when the crucified body was anointed ; the Chapel of the Apparition ; the place where Christ was held in prison while the cross was being made ; the place where he was nailed to the cross ; the Chapel of the Crowning of Thorns, and of the Derision ; the altar of the penitent thief, and of Longinus, the one-eyed Roman soldier whose other eye was there restored by the blood that spurted from the cruel wound he made ; the Chapel of the Parting of the Raiment ; the place of the finding of the cross by Empress Helena ; and many chapels more, each one with its intent worshippers. True, the Latin and the Greek do not quite agree about the undoubted sanctity of all these places ; but they are all on the list, — these and many more. But the main feature of the temple, after all, is the Holy Sepulchre, — a badly composed piece of architecture beneath the central dome. The ante-room is the Chapel of the Angels, — quite small and rather dingy ; and beyond is the Chapel of the Sepulchre. You stoop and pass the low-browed door and come within the holy place, — the holy of holies, sanctuary, supreme object of all Christian veneration. The place is very small, — four people fill it, — lined about, as is the Angels' room, with precious marbles ; both lighted with golden lamps. As you came through the x\ngels' Chapel, you trod, they say, upon the very stone that closed the door of Jesus' tomb ; the same he rolled away when he arose ; the same he sat upon. The precious lamps that swing above are owned by Greeks, Latins, Armenians, and Copts. Within this little place a daily mass is said, sometimes by one denomination, then another. The pilgrims venture in and kiss the marble slab or shelf that is said to cover the rocky tomb, — the same prepared by Joseph of Arimathea, but which cannot be seen. It was dis- covered here, as were the cross and the place of crucifixion, by Saint Helena some sixteen hundred years ago. Old writers aver they saw it ; but it has met the eyes of no one living. 248 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. The hole you see in the wall of the Angel Chapel, — the hole upon your left as you pass out, — is where the priest hands out the sacred fire on Easter Day. You know what sacred fire is : fire direct from heaven. On Easter Day comes this great event. Greek Church, Armenian, and Copt, all take a hand. The Latin Catholic did till some three hundred years ago, when he changed his mind, and quit getting fire that way. The day before these fire scenes the church is packed. The gallery is full of lookers-on who have bought their places. Some tie them- selves with cords close to the Sepulchre, so they can't get pushed away. Hundreds have stayed over-night in the church to hold their places. When darkness comes the priest enters the holy place, — the Chapel of the Sepulchre, Without, all lights are extinguished. In darkness and commotion the masses wait with unlit torches in hand, — awaiting the time when God shall send an angel down from heaven to light the torch the priest now holds within. Soon the angel comes. Its radiance lights up the Angel Chapel. The people catch the holy gleam ; and soon the priest extends a lighted torch from out the aperture. Lucky the man whose torch is lighted first. Large sums are paid to get it, and fierce the contest ; but the guard is there to keep the peace. And so it is that sacred fire is annually obtained from the altar from on high. You may not credit the honesty of the priest ; but what you believe or dis- believe cuts no figure in the case. Many millions of Christian people do believe, and that is enough for them. And as to having faith in this or that, you have got to have faith for many other things you find here besides this holy fire. Do men be- lieve that these Holy Sepulchre places are real ? Yes, many mil- lions do. Nine tenths of all the Christian world, perhaps, believe these things, and are happy, too, in that belief. Let history doubt ; let facts be otherwise ; faith laughs at history and takes hold on higher things. Coming here, bring it with you ; bring plenty of it, and keep your reason and your wits for pagan temples farther on. ....... Jerusalem is rather high, the Dead Sea very low. The former is some five-and-twenty hundred feet above the level of the sea, the latter half as much below. So, going from Jerusalem to Jericho by the route " a certain man " is said to have taken BIBLE LANDS. 249 when he fell among thieves, you must descend some thirty- seven hundred feet. The way is by the graded road, — a road so rough at many points that no carriage can pass it. While the temperature is comfortably cool at Jerusalem, it is in the eighties down where Sodom and Gomorrah stood before the sea was there. To start out on this trip you get your tents and dragoman, a half-dozen saddle-horses, and your dozen mules, the which, with cook and servants, guard and muleteers, make up a rather long procession. The baggage-mules start first, well laden with a couple of tons of stuff, and go straight to Jericho ; while the horsemen and dragoman and armed guards bring up the rear quite leisurely. The beasts of burden trudge on all day without a moment's stop, following their file- leader, the bells of which you hear for half a mile. The tour- ists keep a sumpter mule along with them, and so at noon they stop and take a lunch, an hour's rest beside some spring or at some olive grove, and give the nags a nibble of green grass. These Arabs feed their horses only twice a day, — morning and evening, — often tasting no food or water between these meals. The guard we have with us consists of four men, — a noble- looking mounted Arab chief who lived at Bethpage, whence the Saviour got the ass's colt, and three stalwart braves of his armed with rifles, pistols, swords, and knives, all looking rather fierce. The reason why we surround ourselves with such armed force is that we pay a forced tribute to the Bedouin tribe. The tribe that occupies the land through which this journey lies make this a constant business. Easily can they make the journey seem most dangerous ; and to dispel these fears and make this armed presence a necessity, they stipulate with every crowd, that for a certain sum they will go along and render travel safe. It is but another form of " tariff for revenue and revenue only." They ask to be well paid to behave themselves. So did the castle barons of the Rhine so many years ago ; so did the people of Tarifa, near Gibraltar straits, in centuries long since past ; so do the customs service in our own and many other lands to-day, in ways perhaps more civilized, but quite as sure. And so, with horses, mules, and tents and guards, we leave the city by St. Stephen's Gate, and travel on to Jordan and the old Dead Sea. Skirting the field of tombs, we pass down to the narrow vale in sight of many an olden rock-cut tomb where 250 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. rest the bones, maybe, of many a once-great Jew ; pass close along the spot where Saint Stephen was stoned to death, — the first of Christian martyrs ; then skirt the freshly built walls of sad Gethsemane, and trot along the stony road past countless Hebrew graves, past the spot where the harmless tree was cursed because it bore no fruit, and come anon to Bethany, where lived Mary and Martha, and the resurrected Lazarus, whom Christ loved. Then down and down we pass into the deeper vales, picking our way over steep and stony roads, through lands whose flesh is gone and sap dried up ; whose naked, rocky bones, all parched and bleached, strike the eye unpleasingly. Upon these thousand Jud^an hills there was once much fatness. Here once a teeming population thrived, but now a half-wild wandering race gain but a precarious living. Down into this yawning vale we ride, down and still down, — down past the Apostles' Spring; down along the brook bed where the water sometimes runs in rainy days ; and come at noon to the Samaritan inn. Here, so the legend runs, came that good Samaritan, bringing that *' certain man " who " went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves " who wounded him and went their way, leaving him half-dead. We passed the point where the priest saw the helpless victim lying, and passed on ; and where the pious Levite also saw, but paid no heed. We spread our carpet on the ground within the new inn walls, and ate our chicken, eggs, and fruit, where stood that good Samaritan, so hated of the Jews, when he paid the host two-pence, and said, " Take care of him, and whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I at my return will pay thee." The sum paid down was not exorbitant, as things go now, but the act was noble ; and we all hoped, as we ate our bread in peace and sipped a cup of wine, that the man got well, and that the Samaritan's example might be followed out should any one of us fall into robbers' hands. The host that made our coffee over a litde fire within an American kerosene tin can — a make- shift for a better stove — might have been a lineal descendant of the ancient landlord who took the two-pence and the contin- gent promise ; but when we asked if it were not so, he only smiled and went on brewing Arab coffee. He had evidently forgotten, or did n't want to tell. BIBLE LANDS. 25 I The way beyond leads on through gorges, rocks, and hills, and past a single tree, — almost the only one along the way. We pass some ruins of old Roman aqueducts, which tell a story of the Roman occupation, — how they dammed the deep moun- tain gorges to save up stores of rain, and built these aqueducts of cemented stone to lead the waters to the parched slopes and plains. The Roman knew the virtues of irrigation and hoped to make the then declining country fruitful. He doubtless did so. But after him the Arab, — a nomad who cared not for bridges or roads or aqueducts, and let them and the country go to common ruin. A little farther on we pass a fearful gorge, wherein they say that old Elijah hid himself and was fed through the kindness of some ravens. There are several places in Palestine that claim to be the spot, but this seems as good as any. Now we descend the hill along the gorge's brink, — the deep- cut Wady Kelt ; go past the so-called Moses' Pool, without a drop of water or a present place for any ; and passing a noisy brook, the Cherith, the first running stream that we have seen for days, we come into the wide-spread Jordan valley, and anon to the ruins of old Jericho, and to Elisha's fountain that watered once that now long-demolished city and gave rich fruitage to a wide-spread field and garden space below. They say this noble spring which here rushes forth from beneath the ancient mound was once quite salt and bitter ; but that good old Elisha came this way, and finding it unfit to quench his thirst, threw into it purifying salt from out of a new cruse, saying, " I have healed these waters ; there shall not come from thence any more death or barren land." The waters now are excellent. The natives call the spring Ain es Sultan. By this cool, copious spring our tents were ready pitched, our beds made up, our table set for dinner ; here by Elisha's spring, with the rich watered plain and New Jericho in front ; near by some dirty Arab dens ; and just be- hind us the Mount of Temptation, chapel-crowned, from which the Devil showed Christ the kingdoms of the world, and, owning not an acre of the view, offered for a moment's recognition the entire patch. It might have been a fairer, healthier country then ; we really hope it was ; but if it was not, a gift in full of the whole lot would scarcely be worth the taking. The sun- burned ledges with which the mount is faced are punctured with 252 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. hermit caves. Here in the olden time, when men tried to be very good indeed, they took themselves from cities, homes, and family, and coming to such lonely, dismal spots, ensconced themselves within such mountain caves, many of which may only be approached by ropes let down, and there lived lives of prayer and penance, dirt and devotion. They ate weeds and roots ; slept on sticks and stones and penitential briers ; chas- tised their unwashed bodies till the devils fled in rage ; and then they came feebly back again where people lived, or died alone within their cheerless dens, to become the prey of jackals and of vultures. To these monastic homes we made no pilgrimage. This is Jordan valley where we camped, and this is all that is left of ancient Jericho, — the first city that fell before the army of General Joshua, its stoutly builded walls falling down at the sound of his loud trumpet blasts. Then the bloodthirsty army fell upon the unprotected men and women, children and sick and helpless, and slaughtered every one, — all save the woman Rahab and her family, because she had harbored Gideon and Caleb, spies that Joshua had sent, — slew all these weak and defenceless ones, and thanked God for such a glorious victory. Then he roundly cursed the place, and cursed in advance any one who might rebuild its walls. Yet it was rebuilt ; Elisha once lived here, and David's priests were bidden to tarry here till they had beards again ; and Herod had a palace here, — a castle and a circus ; and here he had his son — the last of the Maccabees — drowned by Marian ; and to this spot he summoned all his chiefs and leading men, and as his death drew nigh he shut them up, to have them decently murdered at the moment of his own death, that all the land might wail. Five days before his death he killed his other son, Antipater, and so the family was finished. Here, too, our Saviour spent a night, and Zaccheus climbed a tree his Lord to see. Christ stayed in Zaccheus' house that night, two miles, they say, from this same spring where we have our tents. The house, so the tradition runs, is now owned by the Sheik, — the large square house down there among the fig-trees. Here Zaccheus divided up his goods ; for he was very rich. One half he gave to the poor, for which salvation came unto his house ; the rest he kept, and probably had enough then. The tree he climbed has disappeared ; though monastic Saint Anthony says he saw it four or five hundred years later. BIBLE LANDS. 2$$ The church that was built over his house is also gone, — gone is everything but a lot of mounds of rubbish, some Hnes of buried walls and old unhewn foundation stones, and the grand old spring. The walls and towers that Vespasian built, and those that Trajan reared, all, all are gone. The curse of Joshua has followed it closely, leaving behind the pretty natural site, the ever-flowing and ever-blessed spring round which the shepherds and the horsemen come to water bleating flocks or rest for the night. Leaving our tents in place, we take our Arab nags and sump- ter mule and start off to the sea. The way is hot, for soon we leave the verduring influence of the noble spring and pass into the lifeless valley of the sea. The Dead Sea in the ages past was much larger than now. When Judasan hills were clad with trees, and wooded lands held much of moisture that gradually found its way into this deep basin land, the sea was rather large. But as hills were denuded, there came less rain, and that was mostly turned to vapor where it fell ; the brooks got dry, whole rivers ceased to flow, and thus bereft of fluvial revenue the Dead Sea shores receded. You see the plain record of this written in sandy strata in the grassless dunes through which you pick your way. If, as is believed on poor authority, the Dead Sea came to take the place of Sodom and Gomorrah, these cities must have been considerable in size, — some forty miles by ten. The sea was rather angry when we came. Great crested waves were rolling in. It was no great sight after all. My governor had bet a hat with Colonel Nead that he could swim three hundred yards in Dead Sea water the same as one might swim in a fresh-water lake. The travel-books and tourists have often said that one can't do this thing ; that these much-salted waters heave him out and sting the flesh, and make a swim a great perplexity. The hat was bet, and in he went — the water cold as ice. He swam a rod or so, but did n't wait to win. He thinks the stories told untrue, but didn't relish the temper- ature. The colonel shakes his head, and is not convinced that what he read was false. The fact probably is that both are nearly right, the facility of swimming depending upon the place selected. The sea has places much more salt than the one we stopped at, near the Jordan's mouth. This is the least salty part of all the pond. Far down to the lower end is a 254 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. mountain ridge of almost pure rock-salt, some six miles long and over five hundred feet high, whose base probably extends far out beneath the surface of the lake. Here and there this salt ridge is quite close to the water ; at others, fifty yards away. At all events, just there the water is the saltest and most difficult to swim in. This salt mine, of which the entire sea is considered a part, belongs to the Turkish government ; and so strictly is it guarded that the natives are not permitted to appropriate a lump or evaporate a pan of water for salt-producing purposes. The Dead Sea has no fish or shells or other life. The water is very salt ; the shore is dull and devoid of interest. No boat rides on its surface. Once, in Roman times, there was shipping here ; but the Arab wants no boats. The Jordan is its principal affluent ; outlet it has none ; evaporation keeps its stage about the same. This sea is much the same as that of Utah, but not so deep by a hundred feet. An hour's ride takes us to the Jordan ford, the old baptizing place. A lunch and rest, and then we mount to return, passing by the chapel-crested hill where Saint John lived in the wilderness of rock and sand, and whence he travelled hand in hand with Christ to the already old baptismal rites ■ then past the ruins of the Gilgal town, where Joshua mustered his host the day after crossing Jordan to the promised land, and where the old-time Egyptian circumcision rite was once more renewed ; up past the dirty kennel called New Jericho, a Bedouin den of thieves ; then through the orchards full of figs and almonds and apricots, and vineyards of fine grapes, back to our tent again. The Jordan valley is a desert where no water flows ; but give it water and good society, and it would make a sort of endurable yet un- healthy paradise. A place so low and full of sickly vapors can hardly be a wholesome place. All attempts to make it so have failed, and no one but these natives think of making it a home. It may have flowed once with milk and honey ; it now has some few sheep and cattle, fruit, Arabs, and old associations. Crowds of Greek-Church Catholics come here to plunge in the Jordan's sacred but nasty waters, just as Indian people plunge into the sacred but slimy Ganges. They take great joy in doing this ; let no one come to turn them back. We spend another night upon the site of ruined Jericho ; then, Arab-like, we fold our tents by morning light, and gladly BIBLE LANDS. 255 Steal away, returning to Jerusalem the way by which we came ; stopping to enter Lazarus' tomb and see where Mary and Martha lived ; stopping, too, at Gethsemane and Olivet and Virgin INIary's tomb. You may have heard that " Jordan is a hard road to travel." It is ; and many a wandering fool has found it out too late. AMien you want to go to the Dead Sea and the Jordan at that point — don't ! A most peculiar people are these Jews. The Egyptian lost his cities and his land, — the fattest land on earth, — yet among its living generations comes to us no token of regret ; the Syrian of to-day scarce thinks or even knows of mighty, fallen Babylon, where erst his fathers lived ; and the Phoenician, struggling at his oars, has no regretful thought that his ancestry once ruled these Orient waves. These peoples have dwindled down, and have lost, among the ever-rolling waves of time, their memory, care, and even thought of the power and glory their forefathers claimed and won of yore. Not so the Hebrew. No Egyptian wails about the mouldered gates of On, or sobs about its lonely obelisk ; no Syrian sighs among the sandy knolls where hung the seventh wonder of the classic world, — the ambitious hang- ing gardens ; and no Phoenician son now quits his oar or plough to wander wofully among the ports and ruined commerce towns his fathers built in days so long gone by. By-gones are by- gones with such as these, whose memories are so well grassed over with their forgetfulness. Let us go to the Wailing Wall, here in this oft-destroyed and oft-deserted city. The way is rather long ; we pick it out along the muddy lanes and through the foul bazaars ; we leap over pools of stagnant filth and smear our boots and trousers' legs with dirty mud and slime ; we encounter devious ways among the homes of poverty and rags ; pass broken arches, crumbling walls, and frowzy kennels of these streets, and find our tiresome way down to the Wailing Wall. It is not the city wall, nor any part of it, but, as is claimed, the strong foundation walls of the great Temple built by Solomon, — the one that dazed fair Sheba's queen with its magnificence. This wall is mighty, ponderous. Cyclopean draughted stone range here in noble tiers, defying those who tore the temple down and razed the city walls ; and here within a narrow limbo street, on dryer soil than we had seen 256 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. before, stood and sat the Hebrew families, — the aged time- bent fathers and mothers, and those of middle age ; the fair- complexioned daughters clad in homely clothes, — men, women, children, all of Hebrew mould and type, and all in deeply sorrowing mood, bewailing glories past and gone and praying God to hearken to their moans and not forget His precious promises. Some, with their well-thumbed Bibles in their hands, stood there and read aloud in doleful strains the great Jeho\-ah's words ; some, prone upon the ground, sat with clasped hands and dampened cheeks, and bethought themselves of long-past fruitful days ; and many leaned against the dark, cold stones, and prayed and kissed the time-stained walls, rending the air with sobs and cries as though their very hearts would break. In this there seemed no sham nor pious fraud or pride, but that deep-seated earnestness of grief that shows no sign of guile or counterfeit. No golden censers here were swung ; there were no richly broidered suits nor jewelled robes nor images, but deeply seated grief and earnest pleading words. Elsewhere the demonstrations seemed formal and theatrical, — to be seen of men. Not so with these poor Jews, who weekly come to wail at this otherwise unfrequented spot. The wall is old and very high and strong ; and if any spot there be in all this ancient city that has a semblance of great antiquity, this is it. Of course these Jews have no actual knowl- edge of the day or date of these great mural stones, but take it all on trust. Antiquarians say the lower courses are of Herod's time, — long after the days of Solomon. That God will hear their prayers, and send a promised Christ to establish his throne on Zion's hill from which to rule the world, they fervently believe, — believe it now as they have done in all the ages past. Scattered are their people over every land ; and eighteen hun- dred years and more have passed since Titus destroyed their city and drove them forth forever; yet even as the magnet points toward the pole, so every Hebrew still remembers Zion, and rests upon the promises. Whether at cities remote or near, in the tropic heat or on the snow-clad hills, yet do they turn unto God even as these sad ones wail beneath this wall, and well remember Zion, and cry out as with one voice : " Haste, haste. Redeemer of Zion ! Speak unto the heart of Jerusalem, and may the promised branch of Jesse spring up therein." BIBLE LANDS. 257 Other peoples have quite forgotten their homes and former times of greatness, strength, and power ; the Jew never forgets. The Egyptian has lost all sight of Amnion Ra and Osiris ; the heavenly mother, Isis, and her god-begotten son, Horus, have no thrill for him \ the Assyrian knows not Bel, and the Phoeni- cian wots not who or what or where the Dagon was ; but the Hebrew hope rests on Jehovah still, and trusts a deathless trust on promises recorded in their Testament full many years ago. We speak of hope and trust and faith as though these were ours alone ; but in all these we may sit at the Jewish Gamaliel's feet and learn wisdom. Christians have long been taught to hate and revile these Jews and flout their faith and call them harshest names ; but one who reads their history, and takes the pains to travel on their track from Herod's time to this, must respect these men of the bravest and stoutest faith. We are sorry we went to the Dead Sea and Jordan, — not so much to the former as the latter. To the common Christian mind the Jordan is a fair stream, with waters pure and clear flowing between two lovely banks of green, along verdured fields and fruited groves, — a liquid poem flowing down from Hermon hills. You have seen the masters' pictures of Saint Christopher ; you have seen the paintings of the Church, where John stands on the flowery bank and Christ stands in the rush- ing stream, and over both the dove of peace. Fair were these pictures to my eyes, and fair the pulpit pictures sometimes drawn of Jordan's waters, clear and pure, that cleanse the soul and bear away the taint of every sin. All wrong ! Would you see Jordan ? Go to the wandering Wapsie in its dirtiest days ; go to the scummy Skunk where it fills its dirty banks ; go to the muddy Missouri at its roily worst ; and j'ou will not find a fouler-looking river than this same Jordan stream, — in size much like the Wapsie ; a roily, nasty flood at its most sacred point, whereat we lunched the other day. Its banks are shelv- ing, muddy, fringed with weeds, willows too, and cottonwoods ; its waters overscummed with mud and dirty froth and filled with treacherous swirls. We thought to take a plunge beneath the Jordan flood. This was before we got there. Coming unto its banks, — fronting the very spot where, as they say, John bap- tized Christ, after the then old Brahmanic, Persian custom, — we let the resolution die, and sat there on the dirty shore and ate our 17 258 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. bread and wine in disappointment. The Catholics from the City of Brotherly Love reckoned they would n't go in for any sum of faith or money ; the Presbyterian had got all he wanted in a Dead Sea swim, and while he protested oft to unbelieving ears that he had swum worse fords with rifle, clothes, and rations on his back in California days, he did n't care to get befouled again ; the Christian of the crowd was sick at heart, and vexed all through. But here the pilgrims yearly meet to wrestle with the muddy stuff. Here they came in flocks of thousands in the mediaeval time. Here in mid-stream a cross was set ; the banks were walled, they say, and paved with marble ; broad steps of stone led down into the flood, and brawny priests stood out in the mid-stream in muddy water to their necks, while Arab guides drove in the human flocks like helpless sheep. The priests then plunged them each beneath the flood with most irreverent haste and sent them back to land ; their sins, of course, all washed away, their bodies smeared with mud. This is written two hundred miles away from the Jordan, in a land watered by Damascus rivers, — the Abana and the Phar- par. And as we see the copious waters of this gentile land, the rushing rivers, brooks, and rivulets, and catch the leaping cascades' gleam, and watch the rippling rush of many a cooling stream, we can but side with Naaman in his proper praise of the waters of his own fair land, which are really " better than all the waters of Israel." • • • • • • • Returning from Jericho the other day, we drew our reins at Bethany to get a view of Lazarus' tomb ; for he lived here, died and was buried here, and some days after, when his dead body began to fill the air with taint, was by the Saviour brought to life again. The tomb in which this man thus dead was laid away is the chief show in Bethany. We paid our entrance-fee, then, stooping low, passed in, and by the light of flickering candles picked our dangerous way far down the well-trod steps into the old-time vault, some twenty feet or more below the daylight. Here on this side was the tomb of Lazarus ; for so the venerable guide averred. And here had lain in death — in days of death — a human body. Where, then, was his soul? In heaven ; for he died a righteous man. But God, at Christ's BIBLE LANDS. 259 request, sent that soul back from heaven to Bethany to take on life and tainted flesh again. Miraculous ! What chance was this to write a book ! He was the only man who hatl lived, died, gone aloft to realms of bliss, returned to earth again ; yet he wrote no line of what he saw or heard or knew of ways beyond the grave. No man has lived that knew so much as he, and of the very things that all who lived before or since have longed to know ; and yet he spoke no word and left no hint behind. Clambering back to the street again, the beggars clustered around to tell how poor they were and cry for bisJiUks. Was there such a crowd as this when Lazarus came forth? Mount- ing our steeds, we passed on through the dirty streets again. " Come in here, my master ; come in here, my lord ! " She who spoke was an auburn-haired, frowzy-looking Bethany lass, with rather pretty face. " Why should I come in? " " This is Magdalen house, — house where Mary and Martha lived." " So? Are you Mary or Martha? " " Mary, my lord. Come in ; come in and see the house." " Where is Martha? Go bring her, quick ! " And away she ran, back through the high-walled yard and into the low-doored house, to hunt up Martha; while we, with unbelief, rode on, — rode on to sad Gethsemane. Coming to the Garden, the Latin one, — the Greek has another, farther up the mount towards Olivet, — we all dismounted. Which is the right one, or whether either is the true place of the Agony, no one alive can tell. We took the first we came to, for night was coming on. The Garden is well walled in and fitted round about with little shrines representing the important periods in the last hours before the crucifixion and those immediately after. The olive-trees within are very venerable. Some believe they stood here in the Saviour's time ; but history says that at the time of Titus' siege all trees about Jerusalem were cut away for use. The place of the betrayal is also shown, where Judas kissed his Master on the cheek, and so made the great work of salvation possible. A kiss of woful death, and yet a kiss of life, of peace and hope and joy to all the world. We decry this awful Judas ; but what could the world of sinful man have done 260 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. without his timely aid? We pray our prayers and count again our beads, pick some pretty flowers, and hasten out to climb the Mount of Olives, — a sightly place, with many walls, a chapel, too, and tower and handsome church. Jerusalem from here is seen at its best, — a very interesting view of all its walls and gates, its churches, mosques, and towers. At this the sunset hour the sight is very grand. Then we dropped again into the vale, entered into Virgin Mary's tomb, where are the tombs of Anna and Joachim. The chapel here is rather grand, belonging to the Greeks. You take a draught of water from the ancient well, then gain the upper world again by a long flight of spacious steps. The day was spent, the Garden journey done ; we climb the hill once more and come within the city's walls. To gain a new experience in our pilgrimage, we leave hotel and tent behind to seek monastic quarters. The Casa Nova being such a place, held by Franciscan monks, we knocked and gained admission. The portly friar welcomed us and showed us to our cells, well fitted up with beds and chairs and mats. A little farther on we went to the refectory, where we partook of such a dinner as we had not seen for weeks. For such as do not care for hotel life, this large, clean monastery is found much more agreeable. All is perfect quiet, — a place to read and think in. As to your faith or creed or politics, no questions will be asked. You live upon the best the land affords. The plain red wines are excellent, the service without fault. These monasteries, or hospices, are very numer- ous. At Casa Nova there are three classes of pilgrim enter- tainment — first, second, and third, — \vith dormitories for either class, quite independent of the others. The first is very good, for which you pay ordinary hotel rates ; the second you pay less for ; the third, — well, you may stay there thirty days with- out money or price. In fact, if you should choose to go away from either class and make no sign of paying, you would be bidden God-speed. At least they tell us so. We did n't try it; we were used too well. Leaving Casa Nova after three days' stay, the good brother manager gave us each a certificate of pilgrimage and good behavior there. Of this and kindred places in this Orient land we have only good words to say. Some are in cities, some on the dangerous mountain-passes, BIBLE LANDS. 26 1 some stand out in the desert sands, — the only means of shel- ter, the only defence from night and storm and hunger. Here are rest for the weary, food for the hungry, drink for such as thirst. Come as prince or pauper ; come in purple raiment or in rags ; come you as Christian, Jew, or infidel ; bring you gold or bring it not, — no question will be asked, no bills will be made out, no hint will be given of any debt ; but with " God bless you ! " you will go in peace. You may trav^el all over the East and find these places everywhere. You make a tour of Palestine and rest and eat in one every night. Some are very good indeed ; some not so good ; but all have welcome, shelter, food, and — shall we say it? — all are Catholic, — Greek, Latin, Armenian, — and all intent on doing good, giving rest to the weary, bread to the hungry, water in the desert places. Thank God for such ! The Greek has much to do with all the holy places ; has more hospice room, and the finest chapel in the sepulchral church ; hangs up more golden lamps than any other branch. In places where the regulation permits all these Catholic sects to worship, each hangs his own lamps and keeps them lighted, — a sort of title to those places. The Protestant has none. He comes and visits, — worships if you please ; may kiss the column, kiss the holy things, look on and see the service, even stay all night within the holy church ; but of real possessions, — chapels, lamps, or saindy bric-a-brac, — it may be safely said, I think, that he has none at all, at least none Jooked like his here or at Beth- lehem or at Nazareth. Now of these sacred places, these things so clearly pointed out, — these places of the Passion, where this one lived, where this or that was said or done or suffered, — what about them ? Fiction ! Created places, named and pointed out by priests and laymen, guides and other frauds. But who is to blame ? No one. They come of a demand, a want. Pilgrims have been coming here for fifteen hundred years. Each one came loaded to the muzzle with questions : where was this or that ? The want must be supplied. Even though you come here knowing well enough that not one place in twenty that will be pointed out has any touch of fact about it, yet you are a little better satisfied to be told where Adam was buried, where Abraham would slay his son, where Jesus was condemned to death, and 262 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. where he fell beneath the cross, and where the crucifixion was ; where are kings' and prophets' and Christ's and Mary's tombs ; these and no end of other spots you would have pointed out, and would feel rather blank were none such to be seen. The churches and people here, the guides and those who have the pilgrim trade, all have a real money interest in having these things ready made and right on hand to meet your interrogation points. The church sects vie with each other in filling these demands. To found a church or holy spot of any sort, a school or praying place, upon an ordinary site, where no uncommon thing had come to pass in Bible days, would be a bit of folly these saintly men would not be guilty of. The Greek Church has its sa- cred places ; the Latin, the Armenian, and Copt all have holy places that you '11 want to see ; all have these places, — all save Protestants. Though most of them are frauds, yet you are will- ing to be humbugged rather than not find what you ask for. Why humbug? Read the history of Jerusalem, — conquered, reconquered, burned, torn down a dozen times ; new Jerusalems built upon the stamped-down rubbish of preceding ones at least a dozen times ; the old streets lost, wiped out, and covered up ; new houses built fifty or a hundred times, on streets and sites that had no reference to former streets or sites ; the people driven off, kept centuries in bondage ; no records kept ; no places marked ; how in the name of all the saints and gods at once can sites be recognized? Impossible. Go ask the Latin Patriarch, an honest man, who has no heart for guile, — ask him, as our Latin lady did, if those things be really true ; and he will tell you, as he told her, that they are not ; that to know them were impossible. One place — the Calvary site, I think it was — he thought might be counted on ; but farther, with safety, none. This is in dispute ; but since disputing does no good at all, 't is better it should rest. Visions and miracles have developed several things, but sometimes two of the same kind, and these in different spots ; so there is but litde confidence in such. But still the pilgrims swarm here by thousands ; more of Greek Catholics than all the rest besides, — some say ten to one. The church at home provides much for their wants ; both church and state contribute to the cause ; so one may come BIBLE LANDS. 263 here and stay a month or two and return to Russian soil for less money than you paid for your hat and boots. The church supplies the places they must see. As with the Moslem, who visits Mecca as a rehgious duty, these pious pilgrims worship weeks here at Jerusalem and so-called sacred places round about. Jerusalem is not a place to hurry from, for partly sleeping all about its vales and streets and walls are old-time memories and thoughts that spring up, ghost-like, everywhere, refusing yet to rest. Before leaving the place, you must go to Omar's mosque and to the mosque of Aksa ; must see the ancient crypts that rest in the uncertain light beneath, and mount the high, thick walls that overhang the deep dark-tombed Jehosaphat, that lies between the city wall and Olivet. You see that rounded stone, part of an ancient column you would think, projecting outward from the wall just by the grand old mosques. It has a story. To this stone, the Moslems say, on resurrection day, a wire will be attached, — a single wire not larger than a hair. Across the deep black gorge, across Gethsemane, across to Olivet, will this wire pass. At this end, here upon this solid wall, in that last day when all the dead must rise and gather to be judged ac- cording to their doings as they have been recorded in the book of life, will great Mahomet sit. Over against him at the other end of the wire, on the Mount of Olives, will sit our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who with the chief of Mussulmans, will judge the assembled masses. The test, they say, is this : before the assembled millions, on this single wire, must each one pass. If he be truly good and fit to live in paradise for all eternity, his feet will tread the narrow bridge with perfect safety. Attendant angels from the upper realms, all poised on steady and tireless wing, will range themselves along on either side, and form there bright protecting parapets to guard the footsteps of the guiltless ones. Those who are not so good, or are not good at all, must pass by this same way, or must attempt to pass. They cannot. Weighed down with many a heavy sin, their feet much clogged with earthly wealth, their eyes bedim.med with Stygian smoke that rolls up from the jaws of hell that open wide beneath, they tread upon the filmy bridge, picking their uncertain steps. No close- packed rows of winged ones come to stay their tottering steps, and soon they waver, stagger ; down, down they go, straight to 264 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the darksome abyss where all the wicked go, where angels never go, into that realm of darkness, fire, and death, — the home of Lucifer. Such is the story of the mural stone that now projects from this old time-stained wall. Such is the Moslem story. Christians don't believe it ; they have a different way, somewhat explained, of reaching the same end. You have read it ; so we will go ahead and see the mosque. You can't get in without a permit ; you must be guarded by a Turk ; you must pay five francs' admission-fee ; you must put off your shoes, for all the place, to Moslem eyes and thought, is very holy ground. Not until within a few years past could any Christian enter here. Like the Meccan temple and the younger St. Sophia, it is a very sacred place. For did not Mahomet start from here to heaven to see the powers above, to see the prophets and the patriarchs who live above the skies, to make arrange- ments for his followers there? You say you don't believe it. Well, if you care to be convinced, stride across the marble thresh- old, pass within these lofty opened gates, come along the richly inlaid marble floor, approach this rough old stone encircled by a costly metal rail. Here is the stone ; Dome of the Rock is its name. Upon its spacious surface Abraham built his altar and piled the wood, while Isaac stood and looked ; and here the intent father drew his sharpened knife, placed one hand upon his wondering darling's head and pushed it back. The cold and keen-edged blade was in the other hand, uplifted and about to fall upon the youthful, blue-veined throat, when swift an angel swooped from heaven's high walls, and stayed the awful blow. Dost thou believe ? Would you have done as much ? This is Mount Moriah ; this stone is the crest and dome. From this did Mahomet mount on high. Just put your fingers there, you doubting one. Those are his footprints. Now look there. There is where Gabriel, chief of the angelic hosts, caught the stone and held it back lest it should mount to heaven with Mahomet. You see the footprints, Gabriel's finger-prints ; you see the very tongue with which this stone has talked. You must believe. Footprints of men and gods are often seen in stone. Buddha's you '11 see at Benares, — Adam's Peak ; Saint Paul's you '11 see at Puteoli ; and Christ's you '11 see at Mosque El Aksa and over there in Rome. A hundred millions do believe these things to be true ; why not you and I ? This stone is of most BIBLE LANDS. 26$ prodigious weight, some forty feet across, suspended in mid-air ! At least tlie Moslems tell you so, and every one believes ; for as it started on its heavenly way, and when it got about ten feet in air, did not the angel bid it stop? And stop it did, and there it rests without support, save that great power invisible. Hard to believe ? And so are many things. One must have faith. Not having that, where are you? We did not see under- neath the entire stone, nor did we make dispute with the attend- ant priests who showed us round ; we heard the statement and went on our way. It is a glorious house, this mosque, founded on the place where Solomon's Temple stood, beneath a lofty, airy, noble dome, upheld by columns of the rarest marbles. You will have to travel far and wide to see such costly monoliths as these. They say that some of these were in the ancient Temple, and you will be shown pearly marbles with quaintly intertwisted shafts, and capitals curiously carved, from the same illustrious fane ; and you would believe it so, for surely that grand Jewish shrine contained works of art most worthy to be preserved. The quarries of the world afford no fairer stones than such as we see here. The mosque is lofty, spacious, grand. No other building here ap- proaches it in substantial magnificence. Its marbles, colored glass, its pavements, metal work, its carpets, hangings, lamps, — all are excellent ; its arabesques are enchanting ; you move about from one choice piece to another, wishing your stay were hours instead of moments, to feast the more upon these rare gifts of nature and of art. From Omar's mosque you pass to that of El Aksa — "mosque of the golden-plated doors" — within the same enclosure, built at first for Christian worship by Emperor Justinian. Its lofty nave stands upon massive subterranean vaults, as do the acres of paved platform adjoining it. The columns are not handsome, and the Moslems have whitewashed all its decorations. Con- spicuous are many Koran texts graven here and there ; the walls are niched for ornaments and shrines, and round about are chapel stalls for prayer. Near the lofty pulpit sat a listening crowd of Moslem folks intent upon the preaching priest, who talked most earnestly. The day was our Sunday, which made it all the more interesting. The few w-ords we caught told our inferior under- standing of Allah and ]\Iahomet, as though it were a Christian 266 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. scene, and the minister were discoursing upon God and Christ. Near by you see the stone, which early pilgrims tell about, that bears the footprint of Our Lord ; and also near by those columns, close together, between which none in unlawful wed- lock can pass, and such as are unworthy to enter heaven can- not go between. Our party made no trial, — most of us are rather stout. The inner faces of these stones are somewhat worn away, showing that people not too small have had many an earnest struggle to " prove their title clear to mansions in the skies." We tried, without success, a similar pair at Cairo ; and having grown no smaller yet — or better either — we let the contest pass. Descending now, we pass into the crypt, containing some prayer chapels, also the real cradle of Christ. They tell you that the Blessed Virgin spent some days here after her presen- tation in the Temple. The vast substructures that support the outer court are called the stables of Solomon, but are probably all of Roman make ; surely not earlier. We climb into the upper air again, and from the city wall get fine views of Olivet, Geth- semane, and deep Jehosaphat, which means " God's judgment." Those rock-cut tombs in the deep valley down below are those of Zacharias, the same who was stoned for setting himself up as a prophet ; of Absalom, the pet son of David by his dashing Assyrian wife, and who made his father too much trouble ; and that of King Jehosaphat, who made it warm for idolaters. You would be glad to believe these things true ; but alas, Jehosaphat's tomb is no tomb at all, — only a solid mass of stone with pyrami- dal top ; and this and the others are all of Roman days. BIBLE LANDS. 26/ CHAPTER XVIII. BIBLE LANDS. Good-by to Jerusalem. — Our Cavalcade through Old Historic Lands. — Shiloh, " Place of Peace." — At Jacob's Well. — Sichem and Samaria. — The Tomb of John the Baptist. — On the Judaean Plains. — Nazareth. — Cana and Galilee. — Banias and Damascus. — Comparing Notes with a Village Sheik. — The Ruins of Baalbec. — Resting at Beirut. — The Best Way to Travel in the Holy Land. GOOD-BY, Jerusalem ; good-by to Bethlehem ; good-by, Jehosaphat and Hmnom vale. Our saddled steeds are at the door ; the palanquin and mules are here, — the madam's wheelless coach ; the sumpter mule has got his luncheon on ; and tents and kitchen, bed and board, have started from Damascus Gate, to take the road to Nazareth and Galilee, Baalbec and Beirut, to take a ship and sail away. Good-by to dirty streets and pious points, to David's house and Omar's mosque ; good-by to chapels, church, and shrine. We mount and ride away. The route is northward through the stony roads and fields. These stones are myriad. The like you never saw. Suppose you have some fields walled in with stones, the walls a thousand feet apart, some more and many less, and ten or twelve feet wide upon the top, sur- rounding heaps of stone. The so-called cultivated lands, so stonily framed, abound in smaller stone, — small rubble-stone, macadam, if you please, — as if it were hauled and spread upon the soil a good six inches deep. Set the plough to work, — these wooden, wood or iron pointed, single-handled ploughs, the long beam running to the straight pole they call a yoke. Run this thing about through the stone and soil, and mix them up. Then sow broadcast the seed in autumn time, and let it sprout amid the winter rain and fasten roots among the multitude of rock and scarcity of earth. Would you believe it? Next season gives a fair sort of crop. This stone is different from ours. In Yankee-land, where most of the vegetable mould is washed down from the hills, it leaves 268 A GIRDLE ROUiYD THE EARTH. the barren gravel without nutrition, and in it no grain and very little grass can grow. This stone is of a different kind, — vol- canic sort of tufa stuff, which, as it slowly rots away, becomes fat soil, none better in the world for raising fruit and grain. The best fruit-raising soil in the Italian states or in volcanic Malta is that which lies about Vesuvius' side and base, or has been made from pounded scoriae. But for this, these old Judsean hills would long have been a barren waste. Too many of them now have been washed off in the centuries that have passed, leaving only stone in their place, most barren, bleak, and verdureless, not even fit for grazing goats. But we are on our way through old historic lands, — along the ancient Roman road over which Vespasian, Titus, Hadrian, led their troops ; along which conquering Alexander came three centuries b. c. to take the Judtean capital, within whose temple, so they say, he worshipped, in deference to a dream he once had dreamed, the true and living God ; along which men have come and men have gone for many centuries and years. We pass now through the land where Samuel lived ; over on yon- der hill they show his tomb ; and over there is the old-time hill of Gaban, in the land of Saul, where Respa's sons were slain by David's order, to appease the anger of the living God ; where Respa stayed beside her sons, so crucified, from early harvest-time till rainfall came and water dropped upon them out of heaven ; and with the bones of Saul, and those of his own brother Jona- than, they buried here those of Respa's slain. And over there is Gibeon, a little to the west, yet not far off, where Joshua, who fought five kings in the evening of the day, constrained the Lord to stay the setting of the sun, that he might have daylight in which to whip the allied force. Here, too. King David met Isobeth's troops, in sight of where we pick our way along, when twelve champions from either side stood forth from out the ranks and fought each other furiously, — even to the death of all the twenty- four. This is mentioned as the original of the Kilkenny-cat story. And here the degraded Joab murdered Amasa, to keep him from being promoted to his place ; and riglit here Solomon, still later, burned alive a thousand wicked heathen, and asked God to clothe his murderous mind with wisdom from on high. It is overpow- ering, quite, to ride along, even in drizzling rain, among such rare historic scenes. BIBLE LANDS. 269 And close by here is Rama, where the woman Deborah, be- tween Rama town and Bethel, sat beneath a palm-tree and judged Israel. The palm-tree is no more ; the Israelites have given over the country to the Arabs ; the fountain is dried up, and all the land looks weary and worn-out. At Bethel — " temple of the sun " — the spot is shown where Mary and her spouse missed Jesus from the party of Nazarenes returning from Jerusalem, and turning back, found him discussing matters with priests within the Temple, and took him home with them. A handsome church was built here once, but time has levelled it. No Chris- tians live here now, only some tawny Arabs. But Bethel lives in history ; for here, they say, did Abraham tell his nephew Lot to take his share of cows and goats and sheep and go his way. You know their herdsmen had a quarrel that caused a dissolution of this earliest cattle-firm, — which goes a long way to show that cowboys then were just as bad as now. Here Jacob, fleeing from his much-wronged brother's wrath, lay down to rest, his pillow made of stone ; his bed, too, for that matter, for it would per- plex any fair-sized man to find a place round here where he might lie or pillow on anything else. The ladder that he saw, and the winged angels on its countless rungs, made up a glorious dream. Here, too, in after days, when he got rich in Laban's land and returned upon his long-delayed bridal tour, did Jacob build an altar to our God, and make an offering here ; -and here his good wife's nurse, Deborah, died, and here they buried her. Here Jeroboam raised on high a golden calf and made unto it offerings, which cost the wicked priests their lives, and brought upon himself a withered arm. And not far from here the forty saucy gamins were eaten up by hungry bears because they hooted at Elisha, and jeered at his bald head, when he was coming here from Jericho. But the temple of the golden calf is gone ; gone is the Crusade church once builded here ; gone are the altars and the old-time tombs ; gone, too, is Samuel's judgment seat. Left only are some pagans, some old sculptured building stone, the same old spring, and all the stone, and more, that Jacob rested on. We passed the historic Bethel region, and pushed on towards Ain Heremeyeh, the Robber's Spring, where we spent the first night out of Jerusalem on our northward way. Much of the country thtough which we pass is surely uninteresting, and the 2/0 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. roads — the paths I ought to say — are very bad indeed. Our outfit plods along and picks precarious footing over ways that never are repaired, and down the rocky beds of furious mountain torrents where now no water flows. Robber's Spring is a curi- ous, cosey place, down in a deep valley, with gushing springs and ruins of an ancient kahn. It was a perfect pocket. The bluffs on either side were very steep and high ; the outlets, right and left, walled in with transverse spurs restricting your horizon round about to a mile or two. A place like it you '11 seldom find, — so snugly protected from the winds, so watered, warm, and comfortable. We pass many rocky roads and villages and olive groves, where men are ploughing in the fields, as men have done no end of years. The rain sifts down an hour or two ; the clouds break open once again, and here we are by Shiloh, — home of the Hebrews many years before they owned Jerusalem ; place of the Covenantal Ark — the Shiloh — " place of peace." Here Joshua allotted the promised land ; here Hannah, wife of Elkanah, besought the Lord to grant to her a son. The prayer was heard ; the son was Samuel, and what he did you know. Reining outside the beaten stony path, we came unto these vvoful ruins. Stones were lying all about, and desolation was everywhere. A lonely, once fair sycamore, now blown down by the winds, rested its weary, leafless head upon the remnant ruin, — a well-built synagogue, perhaps, built up of rough-hewn stones. We bowed ourselves to save our heads, and entered in. The doors are gone. They once were double, one arched, one square. Within, amid the tumbled rocks, stands one roughly hewn column, supporting, as in the days of old, and before Samuel's day, the roof of this poor pile. Here, perhaps, rested the Ark of God, — that precious Ark in which was all the Hebrew faith and trust, a gift to them from God. The place is holy yet, but none come to protect it. Round about are random stone, some straggling weeds and briers : a scene most desolate. We picked our way down the steep hill, through the almost barren fields. The country round about is a bushy, barren waste, with only here and there a place to plough the earth and scratch in a litde seed. And this is the same Shiloh where the Covenant was kept more than three hundred years ! The whole town site, and suburbs all thrown in, is not worth a dollar. BIBLE LANDS. 2/1 We clamber down more hills, along more vales, and stumble round about among the rocks and rolling stone, and eat our lunch in sight of far-off Hermon. A glorious mount is Hermon, with silver crown of snow. A few hours more, and we come to Jacob's well. When Jacob came back home from Laban's country and brought his wife along, and lots of sheep and cattle, he took a fancy to this tract of land that is near to Sichem and at the very foot of Mount Gerizim, " desert mountain," which he bought for a hundred sheep. We went to see his well. The most of the authorities believe that this is the veritable well that Jacob dug upon the land he bought. He got the property cheap because it was not watered. The well is some seventy feet deep and is now useless. You climb a mound of rubbish, — what is left of a fine old Crusade Christian church that once stood there. The old granite columns and foundation stones are lying about ; and coming to an arched spot that once was the church's crypt or vaults, an Arab boy jumps down, and through a joint in the great flat stones that cover up the well, lets fall a pebble, which plashes into the unused waters many feet below. Here Christ met the Samaritan woman. Near by is Joseph's tomb ; not far from here the place where he was sold to go to Egypt ; right over there — ten minutes' walk from this well — his people laid his bones which they brought sorrowing home. Now this is Nablous — meaning Neapolis, "the new city." Sichem is its ancient name. Once of the Israelite, then the Samaritan, it is now ruled by the Turk. " By the rivers of Baby- lon there we sat down ; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion." The Jew went wrong. The Assyrian came and spoiled his land ; laid waste Jerusalem. The Jews were huddled in a drove like cattle and driven in a lot avt^ay to Assyria. The Assyrians re- peopled this promised land with strangers to the Jewish laws, their customs, and their creeds. In driving forth this people to Babylonish lands, some Jews were left behind, — those of the far- off country towns, those who were hidden in the mountain dens. These mingled with the stranger class that the conquerors sent in to possess the land, and a new race was formed, called the Samaritans. Samaria was their capital town, but they lived here in Sichem, owning the town and all the country round. The woman of Samaria who met Christ at the well, and asked him that pointed question which was answered so that the Christian 2/2 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. world has never tired of reading it and reflecting over it, was a Nablous girl, a woman who carried water here to drink and cook her food as girls and women do now. You like the stately, upright figure of these women. They stand erect ; the poorest of them tread the ground like queens, their drapery falling round their limbs in quiet, pliant folds. But they are not pretty. You like their gait, their independent, easy, normal pose, uncramped by fashion's stays or fashion's shoes or fashion's anything ; but come to see their face and eyes — well, they are only Arabs ; let them go their ways. The Jews came back from Babylon, — not those who went down there as captives ; but their children came and set themselves at work to build anew its walls, smooth down the rocky debris that defaced the place, mark out new streets, and gain new habitations. The Samaritans were there. They kindly offered help to the returning hosts from Babylon, to rebuild the walls and raise anew the temple. The Jew declined, refused the aid of any who were not purely of the seed of Abraham. So then and in after years the Jew and Samaritan were twain ; the latter a reproach, a heretic. So when the woman asked why Christ made the request, there was no lack of reason in her words or in his reply. So that is classic ground we tented on. We found our tents within an olive grove. The people gathered around. The wo- men came to bring us water from their wells, — those upright, gayly attired, tawny women ; others came with fish and eggs, and others came to look about, — men, women, boys, and girls, — to see the strangers' ways. They said that they were Christians ; but it made us sad to hear our dragomans warning us to look out for them or they would steal. Those bright-eyed lads and lovely girls, that they should be thieves we could hardly believe ; but we took precaution all the same. To spend the time ere dinner came, we went into the city. A tall and turbaned Samaritan came and asked us to his meet- ing-house. We went, and through such streets as you never saw, — through narrow streets whose rough-laid pavements, worn beneath so many unshod feet, were slippery as ice ; such narrow streets, arched-in overhead, long, crooked, treacherous, and full of human life. We went up old-time steps and crooked lanes, and came unto the only Samaritan church in Sichem. BIBLE LAXDS. 273 Approaching the door, we looked within the dingy church and on the matted floors, the low and whitewashed arches overhead, the tawdry altar, pulpit, screen, and all of tliat ; when the priest brought us the Bible, wound on rods from each end, the rods embellished with large golden knobs. This was the Pentateuch, — all they had of Bible, — and for a franc they then unrolled their volume. It dates, they said, from remote times, — in fact, was written by the prophet Aaron's grandson. Maybe it was ; it is surely very old. Then we went through the rather clean and slippery streets, where wheels have never rolled ; went to the markets ; saw the soaps they make of olive -oil, the goods they offer there for sale, the people's ways, and the manners of the streets ; and then went back to find our tents and eat our dinner there by candle-light. Samaria was on our route next day, — once a mighty city, capital of the Samaritans ; now but a poor place on the hill, with many lonely Roman columns standing round about that tell of temples long since passed away ; of theatres, now grass-grown, where the well-dressed listeners sat, and where actors said their parts ; of stadia, whose sanded track and graded tiers of seats have disappeared to give the plough and \ine a chance. These shafts have now a lonely look. Would they could speak and tell us of the story that they know, tell us of that night of revelry when haughty Herodias claimed the Baptist's head, for they surely saw it brought in bleeding on the tray ; saw much of Herod and his Roman master, the great Augustus ; saw many a prince and Roman officer who came here to the routs, the bloody contests at the arena games ; saw Ceesar's dauntless troops ; heard him and Herod plot to keep rebellious Jews in check. Saint John the Baptist's tomb is here within the church, — within the crypt beneath the ruined nave of that old Crusade church, built here seven hundred years ago. The Moslem and the Christian now preserve it for the revenue it brings. We pay some francs, and then pass down some twenty steps into the tomb below. Here they say the prophets Elisha and Abdias were laid, and close by them the murdered John. They tell you, too, that the hatred of this fearless man did not end with taking off his head, but that his tomb was violated, his bones burned to ashes, and scattered on the fields. But his tomb is here, his and the prophets' ; and just outside the present shabby iS 2/4 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. town, the time-worn columns stand that saw these men and heard what good they did ; but they '11 not tell you, for, like the martyred Baptist, their heads also are gone. Other spots claim the Baptist's resting-place ; in fact, despite of burned bones and scattered ashes, you will find much of his body over there in Italy ; and ladies travelling there have been too often vexed at being kept from the places where Saint John's remains are laid away. Samaria once was beautiful, — the home of wealth and pride and power ; the scene of many great events. The fields it looks down upon are broad and rich ; the Hermon range is far away in sight ; near by is Dothan, where his brethren sold the gayly coated Joseph to go south ; here Israel had its capi- tal seven hundred years before our Lord was born ; here idols stood and prophets told their fate ; here Saint Philip preached the new gospel ; and yet the Greek Church holds the Christian fort, and keeps the Moslem hosts at bay. That night we slept at Ain Jenen, on the outer limit of the great Esdraelon plain, having passed the fortress of rebellious Sanur and the Bethar ruins, lunched in the valley beneath the olive-trees, and helped to plough some soil. The native thought we fooled with him when, taking the single handle from his grasp, we pushed him off, and bade him drive his steers ahead. But his curiosity overcame him, and away we went. The ground was two thirds stone, — a fair macadam ; but the soil beneath was soft and rich, and with the wooden thing we did some clever work. The Arab farmer and his son were really astounded that the kawaga was so ty yib ketir, " very good indeed," at holding the plough. Seeing we were a natural farmer he was pleased, and told how rich was the soil he owned, how many sons he had, and what he raised upon his farm. We bantered with him for his plough ; failing in that, we priced his line-back steers, — yearlings they were, but very bright and true, for which he asked forty dollars. They were not dear, but we left them till we should come again. Jenin is where, the legends say, Christ healed a lot of lepers. It is not much of a place ; a good spring, good grass, but a cold camping spot, on the verge of glorious Esdraelon. For six long hours we rode across that ever-fertile plain, farmed every inch as far as the eye could reach, — ploughed, seeded, cropped for all the time that history knows, no telling how much more. BIBLE LANDS. 275 Manure was never used, nor has the land been irrigated ; and yet each season brings its abundant harvest. Every acre is stained with human blood. Richest and loveliest of all Judcean plains, reaching from the Jordan to the sea, its owners are envied, and ever on the watch for those who would come and take it to themselves. Here fought King Saul and lost his life, — he and his two sons. Here was Naboth's vineyard, where he was stoned because he would not sell it to the king ; here is the village of Jezarel, where from the window of her house fell Queen Jezebel and broke her jewelled neck ; here Joram came to get more health, and Judah's king came out one day to see how he got along ; here both were slain by Jehu, who right here caught King Ahab's seventy sons and had their heads cut off and piled in heaps before the gates of this old city, Jezarel, whose site we pass near by, where pock-marked women at the well draw water still and call for bakshish fearlessly. Here, too, we see another ruined place ; here Benhadad lost a hundred thousand men while fighting Ahab, and some thirty thousand more died beneath the falling city walls. Here came the men who fought with Gideon, — the men who lapped up water like dogs, and slew the Midianites. Here, too, Elisha raised from death to life again the good woman's son ; here David procured the woman Abisa when he was old and weak. Here on this plain Adam lived and told the sons of Seth what he remembered of the de- lights of Paradise ; and over there is the land where Cain took refuge after Abel's death, and where he was killed by Lamech ; here his descendants took their wives, and here they raised up giants. We pass by Gilboa mount ; the village of Nain, whereto came Christ and raised the widow's son to life ; the village of Endor, where slept in death the witch that Saul invoked to get his fortune told. Here, too, is glorious Tabor, — lonely moun- tain, tall and round and fair, — scene, some say, of the trans- figured Christ ; and here to its base came Bonaparte and slew one day — what for I do not know — some forty thousand men. And now we come to Nazareth. We scale a rugged moun- tain scarp that overlooks the famous plain we came across, — a thousand newly ploughed, fenceless, treeless, stoneless fields ; a thousand fine green tracts of winter wheat ; a thousand flocks of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats grazing leisurely. For countless ages fields of blood and grain ; for countless ages land of thrift 2/6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and spoil. Winding about among the almost roadless rocks, we turn a corner. Here is Nazareth, despised Nazareth, the mountain town where Joseph lived and used the plane and saw ; where Virgin Mary lived and wrought in flax and wool ; where Christ lived many years and grew to manhood's state ; whence he went forth to preach that all mankind could live ; went forth to fill his mission, bear the cross, and die on Calvary. We camped within the town, near by the Virgin Spring. About this spring, as when Mary brought her pitcher here, and the young boy Jesus came to quench his thirst, were gath- ered many girls, each with her water-jug upon her head, each dressed in flowing skirts of warmly tinted print, filling their ves- sels at the gushing spout, chatting and laughing, talking of vil- lage trifles, joking of their whims and loves, as they did so many years ago when Mary came to fill her vessel there, when Christ passed by to go to Cana's wedding feast, or on to green-shored Galilee. We went into the pretty church where mass was being said, where many little children knelt and kissed the floor ; went down the steps that lead to the spot where Mary sat at work within her house when the Angel Gabriel came to tell her of God's will concerning the Christ that was to come. The rocks are there, the native stone on which her house was built ; the house itself, they say, was picked up bodily just be- fore the impious INIoslem came, and was borne on angel wings to Torsato, by the Adriatic Sea, a. d. 1291, then to Recanto, then to Loretto, in Italy, where it stands to-day, almost as good as new, and to it good Latin pilgrims go as they have done some six hundred years. The kindly priest points out the ob- jects and places you want to see, — the very place where INlary sat when Gabriel came unbidden in ; the fragment of a column yet hangs above that sacred spot. The spot she sat upon all pious pilgrims kneel before and kiss, and mothers bring their prattling babies to see, then, often weeping, go away. You see the shop where Joseph fashioned beams and boards ; they showed us two of them, both made of stone, both cleanly white- washed, — chapels each for prayer. They showed us the huge stone table unto which Christ and his disciples came and supped after his resurrection from the dead. It was a solid mass of chalky stone, eleven and a half feet long, and nine and a half feet wide. BIBLE LANDS. 2'J'J Next morning we strike our tents and move away. The water women come to see us off; tlie matron who came in yesterday and browned our coffee, then beat it into powder in a brazen mortar, was there to gather gifts of coin ; the girls were clustered at the spring, chatting away as good girls will. The morn is fair and bright, and away we start for Cana and Galilee. The road is very bad. We pick our way among the rolling stones that show no moss ; pass Gath Hepher, where Jonah was born, and where one of his tombs is shown, — for he has several ; then come through thick-set cactus hedges, even unto Cana. The Greek priest takes a fee and opens up the room in which the wedding feast was served ; points out the place where Jesus stood ; points out the jar that was for wine, and the one that was for water. These jars are also in Cologne, and elsewhere ; but it is all right, — the more of them the better. On we ride, to Galilee; on past the Mount of the Beatitudes, — scene of the wondrous Sermon which you may read in Matthew, chapter fifth. It is not a mountain, but a very pretty hill, well clad in green, and near its base large herds of cattle grazed. From here you view the Sea of Galilee. Down the steep side- hill two thousand feet or more, amid the grazing lands and cultivated fields, we come within Tiberias's crumbling walls, and pitch our tents beneath the great round cracked Roman towers, in view of placid Galilee, near by Capernaum, where once was Peter's house ; near unto ruined INIagdala, whence came the Magdalenes ; before the spot where were so many fishes caught, and where the Saviour walked upon the restless wave. We sailed about upon its still, clear waters ; tramped among the rank Capernaum weeds to find the site of Peter's house, and camped again upon its shore. From Galilee — " the rolling sun " — the caravan moves on to Banias. The journey takes two days ; the way is like unto the ways of the wicked, — very bad. Some- times it goes through vales of green, sometimes along clear brooks and past cool gushing springs, but oftener by rough and rugged ways, where one should heed his footsteps lest he fall. These streams are from Mount Hermon. The evening air is charged with Hermon dew, the nights are chill, the mornings full of shiverings. These laughing rivulets, so fair and clear, haste on to fill the Sea of Galilee. While waiting there they 2/8 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. gain no stain, and leave the once clear Galilean pool as your pure children leave their homes. No sooner is it left than the waters take on worldly taint, gather mud, and all the distance to the sea of Death, down in the noisome vale where sinful Sodom stood, near by that spot where Mother Lot was turned to salt, they grow from bad to worse, and glide into the purga- torial sea a stream of liquid filth. There it is purified. The mud and filth are taken out ; the burning, resurrecting sun lifts it up ; it mounts on wings unseen, and forms aloft soft fleecy clouds that float in misty pictures through the upper air ; and at the dawn you find it glistening, diamond-bright, on every blade and leaf. You have seen foul water in gutters by the streets, so full of mud and stench that you might say it contained nothing that was pure. Next morn you pluck a lovely rose, and on its per- fumed petals see bright drops of flashing dew, lovelier far than regal gem. Observe it well ; for those most perfect aqueous gems yester morn made part of that same nauseous pool in which you saw no good. The resurrecting sun has made this change, wrought out this wondrous miracle. The dross is left behind ; the purity within it, which it could not kill, stands radiant in your sight. So, too, the soul that God has breathed into your mortal clay, and which no earthly sin can long con- taminate, shall at the end be raised aloft, in perfect, deathless radiance. In leaving Galilee, you almost quit the Holy Land. Not sorry are you, either ; for down in that deep-cut vale, where stood Saint Peter's fishing hut, and where Magdala's daughters lived in sin, down by that Jordan lake into which ran the bedevilled swine, lurks fell disease. Among its damps are pes- tilential fevers ; it is a most unwholesome spot. You say good- by with pleasure, mount, and ride away, glad that the lurking virus has not befouled your blood. The way is by the old bleak moor, by mountain paths and nomad Bedouin camps ; by Ain Malaha, " beauteous spring," where you alight and lunch ; by lively streams, along the long since worn-out Roman road, through mud and fields of wheat and maize, through rushing brooks and over Roman arches thrown across the streams, over the ruins of the old-time Dan, the northmost point of the Jud^an realm. There you come to Banias. All day has snow- capped Hermon been in view ; for two days you have seen his BIBLE LANDS. 279 gleaming head, and hoped at last to cross his footstool hills and reach the promised land, Damascus. We turned aside to look at Dan, place of the Judges ; but there is nothing there but a lonely-looking mound of rubbish. Near by grow grand old trees, and here is one of the upper Jordan's mighty springs. We dismount a moment, stretch out upon the rocks, and take a hearty drink of Jordan water at the fountain-head, — cool, fresh, and sweet as melted snows from Hermon's crest. The ride beyond is short, and soon we come to camp. Banias, — Pan of the Greeks, within whose mountain cave that god was long-time worshipped ; Cffisarea-Philippi of the Augus- tan days, when Palestine was held by Rome ; Neronias of Nero's dark career ; and now the old-time name asserts its sway, and Pan is here again, pronounced by the nativ^es " Ban-ias." The way we came was rough. The once rich fields and fruit-crowned heights are now gone to waste ; the grand old Roman road, that once passed this way, is difficult to find. We crossed a three- arched Roman bridge back there an hour ago, — a noble bridge. So well were its hewn and cemented arches made that all these nineteen hundred years of gnawing time and dashing stream have not torn them away. The road is fearful there as you approach, and as you leave it you find the great stone flags with which that people paved their roads have not worn out ; but go a hundred feet beyond, and all is desolation. The road is gone. Gone are its pavements, — the whole place so strewn with stone that your safe-stepping horse can hardly pick his way. Mighty men those Romans were. You see their roads and bridges everywhere ; their castles, kahns, and old-time works. They had some faults, like other men ; but blessings on people that build good roads upon the land and span the streams with solid bridges ! The Arab builds nothing, and repairs nothing that other men have built. When the Roman bridge wears out, the Arab lets it go. If a stone falls from the bridge, no repair is made ; if the road or wall or tower decays, they let it go ; they ford the stream as best they may, and pick their way among the rocks. They want but little here below, and are content with less. No one can tell when the city was begun, who built its walls, or who fashioned out the cave of Pan. We hear of all these 280 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. things and see the work of ruin here and there, but all is lost in darkness. We pitch our tents upon an old-time terrace of a spacious garden, in an orchard of most venerable olive-trees. Over against us, separated by an inwalled stream, is another spacious garden tract, with bits of walls and great foundation stone, perhaps of fountains, there among the trees, or where once some statues stood. The garden space is very large, and on beyond you hear the noise of rushing waters, which you push on to find. Forth from beneath the rocks in front of the great cave, and underneath the towering ledge in wliich are cut many a deep and shell-crowned niche, rushes a flood of purest water three hundred feet in width, or more. It is not a spring, but a subterranean river that finds sudden egress here, and forms at once a mighty stream that goes rushing down a single channel on a stony bed, — down through the noble garden, under- neath a low-arched Roman bridge, its surface filled with leaping waves, down the walled-in bed, down past the deep foundation walls of a once noble castle, down past the tall Saracen gate and underneath another bridge, through the grounds where noble gardens were and many a marble statue stood and many a mar- ble fountain played, — down, down to meet the waters of the springs of Dan, and form there the chief branch of the sacred Jordan, Jordan is not born of tiny springs and brooklets, like most other rivers, but it comes from underneath this rocky grot in a rush of mighty waters. Banias is dead. A few Arab huts are here, built of mud and stone used in the palaces in olden time. Here once were the noble summer resorts of the Roman emperor. Here were Ves- pasian's palaces and gardens. Here Titus spent some time, and in the arena here made captive Jews engage in gladiatorial fights. Here were races run in the great stadium, and to its theatres came famous men and women. Over the rushing spring great marble temples stood, and crowning the bold ledge above the cave of Pan another radiant many-columned temple flashed in the bright sunlight. Upon the mountain spur that overlooks the town stand the embattled walls of a most extensive castle, within whose ample space ten thousand troops might gather. Even now it is the best preserved of all the Roman castles. It was first built in the Phoenician days, before Greece or Rome was born ; then added to by other warlike nations. Now it is BIBLE LANDS. 28 1 a useless wreck. The country where it stands is now too poor to need protection. The men that piled its mighty walls have passed away ; the armies of the prehistoric days that gathered here, the allied armies of the Grecian states, the mighty legions of all-conquering Rome, — they have all been here and made most vigorous war ; the very maps their generals changed to suit themselves ; all these have come and gone, leaving what you see behind. Gone are the armies of the Greek ; long gone the Roman legions, waiting here to fall like mountain avalanche upon rebellious provinces ; gone are the arms, the enginery of war ; and in these silent courts where weary warriors slept and harnessed chariots waited for the fray, grow grass and weeds. The prowl- ing jackal burrows where the war-worn generals spread their mats, and eagles build their nests in the angles of her battlements. This place about the gardens where we tent gives melancholy thoughts. In prosperous Roman days no lovelier mountain spot was known. The scenery bold and picturesque, abundant springs, the finest lands and flowers and fruits, a mighty castle palace, temples, aqueducts, theatres where Athenian stars came to shine before the nobles gathered here, the arena, stadium, mighty walls and gates, — these with copious fountains, statues rare, in richly fruited, spacious gardens that rose bench on bench, all these, secure beneath the vigilance of yonder mighty fort, made up a place of untold excellence. In ages past Bacchus was worshipped here in temples by this rushing spring. Then came the Greek ; and Pan abode within this spacious cave, and lovely temples rose to do him honor, and here in his name were miracles performed. Then came the Roman ; and Pan suc- cumbed to Jupiter, yet greater temples rose ; the waters were made to contribute to beauty everywhere. For centuries this place was a paradise. Then came destruction. The empire fell ; earthquakes shook the temples down and made the famous cave a wreck. The palaces and pleasure halls and aqueducts and towers and walls went down beneath the touch of ruin. One gate, a Roman bridge or two, part of an aqueduct that gave fresh water to fountains, bath, and outer fields, and some foun- dation arches, pavements here and there, — these are left, as sad reminders of the glorious past. But the spring sends forth its wealth of sparkling v.-aters now as when CiEsar watched its wild career beneath the marble 282 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. bridge. Its melodies are now as then ; its offices are sadly less ; but every day it sprays the struggling garden flowers, and yields a freshness to these olive-trees. Striking our tents, our horses clamber down the terrace steep and through the broken aque- duct. Along the once smooth, now old pavement, worn and tossed, we pick our way ; over the still firm bridge that spans the noisy stream ; out among the dozen Arab hovels, all that is left of human habitation there ; up, up we mount along old roads and paths, benched-up gardens once, with fruit and olive groves ; up past old-time noble homes that overlooked the city Dan, and the far-off valley of the Hasbany ; up, up we climb the Hermon foothills, then past the untamed mountain Druses in their close-built villages, then on through stony ways to tent by hunter Nimrod's tomb, then on again to fair Damascus. Now we are done with Palestine. We now have passed by Dan, the northernmost point, and come to gentile lands. We have told you where to find primeval Adam's tomb, and where our Mother Eve was laid to rest ; we have tented near Abel's grave, and named the place where Abel died ; we have scoured the land of Abraham, — the place where Jacob dug his well and Joseph rests by Sichem's walls ; have named the place where Noah sleeps and Lot's wife was turned to salt ; where Jonah rests, and Samuel too, and many a noted Israelite has left his bones ; have told you of many a Christian place where Jesus and the apostles were, and treasured miracles were wrought ; we have taken you to Jordan's stream, and to the Sea of Galilee ; where Jacob slept on heaps of stone, and Joshua fought and won the land and wet the earth with blood of innocents ; have told you about Jerusalem and Bethany and Bethlehem. The land beyond is heathen land. I am glad of it, for a change, and long for Damascus, — city of the fruitful plain, — that was a city ere the days of Noah, went safely through the flood, and is a teeming city yet, with wall and tower and minaret. Would you go to Palestine? Stay at home and read your books. Would you see the places where the Jewish kings lived, the prophets and the Pharisees ? Buy photographs and travel otherwhere. In many things in life you expect frauds and tricks and devious ways of men and general moral hazard ; but you have an inner sort of thought that all is fair in Bible lands. Then hold your thought and cherish your belief, and come not BIBLE LANDS. 283 here to find that there is nothing too sacred on the earth for sons of Christian men to trade upon. You have behef to-day that Judaea was the real spot of all this bright and lovely earth that God most smiled upon. It gives you comfort to believe ; then come not here, lest you may doubt. Damascus defies history. The word is damesek, name of a heavy silken stuff for which the place was ever noted. It is older than Egyptian or biblical history, older than the days of Abraham, reaching farther back than even Moses knew. In the book of Genesis you find it named as already a well-known city. Its kings and rivers are spoken of at many places in the Holy Book, and in all other books relating to this Asia Minor land you find Damascus mentioned. Before the days of Baby- Ion there was a city here. Before the Jews knew Judaea, or heard of the Red Sea ; while yet Grecian places were a wilder- ness, and Rome was in the far future ; while Europe was a forest from end to end, and the solemn Sphinx was hidden in its desert mountain spur, — even then Damascus throve with trade, a sturdy city in a lovely plain. What of history it has you have upon your shelves ; it is most replete with pagan, Christian, Moslem interest. We came to it across an outstretched plain, where for more years than you have hairs the plough has been at work, and copious streams from Lebanon have fertilized the soil ; yet to this day the yearly crops are good ; the fig and date and olive tree abound in fruit, and grain grows here to make good bread. Here cattle thrive, and sheep and goats ; here wooden ploughs and wooden hoes and picks stir up the earth, and farmers' sons are farmers yet, and have no longings for the world beyond. We came upon Damascus suddenly. Coming along the dusty modern road to the brow of the higher table-land, all the glorious scene breaks into view at once. Closed in with hills on every side but one, and resting there outspread in great extent, you see Damascus and its miles and miles of surrounding gardens, — vision of the Moslem paradise : city walls, tapering minaret, domes in soft repose ; the roofs of many dwellings, palaces, and well-built bazaars ; the homes of wealth amid the lovely trees bursting into bloom, — the fig, the almond, apricot, and plum ; the cherry-tree and peach and pear and vine ; the orange and 284 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the lemon tree, pomegranate and the prune, all clustered here with silver poplars, sycamore, and cypress, watered by those noble streams that come laughing down from Lebanon. All through these city streets and among these gardens rare do these sweet waters stray, bursting forth in fountains fair in every house, in cooling draughts among the busy streets, the walled-in streams, or yet in the sparkling pool, pure as the streams that flow through Paradise. We come within its lowly walls, along its narrow lanes that trail between the high earth garden walls, wind on amid the blossomed trees, and breathe the perfumed air, and stop at last within the marble-flagged and fountained court of our long- sought hotel. It was once the home of a retired Damascene, with cosey court' and fountains cool, rooms with raised floors and rooms in curious arabesques, and this year changed into a grand hotel. We saw the city from the minaret next day, — its buildings, gardens, trees in vernal bloom, — and thought had we been taught that this was the chosen land on which Jehovah's warmest smile had fallen, instead of on Jerusalem, we could have had no doubt of it. And is it not yet possible that men ' have made mistakes and got their names of towns mixed up ? For surely on Jerusalem you find no traces of His smile, but rather frowns and signs of wrath. God smiles upon this city of the plain, but scowls on the Judsean one. He smiles here, and joyous brooks leap forth ; He smiles here, and the bright birds sing; He smiles here, and the roses bloom, the fruit-trees wave their incense-laden boughs, and all Nature praises Him. Not so in cold Jerusalem, — a stony heart, a scowling brow, with not a garden, rill, or bower, without a fountain or a flower, a place of wrath and bitterness. Damascus mosques are many. We cared for only one, — in part a lofty Christian church, upon whose bronze veneered doors you see the chalice figured yet ; you see the noble col- umns, many swinging lamps, the marble pavements covered with softest Oriental carpetry, with here and there fine bits of gold mosaic-work, fountains of pure water, pulpit, tomb of the great Saladin, and that of good Saint John. They say the Baptist's head was brought here by the early Christians and buried ; and in those days when Christians had this grand old church, their favorite oath — for Christians sometimes swear — was BIBLE LANDS. 285 "by the head of John;" and to this day the Arab swears by the head of " Yahia," — John. How the saint's head got here you need not try to know. Some say it was buried at Samaria, others at Ephesus. Near by the tomb of Saint John's head stands the Dome of Treasure, a small place into which the famous Christian books were piled and walled up by the conquering Khalid. Revering books, he would not have them burned ; yet not liking Christian books, as their teachings were contrary to the Koran, he walled them in with stone and brick that they might do no harm. Some day when Christian people resume power in this land, when the fierce Russian stakes his war-steeds in the minaret court, these stone and brick will yield to pick and bar, and some rare books may come to light again. We wander round and look at pillars fair and curious capital, and watch the sporting children at the spring ; read cufic writ- ing on the old tombstones, and see the women around the letter- writer's desk sending some word to husband, sweetheart, friend ; then climb the vulture minaret, and scan the curious walls, hear the stories the attendants tell, resume our boots, and go to the ba- zaars. We had been told tliat tradesmen here were sullen folks who would hardly look on Christian dogs, or offer such their wares ; but this is all romance. We found them in their little nooks of stores, sitting among their metals, silks, and provisions, sweets and pipes, — polite, attentive business men, who have a dozen prices, but do not push away a grain of Christian gold, — as anxious for your trade as though you were a Turk and billed for Paradise. The dogs you find here, — some fat, some lean, — all lying around, too lazy to move or bark or worry fleas. Only when hunger calls them out do they hunt the garbish heaps, and thus keep the city clean. There is many a city we have seen outside of pagan lands that needs such scavengers. We spent a day or two among the old Damascus streets, then took to our saddles again. There is an excellent carriage-road from here to Beirut, — five-and-forty miles away, — built by the French and operated by them ; but we were booked for Baalbec overland, across the rugged hills and over rocky steeps, — three tiresome days away. The first night out we camped by Abel's tomb, by the head-waters of the Barada, — the Abana of old Bible times, one of the streams that General Naaman bragged of. He was right, if there is anything in appearances. His 286 A GIRDLE HOUND THE EARTH. house is in Damascus yet, — a leper hospital. The village sheik came up and had a smoke, a drink of claret, and an evening chat with us. He told us of his village and his home, four wives and ten fine children, — all but nine of whom, he said, were sons. Comparing notes and photographs, he rather liked my hand, but bragged on his as winner of four wives to one, nine girls to two, — " Better for my tribe," he laughingly said, and lit a fresh cigar. " Tell me, O sheik, how many are there in your tribe, your village, — old and young, counting men and women? " " About six hundred," he replied. " How much tax do you pay the Government?" " About fifty-five thousand piastres every year." That is about two thousand five hundred dollars, a trifle less, — about four dollars per capita. " But if the Government should choose to make it higher, what would you do?" " The Government will not ; the people would make com- plaint. The tax has been the same since my father died, and the same before." " When you want some money to buy some sheep, what do you do?" " I go to Damascus and borrow it." " If you borrow five hundred piastres for a year, how much do you pay back when the year is up? " " Sometimes five hundred and fifty or sixty or seventy piastres. If man pay good, he pay less ; if he not so good, he pay more." " Who does the business for your tribe, — collects and pays the taxes, borrows money, and all that ? " " I do. I am sheik. The Government makes me pay ; I make my people pay." " If one of your tribe wants to borrow money, how does he get it?" " Oh, sometimes of a neighbor, sometimes of me. If I have not got it, I go and get it for him in Damascus. I pay, and then he pays me." " But if his neighbor has it or if you have it to lend, what rate of interest do you charge? " " About twelve per cent a year." " I thought the Koran forbade you to take interest? " BIBLE LANDS. 2^7 " Can't help. Some say they can't take interest ; but they don't have money to loan." " But don't all good Moslems do as the Koran says? " "Yes, about like Christians do with what their Bible says." Mankind are much alike. These Arab villages have a ding}% shabby look ; but around them you see show of fruit and rich pastures, fields of wheat where irrigation comes, plenty to eat, and flocks and herds around with every look of comfort. While striking our tents next morning, all the women of the village came to the buiying-ground near by, and gathered around a new-dug grave. They came with doleful wailing, in robes of gayly colored stuff, and fine, long scarfs of white. The real mourners gathered round the grave, and shrieking aloud, threw dirt upon their heads. Soon the men appeared bearing the corse, and the wailing increased, but ended w'hen the body was let down. Then some of the women moved away toward the village ; some loitered and trimmed the mounds where lay their dead, watered the flowers about the graves ; bent over, seemed to kiss the spot where slept in death the loved ones gone before. Who have love and hope ? Who have little ones and loved ones over there beyond the clouds and sun ? Only you, and you, who have been born again? The love of mother and of child is very strong in these poor pagans' hearts. Will God curse it, even though they have not heard of Jordan's wave, nor known a second birth ? • •••••• The way of the wanderer in Palestine is hard. The roads are rough, the stones are cruel there. ]\Iy governor fell from his stumbling horse one day, and found himself invalid for weeks. A faithful mule went down beneath his burden on the heartless rocks, and was a mule no more. The pelting snow came down in fitful gusts ; and when we hunted in Yafufeh vale for place to pitch our tents, there was no refuge from the mud and rain and sleet. But in a friendly village near by we took possession of the mayor's house, — his palace, if you please. He was away on business. The servants took us in and built a fire, where we dried our clothes and spread our beds. Our rooms were on the second floor; the tired mules and horses had the first. The floor between us and the tired beasts was made of some poplar poles, then some staves, all plastered over with mud mixed with 288 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. fine-cut straw. This, fully dried, makes a solid floor, not to be scrubbed, but matted, and quite good and warm. The flat roof above our heads was made in the same way, — the hardening mud rolled down with a stone roller when moistened by the rain. Around the split-wood fire that blazed in the corner, we sat and dried our clothes and enjoyed the Oriental luxury around us. The family cat came in to purr about our feet ; good Abu gave us excellent soups and meats ; we talked of castaways in far-off heathen lands, of friends in happy ignorance of all we had suffered here, counted our well-worn beads, smoked in peace our pipes, and went to sleep and dreams. But morning came, and such a morning ! The clouds leaked like a sieve. The dragoman was glum ; a mule had died ; we must not start, he said. But start we would, and start we did. Of course the rain was wet, but we reached Baalbec in four hours, and found fires and cushions and warm rooms in sight of the grandest temple ruins in this weary land. Warmed and cheered again, we were glad we came, glad of the drifting snow, with which we pelted Arabs. Baalbec ! " Wonder of past centuries, wonder of future gen- erations ! " We had read of it so many times, yet knew it not. I can tell you nothing of it, except this : that over twenty acres, perhaps more, are such old temple walls and such gigantic columns, capitals, cornices, as can be seen nowhere else in Asian lands. It has no satisfactory history, as to who built here first in this gigantic way ; but that the Roman wrought here last before the Arab came is plain to see. How far he got along, whether the vast work was ever completed, no one will ever know. The ground is strewn with columns ninety odd inches through and seventy-five feet high ; with carven capital and niched cornice work, the labor of a giant race ; with ddbris from these lofty walls and loftier roofs now here no more, — a mighty, time-defying ruin. You come unto it as one struck dumb. The lofty walls surround you. The prostrate columns lie about, just where the earthquake pitched them. Of these fifty-six are in place, some standing, some leaning, some tipping against the wall, just as they found themselves when the heaving earth stood still again. You take "a sample piece, — the one that lies there in the quarry just beyond the town. There are several in the buildings just about as large, but you can't see the whole of them ; BIBLE LANDS. 289 but of this one you can. It looks like a twenty-ton box car ; but a box car alongside this huge monolith would look about as large as a Saratoga trunk. You pace its length : it is like a city block. You look up : it is like the blank wall of a house. You can't really understand the thing. You try to lift one end, but don't succeed at all, so take its measure, — take it from the records. The length is seventy-one feet. Get up and pace that off. Its breadth is fourteen feet ; its width thirteen. Multiply these, and see how many cubic feet it has ; then weigh it : fifteen hundred tons, — stone enough to freight a hundred cars ; and yet they were going to carry this off bodily to the temple and lift it away up somewhere in the wall. Could n't do it? Nonsense ! In the wall we have just been looking at there are three smaller stones — sixty-four, sixty-three and a half, and sixty-two feet long, and thirteen feet the other way ; the width about the same. But these were carried there and lifted up where they lie, some five-and-twenty feet above the ground, each weighing about twelve hundred tons. You needn't think that any one shouldered them and took them there that way ; nor need you think, because our puny race don't do such things without the aid of steam or water force, that tlie Baal- bec builders could n't. They did ; and these huge stones were cut and polished with such exactness that a penknife blade would be too thick to pierce their joints. The Egyptians did such things ; so did the Romans ; but in no modern buildings do we find such feats of builders' skill. They claim for Egyptian stone-movers that they took a single piece from Sien to Siais that weighed six thousand tons ; but the stone is n't there to prove it, — only the fragments, after Cambyses broke it up, were figured on. Men do some great things in this age of ours ; but see their helps. Try them without their steam and hydraulic powers. The heathen was ahead, and keeps ahead, in feats of crude human strength. How came it that up there in Bukeia vale, penned in by mountains, shut out from the world — on the high road to nowhere — these men built such a gigantic structure ? A place of worship, it no doubt was. The sun and Jupiter were wor- shipped there in time of Roman strength ; before them the Greek worshipped there, perhaps ; or the Phoenfcian. The history is too meagre; no one knows. Rome had no such temple scheme, neither had Athens ; yet away out there beyond the sea some 19 290 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. forty miles, and at a point of no great place or city, nothing of renown so far as men know now, tliis great work was done. A little village struggles here, with its mulberry gardens, groves of poplar and of walnut trees, and its little streams from Ras al Ain, living largely from the revenues the temple ruin brings, and built upon an ancient graveyard in which the people delve to pull out bones of buried ones, and gather rings and trinkets from bones of men and women who had not stripped off their jewelry at their burial. Little did they think that men would come and rob the tombs in which they were to rest until the judgment day. Down beyond Tarsus the other day they struck a king's grave, — one who had been dead some several thousand years, maybe, — and on his head theyfound his crown, — agolden crownindeed, with precious stones set round, — which brought the finder two hundred dollars. Good find? Yes, rather; but what a savage thing for man to do ! For how many centuries hence will graves of English kings, our own presidents, or yours, be inviolate? There is only one escape, for men are much alike, and have no reverence for the some-time dead. The Hindu escapes it. He cremates, and flings the ashes in the river. No trifling with the scattered ashes of their dear dead. The rough-and-tumble work of our journey is done ; the road to the ship is only forty miles, smooth as a floor. We make it in two days, for at that rate our pack train moves. We tent at Maxa. Morning and all night a furious rain. The couple want a carriage. Fifty dollars is the price to send to Beirut, twenty miles away, and get one. Into saddles, out into the rain, up the mountain in the snow ; down the mountain, fifteen miles of lovely sunny scenery, zigzag, hard, smooth road ; and then we come to Beirut, go to our hotel, pull off" our wayworn clothes, and call our journey finished. What does it cost to suffer in Palestine ? You join a mob of pilgrims, such as the great contractors send out, and the thirty days will cost you thirty pounds. A party of four costs six pounds daily. Two pay a little more in proportion, — say eight dollars each a day. The extras are what you make them, — a dollar more perhaps each day for wine and bakshish. But the best way, after all, to do up Palestine, — as mentioned heretofore, — is to do it by your fire at home, in your arm-chair and with a good book or two. IN ASIA MINOR. 29 1 CHAPTER XIX. IN ASIA MINOR. Beirut, City of Alexander. — Missions and Colleges. — Coasting the Mediterranean. — Tripoli. — Alexandretta and Aleppo. — Tarsus, City of Saint Paul. — Mersina and Smyrna. — Ephesus and its Mighty Ruins. — The Isle of Rhodes. — Up the ^gean Sea. — The Turk- ish Dardanelles. WE come now to Beirut. The word means " a well." It was once a well of knowledge, — home of brave Saint George. Had you been here sixteen hundred years ago you would have found the most popular law school in the East, Augustus founded it and gave it in charge of men of the highest talents. He found the site a ruin, and erected good buildings, temples, theatres, and baths. Gladiatorial games were instituted here ; and when Titus had made it unusually hot for Jerusalem, he brought hither, as to other Roman towns along the coast, numerous captives, whom he compelled to fight each other in the arena for the amusement of the populace. The city has a noble site, — facing the sea, and gradually rising from the spa- cious harbor. The ascent continues here for many miles, and is rich in vines and orchards, and in mulberry-trees, which pro- duce annually a vast amount of silk cocoons, and bring great revenue. The population is largely Christians, and these have gradually displaced the Moslems. After the terrible massacre of the Christians some five-and-twenty years ago by Moslems and Druses at Damascus and in the smaller towns, many Christian people came from thence and settled here. The American Presbyterian Mission has been established here for more than fifty years, and operates through Syria from this centre, — having large printing works and hospitals. The Catholics, also, have large foundations here, with schools and colleges. The native Christians — Maronites, as they are called — are numerous here. They are a thrifty people ; among 292 A GIRDLE ROU.VD THE EARTH. them are merchants and manufacturers, who do large business and have branch houses in European business centres. Both CathoHcs and Presbyterians print here many books and tracts in English and Arabic, — making their own matrices and type, and to a large extent their paper, — and thus great leverage is used against the Moslem faith. This is not now regarded quite complacently by the Turkish Government, and it is moving to close the smaller schools along the coast and the interior, which action hints of troubles yet to come. But the work cannot be suppressed ; and though many schools have been shut up, no further overt acts have been perpetrated ; and the Turk knows now that another massacre will brinsr him swift destruction. He finds himself in straitened lines. He knows full well that every school makes Christians. He knows that some of his Arab people hke to get more thorough edu- cation than the Turk can give, which is almost none at all. He knows that every Christian convert makes him another natural enemy, — an enemy to his government, his social life, his ways of doing things. From his standpoint, he can scarcely be blamed for trying to break the toils with which he is finding himself enmeshed ; no wonder he would close, if he could, every Christian school within his realm. In a sense it is his only safety. In another sense it would seal his doom. The w'ork ' has gone too far. The Christian rules the great commercial world. The Christian gunboat holds the seas, the Christian cannon rules the land ; and to attempt to throttle Christian power would be suicide for Moslems. The Turk, so to speak, is in a bad way. He will shut up schools now and then at weaker points, but they will start again. His best remedy he will not take, — to found good schools himself, and use such means as Christians use. He dare not put into his ranks of war his Christian subjects, nor yet the pagan Druse. The Moslems only constitute his troops. And yet let us do him justice. We have many schools and mission points within his realm, and to these we send out large supplies. All these pass through his ports without a cent of revenue. No such concession is he bound to make ; but he does it, just the same. When the Turk brought goods to show at our Centennial Exhibition he had to pay duty on every dol- lar's worth. There is more good in Nazareth sometimes than IX ASIA MIXOR. 293 we are willing to admit ; and " the land of the Lord " is not ahvays the land of the golden rule. We sailed away from vigorous Beirut, Our steamer was a Russian vessel, engaged in the coasting trade ; so off we went to Tripoli, Alexandretta, Alersina, Rhodes, Smyrna, and Chios, and so on to Constantinople. At Tripoli they let us land, go through the bazaars, and look about, but the old crusader castle doors were shut against us. A tramway connects the city with the port, — a line built by the French. The freighting farther on is done by caravans ; so here meet the modern means of handling goods and those as old as Abraham. The freight car brought down fifty sacks of wheat from the city to the port. Those sacks would load twenty-five camels. That is progress, away out here in Asia Minor, where roads are being built out into rich valleys whose good wagon-roads and railroad-tracks will bring in the vast crops of wheat and other produce that often rots upon the field for want or cost of transportation. While this seems well and good, — this opening up of this fat land, — yet every bushel of grain that comes into port from these old drowsy lands stops another bushel from leaving America. The Arab gain is Yankee loss. Alexandretta, the ancient Iskanderum, our next stopping-place, is noted only for its unerring stupidity and for being the seaport of Aleppo, one of the chief cities of the Turkish Empire. Be- yond was Tarsus, city of Saint Paul, which we had planned to see, by taking a train at Mersina the next morning. The train was secured by telegraph, but the loutish officials held back the mail-bags some ten hours beyond our proper sailing-time, and thus prevented the excursion. Mersina is the western end of the proposed Euphrates railway, which is already being operated some forty miles by Mr. Dobbins, our consular agent there, who made our short stay very interesting. He told us that the Tar- sus we were thinking of, where Saint Paul went to school, was twenty feet at least beneath the present unimportant Tarsus ; that of the ancient ruins little was left save the tomb of Sardanapalus, which was very much out of repair, not having been much taken care of since the old tyrant was planted there, some twenty-eight hundred years ago. Tarsus was one of the three great universi- ties of the pagan world, ranking, among the Roman royalty, with those of Athens or Alexandria. And so it came that Paul was so 294 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. well educated and versed in all the languages, and gained his high position as a scholar. By trade he was a tent-maker, whereby he earned his daily bread here and later on at Ephesus. Tarsus was then connected with the sea, as now, by the river Cydnus, which floated ships. Now it is worthless as a means of transportation of any sort. It was up the Cydnus that Cleopatra came in her barge of state, and here she and Antony first met. The cold- watered Cydnus is crossed by a railroad bridge. When the pile- drivers set at work they could n't drive the timber down, and looking for the reason, found the earth below thickly paved with large flat stones that covered graves. The same were found upon the river-bed. The river had changed its course, and was run- ning above the well-cemented vaults of the old Tarsans. We move again, and on to Smyrna. The word means " myrrh." From the sea it looks like many another town, — with a well-built quay, along which tramways run ; hotels, stores, and places of amusement. Farther back the rough paved streets show some signs of slight antiquity ; but most things here are modern. A railway runs to Adana, passing Ephesus. Our boat would stay next day, so we went by rail to Ephesus, — most glorious of the Asia Minor cities eighteen hundred years ago ; most perfect ruin of a great city you will ever see. Here in a spacious harbor — now a noisome swamp — there floated many ships. Here Diana's noble temple stood, — most perfect temple of the day; one of the seven wonders of the world. And what a ruin ! The very ground where it was built on charcoal and wool foundations is twenty feet beneath the soil, where recendy the British Museum explorer discovered it. The earth has been removed, but nothing now is left but some foundation stone and here and there a column, a base, and worthless bit of sculptured marble. Once Ephesus was the glory of the world; now it is nothing. Its treasures are gone ; you look about now in Constantinople and in Italian, towns to find its sculptures and its noble columns ; you see ity marbles in the old Ephesian aqueduct that winds across the plain, itself a ruin, on the lofty piers of which the storks have nests ; you see its marbles in the later mosques — they now are ruins ; you see them in the huts and here and there, — these sad reminders of its glories past. Not only the Temple of Diana, but many another temple, was builded here. Here was the great stadium for games and races ; IN ASIA MIXOR. 295 here were the famous Odeon and the less and greater theatres ; here was the magnificent Agora, where the courts of law were held, and from whose judgment seat rushed Antony, one day, leaving a great orator's plea behind, to shake hands with Cleopatra, whom he had but recently met while holding court at Tarsus, and who was being borne that w^ay. Now the great buildings are heaps of worthless ruins ; the more modern fanes that Christians built when Ephesus was the head of the Christian church are all in ruin too. One stone alone I saw that spoke to me. Among a pile of rubbish, just beyond a ruined wall and gate, was a well-carved stone among the thorns and weeds. These were the ruins of Saint Luke's church, and on the stone within a sunken shield was carved a cross and bull, — a Latin cross with foliated ends ; a sturdy, well-carved bull, — emblems of the new religion and the old ; the foremost emblems of the Christian world. You may have seen prints from the early Chris- tian painting, where Saint John has an eagle's head, Saint Mark a lion's, Luke a bull's, and so on through the hst. As time wore on, these brutal emblems faded out and in time entirely disap- peared. These things were in a spirit of compromise between the relidons, — much the same as Christian missionaries in China wear Chinese garb and pigtails ; or Maronite Catholics of to-day are permitted to have wives, while other Latins cannot. Ephesus was one of the seven apocalyptic churches, — the cap- stone of them all. Saint John came here on his release from volcanic Patmos. His church is the best preserved of all, and this because it became a mosque. The Moslems built unto it a new facade, and made it their principal Ephesian temple, as the famous Christian church of St. Sophia at Constantinople is the chief mosque there. The Pantheon in Rome was saved to us in the same way, and became in early times a Christian church. To-day there is next to nothing Christian at Ephesus, though John preached here, and Paul and Timothy. And here too came the Vircfin ^Llrv — so the historv runs — to live with the beloved disciple John, and here she was buried, even though they show her rather gorgeous tomb near Gethsemane. Her tomb brought myriad pilgrims here, and brought to Ephesus great revenue ; but when Ephesus declined, three hundred years later on, the priests at Jerusalem decided that she had not been entombed at Ephesus at all. Here, too, — for so the legend runs, — came 296 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Mary Magdalene, who was buried here near Saint John's church, although her other tomb is near Marseilles in France. It makes no difference what you think, for this, like other early Chris- tian legends, will never be decided. The tomb of Timothy and prison of Saint Paul were also here ; the latter stands upon the hill ; the place where he lived and made his bread by making sails was near the great stone warehouse which now stands by the old-time wharf. We rode about an hour or two among this ruined mass, then came back to a Greek's house, where we left our horses, and got a lunch, and came away as we went. It is a spot well worth our seeing. Once a most sumptuous place, abounding in great wealth ; a place of most vigorous pagan and afterwards of Chris- tian worship ; place of learning, wealth, and power, — now a most perfect wreck ; most ruined place the world affords. Baalbec, PalmjTa, Thebes, once were great, now nothing ; but something yet is left of them. Of this place — best of all of them — there is almost nothing. Saint Paul, you may know (Acts xix.), left here in something of a hurry ; and not far off he might have turned and seen a most glorious architectural vision, — many temple columns, roofs, noble theatres, the great Agora's columns, walls, and winged pinnacles ; the gleam of marble, gold, and bronze ; the harbor filled with ships, and mile on mile of battle- mented walls, bright fountains, towers, gates, the prison where he lay in chains. We poor pilgrims turned and saw nothing but incongruous desolation. Temples, stadia, towers, were gone ; gone were the walls and gilded gods ; gone fountains, statues, churches, ships, and all ; we saw nothing but a woful wreck. The ship sailed on that night. Smyrna soon lay behind. Next day we came to Rhodes, — a noble island, from which we have a State named. It was a smart port in its time, noted for its pub- lic edifices. That time has gone. You have heard of its three thousand statues ; its colossal one that bestrode her harbor entrance. It was one of the world's seven wonders. But, like the one at Ephesus, it is gone. A vicious earthquake tore it down, as it did many Ephesian things. But it was n't much of a statue after all, — only one hundred and five feet high, which rather spoils the story about its striding the harbor entrance at such a height that masted ships could enter there. The squatting Buddha statues of Japan would be much taller if they would IN ASIA MINOR. 297 Stand up. Vastest of the ancient images is the broken Ramsean statue on the Theban desert plain, a puzzle to the world. Vaster than the Rhodian one that wondrous figure out on the Doras plains, whose brazen forehead burned with the lustre of seven times heated furnaces, outshining all the sacrificial fires of Baal's altars, and dimming the torches of Mylitta's festivals. Greater yet than all of these is the one that stands at New York harbor, whose pedestal is higher than the masts of ships ; and the torch she holds aloft is almost as high as the crest of the great pyra- mid. But Rhodes was a little island state, and did some excellent things. Our sliip now passes Carian Halicarnassus ruins, birthplace of Herodotus, father of history, — a noble, many-templed town that faced this most lovely sea, gemmed with islands far and near. Here, too, once stood another of the world's seven classic wonders, — that wondrous marble tomb that the sister-queen Artemisia built over her husband-brother Mausolus ; of purest Parian, tasking the skill of Philetus the architect, the sculptors Scopas, Bryanis, and Timotheus, — a glorious pillared pile, the heads of whose bronze chariot horses were sevenscore feet above the earth. Won- derful region, having three of the seven wonders mentioned just above. Two more were not far distant, — the Olympian Jupiter, who stood almost in sight of where I sat ; and the Pharos of Alex- andria, — most ambitious architectural feat the world has ever seen, whose light shone out upon the sea three hundred miles away. Farthest away of all the seven were the Babylonish hang- ing gardens, built by a king to cheer his mountain bride. A wondrous seven, — two tombs, two statues, one temple, one gar- den, and a hght- house. Now every one is gone from off the earth, save one, — the time-defying pyramid ; all the rest were baubles, played with by earthquakes, and toppled down. The pyramid, whose head was sheened by centuries of suns before the na- tions were born that built the others, yet looks down in scorn upon earth's wonders, thrones and kings and monuments, chat- ting with his attentive neighbor, the ever serious Sphinx, won- dering what temporary trash will next be built. We sailed on through this lovely island sea, once the home of gods and men, — the dreamy ocean land where Neptune trained his fiery colts, — and so came to Kos. Here was born the famed Greek master, Apelles, whose painted fruit the birds would come 298 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and peck at ; here Hippocrates was born ; here dwelt the sons of Esculapius ; here wrought Alcibiades to build up mighty walls and towers ; and hence came that rare wine of Kos kings held in great repute. It is a lovely island yet, adorned with villages and orange groves and vines. The day began to fade as we skirted the low-browed isle of Patmos, where Saint John long lived in banishment and the rev- elation was written down. It was Domitian, or some intolerant Roman ruler, who sent him here because he preached an un- usual gospel, — was of another faith, you know. Well, it was n't strange. There are Domitians living even now who consign no end of folks to Patmos, or a warmer place, who don't believe with them. There is a grotto over there, half way between the town and port, where John conversed with angels and thought and wrote. There is a chapel there where lamps are still kept alight, and pious monks will point out the very crevices through which the heavenly revelations came in voices " like the sound of a trumpet," — crevices severely similar to those through which the inspiration came to listening Delphian oracles before Saint John's time and after. But our day was blending into night, and we had no time to verify the statements made by the spectacled professor, so we lighted fires on the shaded deck, and talked more wisdom than we knew of things unseen. The morning sun shone down on Dardanelles, as right and left the Turkish batteries frowned and gave out hints of horrid war. So near to Patmos and to Ephesus ; not far from Bethle- hem and place of that wondrous Sermon on the Mount which echoes yet in countless ears ; not far from Olivet and Calvary, — and yet — and yet these cursed means of war. The vicious steel that thirsts for brother's blood, instead of lessening, multiplies. The Hon is here yet, the lamb must keep away. Good men preach, and while they tell of peace and faith, black-throated cannon boom ; the wounded call on God, and die ; and faith and love and even all "good-will to men " are deeply veiled in sulphurous smoke. " How long, O Lord, how long?" CONSTANTINOPLE. 299 CHAPTER XX. CONSTANTINOPLE. The City of Constantine. — The Fairest Scene on Earth. — The Turkish Custom-House. — The Dogs of Stamboul. — Turkish Merchants and Bazaars. — The Unspeakable Turk at Home. — Boating in the Bos- phorus. — Sunday in Constantinople. — The Sultan goes to Prayer. — A Splendid Pageantry. — The Mosque of St. Sophia. — A Temple of Magnificence. — Visit to Robert College. — A Spot of Historic Memo- ries. — Among the Howling Dervishes. — The Most Interesting City in the World. CONSTANTINOPLE ! City of Constantine ! Constantine, the Christian-pagan emperor of Rome, Briton-born, wor- shipper of the sun. Rome was an unhealthy place two thousand years ago, as now. Its rulers spent but little time within its walls. It had no harbor, save at Ostia. Its navy lay at various ports, preferring Baice, where there was no end of temples and palaces, sibyls' caves and baths and mansions. Constantine was a politician who brooked no opposition, present or possible. He was a Caesar, and must retain the mastery of the world. He was a murderer, with none too near or dear to stay his murderous hand. Christianity had become a great and growing power. It grew among the rabble, and forced its way into palaces. It had honeycombed all Roman pagandom. Stamping out with fire and sword ; giving Christ's followers to the gibbet, the arena, the cross, or the stake ; boiling them in oil, — all served but to increase their numbers, powers, and faith. They marched to martyrdom with firm step ; faced persecution with a patient smile ; deified no living man, but put their trust in God and dared to do His will. Constantine saw in these people a mighty power. He knew that Rome must meet this element half way, or be swept down in time by its overwhelming force. He knew his army well, — knew that it was filled with Christian thought and faith, and that it would support him if he placed the cross among his eagles. He 300 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. did so. He acknowledged the power of Christ, but would not be baptized. Not until his latest hours would he accept that ordinance, but kept his faith with Christians and with those who knelt unto the sun as well. The Christian power was satisfied ; so, too, was that of pagandom. The Christian pardoned all his sins, while the priests of Jupiter were allowed to live and work. But Rome was not his home, and really never was. It was a place of no natural strength ; it had no room for ships of war or trade, and was filled with pagan influences and party bicker- ing. So Constantine, far-seeing man, who knew Byzantium and marked its natural advantages, removed his capital there in the year 330 a. d. Building was actively begun. Palaces, law courts, and temples grew as if by magic. People were imported to swell its tide, — some from Rome, more from other points. As Old Rome decayed. New Rome gained in power. For eleven hundred and twenty-three years Constantinople was a seat of empire. Long after Athens was cast down ; long after Rome attracted men ; through the dark ages, — while most of Europe was yet barbarian, — the lamps of literature were kept somewhat aglow in the city of Constantine. We came here through the Dardanelles, arriving in the morn- ing sunshine. No pen can well depict the glory of the view, for on the earth's broad face I know no fairer scene than this. Venice rising from the sea ; Naples's amphitheatre of palaces reflected in her gorgeous bay ; Genoa or Buenos Ayres, — all are beauteous gems, but all fade before this vision fair of paradise. The curious old battlemented walls, the confused terraced roofs, the palaces in marble rows along the water front, towers, gilded tips of lofty minarets, and noble mosques with clustered domes, the cypress groves and arsenals, and over all the soft blue sky, — there is no sight so fair in all the world beside. On quitting the ship your baggage goes to the custom-house in one small boat, while you are taken to the passport office in another. The officials take your papers and scan them, take some money from your hand, and pass your papers back. They care very little about your papers, but care much about your money. You give them money, not as a bribe, of course, but as a remuneration for having troubled them so early in the day. Then you go to the customs place to find your baggage. It is already there. You may ha\'e nothing contraband, but your CONST A NTINOPLE. 3 O I saying so makes no difference, for a Turk never takes a Chris- tian's word, even in open court. The officer does not want to see your stuff; he really does n't care what your trunks contain, or whether the contents are dutiable or not. He is in no hurry. You are. So you assume that you should pay some sort of duty on your stuff, and put some coin in two or three men's hands that do not hesitate to take it, but slide it uncounted into a deep pocket, and you pick up your trunks and go your way. So the farce goes on, as it has gone on for many a score of years. The Government is not defrauded, for there is no Turkish Government, — only a sort of bakshish mob. You go to your hotel. Your baggage goes there on the backs of men w^io handle your great trunks with perfect ease. With a cushion on the back to rest the trunk upon, and a bit of rope around the forehead, off they go up the rough paved steeps with steady tread. There is a single road that leads up to the hotel street, — Grand Rue de Pera, — but that is used mainly for car- riages. The hotels here are only fair, but they are very dear. The traveller has enough to eat, such as it is, and good beds to sleep on, but pays as though he lived in every luxury. Stamboul is unique. The word itself is curious, — is not a corrupted form of Constantinopolis, as is supposed, but of the Greek es tan polls, — a phrase like " going to town." The guide- books tell you that the beauty of the city is all outside and noth- ing of it within. Without, of course, there are no end of lovely sights, but there are also pleasant spots within : bright gardens, palaces and mosques, towers and minarets. There are cosey nooks and charming prospects out across the clear blue waters dotted over with ships and sails and tiny caique boats. Most of the streets are narrow, crooked, roughly paved, and dirty. The streets are {q.\^ where one may safely drive, yet there are many vehicles here, and the horses are not bad. At street-corners stand saddled nags for hire, and grooms to attend you where you will. The drawback is in too general ignorance of the lan- guage ; but you must have a dragoman to help you out in that. Then, well-equipped, you will take in no end of sights and sounds at leisure. The dogs of Stamboul ! They are here in force. They have their mission and seem to know it. When not hunting for gar- bage, they lie around and sleep, regardless of everything. They 302 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. are not so poor and rough of coat as writers sometime tell, but rather jolly, knowing whelps, that have an eye for business, and are mostly "yaller." They have their own ranches to themselves. A half dozen curs, or so, own so much of a street — forty rods, perhaps, — and woe to any trespasser that dares to hunt a crumb on their preserves. If a stranger-dog appears at either end, the alarm is sounded straight. Every sleeper jumps up with a business snap, and each feeder quits his lunch, and in a bunch they make a dash upon the intruder. If he retreats, all right. If he lingers too long, it will take him some time to count the holes in his skin. I don't despise these dogs ; if it were not for them Stamboul would have ten smells where it now has but nine. The air of injured innocence they assume when disturbed is amusing. Should you innocently tread on the too convenient tail of one as you find him in your path, he will sit bolt upright, stand his nose straight up into the air, open wide his spacious mouth, and wail as though his heart would break. The other dogs don't take stock in their comrade's noisy rubbish, but if he makes too long a row, some Turk gives him a kick, and he lies down for another nap. Hydrophobia is almost unknown among these outcasts. The mosques of Constantinople are really beautiful. Their tall, slim, tapering minarets and clustered, bulbous domes are scattered everywhere. You look for Christian towers and steeples. You will not find them. There are many Christians here, mainly Greeks, but they make no show of towers or spires. There are churches here, but you would not know them as you pass them by, so identified are they with business buildings. The Turk has little liking for Christian things, and wants Christian churches out of sight. The bazaars are extensive, and stocked with goods from all the world ; but the merchants of Stamboul are not the pleasant men you find in the Damascus stores or down in Cairo. You may be able to get what you want, and at a fair price, providing your patience holds out ; but they don't seem to care whether you patronize them or not. These Turks don't like Christians alive in any shape. They seem to have a grudge toward them. They hiss at Christians on the street, and greet them with insult- ing words. Meeting a soldier on the street to-day, he addressed me with : — CONSTANTINOPLE. 303 " You are English? " " No," I answered ; " American." " Pardon — you are very good. I hate the English." "What for?" I asked. "They want to govern us," he said, "and they had better mind their own affairs." But they will not. The mill is grinding, — slow, perhaps, but fine, — and the Turk will have to go. Change he cannot, of his own accord, and Turk he will ever be until he is not a Mos- lem. He has no common thought with Christians, in language, art, domestic life, or business ways. When he came here and took this place he murdered Christians right and left, and would now if he dared. His life is full of rottenness, deceit, and dev- iltry. There is no government ; the people speak of state affairs in bated breath ; and if you question them too close, even those who stand around and have no part in what is said will hurry away, not daring to listen, lest they might be called upon to tell. Spies lurk everywhere : the very walls have ears. The press is muzzled, and when you come ashore your every book is taken and sent away for an expert to read. Tupper's poems, Zola's novels, Murray's guides, Barnes's Notes, or Baxter's "The Saint's Rest," — anything thus full of life and fun is suppressed as unsafe. If any of you mean to come this way, lay in a lot of Patent Office reports, — something that will give these fellows a full dose. There is nothing the matter with this country save its religion. The Moslem has nothing in common with the Christian ; he can't like him, can't work with him, would n't have him about an hour if he could prevent it, and has no place in Paradise for him hereafter. The Christian flatters himself that he is a power ; that he is somebody's "free moral agent," and can run his agency to suit himself, whether the celestial powers like it or not. The Moslem has no agency of the sort, — free, moral, or otherwise. The Christian says, " I could have prevented this or that ; I could have done it." The Turk says, " Kismet," — it is fate ; no power on earth could have changed anything that has happened. The Christian admits God's omniscience, but the admission is with his breath ; with acts, never. The IMoslem admits this omniscience, and lives by the belief. The Christian is impelled by his " agency ; " the Moslem has none; he stag- nates. It is a bad religion for any country, having no push and 304 A GIRDLE HOUND THE EARTH. no responsibility. Its votaries cannot succeed in the long-run. It is too much faith, and too little work. The boating here is delicious. If you have a good map be- fore you, you can catch at once the wonderful contour, — Seraglio (harem) Point ; the gleaming Golden Horn, dividing Stamboul from Pera ; Galata, fringed with city fronts and vil- lages, and ending in a river, — " the sweet waters of Europe." To the right pass Trophane, and then from the Marmora into the Bosphorus, — that deep, narrow, rapid strait that connects Marmora Sea with the Black Sea. This strait, on one side, for twenty miles or so, fairly gleams with palaces of sultans, princes, potentates, legations, ministers, and merchant princes. These and the old-time defences, the gardens sloping down from the bluff behind, the jaunty villages and lovely cypress groves, make a picture of surpassing beauty, a dream of Oriental splendor, nowhere else so bright and fair. On the other shore lie many villages and pretty palaces looking over from the Asian side, tall green bluffs and gardens and groves, away down to the old town of Scutari, the Asian part of Stamboul, with its endless breadth of cemeteries. From point to point you glide about in steamer or caiejue. No matter where you turn, whether to tower-crowned Pera or minareted Stamboul, up the wending of the Golden Horn or out toward the Olympus Mount in the bright distance, all is picturesque, — a panoramic dream of Paradise. Moslems bury their dead. The cemeteries are extensive, and bristle with tombstones until there seems no room for any more. Some of these stones relate the virtues of the dead with as little regard for fact as Christians sometimes have, as though the statements were a certificate of character to be used on the judgment day. These grave-fields are planted thick with cypress-trees, whose exuding gum, it is supposed, counteracts the graveyard miasma. The English cemetery is also there by Scutari, a lovely stretch of land upon the indented shores of Marmora, where, round a noble monument, many a brave lad sleeps in peace, — a lovely spot, with many a nameless verdured mound, many a bay and laurel tree, and many a sweet forget- me-not. Sundays come in Constantinople as in other lands, three of them every week, — Moslem, Jew, and Christian ; Friday, Sab- bath-day, and Sunday. These differing forms of faith adore the CONSTANTINOPLE. 305 one living God, but differ as to days. On Friday many Moslem stores are closed, and the bazaars are rather dull ; on Sabbath-day the Jews close up, but they being few comparatively, the business tide flows on ; on Sunday many Christian stores are closed, but Moslem, Hebrew, and too many Christian shops are in full blast of trade and noise ; the steamers and horse-cars and small boats ply as they do every day. Friday brings an event. The Sultan goes to mosque for prayers. You know, of course, that the mosques are open every day, and, as with Catholic churches everywhere, you never enter in without finding more or less of worshippers. But on Friday the Sultan rides forth in royal state to say his regal prayers. Taking a carriage, you go forth to see the mighty Moslem prince. You drive out in sight of his palace home upon the bluff", on the Pera side ; and in a crush of coaches, carriages, and hacks, among Christians, Turks, and a motley crowd on foot, you stop and wait his royal progress to his mosque. The royal troops are out in force, with banners, bands, and glittering arms ; troop after troop of foot and horse, with uniforms aglint with gold, and horsemen hurrying to and fro to make a show and carry orders to the troops and mosque, that all may be in proper state when the Sultan shall please to come. First are the swarthy Nubian guards, in black and gold, with shouldered battle-axe ; then brazen bands and troops on foot ; then bands of music ; troops of gayly saddled horse rush through lines of picket guards ; then comes the Sultan's mother's coach, hedged in with eunuchs, prancing steeds, and men-at-arms ; she scatters money near and far. Then come the fierce Albanian guards, armed to the teeth and led by bands ; more dashing steeds and gilded coaches, the relatives and Sultan's ministers. An hour of rush and gleam of arms, and then a lull. Why doesn't he come along? Nobody knows when he will come. The single horsemen come and go ; the vast crowd becomes vaster, more closely packed ; the grounds around are packed with folks ; the streets are crammed with carriages. " Why don't the fellow come? " At last a horseman dashes down the road ; the Sultan has started ; the muezzins from the minarets now shout out the hour for prayer. Now comes a lumbering water-cart to lay the rising dust ; then a golden music band, with horse guards, — 20 305 A GIRDLE HOUND THE EARTH. glorious steeds, some iron-gray, some noble bays ; then a troop of gleaming white, the whole caparisoned in gold, — the bits, the bridles, saddle-cloths; the stirrups, cruppers, girths, and reins ; the riders' uniforms and scabbards and halters, all gleam in the bright sun, drawn swords flashing in the air, — a mass of magnificence. The Sultan now comes dashing on. He drives to-day ; some- times he rides. The carriage is a victoria, with the top put up. He sits on the back seat alone, faced by two generals, — a puny sort of man, with care-worn face, shrinking in his seat and greet- ing no one. Behind him rolls his empty coach, with two grand grays — the horses, drivers, servants, coach, gleaming with bur- nished gold. This is to return in. His heralding band of forty golden instruments plays half-barbaric notes. No shouts arise, no word is said, no hats are raised, no orders given. The bright red fezes fill the air ; the gleaming crescents mock the sun ; the golden standards name the state ; green-turbaned troops are here and there ; the glittering cortt^ge sweeps toward the mosque through lines of armed men, — all that this poor man may go down to church to say his prayers ! The show is done. The turbaned Sultan, emperor of all the Moslem horde, prostrate in glittering state, adores the Lord. Near bv, within a sombre nook, a broken-hearted mother hum- bly bows and prays to God for mercy, — bread. To which, say you, will He incHne His head? It is Sunday. Suppose we go to church, — in arm-chairs if you please ; full many go that way. Suppose we go to St. Sophia. Who was Saint Sophia, that she should have a church named after her, like Saint Peter, Mark, or Luke, or John ? The words mean neither woman nor man ; they mean " Eternal Wisdom." It is a good name, — the one Constantine gave this church fifteen hundred and sixty-one years ago, the date of its foundation stone. This present edifice is not the one that this first Christian Caesar built, for that one perished ; but this one was raised on the same site by Emperor Justinian, A.D. 538, or thirteen hundred and forty-eight years ago. The pile is very venerable ; older, almost, than any unchanged Chris- tian church in Rome or elsewhere. It stands out on Seraglio Point, near by the old-time Hippodrome and the thousand- columned cistern, the central place of the Christian city, now CONSTANTINOPLE. 307 the Al Mejdani, "place of horses." Horse races were more popular among Christians then than now ; at least they were not tabooed by the Church. St. Sophia has several clustered domes, so flattened that you wonder how they hold their place. There is no dome like them in all the world, — so lofty, flattened, self-sustained. Anthemius was the architect, aided by Isodorus, — mighty Christian builders, whose names you rarely hear. It is said the dome was built of light and porous Rhodian brick, held fast with the cement of Rome, that bound the brick into a perfect mass, as though the whole were as one solid piece. The tall, tapering Moslem minarets, enriched with carved balco- nies, were added by the sultans ; so were the spacious fountains to which the Moslem must go to wash his face and feet before he can come within the holy place for prayers. Not tliat the comer is personally in need of water. He may have come directly from a bath at home, — but that water was not holy. He must bathe his face and feet again to be entirely right. It is wonderful what a hold this holy-water use has upon the world, — Pagan, Christian, — even now as full five thousand years ago. The sacred stream is very long, shallow at places, a mere sprinkle sometimes, with wide and copious flow at inter- vals, — a stream that has come rippling on through all historic time. Before we enter the place of prayer we ascend by one of the easy inclined planes to the women's gallery. In early Christian time, and even now in Oriental lands, and sometimes in our own, the sexes worshipped by themselves, — the women could not worship with the men ; husband and wife must meet the Lord apart. The men did all the praying then. The women stayed at home ; or, if they went to church, as they often did, they mostly held their peace, as in duty bound. You know, if you have read the Book, what Saint Paul said upon this head, and was he not inspired ? But it is different now ; the women worship more than men, — leastwise in Rome you'll find it so ; maybe in New York. And in Jerusalem, against the Wall of Wailing, we counted two hundred Jewesses and only six-and- twenty Jews. The ascents to the galleries are very spacious, so that noble dames and early Christian belles might be carried up in well- closed sedan chairs, and not be seen of men from the time they 308 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. left their rooms at home till they got home from church again. The gallery is wide, affording ample room to promenade upon the fine marmora floor, far above the first-floor worshippers. The bold arched ceiling overhead is crusted over with fine mosaic-work laid on in httle bits of gilded or colored glass not bigger than a split pea, upon gold ground inwrought with pic- tures and pattern work, — a gorgeous gilded sky. The half par- titions that divide these gorgeous galleries are made of marble plank, — fine-textured, creamy parian, with sculptured panels, imitating slat-work; the hinges, locks, and pendant rings for knobs, all in careful marble sculpture. The columns that sus- tain the arched fronts were brought from famous heathen shrines, and have raised leaf-work capitals, Justinian's monogram on each, in pure Byzantine style. The arches and covered ceilings ; rail and marble balusters ; the many-colored marble columns, capped and based with white ; the gold mosaic-work and black- veined marble crusted piers ; the rich veined alabaster panel- work framed in with porphyry, — all make a most harmonious picture, an earthly hint of mansions that no hands have made, eternal in the skies. To reach this rather heavenly place, where early Christian angels came, there are eight inclined ascents, of which they now use but one. By that we go below. Approach the entrance ; drop off your shoes. No Christian temple this. The crosses that for nine hundred years decorated these tall and wide bronze-sheeted gates are gone, — have had their arms torn off by pagan hands that brooked no emblems of the Christian faith. They believe that Christ lived on the earth, was flesh and blood, a true prophet of the living God, and died upon the cross. Further than this, they deny. Mahomet was a prophet, also, — God's later messenger to men. In stockings or in slippered feet you enter in. The porch runs clear across the entire front, between the officers' court and the second ves- tibule. This one is the place where backsliders must wait and bide their time till they shall be received again by an offended God and church. And here with them the candidates for mem- bership await baptism into the faith. The architectural joys were farther in. Without, all was worldly and cold ; within, all was heavenly and bright. The way of getting into church was more ceremonious than now. The goats now sit among the sheep, — often in the best pews ; tlie righteous poor have to CONSTANTINOPLE. 309 content themselves with uncushioned benches, and gaze upon the pulpit from afar. It was different here. The ungodly stayed without, nor dared to come within the celestial place till taint of sin had been effaced. That sort of dealing now would ruin many a church. Passing through this portal, we came within the second nar- thex, or vestibule, more spacious than the former, and more adorned ; rich in marbles, bronze, and mosaic. Sixteen doors of bronze lead to the body of the church. Each one sustained a cross, — all gone. What sacrilege ! Stay ! How many a church and shrine of men of other beliefs were plundered to build this very edifice? Precious to the heart of many a pagan worshipper were many of the noble things with which they glori- fied their temples and shrines. We Christian folks — the honest followers of the Lamb — stole them away. Why not? It was not larceny, — merely the use of power. Besides, were they not heathen? Had heathen any rights ? Does not the good Book plainly say that they and theirs God gave to us for an inheri- tance, to do with as we will? In taking, then, his chattels or his children, we kept within the word. Above the central gate you see, inarched upon its bold bronze cornice, a sacred dove and words in Greek, saying that this is the door of the sheep, etc. ; and just above some medallion portraits showing through the hiding plaster with which the temple was overspread in most places to blot out all human images. The Moslem follows the letter of the Bible with regard to making or setting up heavenly, human, or brute images of any sort within these homes or holy places. Some Christian sects do likewise ; but a majority of them take no notice of it, — leastwise they count on God as being pleased with pious pictures and marbles anywhere. Pass- ing within the great audience room, you stand amazed. On either side grand arches mount from sturdy corner piers, and reach to a giddy height, their summits crowned by an ambitious dome. Within these arches are many noble pillars. Both on the lower and the women's gallery floor a bronze-railed gallery sweeps clear around, with a balustraded marble screen that fronts the women's gallery, and above these are many open- ings for lights ; also a circular row of lights above the arches pierced in the dome's lower rim. All these arches, domes, and all about where marble is not used, were crusted over with gilded 310 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and colored glass mosaic. The glorious dome, flashing still in gold and sumptuous ornament, is ninescore feet and six above the richly marbled floor ; fivescore and seven feet span, two- score and six feet rise, — a feat in plain brickwork nowhere else achieved. The numerous pillars set beneath the arches and at the comers are of precious porphyry, conglomerate green and dark veined marbles taken from several pagan shrines, — from the thrice-sacred fane of Delphi's famous oracle, from the world-famed Temple of Diana of Ephesus, from Baalbec's Tem- ple of the Sun, and wheresoe'er such precious marbles could be found ; and even Aurelian's far-famed solar fane was stripped for this most grand adornment. Such wealth of precious mar- bles, granites, capital and base, you will not often see. The capitals are Byzantine, — vine and leaf work in high relief, cut with the builder's monogram in richest chiselling. The floor is overlaid with thick carpeting that has been sanctified upon the Mecca Kaaba stone ; with prayer place pattern, laid down by the Turk. This is the noblest audience room in all tlie world. St. Peter's, John of Lateran, the cathedral at Toledo, and other noble temples of the Christian world, — none seem so grand, so sublimely beautiful, as this. The Moslems have debased it all around, — effaced its emblems; permitted its decay in many parts ; hung on its walls, inscribed on great round wooden shields, some special Koran texts ; burned its paintings ; de- stroyed its superb altar, pulpits, patriarchal seats ; effaced its carvings ; changed its chandeliers ; built in new chapel shrines, pulpits, prayer stations ; hung up tawdry signs, — yet for all this, the room asserts a Byzantine grace and excellence that no hand can destroy, no ordinary mutilation deface. It is still most beautiful and sublime, — a grand original to which the Venetian St. Mark's is but a toyish hint. No gothic work — mere rows of forest-trees and aisles, which keep you ever in Druidic woods — can at all compare with this. High heaven is overhead. The all-winged seraphim, those disembodied angels, salute on either hand ; the column-screens, the circling vaults and airy domes, and the great self-balanced central dome, speak of heaven's great dome above this earth of ours, — a place of spacious calm and rest without an intervening obstacle, — bold, beautiful, sublimely grand ! CONSTANTINOPLE. 3 1 1 These venerable columns, some trussed up with thick bronze bands to mend some crack or flaw, have graced earth's noblest fanes, have stood by fair Diana's side, sustained old Baalbec's votaries of the sun, heard praises of Osiris sung before the time of Abraham, then came forth from clouds of incense in those pagan shrines to sustain the temple of Holy Wisdom here in Byzantium, — came to be degraded from Christian worship back to pagan- dom. To this tall shaft rode murderous Mohammed, conqueror of Constantinople. While he was battering at its wall, and his success seemed imminent, many people — mothers, daughters, children, and defenceless ones — came here, and on their bended knees, prostrate before the holy shrine, they and the assembled priests besought the help of God to shield them from the dreadful doom. No heavenly succor came ; but thither came the tiger- Turk, and wading in blood of mothers, maids, and innocents, — ankle-deep in unoffending Christian blood, — the work of butch- ery went on till not a life was left. Corses were heaped on corse, — mother and daughter, wife and son, prelate and priest, in murderous holocaust. On rode the conqueror, his war-horse trampling o'er the yet warm mass of quivering human flesh ; there dipped his red right hand in sinless blood, — see where he struck with it the white marble and left a stain that to this day is plain, proclaiming there his mastery of the world ! May each finger-print rest there in witness of this ruthless savagery till Christian arms shall purge this place of every Moslem Turk ! The grand high altar that Justinian built is gone. The holy shrines, the sacred vessels of the church, all that was movable was torn away and put to other use. About this grand old temple Koran texts are hung, and in the dome the well-known Koran verse : " God is the light of the heavens and the earth." Next to the Meccan shrine and Omar's Mosque at Jerusalem, this is the most sacred Moslem spot on earth. But no Christian is welcome here. The priests all have unfriendly ways, and answer questions with a scowl. They show the cradle of Christ ; the basin in which he was washed by Mary, — both brought, they say, from Bethlehem. Who knows? They show you, too, the shiny stone, the sweating stone, close by, which makes miraculous cures, the Koran that was sent from heaven, and other curious things, because you pay them for it, and Chris- tian gold is goodly in their sight, if Christian folks are not. 312 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. The candles burnt at Ramadan — the Moslems' period of Lent, when they eat nothing in the day, but fill themselves by night — are giants, — full eighteen inches through and ten feet high, set into immense candlesticks of figured bronze. Though used for some ten years they are only two feet shorter now than when they were set up. The fish and Neptune trident — four fish and one forked spear — on a bronze plate, set in a pier, were placed there when the church was built. Why are they placed within a Christian church, these emblems of Assyrian pagan faith? Not more pagan than the candle-light, vestige of sun-worship ; not more pagan than the doves, Brahmanic bird, nor yet the cross, — an Egyptian emblem of eternal life. The candles are used by Christian and Moslem, too ; the dove is sacred among the heathen gods and among Buddhistic folks ; the Christian venerates the bird, so does the Mohammedan. The fish also figures in the early Christian church, and has its meaning yet. All these things, and many more you have no time to hear about, are but the connecting links — articles of compromise — between the pagan and the Christian faiths. How came the Moslem in this fairest Christian shrine? Through Christian greed — or rather greed of Christian men — and Christian schism. Read the history of the Genoese, read the Crusade history, and learn how this place was sacked by soldiers with cross-hilted swords and cross of Christ upon their coats ; who came here as brothers and friends ; who stripped the city of its power, who desecrated helpless homes, who did such deeds of riot here as inky pens must blush to write. Read, if you care to know the truth, of the Latin Church and of the Greek, of church hatred and its feuds, and you may find the key to all this Byzantine misery, — the loss unto the rabid Turk of the fairest city site on earth, the grandest Christian shrine yet built. But other Christian shrines are left. When the Turk came in, there were more than three hundred Christian temples here. Forty-six of these the Moslem changed to mosques. Most of the rest are gone, but nowhere else is there such a fine array of buildings of this class. Some of these are of the time of Con- stantine, with the flattened dome of Justinian's day; that of St. Irene, where the golden-tongued Chrysostom preached, now a place for storing arms ; the church of Chora, with numerous CONSTANTINOPLE. 3 1 3 well-preserved mosaics representing the life of Clirist and Mary, — these and several more. The chief of the real Moslem mosques is that of Solyman the ^Magnificent, whose reign began the year the Pilgrims landed on old Plymouth Rock. He became a conqueror of armies, and so under the Koran rule was entitled to build a minareted mosque. Without, it is quite as imposing as is St. Sophia ; within, it shows much less of taste or beauty, thougli an attempt was made to surpass it. The failure is palpable. A curious quartette of columns stand beneath the ambitious dome, — four monolithic shafts of fine Egyptian granite. Where did these come from ? No Moslem ever quarried out such stone. Well, in the time of Justinian — the man who raised fair St. Sophia — he gathered material from far and near to build a regal palace. Among the pillars of his porch stood these noble columns. The conquering Turk tore them away and used them here. So does Dame Fortune trifle with the affairs of men. Originally, no doubt, they graced some Egyptian shrine, mayhap the pal- ace of a Pharaoh. The Roman plucked these fine things in his day, carted to Rome the Egyptian obelisks covered with hieroglyphics they could never read, and these no doubt played their part in Rome, in palace or heathen shrine ; and when, in turn, Old Rome was plucked by Constantine to build a New Rome on the Bosphorus, these ponderous stones were shipped out here. They graced the palace of Justinian for some centu- ries, and now help to prop a heathen mosque. Where next? Some day these Moslem temples, having had their day, will mix with earth again. These noble shafts will find a place in some palace, hall, or temple ; for such stones are too valuable to pass away with cheaper stuff with which they get mixed up. Pity it is they cannot talk, for they could tell tales of other days and faiths and governments that one would like to hear. In passing on we come by the ancient Hippodrome and see the Egyptian obelisk. It is only some fifty feet in height, set upon a heavy sculptured base of softer stone, sculptured here. It came from Heliopolis, where Joseph lived in his Egyptian days, and which he saw full many a time when visiting his mother- in-law who lived at On, the present Heliopolis. It has stood this climate bravely. Though out-door life for some five-and-forty centuries has faded out its rich red tints, its angles are most 314 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. perfect. The brazen fir-cone that Roman hands placed upon its top was snatched off by an earthquake. Nature revolts at such monstrosities. Saint Ignatius, who in after times preached here, has left behind the story of its sudden taking- off Best of the ancient columns that Christian Caesars here set up to grace their Hippodrome withal is the old brazen intertwisted trinitarian serpent. Sometime ere you were born — twenty-three hundred and sixty years or so ago — an ambitious Persian sought to punish Greece. On that exploit intent, he took a squad of a million or two of men, and got into a fight at Platsea, — and came out second-best. The Greeks picked up the plunder, one tenth of which they devoted to their oracle up at Delphi — the same that told them not to be afraid. The gold tliat fell that way was wrought into a massive tripod. On this was reared this serpent monument, fifteen feet in height. Take three full-grown snakes some eight yards long ; put their heads and tails together, and twist them like a rope, and let their open-fanged heads stand out three different ways, and you will have a model of a column like this. The Phocians captured the golden tripod ; Constan- tine took the snakes, and set them up here to ornament his circus. The column stands it well. The snakes are good old bronze ; their heads have been lopped off, but the rest is well protected. The victories against the Persians are graven on this snaky column ; and by such means are histories handed down. You may read more about it, if you like, in Herodotus. These monu- ments stand in wells some ten feet deep, the bottom once the level of this rare old sporting ground. This shows how cities rise upon the filth and sculch the authorities were too lazy to cart away. Near by, Constantine set up a noble porph}Ty column sur- mounted by the Phidian Apollo, a precious remnant of the emperor's pagan proclivities. The column was a most costly and noble one. But fires that raged from time to time in dan- gerous proximity splintered its polished surface, so that it had to be hooped with heavy bands of bronze. It is about one hun- dred feet high, and probably the largest shaft of porphjTy ever seen. It is a sorry-looking piece now, but zealously protected. • ••••*• At Constantinople, as at Beirut and other points, much good is being done in educating the people. American philanthro- CONSTANTINOPLE. 3 i 5 pists and boards are doing a full share of it, — more, perhaps, than any other country. Visiting the Robert College here, we found it full of interest. It was founded by a wealthy New York merchant, whose name it bears, and is dedicated to the educa- tion of boys, of whom there are about two hundred there. They come from Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Persia, and the Asia Minor country, to get a thorough education. Professor Grosvenor kindly showed us through and answered all our questions. The college is founded on the Amherst plan ; it has no connection with the mission boards, its religious character being based upon the principle of perfect freedom of conscience for all, combining the highest moral training with intellectual and physical develop- ment. Its business management is in New York, and it draws its sustenance, beyond the income from tuition, from that locality. Its professorial corps numbers about twenty, largely American. Ten different languages are taught to boys ranging in age from fourteen to thirty-five years. The cost of tuition, includ- ing board, is about two hundred and forty dollars a year, which would be considered rather low in America. The students are almost entirely Christians, — sons of Christian parents here in Turkey and round about. Why don't the Moslem sons come in ? Why don't oil and water mix? The Turk has schools after his own fashion, and once in a while he will have his children in Christian schools, but the cases are so rare as to be hardly worth mentioning. Why? For the same reason, in a general way, that Christian parents do not care to have their sons put under Turkish tutelage ; for the same reason that Catholic and Protes- tant want their children educated under their own religious in- fluences. People don't differ much in their prejudices. All have them, and none are more strong than those which relate to the bringing up of one's children. We spent a pleasant hour on the college premises. The site is magnificent. The noble building, almost fire-proof, stands within a spacious enclosure close by the old Turkish " Castle of Europe," on a commanding bluff" some five hundred feet above the beautiful Bosphorus, a half- hour steamer ride from Stamboul. The view is glorious. Out across the Bosphorus (the word means " Ox-ford ") the Asian shore is lined with villages, palaces, grim defences, countless floating craft ; over among the hills are many fields and gardens, orchards, groves, and palace grounds, 3l6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. all most picturesquely fair. And this is classic ground. For standing here, or looking from his study room, the student sees the footprints of many an army officered by classic heroes. Here marched and crossed the Bosphorus great Xenophon, deathless in history. Across here at our feet, twenty-three hundred and ninety years ago came Darius, Persian lion, leading forth his fierce trained troops to conquer Scythia ; here he built his bridge of boats, — the first pontoon, perhaps, in history. This way, too, came Philip of Macedon with Hellenic force to meet and conquer armies ; and here, in sight of Thermara, was that famous hot day's battle fought, of which you may have read. Over there, the Asian hills are famed by the presence of Haroun al Raschid, of the Arabian Nights. At your feet, abutting on these college grounds, are the fa- mous European towers, the stronghold of the Turk, where the great work was done in ninety days, — a preparatory step to assaulting for a second time the walls of Constantinople in 1453. While these forts were just begun, the Emperor sent messengers from Constantinople to inquire why in time of peace such de- fences as tliese were being built. Mohammed H. heard their errand, and replied to it : " Go this time ; tell your master if you come and ask any more such questions I '11 send you back with- out }'our tongues ! " They came not back again ; but the work was crowded on with renewed energy ; the solid towers and walls were finished in three months' time. It was the beginning of an awful end. The grim old towers and walls and their twin forts there on the Asian side that well controlled the Bosphorus for many years are complete, — old, gray, and grim, but past their day of use. Heroes and heroic deeds crowd in upon one here, whetting the students' appetite for language and for history. The school for girls, another well-known American institution, is on the Asia side, at Scutari. (Pronounce it " scoot-ari ; " accent the first syllable.) The word is Persian, — Uscudar, "place of couriers," being the point from which the army couriers started for the Persian capital in Xerxes' and in Cyrus's time. Probably the slancr word " scoot " is from this same Persian word. The site is fine, encompassing Constantinople. It was vacation time, and most of the hundred student girls were gone ; but the teachers kindly welcomed us and showed us about the spacious CONSTANTINOPLE. 317 tidy premises, well fitted for the noble work. The girls, they said, were from the city and the country round about. They give them a good education, including languages, painting, draw- ing, music, plain and fancy needlework, something of cooking, — preparing them for lives of use and happiness. The school is not a charity, yet it costs the student less than the same educa- tion in this country. It is under the auspices of the American Woman's Board, and is self-sustaining in all save the salaries. These come from the Board. The students are mostly Chris- tians, with now and then a Turk ; but Turks are very rare who send their daughters to Christian teachers, for reasons as stated in connection with the other school. Both schools are doing much of good. They are a necessity. Christian people would not send their children to Moslem schools, and an education they must have. The Greeks have schools, of course ; the Latins have their schools ; and these come in to fill a real want. From schools to church the step is short. You may never have been to a Dervish meeting-house, and seen the unique service. Suppose you come along. The admission is twenty- five cents — cheap enough. And while we think of it, why don't Christian people take up their contributions at the door, — a stated price of admission to non-communicants ? The admission money is quite enough, they say, to pay the priest and choir, buy the holy candles, and keep the church repaired. A service worth hearing is worth paying for. But we pass in. The room is large, nearly square, with gallery above and below on three sides, all painted brownish- white. About the walls are circular shields, or disks, — some emblem of the faith. The floor is of plain wood bordered with mats, — black and white sheep's pelts tanned, to kneel or sit upon. On the side fronting the altar, as we entered, sat some worshippers, chanting slowly, invoking Allah, and swinging their bodies slowly back and forth. More came in afterwards ; stoop- ing low, they kissed the hands of the priest and master of cere- monies and leader of the choir, then took their places in the squatted row, which soon filled all one side and part of two more. No prejudice was shown as to color ; white men and black mingled together. The active worshippers come to their feet; the choir stays on the floor. Now they fall to work. Chanting with great vigor, they sway to and fro, and howl their 3l8 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. prayers most vigorously. Faster and faster grows the music, faster and faster pitch and sway the worshippers. Their feet are motionless. Back and forth, now to the right, now to the left, tossing their heads, jerking their sweating necks ; their voices mere hoarse howls, all their songs a hundred times repeated prayer. One swarthy Nubian, black as coal, took the lead and held it. With rolling eyes and mouth afoam, he yanked his turbaned head about, bent like a tree before a gale, howled like a demon full of wrath. There came a general snort, and then a little lull, and the healing was begun. Healing the sick by pious means, you have heard of such before, — by laying on of holy hands, by touch of relics of some saint ; but this was something new. Now watch the priest by the altar-apse. Some woolly skins are spread before his feet. He faces the howlers, who increase their howls ; the choir chants on a higher key. See that puny, sickly babe, scarce a twelvemonth old, swathed in many a fold. Its father brings it in. No mothers enter here. They lay it on its little pain-pinched face upon the rug. Horror ! The stal- wart priest treads on its fragile form ; he stands with both feet upon it ! Loud and louder shouts the choir ; loud and louder howls the mass ; faster and faster sways the crowd. The priest steps off; the infant is wailing; the fother takes it in his arms; the priest breathes thrice upon its face. It 's cured ! Others, big and small, babes and grown men, patients all, prostrate them- selves before the sainted man, some on their hips, some on their knees ; the chorus does its noisy work, the priest walks on them, puffs holy breath upon the sickly ones ; the cure is made. Bot- tles blessed and breathed on by the holy priest are carried forth to such as cannot come. The priest puts on his heavier robes ; he waves his hand ; worship is done. Now the doctor was there — the doctor, who, with the bishop, had come out to meet us on our way and return with us. He was at this dervish healing-school, to learn. With eyes intent and every sense absorbed, he noted every move. We questioned him ; but doctors do not always tell their inner thoughts, but await their own experiments. But the priest here at the dervishes' is not a common man, — he is a saint ; so he is claimed to be. Doctors, sometimes, are not ; and if they are or not, is hard to tell. But this priest and people quote no end of cures. They say this standing on the CONSTANTINOPLE. 3 1 9 sick just drives the evil spirit out. First cast out the devil from within which causes the sickness ; the patient will get well, if Allah wills it so. Nothing is more simple or easier ; but the treat- ment is not new. It varies a little ; but there is, indeed, much precedent for casting demons out, — making whole the sick that way ; also by human touch. Only such as are saints can do it really well. And so the things of life repeat themselves. So come down to us through all the ages, years, and days, the old- time customs. The candle at the apse has burned many thou- sand years ; the holy water in the font was there before the days of Noah ; the saintly healing of the sick was practised long before the sun stood still. " What nonsense, rubbish, rotten sham that was up there ! " So said my priestly friend as we walked to the boat ; the same priest we had met in Jerusalem, — an Australian vicar, on his journey back to fatherland. " Yes ; but bits of bone and bits of wood were used to cure men's pains, even in Europe, scarce a hundred years ago. Was this more sham than that?" I wait an answer yet. For men are much alike, Christian or heathen ; they believe what they believe ; no answers need be given. We are right ; the others always wrong. We have the panacea ; all the rest are shams. We wander among the Turkish hospitals, but gain no knowl- edge. They are behind the age, and can't catch up. The hos- pital of Florence Nightingale, who did such noble work out here during the Crimean war, is a great building on the Scutari side, but little used. • •••••• Constantinople has a bad name, I '11 admit ; and people scold about its streets and its dogs and its dirtiness. This is all non- sense and unfair. The streets are indeed none of the best, but you may go farther and fare worse. When the city was built carriages were not much used, and many of the streets are so steep that vehicles could not be used anyhow ; but for all that there are highways wide enough and smooth enough to take you to nearly every place of interest ; and where you can't go in car- riages, you can take a ready-saddled horse or the handy caiques — charming little boats in which you glide from point to point across the deep blue waters with delightful ease. Trams have 320 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. taken possession of much of Pera and Stamboul, and you may cover long distances in them at small cost. And as to dogs, I have been among them ten days and am able to speak intelli- gently on the question. The dogs are among the best citizens here. They hold office, are public scavengers, and form a canine board of health that patrols the streets day and night, mindful of any organic matter that might decompose and poison the air and induce contagion. For this most excellent ser\-ice they get no thanks and many kicks, — which is too often the case anions humans. But nevertheless they go about their work, prevent disease, and so save human lives. That is doing good ; and whether you do good, or a dog does it, the difference, if any there be, is in favor of the dog. They lie about the streets, to be sure, sometimes soundly sleeping in your very path. They sleep in the middle of the streets, rolled up like little balls of fur, in some cosey depression in the rocky pavement. But what of it ? The dog takes all the risks. He knows that most men are friendly and will let him take an ungrudged nap ; he knows that his ears will wake him up if a carriage comes ; he has system in everything. They have their families and castes and customs, and hold their meetings, and sometimes in these do get a little noisy, — very much like men in that respect. They don't get mad. Hydrophobia is something almost unknown in Constanti- nople, where dogs abound, and where no dog is muzzled. You can't account for it, but so it is. It seems to have been arranged somehow in the economies of nature that these dogs shall es- cape the rabies and live and do their work that men may live and do theirs. So, on the whole, the Constantinople dog may be considered a real blessing. Then, after all, the street-and- dog question does n't hurt the city much ; and, so far from being a place to be avoided, it is the very place of places in all Europe that the intelligent traveller should visit. Most beautiful of all the cities of the world is this, most interesting from many points of view ; with wondrous lines of beauty in its shores, its bold projections, dainty nooks, and stately elevations, temple- crowned ; its palaces a dream. You cannot say that you have seen much of the world abroad, if you have left out this grand old city. And the accommodations are good as they will average, better, perhaps. You need not fear about the comforts, the weather, or the attractions, but be sure and see this grand old CONS TANTINOPLE. 3 2 I inter-continental city. Here the great continents meet ; here Europe and Asia shake hands across the neat and narrow Bos- phorus ; here the widely variant religions meet, — the crescent and the cross. Here on the broad pontoon bridge that weds Stamboul to Pera is the most perfect picture of moving human- ity you will ever see. The bridge is some eighty feet in width and always crowded, and is never without some soldiers. Men of every color and every clime, every style of raiment, cut and color, tone and tint, — men, women, children, prince, and pauper jostle here ; the porters with heavy loads ; the dandy Turk with waxed mustache and cane ; soldiers belaced and spurred, ca- vasses armed like arsenals with swords that never cut and pistols that never shoot ; women who hide their charms or ugliness with veils, and those who do not veil at all ; Circassians, Georgians, Greeks, and Persians ; people from almost everywhere, pagan and Christian, porters and priests ; armed men and eunuchs, beg- gars and boatmen ; hatted, turbaned, and befezzed, — an ever- moving multitude most picturesque to see. The bridge takes you everywhere. From it you take the ever-plying local boats that plough the Bosphorus or the placid Golden Horn ; from here you go to mosque, bazaar, or tower ; from this same bridge you go to Scutari, or to Seraglio Point, or anywhere you like, for it is the great meeting and starting point in this grand urban link between the West and East. Though in the main an Oriental city, — home of the Turk, Armenian, and Greek, — the ordinary architecture of Constanti- nople is of Italian cast. The Genoese and Venetian folks were here in great force long before the Turkish occupation, and the architectural tone they gave the place seems not to have been changed. Aside from clustered domes and minarets, the city view from Galata (castle) tower, or that which you get from buildings while driving through the streets, there comes no hint that you are beyond the pale of Christian lands. For one who takes an interest in elegant effects in brick and stone, this is the place to study. In all the Christian world he finds the Gothic church more or less pure ; but here is the Byzantine. Which is the most attractive ? If you stand before the Gothic grandeur at Cologne, you think it is the fairest fane on earth ; if you look on St. Sophia here, or mosque of Solyman, you may have to cast your ballot for the Byzantine. Ambitious domes in clustered 21 322 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. bulbs, a grand dome yet above here speaks to you of earth and skies, and heaven over all. The one a hint within, with- out, of savagery, of forest life ; the other speaks of worlds made glad, of faiths combined, with God and heaven over all. The minarets add beauty to the scene, those tall and slender spires that pierce the upper air, — great out-door candles whose wicks should be aflame to light the earthly pathways down below. ROUMANIA AND AUSTRIA. 323 CHAPTER XXL ROUMANIA AND AUSTRIA. Bucharest, " City of Enjoyment." — Turn Severin. — A Merry Gathering. — Up the Danube. — Budapest. — A City of Hospitals. — Vienna. — Her Architectural Beauties. — The Surgical Mecca of the World. — Medical Students at Home and Abroad. ENTERING or leaving Turkey or Russia, passports must be shown, — a requirement which is rarely made in other lands. They not only make you show, but make you pay. The water service between Constantinople and Varna on the Black Sea — a fifteen hours' ride — is Austrian- Lloyds and villanous, — so-called accommodations at exorbitant cost. From Varna there is no choice of travel ; one must go by rail to Rustchuck, take the Oriental Express that goes straight through to Paris, and is provided with dining and sleeping cars. We broke the trip at Bucharest, " City of Enjoyment," — the pretty capital of Rou- mania. They call the place " the litde Paris," and, surely from its neatness and its well-paved streets and fine hotels, it well deserves the tide. The road from Varna there and on to Turn Severin is through as fine a farming tract as one could wish. The broad rolling farming lands are largely devoted to raising sheep and cattle, large flocks and herds of which are seen on either side. No fairer-looking land than this have we seen anywhere. No wonder the Turk disliked to give it up and lose the fat revenues its husbandry afforded. But by force of arms he stole it from some one else, and by the same high law he lost it, — it and many other lands as good. Such is fate. You will not find Turn Severin on the map, — that is, not now ; but had you lived some two thousand or so years ago you might have known it better. The place was once a thrifty Roman point, named after the Roman Emperor, Septimus Severus, who had his stronghold here in a large and prosperous city. Here across the broad blue Danube the Romans built a massive bridge of stone, the abutment ruins being yet visible, and on an emi- 324 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. nence close by the village are the once strong castle ruins, — ruins of tower and palace walls within the heart of vast possessions. We came here on Easter Monday, and the town and country round about had come together for hoHday pastime. Some hundreds of people, mostly young or middle-aged, were gath- ered on the green and open space, playing at rustic games and dancing native dances, getting their fill of genuine enjoyment. Dressed in the costumes of the country, in white and many- colored stuffs, short skirts and sleeves and pointed bodices, tricked out with jewelry and tinsel stuff, they made a gay, bright picture. Many of the young men wore white tunic frocks and jaunty caps with bird's feathers. They danced such dances as we never saw, — in great rings, with the single bagpipe music inside, — all holding hands, men and women, lads and lassies, interlocked. They played and laughed, ate creams and bon-bons, promenaded two-and-two, stood about in knots or chatty couples, as young people have done ever since the human race began. The iron gates of the Danube are not far from Severin. Through rugged mountain cliffs of the Transylvanian Alps the mighty river rushes. Against the foaming tide our long, slim, handsome steamer stoutly pushed her way. The weather was charming, keeping us on deck till the last riven and channelled mountain crag was left behind. What great cataclysm tore these towering rocks apart, or how many years it took the rushing flood to wear a channel through the living stone, no one will ever know. We thought to leave the river at Belgrade, and con- tinue our journey by rail ; but our boat was such a palace of contentment, and the river-way so excellent, we made no change, and came on to Budapest afloat. The river winds by many a thrifty village, and all along the stream are rich farming lands, and out upon the water hundreds of tide-mills for grinding grain, safe anchored in the stream. Of course they make less fine and pure flour than the more modern mills, but answer every purpose for the common people. So inexpensive a way of doing com- mon milling work might well have attention on our rapid Western streams. Budapest, the old Hungarian capital when she had a crown of her own, and the present place of parliament under the Austrian rule, occupies both sides of the sweeping Danube curve ; has palaces and parks; broad avenues lined with stately modern ROUMANIA AND AUSTRIA. 325 buildings ; a noble opera ; clean, broad, and well-paved streets ; churches of many creeds and sects ; fine museums, galleries of art, a stately university, and mineral springs and baths; and better yet, as marking its humanity to man, a full array of hospitals. We must needs mix some pills, so to speak, with all this pleasure, for as you stroll about in a city great or small, old or new, and see the moving masses, places of learning, manufactures, arts, amuse- ments, church and state, this thought is ever with you, — how fares it with the sick ? The poor, the Bible says, ye have always with you ; but we have not seen a beggar in Budapest. The sick you have, also, always with you ; how fare they here? The more a people grows up into the love of light and right, and tries to love his neighbor as himself in ways that are useful and prac- tical, the better you will find its asylums and hospitals. For if we have no care for each other's aches and pains, do not try to heal the sick or cause the lame to walk, how poor and meanly selfish is the life we lead ! Count not on the nobility of your cities by the number or height of its spires or its palaces, but upon the extent and excellence of its schools and hospitals. That will set you nearest right. In this respect there is no lack in Budapest. The city has spent large sums of money upon its hospitals. Besides the many public ones, there are the military and university hospitals, built with the greatest care and con- ducted with the best of skill. To see in Budapest what these people do for their university, and how jealously they watch the interests of education in medicine and surgery, makes one feel that not all of this world's light and Christian care and thought has gone West. The other branches are not neglected, but not having time to see them all, and as surgery and hospital work are real object lessons, we spent our time on those. We were received most cordially by the profession everywhere we went, from hall to hall and ward to ward, among those really pleas- ant places for the sick ; and seeing all these means for teaching men the healing art and helping men to gain their health, we thank our stars that so much good work is being done. • ■••••• Vienna grows more and more beautiful every year. Ten years ago they said the place was made bankrupt by its building boom, but it has kept right on with its architectural improve- ments until it has almost eclipsed its European competitors. 326 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. There are no such ambitious structures here as in many places, — no six, ten, or fifteen story buildings such as you see in some European and American cities ; for there is a law in Vienna that no business or residence block shall rise higher than four stories. They get around this by counting from the first floor, which in most European houses is found at the top of the first story, so that what you term the first story is no story at all, and hence the Vienna house really has five stories. As most of these are liberally spaced between joints, they seem quite high enough ; and with the immense amount of projection and ornamentation, they make a very elegant appearance. All builders seem to take great pains with their work, and the result is that Vienna has some of the most elegant streets in the world. People cannot build here as they please. In most American cities, a man can build just as fine or just as ugly a house as he may choose. In the perfection of our liberty he can make it any size, figure, or shape, any thickness of wall, any sort of interior partition walls, — in a word, he can put up a palace or a hovel. It is not so here. In this down-trodden country one must conform to rules of symmetry and safety. The security of those within and without is carefully considered. This despotism wipes out shanties ; even cottages have no place ; yet the utmost care is taken as to appearance. The poor man can't build a house in Vienna. He cannot conform to the rule. He cannot get a lot of cheap scantling, boards, and nails together and build him a house. If he wants a home he must rent a room or suite of rooms in the great substantial houses that men of money build. Hence there are no streets of small cheaply built stores or dwellings here, and so the city is a place of palaces, that grows more beautiful every year. Business and homes are close together. In our cities a store is a store, or store and offices combined. Here the ground floor and some of the upper floors may be devoted to stores and offices, but there are no end of family rooms on the upper floors. That this is not so in America is a drawback. Of course it is of no use to preach about it, for our young man of small begin- nings, or no beginnings at all, prefers not to live over his store because other people don't. So he must have his separate dwelling and the increased expenses. Vienna is a city of fine streets and exceptionally fine build- ROUMANIA AND AUSTRIA. 327 ings. Plenty of royal palaces, no end of military outfit, mag- nificent public buildings, superb places of amusement, noble gardens and grand churches, and, to her still greater fame, the most extensive hospital of any city in the world. This great sanitary outfit covers many acres, and has many buildings and much broad, well-kept, open space within the surrounding wall of wards and lecture-rooms. This is the surgical Mecca of the world. Here are the most famous surgeons ; here the most numerous list of medical professors, whose lectures and chnics are attended by students from the four quarters of the globe. The hospital service has three thousand beds, and a force sufficient to attend to them. Each professor has his own lecture-room and his own clinic, and all have their piques and jealousies, much the same as at other foundations of learning. An attendance upon the clinics of several most distinguished surgeons made this impression : that the operations were un- necessarily long and tedious ; that the assistants were too many by half, — eight to each professor ; and that the work was no more efficient than is done at home. But reputation makes the difference. Doubtless our young doctors can learn everything in America that they learn here, and at less cost, for there is nothing cheap in Vienna ; but it is the fashion to come abroad to study, and the young man who is able to come argues that though he has all medical knowledge, and is able to perform wonders upon frames diseased, yet not having been to Vienna, he is nothing. So he goes. Many go to study ; some don't. The great majority of American students have the reputation of being ardent, painstaking, and hard-working ; but some there are who prefer the fountain of Java and Mocha to those of Esculapius and Hippocrates. " Is it true, as is sometimes stated, that our young men come here, take rooms, select a special housekeeper, and live in this questionable way during their student life in Vienna?" This was the question, toned down, that was asked of an American student who had been studying here some time. The impression was abroad ; the questioner wished to investigate. " No and yes." The negative, he went on to say, covered the great majority of our students here, so far as his information or belief extended. But here, as almost anywhere, there were students of peculiar ways, who have no serious intention of 328 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. injuring tlieir health by over-study, and who succeed very well in that direction. The course of study is five years ; but as there are frequent and long vacations and no end of holidays, — most of which are rigidly observed, — the real time spent in work in these five years is not more than is spent in our three years' courses. Besides this, there seems no interest felt between professor and student. The conditions remind me much of Catholic church ceremonies. The mass is had at such and such an hour, whether there is an audience or not. The lec- ture is said, the clinic held, whether the students be many or few, or none at all. If the student does not choose to come, that is his own affair ; the professor has no care for that. He provides the feast, he has his pay for it ; the student may par- take or let it alone. The student is of age, supposed to know what he is there for, and is at perfect liberty to make his own choice. So much for medical matters. They are alluded to because this is the centre of surgical knowledge, and must not be over- looked. It may do no good to say to our young doctors that they can gain in America all they can gain here in their pro- fession. They will come here still, — here, or to Berlin, or Paris. And it is not a bad idea. Be he doctor, lawyer, preacher, writer, or follower of any other profession or calling, if he looks abroad, intent on study of the ways and means of other men and countries, he is the better man in his calling for having done so. To be well informed in any way one must have studied far and wide ; and he is better and broader if he has looked beyond the books and gone about the world awhile. Too many studied men are hke a tall cathedral spire, — tall, towering above all other steeples, yet nothing but a tower after all. They are minus the cathedral, — a lofty part, yet lack- ing in that other lowlier, broader, more comprehensive part, without which the structure is incomplete. ITALY. 329 CHAPTER XXII. ITALY. Across the Brenner Alps. — Verona and Shakspearian Memories. — Bologna. — The Story of a Precious Painting. — A Sanitary Pageant. — The Home of Galvani and of Galileo. — Naples — Her Pictures and Her Marbles. — The Farnese Bull. — The Pompeian Museum. — Relics of a By-gone Civilization. — The Aquarium at Naples. THIS is Italy. You need not travel far in this Italian land to find an interesting stopping-place. The world of tour- ists has no thought of other towns than Rome and Florence, Naples, Milan, Venice, Pisa perhaps ; but the myriad other places, with fair cathedrals, frescos, paintings rare, and scenery most grand, are quite too much ignored. Most travellers would cover great spaces. With such as lack experience, long latitudes and longitudes mean almost everything. From Naples up to North Cape, from Liverpool to Cairo, from Edinburgh to Buda- pest, — that is a summer travel ; go whirling through the Alps, and talk of Alpine scenery ; go racing down the Rhine, and rave of castles scarcely seen ; spend moments in the noblest painting rooms and grandest halls of sculpture, — this is common travel, the common way of feasting on European sights. " I may never come here again, so I must see it all ; " this is the common crude idea. Don't laugh, but pity such ; you might do the same yourself The way across the Brenner Alps is very full of vistas, far and near. Snow- clad mountain peaks look down on flower banks and grassy vales ; the ambitious rail creeps well along the chasm's brink and wriggles up and down the Alpine steeps, across the rushing streams, past tipped-up mountain farms that cling aloft among .the rocks or the many-terraced vines from whose rich fruit full many a vintage river flows. Hour after hour, we pass tunnel, gorge, and mountain face ; torrent, cascade, glacier stream ; castle, hamlet, arched bridge ; luxuriant vines, olive groves, fruit blooms, grassy glens, and bursting flowers. The 330 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Brenner Alps are all aglow with energetic and beauteous life. You see the rustic houses nestling in the hills ; the peasants at their work ; the shepherd with his flocks ; you see their homely, hearty, wholesome daily life amid this ever wondrous Alpine poem, and you no more wonder at this love of country and this long-continued happiness. And yet — and yet we have to pity them. They live beneath the shadow of a king ; they know not America ! How can they love their homes? This is Austria. How fare these people on their cramped-up farms, when prairies are so very broad and wide ? And yet, maybe, they are happy here ; they live and die, have loves and feasts and many a cosey home and countless happy days ; they have enough to eat and wear, and enough priests to pray, and taxes to be paid ; and enough births, marriages, and deaths. They have mostly lovely scenery, and God is above them all the while ; and yet we must needs pity them, — they don't live in Dakota ! You come down from out the gorges, out to the Italian line ; open and shut valises as a merest form ; and step down at old Verona. Two gentlemen, they say, once lived here, and may do so still. Perhaps we saw them, for the people are surely cour- teous. The balcony from which Miss Juliet dropped her honeyed words into young Romeo's open heart they now point out, even the ancient coffin where she all too early found unwelcome rest \ and then they sell you photographs. This is all romance ; so are many things you like to see. The grand old Roman theatre that held ten thousand men, the well-kept arches, kingly seats, and dens for snarling beasts, excite your wonder ; but what are circling rows of steps, and stairs, and vast arena corri- dors, to that old story of young Juliet's love and Romeo's? The rocks the Romans piled up, tier on tier, are very firm and last- ing ; the loves that Shakspeare pictures here are yet more deathless in the minds of men, — a picture drawn upon the heart that time cannot efface. Stone may crumble, marbles turn to dust ; but Ruths and Romeos renew their youthhood every year. Coming to Bologna, the rich tilled fields that cram the valley of the Po attract you with triple crop of silk-worm food, and vine, and field and garden stuff. It is a land of never-ending fatness. These great rich acres never cease to bless the world with food, with meat and drink and costly raiment. The people ITALY. 331 have snug homes ; their acres yield no weeds ; their children shout for joy, and seed-time and abundant harvest come with happy hohdays ; the winter is not cold, the summer none too warm, and the people are content ; and yet we must needs pity them, for here they cannot know much about our land of liberty beyond the deep blue sea I " In half an hour you '11 see the procession, right here, right out here, gentlemen, — here from these windows 1 " That was what the Brun hotel man said in Bologna, as he opened large airy rooms that looked on the piazza. " What procession ?" we asked. Our friend the bishop said it was Whit-Sunday. The doctor said, " Oh, psha ! " The rest of us simply waited. It came with music, robed priests and acolytes, banners, music, crucifixes, canopy, candles alight, and many a matron with never-failing faith and waxen flame. Some were young and fair, but most were ripe of years. With singing, brazen music, oras and response, gorgeous robes of many hues, cloaks of red, and homely garb of common folk, — so the procession came and stayed, and knelt and prayed, and went away. We could n't understand it ; we took the bishop's word — 't was Whit-Sunday. Later on, at table d'hote, amid the noise of clinking glasses, knives, and forks, came forth a woman's still, small voice : " Whit-Sunday comes in June ! " Then for the first time we lost confidence in the bishop. He went away and looked up the procession story. Maybe it 's worth telling here. Some scores of years ago a rather pious painter who had some gift of inspiration in his brush painted a Virgin Mary. There is not a painter living, nor one dead for eighteen hundred years and more, who has not done the same thing. Saint Luke, they say, began this sort of art. He was an artist ; he did the draw- ing, then as he slept the loving angels did the rest, and so the world received its authentic picture of Christ and Mary. And thus this other artist made a picture. If you have any doubt, go now into the crowd ; beneath the canopy there you will find it. It is no Raphael, has no firm claim on art ; but after all, as we must all believe, it was well inspired. At all events, it gained renown. The pestilence came here some scores of years ago, 332 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and death walked forth among the crowded streets, gathering the ripened wheat and the flowers of youth that grew between, as death too often does. The people wailed and called on Heaven for aid. 'T were better to have cleaned their streets, you lightly say ; but the plague was already here, and aid must be employed. You know how it is with people. They drone away their time, and abet a plague by unclean ways ; but when the tribulation comes they take to their knees as a sudden, cer- tain cure for every ill. This unknown painter hung his inspired picture in a parish church in the lowest, darkest, sickliest part of the town. In every church within this goodly town were pictures of our precious Mother Mary, but none were so sanctified as this. The plague came on, and thousands died in hopeless pain, and more died in this infectious parish than in the other ones ; yet such as did not die counted themselves well protected by this precious picture, whereat the people were most glad, and offered prayers and praise. Year after year, and several times a year for many scores of years, came this procession forth with this dear picture, and with music, song, psean, and praise, to march from church to church, with paternosters, aves, orisons, to save the place from further plague and scourge. Sometimes disease lurked, but there was no complaint. A score or so of years ago a conqueror — Victor Emmanuel — came into power, and finding his kingdom much given up to churchly holidays, — too much, he said, for real good to church or state, — he called a halt, and this procession among the rest has stood at halt some fifteen years or more. But cholera came, you know, last year, and made sad havoc with the French ; and the Italians feared it might reach them ; so the few God- fearing people left in Bologna pleaded with the powers of states to let the procession move once more, and so keep off the ugly plague. The Government consented for this year, — for a con- sideration of fifteen hundred francs. The sum was paid ; and the procession moved again for the first time in fifteen years, — went round with picture, music, candles, cross, and choir, from church to church, and made the city safe. You do not believe it ! No one asks you to. Come here and see for yourself. There is cholera in Venice, but not a case in this good old sausage town. The long arcaded streets are sweet and clean, well scrubbed of mud and filth ; the doctors, ITALY. 333 city officers, are all alert ; then comes, to cap the whole, this well-kept bit of sainted paint, with bishop, bells, and robed priests, and so the plague is baffled. Full long is this procession. You see it tramping down the aisles of time for many a thousand years ; you hear its tramp, its orisons, for eighteen hundred years ; you hear its footsteps, muffled notes, for twice two thousand years ; down through the heathen times it came, with prayerful priests and blood of goat and rams ; down through the Christian times it comes, with Mary-painted miracles, candle-light instead of resin torch, — all to withstand and mollify the very righteous wrath of powers that rule the world. So do our customs, human customs, cling to us. Ten thousand people gathered in the square to see this sanitary pageant. But at the call for prayers, who kneeled? The priests, the acolytes, the women with tallow-dropping candles, and now and then a woman in the crowd. The men stood on their feet, with covered heads, — declaring disbelief and want of sympa- thy. You try to analyze this thing. Are these processions Christian? Are they but a continuation of old heathen rites? Copied they surely are ; dressed anew in some remote degree, — not as to raiment, music, chanting, wreaths of roses on the head of youth, — but candles instead of torches. The painting is of this age ; the rest — the cross, the mitre, crosier — date back five thousand years. Leaning across the cushioned window-sill, you close your eyes and think. Two thousand years and less ago the court to which your face is turned was a temple of the central Roman god, great Jupiter. There stood the statue of the power that grasped the lightnings, hurled the bolts of thun- der, had children, ruled the world. You see the sacrificial altar there beneath the marble dome ; your inturned eyes behold the grand procession there ; your ears now catch the music of the harp and horn and cymbals ; the praise of Jove is played and sung, the priests and people bow their heads and bend their knees. Two thousand years pass instantly. You look. Gone are the temple, Jove, and sacrifice ; come is the altar-church across the way. The procession has not changed ; the Christian is the pagan rebaptized. The one your closed eyes saw besought 334 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. its God for plenty, peace, and health ; the one your open eyes now see so plainly beseeches God for health and peace and bread for all. What then has changed ? Will he who wanders here two thousand years to come find also people here beseech- ing heaven for peace and health, and bread enough to eat ? I think so. Nations come and go ; religions live and change ; but faith in God is always strong, and on Him we call for safety and bread and wholesome breath. Times change ; our needs, our wants, our prayers, are much the same. You can read of Bologna in the books ; her noble schools have helped the world along ; her scholars have made names. When ? Who put the silver on the knife you are eating with ? Who galvanized the million miles of wire with which your farms are fenced? Who touched the dead nerves of the froc and caused new life to come ? Your jewelry ; your table-ware ; your harness ornaments ; the metal plate, perhaps, whereon your new- found teeth are strung ; the iron roof above your head ; the common coal-hod at your feet ; the miles of fence about your farm, return the questions. Galvani has a noble statue here. He and other noble men of science, culture, fruitful brains, lived here and from Bologna taught the world. But time was short, and trains won't wait ; and we came on by mountain rail across the tunnelled Apennines to this grand Tus- can city of Florence. You don't expect description of this centre of the world of art and marble music ; you can't understand without the sight of these two miles of gallery art, nor see the sight from off Galileo's house, or from the walls and Fiesolian drives. These and the noble domes and tombs of kings and kings of art and thought, the miracles in stone and bronze and carven wood and jewelled gems and ivory, you must come here to see. No depth of ink can float them to your mind and eye ; no picturing with pens can tell you what you most would like to know ; you must come here to see. Here one may see the processes by which the artist's thought is born of i)lastic clay ; by which the self-same figure that the artist found within his thought- ful mind is found within the rough-split marble block that comes here from the quarry. Great men these Florentines. They walk about and dream they see angelic figures in the very paving-stones, and go to work and prove the dream. ITALY. 335 You might not care to come to Naples to see Naples. It is very much like other well-known ports, — something like Liver- pool, Hamburg, or Marseilles ; better, perhaps, than either, which is not saying much. The views are really grand. Some do say there are colossal smells ; but that is guide-book stuff, based on what Naples was, not what she is. To be fair with her and tell the truth, she is about as clean as any seaport town in any land. But travellers will always tell yarns of awful smells, — not that they ever smell them, but because they have read it in a book. And if there were smells, what 's the use of parading them ? They are neither pleasant nor instructive. Look at the views. Views are what you get at Naples, — glorious views, — better than can be had in many a place that is called clean. Look off up there to Vesuvius, smoking his big-bowled pipe and spitting fire. Look out across the noble bay and take in Capri, — gem of the sea, home of Tiberias. Look over to Sor- rento, — garden spot of orange groves and olive-trees, a per- petual summer. Look across this loveliest of bays to beauteous Baice, — bluffed round about with verdured slopes, once fringed with Roman palaces, — the popular patrician lounging-place, to which brave generals came to rest from wars, and men of dignity and state were wont to come and lounge about. Look where you may, — across to Ischia, brave Garibaldi's home, or around to Castellamare, and you find a sea of beauty every- where, the waters smooth and pure and clear, of variant shades, blue prevailing, beneath an atmosphere of pearly tinted haze ; its vistas dreamy, deep, enchanting. And yet you will not care to waste much time in Naples. The best of the sights are quite beyond the city walls. Yet there are some things here that may interest you a day or two, some pretty things in paint, — a Raphael's Holy Family, a pic- ture or two by Rubens, some Titians, Murillos, now and then a Veronese. But these Neapolitans were slow in works of art ; and other people got the lead in gathering up old masters and encouraging new ones, and they seem to keep it. In archi- tecture, as in art, they lag behind. Most cities of this land have some peculiar type of buildings. Naples has none. In palace, church, business buildings, theatre, or public edifices, you find no elegant taste displayed. But the balconies ! Every opening that fronts the sun must have a balcony, from which 336 A GIRDLE ROUXD THE EARTH. on feast and special holidays they hang gay-colored fabrics, and in sunny hours the women sit and chat or work beneath their gayly figured awning cloths. Despite the architectural lack, these tall and slender buildings, with their balconied fronts tricked out with bits of lovely color, pots of flowering plants, and here and there a pretty face, make up a lovely picture. Naples may lack in painted pictures, but she has royal mar- bles. The Farnese collection, — the Bull, the Hercules from the baths of Caracalla, — these and hundreds more of the best type of Greek and Roman schools suffice to keep you busy many an hour. The Farnese Bull is the grandest of colossal marbles, — the raging bull, Antiope and her sons, the wicked Dirce and dogs, each life-size, cut from a single marble block. You may not have heard the story that this grand old marble tells. Well, Antiope was pert and pretty, as girls usually are. She mar- ried a king, a jealous one at that, who made a foolish fuss about his wife's baby boys, young Amphion and Zethus, declaring that they were immaculate conceptions, —sons of Jupiter, and none of his. Deistic offspring, mystic births, had a strong hold, you know, upon the ancient mind, nor has it weakened much even in these days we like to call so enlightened. At all events the king destroyed the marriage certificate, married another woman right away, locked Antiope in a lonely tower, and sent the babies into the woods to be eaten by wolves. But a shepherd found the boys, liked them, and brought them up. Antiope escaped from prison, found her sons, but kept her secret to herself. The second wife — Queen Dirce was her name — went out among the country hills one summer to have some rest and worship there according to the fashion of the times. And whom should she come across but her liusband's first wife, Antiope, whom she thought to be a prisoner ! She would stop this right away. Calling in Amphion and Zethus, she hired them, now full-grown, lusty men, to catch the wildest Carian bull that roamed among the hills, tie Antiope upon his back and horns, and turn him loose. They caught the bull, a stiff-necked, raging brute of fiercest sort, and brought him in. Antiope was brought there, and Dirce and the dogs came out to see the sport. The young men caught their mother to tie her to the monster's back. She made no noise, but whispered something in their ears that changed the drift of things. They set her ITALY. 337 down, and pouncing on Dirce, brought her to the bull. They catch him by his neck and horns ; the rope is ready. Thus the group stands, — Dirce, men and bull, upon the rocky crags up which now leap the fiery dogs. Antiope stands directing. This is the part the marble tells. Just at the nick of time, when Dirce would have been bound upon the bull's big horns, the gods interfered. They changed the wicked queen into a moun- tain spring, which boils yet, as you may see, not far from Thebes, in Greece, any time you feel like going there to prove this story true. Antiope fared better. Her sons, enraged at the king's cruel treatment of their mother, then took the throne themselves. But there are many marbles here, and each one has some sort of story, that you may find in books that tell of Jupiter and Juno, of Mercury and Venus, Mars and Psyche, and all the rest, — marbles of gods and men ; marbles in vases, rich mosaic floors ; marbles in medallions, columns, altars, and bas-reliefs, — a gorgeous gathering of many thousand pieces, the patient, precious work of many a well-known master in his day. Perhaps the saddest things in all these marble halls are the anonymes. You know of Jupiter and Caesar ; you expect to meet Socrates and Brutus and Ceres ; Venus and Flora greet you everywhere ; but these stranger people, who are they ? This man, you do not know him ; he can't be introduced, because he has no name. This woman, nobly draped, with queenly pose, is some one you really ought to know. No use ; no card, no name. Both had names once, and hoped to hand them down forever, so they had themselves produced in masterly marbles. They died, as all men and women must ; their generations and names perished, leaving these marble effigies, nameless and lonely, amid a noted throng. For this we pity them. You know the others, — the gods and goddesses, the kings and generals, the philosophers and priests ; but these good-looking nameless folk, you know them not. They pose here not for their deeds or state or words of wisdom, but merely to show their figure or their clothes ; they cannot speak to you, or tell you why they came or what they chance to know ; and so you can't help but pity them that vanity should beguile them so far out of place. Surely one must have brain and thought and tongue to figure well in company of gods and men of mind and state. 338 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. We came into the great Pompeian rooms. For many years the Government of Naples or of Italy has been exhuming Pompeii, bringing the rich harvest of curious things, and things of common use two thousand years ago, to this collection. "We found no pens or type or printing press, but many a plate of bronze or brass graven with deeds and contracts ; and furniture for household use, and weights and measures, and farmers' tools, and those of the professions and mechanical trades. These people tilled the fields, and must need have shovels, hoes, rakes, picks, and forks. They wrought in stone, and must use drills and wedges, hammers and various dressing tools. They fashioned wood, so they must saw and bore and plane, use spikes and nails, and fastenings for openings. They wrought lead and copper goods, and must have plumbers' tools. The list is as endless as the trades. What we have now that they had not are mostly modifications of the implements then used. These people cooked, and so had pots and pans, skewers and knives and spoons, dishes for cooking various sorts of food, and table-ware for eating ; they bought and sold, so used their steel- yards, weights and scales, and measures for grain and meal. We found a long glass case of knives for cutting human flesh ; of forceps, tweezers, operating tools of various kinds, even such as we supposed were only made in modern times. Then there were cupping appliances, and pots of pills, and numerous preparations fitted more or less to human aches and ills, articles for toilet use, cosmetics to color the face, and powders to give the teeth a pearly cast. For there were surgeons then, and doctors too, and those who pulled out teeth, and put the halt and lame in better shape. There were fashions too ; and ladies crimped and curled their hair, — here are the curling tongs. They painted, powdered, jewelled, oiled their hair, — here are the witnesses. We looked for spectacles and smoking pipes, but found them not ; the former must have been used — at least, they were in China — in that day; but tobacco and cigars, — that calamity had yet been spared this people. Hour after hour, day after day, if you have time to spare, you may wander in these rooms, among the noble marbles, pic- tures, Pompeian finds, and choice keramic wares ; among bronzes, medals, coins, and wondrous crystal goods ; no end of jewels, bracelets, armlets, lovely chains, and precious rings ITAL Y 339 and pins and other golden things, — an interesting maze. Below, you go from hall to hall to see Pompeian pictures, — paintings, frescos, fine mosaic-work, groups and quaint domestic scenes, — stories in light and shade of classic times when Neptune ruled the sea, and gods came down to earth to take on earthly forms for their own purposes. Our painters of the last two thousand years have elaborated their art in many respects, and yet must rank as largely copyists. You see these angels frescoed on these walls, creations of two thousand years or more ago, and then compare them with Raphael's " The Hours," and the similarity startles you ; you almost ask. Did Raphael see these same sketches of these wondrous things before he traced his airy forms, " The Hours," that grace some rarely opened room within the private chambers of the Vatican ? It were blasphemy almost to speak aloud of such a possibility, and yet it may be so. You may not think the Pompeian twelve the better, yet look at them long and well before you say that they are not. Raphael had little need to borrow thoughts, perhaps, yet all his forms — most beauteous forms they are, despite the tooth of time and unskilled restoration — were borrowed from some source. His Madonnas were living women of his day and home, — brevetted wives ; his holy babes and Johns were real babes and boys ; his Josephs, Peters, Pauls, and Magdalenes, all were from living subjects which he gathered up. Mayhap he saw some sketches of these angels of the Pompeian walls, and so produced his famous " Hours " that now so grace the Vatican. We quit this dust of ages, this paint and plaster, this corroding bronze, to take fresh air, — to go a-fishing. There is no place like Naples for seeing fish. The fruit of the sea is everywhere abundant ; but the great glass fish tanks, made of heavy plate and furnitured with rock and gravel, and watered from the sea in continuous supply, are filled with curious fish and crabs, — with swimming, creeping, crawling life, — animals rooted to rocks, with corals and anemones that eat and breathe, but cannot swim or walk or ever get an inch away from home. Here you sit and watch the ill-made, gangling devil-crab; sand-colored fish of curious form that live beneath the sand and come above only when the keepers stir them up to give them food ; here you see tlie strange electric fish ; great ugly eels and pretty flying fish ; the tiny trumpeters ; ray fish and star fish that look like cactus 340 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. balls ; and farther on, that fearful, awe-inspiring devil-fish, the great octopus whose frightful arms and tough involving web of skin enwraps its prey with sickening involutions, — the most hideous form the water gives. This grand aquarium of Naples is not a show place, yet it is the most interesting of its class in the world. It is a school, built by the governments and powers, here where sea life is most complete, — a place for men to come and learn of things that swim the waters of the deep, of forms half-animal, half-vegetable, the sponge and the coral, sea anemones, — come here to see and study, under competent professors, what they could not see and study elsewhere. THE BAY OF A'APLES : P.ESTUM AXD POMPEII. 34 1 CHAPTER XXIII. THE BAY OF NAPLES: P^STUM AND POMPEII. On the Bay. — Capri and Sorrento. — A Moonlight Drive to Amalfi. — Dangers of the Way — Psestum. — Ruin and Desolation. — Grecian Temples. — Salerno. — On to Vesuvius. — Ascending the Volcano. — Pompeii. — Sights and Scenes in the Dead City. THERE are two fine drives near Naples which should be taken leisurely, devoutly, as one goes upon a pilgrimage. You go by ship across the deep clear waters of the bay, dotted over with white-winged fishing smacks. No matter which way you turn your head, or where your vision strays, the scene is beautiful, suggesting always paradise. The crenellated towers just left behind ; the towering heights that guard the town be- neath ; the countless villas peeping through the ever-present greenery, flecking the olive groves and broad-spread vineyards with a gleam of white, are very beautiful. The noble islands springing from the light-blue placid wave — in distance seeming turquoise gems, fruited to the top — are bestarred with villages that nestle in among the hills and vines in sweet contentment, wanting naught beyond. The great round cone that rises over these, and smokes his morning pipe, seems mild and harmless as a New England pasture hill ; but he needs watching. He lets the trusting vines creep up into his lap and trail about his broad- spread shoulders ; he invites Miss Flora to his house, and makes plump Pomona many a flattering promise ; and even Ceres, wise and watchful of her golden grain, has this calm smoker more than once deceived. He cheats them all, gets angry, fierce, denies his promised word, shuts out the sunshine, rains red-hot sand upon the grain and vine and land, — a fell destroyer, now so meek and mild. You sit upon the quiet deck and look on Ischia, mourning for her many sons the hungry earth has swallowed up ; you look to lovely Bai^e ; to Cum^e, sleeping by the huddling hills whose every side wears festoons now of blooming grapes ; while right 342 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. over there did Dante leave the upper world, he and his poet friend, to explore the infernal regions and bring back word as to the management in hell. His account is well worth reading ; and how he came to write such horrid things you can right well appreciate after you have been here awhile. No place on earth is so near to heaven, so close to hell, as this. Such perfect peace, such pandemonium ; such sky and land and glorious water tints, and eke such fiery desolation, — fearful contradictions, so false, and yet so very fair ; the overlapping border-land of the eternal bad and good. You stop at famous Capri Cave to see the deep-blue water there. The very boats in which you sit, your tawny boatmen paddling round, your very selves, all are a brilliant blue. They say that fairies gather here, and that mermen wed their mermaids underneath this azure dome. We row away to Capri town, and take a lunch of tender steak and peas, washed down by a little glass or two of famous Capri tea. Then up among the vineyard walls, up steep-stepped paths among the grapes and lemons and orange-trees, up past the fountain streams, and Mary shrines, and shrines with frescoed crucifix, we ride and snuff the moun- tain air. In Cairo, the donkey boys are boys ; up here they are bouncing, blooming Capri girls, who whip the mules and offer strings of corals, coral pins, and chains, even while you ride aloft to catch a further, bluer ocean gleam. In olden time this Capri place was famed for Roman palaces. But these are gone, — leaving the noble hills and luscious vine, the fruitful harvest, the precious views and pale thin clouds, the tinted waters of the bay, the entrancing vistas everywhere, and overhead the soft, warm, tender sky that makes the whole so perfect, full, and round. This is the first of two fine rides. Could you but see this grand inturned curve that marks the water line a dozen miles 'twixt here and Castellamare, and the beetling mountain-tops that overhang this bay, then you could understand how grand a ride this giddy roadway gives ; how fair it is at times amid the forest groves ; how reckless here and there in leaping gorges deep ; how tame and tidy in among the vines and trellised shrubs and youthful ilex growth ; how boldly round the high-browed crags it winds its dizzy way, hundreds of feet above the surf that slowly beats upon the worried rocks straight down beneath your landau wheels. It is a most cheering ride.' The triple bays glide o'er THE BAY OF NAPLES: P^STUM AND POMPEII. 343 the ground with more than usual speed, and ere the sun has set their dozen choking shoes are beating rapid time through Castel- lamare streets, faced towards Salerno, twelve miles across to the other bay. Through village after village on we go, through rusty old Italian country towns, with knots of people round the doors and crowds of people in the streets, the vespers ringing in the towers, the fountains plashing in the squares, the toiling carts, children laughing o'er their sports, — a lively picture indeed. We reach the other bay at ten. The moon is full and out of bed. Twelve miles more before we sleep. Here now begins the second drive, the better of the two, and most daring of the road-makers' skill you '11 find in any land. Twelve miles of precipitous mountain side here faces to the south, along which shadows only safely cling. This face is slashed with gulches, cut into the mountain at various points, providing now and then a small snug harbor, once the hiding-place of pirates, now the prosy homes of toiling fishermen. Along this stony steep — sometimes close to the water's edge, again traihng on the stony mountain breast some hundreds of feet above the deep blue sea, — this dizzy road is cut. It runs on solid mountain bed; it runs on arches built up and up from the blue water's edge ; it runs on buttressed walls and channels hewn within the over- hanging rock, — trailing on its dangerous way, yet forming a per- fect road, walled in with strong stone parapets, among no end of terrace land where many a white stone villa clings, sometimes mid fruit and trellised vines, sometimes crossing viaducts, back and forth along the deep-set gulch, winding in and out, — a most enchanting full-moon ride above Salerno Gulf. Did we enjoy it? Rather! The hour was somewhat late, the ride we had taken not short ; but such a road hung up among the stars so far above the seas were worth whole days of toil to find. The moonlight ride among the stars, — we saw them glinting in the sea, — the songs and tales of other lands, the hope the road would last all night, the castled rocks up and down, the caves and grottos of the elves, the flashing cascade, the azure sea, the moonbeams scattered over all, — you must come yourself to see this ride to Amalfi, by Salerno sea. Then will you believe its beauty cannot be described, only hinted at. Sleeping an hour or two on well-made beds of the old monas- tic hostelry, at early daylight we went to mass in the venerable 344 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. St. Andrew's church, most rich in marbles, carvings, and noble lapis work, pictured saints, and mosaics, which the travel- ler hardly expects in such a walled-in, stony place, hung up above the sea. Here sleeps a town to the world almost unknown, whose natural beauties out-rank all the rest, — a city making macaroni, raising and shipping fruits and olive-oils, catching fish, — busy as a hive of bees ; hotels most neat and clean and fair ; choice meats and fish and wines and fruits, — a real summer paradise of upturned green against the sea ; a spot where winter dare not come ; a place of rest, content, and ease. But we are off; the horses stand before the door; a lunch is put up for later use ; the good-byes are said to landlord, butler, chambermaid ; crack goes the whip, the bells jingle, and away we go again, back over the same twelve miles of lofty mountain • road to take the cars for Psestum. The scene on this magic road is grand by day, but not so full of weird thought as when we saw it by the moon. Daylight shows too much. It reveals things you would not see ; puts questions better left unasked ; tells faults that no one cares to know. Better the silver moon- light that makes grand castles out of lofty rocks, and pictures villas where the cascades fall. Better the moonlight that con- dones Dame Nature's faults and gives imagination wings. But Paestum ! Two dozen centuries ago, when Greece pro- duced, as Britain does and has for many years, more men and women than can stay at home, she sent out colonies. Take up your map and look along these shores, and count the many towns these people settled long ago, years before Rome had a Caesar. Such a place was Pcestum, well founded by the sea, near by the river Silarus, — a rich and lovely plain. Who lives there now? No one, — that is, only a family or two; but re- cently the iron road has come that way, and brought some signs of returning life. What is there to make folks come? Some grand old walls and temples. Some years ago, longer ago than any of your friends have lived, there dwelt at Paestum two thousand score of souls. They had stout city walls and stone-paved streets, had palaces and homes and shrines and temples fair, — lived in state and wealth and luxury. What now is left ? A gate or two, three miles or so of ruined walls, and well-preserved ruins of three noble temples. People come here chiefiy to see these latter. THE BAY OF NAPLES: P^STUM AND POMPEII. 345 In this proud city, in its younger days, — hundreds of years before our era's dawn, — these people built fair temples to their guardian gods, — to Neptune, in whose care the city was ; to Ceres, who gave the people grain for bread ; to other gods, whose names no one can tell. They also built rich palaces, and many streets lined thick with dwellings, shops, and theatres. But all are gone ; gone the houses where the people lived and wrought and amused themselves ; left only are the temples. The abodes of men were of little value in the Grecian eye ; places to buy and sell were nothing in their sight ; their meas- ure of greatness was the place of prayer and sacrifice, — the earthly abode of their protecting gods. So now are the dwell- ings, theatres, and storehouses gone ; you '11 look in vain for ship or dock or wharf; you came to see this once grand city by the sea that had so many people, and counted untold wealth, and you find nothing but ruined temples, walls and grass and weeds and creeping things. What made this city desolate ? Its pagan ways ? No. An enemy ? Yes. Not with axe and brand ; but in the later times when she had lived and thrived eight hundred years, had been the favored home of gods and kings, had withstood wars, and kept the faith first with Greece and then with conquering Rome, there came an enemy she could not beat away. The rank miasmatic vapor that came so near to conquering Rome, — that stealthy fatal poison of the blood that lurks about your feet and beds soon as the watchful sun goes down, — this fever-bringing scourge completely conquered Pcestum, and drove the people forth to live on higher ground, scattering them far and wide. For many hundred years no one has lived at Paestum. No ships went thence to sea, the houses rotted, the streets grew up to weeds and grass ; and hundreds of years ago the plough tore up the city site, and farmers tilled the market-place and all the grounds, save where the temples stood, — having their homes on higher ground, working in daytime on the deadly plains of Paestum. The temples are yet grand : that of Neptune has its every column, architrave, and frieze and pediment ; that of Ceres is almost as good ; the other one is of a later, poorer make, and worst preserved of all. The Neptune temple has fine tall fluted Doric columns, well preserved, not counting those within the 346 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. outer rows that range around the inner holy place. The other temple is about the same in size, but that of Ceres little more than half as large. The pavements yet are sound, worn rough by rain and time ; the massive stone-work has lost its stucco, paint, and marble work, but has a mellow yellow brown that well befits its age and state. The roofs of wood long since fell in, and rot there on the plain. Some hours we loiter round these piles, and try to reinvest the scene with people, trade, and busy life ; with crowds of ardent worshippers thronging the forum, courts, and streets, bringing in their temple tithes, be- seeching Ceres for good crops, making processions to the fields and folds, led by priest and prayer and song, bringing to tem- ple shrine the best of all their gains, grateful to powers of heaven and earth and sea for responding to praise, sacrifice, and prayer. Next to the Athenian temples these are the best of all the Grecian temples left. The grand old fane at Ephesus, the seventh wonder of the world, is now quite out of sight ; the Olympic temple long since passed away ; Corinthian piles and Theban fanes, and those that stood at Delphi, Samos, and on the Eleusian shores, are wiped from off the earth ; these only remain to tell the wondrous temple tale of mingled gods and men, — of the time when heaven and earth went hand-in- hand working for the good of men. But why are Pa^stum temples left? Why not also those of Ephesus, Olympia, Corinth? The answer you may find in Christian churches, palaces, and museums. The stones of many of these temples, shrines, and porticos were the rarest of marbles. The Christian had the pagan for a heritage, so fitly despoiled him of his temple treasures, — marbles and bronze, porphyry and rich waved alabasters. Great columns and small were all pulled down and borne away ; pilasters, capi- tals, mosaics, and carven stone of every kind ; the sacred altars, tripods, incense stands, great vases, walls, and every sort of fine and fretted stone, — all these they robbed the heathen tem- ples of to build their own withal. Those at Athens, Hera of Samos, Artemis at Ephesus, Apollo at Delphi, Zeus of Olympia, were made of precious marbles, and so were mainly moved away ; but those at Paestum were made of common travertine, a cheap and coarse-grained stone not worth its cost of time and THE BAY OF NAPLES: PAlSTUM AND POMPEII. 347 freight. And so they stand to-day ; and so those stand at Girgenti, Syracuse, and Baalbec. Better for the architectural history of the land of Greece and Asia Minor coast had all the temples there been built of travertine. The precious marbles, carvings, statues, noble bas-reliefs were moved away to garnish Christian churches, furnish museums and palace courts, full many a score of years ago. At old St. Andrew's in Amalfi you may see some rare marble carvings — high relief and rich mosaic-work for altar ornament — that were stripped from off these P^estum temple walls and altar shrines many centuries since. At Naples, Rome, and other museums, they point with pride at rare specimens of thorough Greek art obtained of old at Pfestum. For quite a thousand years these fanes have been deserted, walls unused, and gates unclosed, and still these noble columns stand erect and hold their watch. The deities to which they rose have lost their places among tlie gods that men now kneel before and worship ; the tombs along the roadside leading to the gate have all been violated, as yours will likely be in course of time, to plunder finger bones of rings, and poke among the human ashes for bits of coin or jewelry. A cursed practice this ! Why not let dead nien sleep ? We send a man to prison for violating modern graves ; we make the plundering of older ones a reputable business ! Are tombs less sacred when one's kith are dead ? It would seem so. And so in other things, — customs that we say God smiled upon and blessed in Jewish times, He now abhors. God, then, has changed ? Not so. God changes not ; men do, and to excuse themselves try to make believe that Heaven has made new laws. The train arrived almost too soon. We left sweet Ceres to herself; left the grizzled Neptune to his endless sleep; silent we came along the street of tombs, where husbands, wives, dear ones of home, and friends, amid deep sobs were laid away to rest ; we passed the time-worn carvings, the crumbling temple wall, the chisel prints in vine and chain and fruit ; the sculptor's skill in dolphin, ship, and trident ; passed underneath the yet unbroken arch above the long-demolished gate ; turned back and looked again on these grand relics of a grand old race, and called the day's work done. Salerno is the next important town at which to stop. It is 348 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the old Roman Salernum, a pleasant site above the sea, — the town to which the Arabs came a thousand years or so ago, and set up there the earliest school of medicine in Europe, which grew to be the first upon the Continent. Esculapius was late in getting out into the Western world, but chose a most delight- ful port and seat. Just where the college stood no one we asked could tell, so we cut short our pilgrimage and came across to Naples Bay early in the evening. Vesuvius was puffing at his pipe and shooting forth great glares of light; bright lava streams came trickling down the ashen cone, — rivers of fire in the night, — a fascinating spectacle ; a threat of what might happen at almost any time. It is one of the choice places of Europe, this Neapolis, this new city of the Greeks, — the vast city stuck upon the steep side-hill, on the inner curve of the horseshoe ; this city whose long front street, from Castellamare clear round to Poz- zuoli, measures some five-and-twenty miles. But after all, and after the Museum and Martino and Posilippo, you don't come here to stay, but come to get away, — away to Vesuvius, where the molten flood runs down the upheaved cone and pales the cheek of vinters and of villagers ; away to Capri, where eternal blue and ceaseless summer wait you, where olives never shed their leaves, and orange -blooms await the banns of every month, and roses, beauty, and rich ripening fruit abound perennial; away to fair Sorrento, seaside gem and perfect resting-place, where you may sit and watch the azure wave and pluck luscious fruit from bending bough and vine, gaze forth upon the blazing mount and noisy streets across the narrow gulf, and hold your- self in constant rest and peace ; away to Cumse, where Aver- nus's prattling tide talks low to you of deep-cut caves and sibyls flattering armored kings with thrilling hopes of victory, or telling youth of warmest hopes to be fulfilled ; away to Baise's azure bay, boat-bridged in Csesar's time, and fringed with marble palaces and shrines, where ships of war and warriors of the sea came back to rest and live their baneful lives of untold luxury and ease. All this and more than this, — visits to desolate Pompeii, whose well-paved streets hear no familiar footsteps ; whose shops and temples, household walls and household shrines, have long been listening for their lords to come ; whose very stepping- THE BAY OF NAPLES : P^STUM AND POMPEII. 349 stones and rutted streets tell you of loneliness, of weary waiting for the ones that fled on that dark ashen day when desolation came so fast and black and deep. You come to visit old Pute- oli, where Saint Paul landed on his way to Rome, and where his footprint yet is seen upon the hard-faced, never-before-re- lenting rock ; to see the road this Tarsan trod up past the place for fighting beasts, up past the house of Seneca, of Brutus, and of Cicero ; up past the verge of that great volcanic crash, whose pulse has not yet ceased to throb and threaten ; you come, indeed, if you are wise and have the time, to ride upon the cornice mountain road, that burrows into beetling rocks and overhangs the deep blue sea, and leaping frightful chasms, goes plunging down into dark green olive groves and chestnut boughs and blooms that fill the air with perfume ; you come to ride across the hill to old Salerno, to thread the dizzy carriage-way that overlooks and overhangs the sea at many dangerous, dizzy feet above its booming wave ; to Amalfi, convent place with gorgeous church and old-time palaces, with temple, tower, and countless terraces yet chnging to the precipice ; with groves of fruits and trellised vine and low-trained lemon-trees, roses and banks of buds and blooms so shadowed in the sea ; you come with slow and measured tread, with hat in hand and rev- erent tread, to visit the roofless shrines whose fluted columns stand in solemn time-stained ranks about the holy place where once great Neptune, bounteous Ceres, ruling Jove, were wont to stand. To such a country do you come, — land of volcanic throes ; land of the Caesars ; the lounging-place of men who ruled the Roman world ; rioting ground of Roman men and Roman women who wrought the downfall of their land. Land of milk and honey fair ; land of fame and fortune rare ; cradle-land of loveliest seas and groves and skies that eye of man e'er rested on, — this is the land you visit when on leaving miasmatic Rome you come to Naples leaning from her lofty balcony, look- ing out across the sea. Our time was rather short, for in five or six days, at most, we must be back in Rome to get a promised blessing at the Vatican, — must do two days' work in one. Breakfast at seven; three harnessed horses at the door, and off the carriage rolled towards the smoke that cKmbs the clear blue air above the ashy cone of 350 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. old Vesuvius. The first clear day in twenty. You may come to Naples twenty times and never see the tip-top cone. For weeks before this day, men had come here and waited days and days without seeing it. As we rode in from Rome the day before, the cone was covered with clouds, — the cone and more than half the mount, — which made our chances very poor. Never mind. The road is good right up along the mountain side, and every inch is tilled with vines and fruits and roots, and every house has lots of little folks, and every inch the danger grows. What makes these people stay so near this awful spot? What makes you go there ? You take the chance. So do they. This is the loveliest spot on earth to them, — the richest place for growing vines and making wines and raising fruit and garden stuff for Naples market. Fruitful place for children ; how they thrive in this pure mountain air up here among the fruit and milk of goats ! Why not live here and take the chance ? Some- times a rain of ashen dust besmirches their farms ; sometimes an avalanche of fiery flood comes pouring down the hill. It blasts some homes with its great black viscid mass, contorted, serpent- ine, and buries deep the house and home that years of toil have made. Mayhap some lives are lost ; so are they on the sea ; so are they by the cyclone blast ten thousand miles from Vul- can's land. There may be danger here, but the peasant says God holds the keys of life and death : che sara sara. Ten miles on your way, four miles from the top, — such blis- tered desolation ! Leaf and shrub are left behind, ruin riots right and left. The road winds through great seas and waves of arid drift, great stiffened clots of foul volcanic bile vomited forth to blast the field and fruit, — a hopeless vision of the deso- late. For all these miles no daring blade of grass appears ; no hope for such. The horses' bells are hushed at the station house, where the train stands ready to lift you to the summit — a single car upon a single rail, drawn by a single rope of steel, propelled by electricity. The grade of this new road is about as steep as the dirt grade of an ordinary sandy railroad filling, — steep enough for comfort. The ride costs, with use of guide and two miles of carriage road below, about five dollars. I walked the distance once in ante-railroad times, for fifty cents ; but it was a losing affair that I never quote with satisfaction. We walked the crater's roof, and heard with fear the awful THE BAY OF NAPLES: r.ESTUM AND POMPEII. 35 1 throes within the fearful maw beneath our feet, and wished we were at home. We saw, with apprehensive quakes, great clots of viscid stuff lately vomited from the sulphurous throat, and tons of lava stone, yet piping hot, playfully shot into the upper air and dropping close by our brimstone-seething path, remind- ing us of the hereafter not so far away where overcoats are rated rather cheap. Reaching the fearful new-made trembling cone, the waiting guides stood ready to pull us farther up, and amid the piercing fumes of heated sulphur, outstretched upon the shaky brink, show us the very mouth of this unmitigated hell. But the doc- tor said he 'd had enough ; the bishop said amen ; the other man said basia to the guide. Then all turned back, crept down the lava rafters, over the crackling shingles of the sulphurous roof, toward firmer land. And as we walked along, striding and straddling over lava rifts and sulphur-fuming cracks, our boot soles heated up to an odorous point, a wicked wretch remarked that all below his feet was fire and flame and sheol ; that it was frail and feeble and liable to break in, the whole cone go down with a crash, as it had done at other places and times, and send us all to sulphurdom. A man or two who heard the mean remark walked faster. They passed the wretch who talked, and even overtook and passed the lively guide. The villain hurried not, but lingered back and smiled. He even laughed. Down the track and down the road ; down past the desolation that you can't forget ; down past the now cold lava streams, and past the gardens, vineyards, homes of parents, clustered chil- dren ; down to the sea again, and off to old Pompeii. You don't want a description. Imagine a city of a hundred thou- sand people ; streets well paved with solid stone ; temples, theatres, court-house, baths, and bakeries, and all these and all the dwellings made of brick, one or two stories high ; then bury it in ashes fifteen yards deep in fifteen hours, the red-hot ashes burning off the wooden roofs ; most of the people fled ; then let those ashes lie there seventeen hundred years, used as farms and fields and pasture lands ; then go and dig that city out ! Fancy what you 'd find ; what knives and forks and crockery ware and stones and pots and hardware stocks and doctors' kits, and lots of stuff within lone walls with roofs burned off — and that would be like Pompeii. 352 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Of course the finders would wonder what sort of pagan mum- mery they used to have in the cathedral walls or in tlie Baptist temple farther down ; of course they might ask what kind of plays were put upon the opera stage, and wonder how the judges ruled on legal points within the exhumed court-house. That 's about the way we wondered at Pompeii, and the other case would be the same. We wander in her well-paved streets, the pavements rutted by the rolling wheels ; we poke about the houses of the rich, look through their parlors and their sleeping- rooms, look closely at the paintings on the wall, and criticise their stucco-work and plumbing. We go about among the baths and sit on marbles where the men went in to bathe and where bathing women sat ; we count the niches where they threw their clothes, stand by the marble wine-shop counter where they got their drink of wine dipped up from cool stone tanks ; re- mark upon the family altars set up in these olden homes; peer into bakers' ovens where hard bread was found, baked there and staled for seventeen hundred years. We laugh in places where they said their prayers, and steal bits of stone from Jove's fair fane ; seek out their tombs, their lounging seats, the inner homes of rich and poor, — yet wondering how they got along so very many years ago without a type or printing press, without clothes- wringers or kerosene, without Catholic church or Methodist, without communion or baptism ; wondering how they got along through such a weary, wanting life, and where they went to when they died ! RAMBLIXCS IN ROME. 353 CHAPTER XXIV. RAMBLINGS IN ROME. Old Triumphal Arches. — The Palatine and Capitoline Hills. — The Pantheon. — Rome Not Seen in a Day. — The Vatican. — The Forum and its Memories. — Rome in Early June. — Healthfulness of the City. — Courtesy and Generosity of the Italians. — Treasures from the Hand of Raphael. — A Marvel in Mosaic. RAMBLING in Rome again. Titus's Arch is really worth your while. Though it is the smallest and ugliest, per- haps, of any here, it is by far the most interesting. The arch of Severus is a much more imposing one, but it curdles your blood. This Caesar loved his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, who went with him to war and returned with honor. Both their names he put with his, in noble mention, on this arch. The father, Severus, died ; Geta was murdered by his brother's hand, his name erased from the dedication tablet, and the space filled up with commendation of the cursed fratricide. The arch of Constantine beyond is, in the distance, largest and most imposing of them all ; but don't go too near to read its truthful tale, lest you come to despise it and to hate the man who built it and whose name it bears. This Constantine, hav- ing no great deeds of valor to record, adopted those of others. Look at those glorious marble pictures up there upon its sides — grand bas-reliefs of Dacian wars, of conquests won and Rome made strong. Who fought these battles, gained these victories, brought home these spoils and tributes? Not Con- stantine. These massive marble pictures and these lovely fluted columns once graced great Trajan's Arch. Constantine stripped them off to garnish his, that coming men might count brave Trajan's work his own. Imperial plagiarism, — a trick so mean that you detest the very arch that hands you down the memory of the thief and theft. Smallest, yet best of all, is this Vespasian-Titus's Arch, given him for his many brave deeds at Jerusalem, where he took his 23 354 ^ GIRDLE ROL'XD THE EARTH. imperial father's place and gained a great victory. But chief in interest are the sculptures inside the arch, — the seven- branched candlestick and the sacred vessels of the Jewish temple, the fiery horses of the triumphal car, and crowds and pris- oners, — the only marble link between the days of Solomon and ours. Much bruised and battered by all these eighteen hundred years of buffeting, it still remains a wondrous piece of marble. This arch and the Pantheon are the two most suggestive spots in Rome. If you like, we will skip the Palatine and Capitoline hill and visit them. The Palatine is a mazy mass of substruc- tura: arches, — brick and mortar, pile on pile, — supporting plat- form gardens, partly clad with shrubbery and tall cypress-trees, and interspersed with benches, walks, and nooks, and timeworn statuary. Ruin, ruin, ruin, — not a word of consolation any- where save where the roses grow, save where the fountains yet play and bright cascades come leaping down a broad and mossy niche, laughing at empires, thrones, and dynasties, telling their tale of men that come and men that go, and their utter contempt for each and all. The Capitoline is different, — a lot of stone and stucco work put up in Michael Angelo's time and by his plans ; buildings, not where senators and Caesars met and uttered words that influenced the world, but only aldermen whose influence stayed within their wards ; the city hall and museums of rare old-time marbles, a poor lot of pictures, and nothing more. Outside, Aurelian's horse still paws the ground and proudly bears his noble master ; and here this patient man has sat for many a hundred weary years, watching destruction of his home and hope, watching the rolling of Dame Fortune's wheel till time should see Rome all powerful again. Close by him are Leda's twins, standing beside their fiery steeds looking towards the Quirinal. Descend the steps. Close by arose the rock of Tarpeia, down which they hurled their prisoners to death ; and here is where the bloody head was found that gave the Capitoline its name ; and here the warning geese came squawking over and woke the guards, and so saved Rome ; here stood the temple Moneta, where the first Roman coins were struck. So " money " comes from "Moneta," and Moneta temple from the admonda, or admonition, that the gray geese gave that saved Rome. You will like the Pantheon. Of all the buildings here, none RAMBLIXGS IX ROME. 355 seems to me so full of interest, so grand, so calm, so self-contained, so spiritually impressive, none so much the temple of heaven as this, whose only window opens to the stars and upper skies. You may pass great modern pagan piles and shrines, — for they are only strangers, — pass great basilicas and cathedrals ; push past the spires and domes and towers and meeting-spots of men of prayer or trade, and come at last to this great swelling pagan fane, this enshrined place with open dome, through which floods down the bright sun's rays ; through which comes down the falling rain ; through which the spirit dove may come and bear away on high our prayers ; through which our thoughts and incense smoke and savory smell shall unobstructed rise to heaven \ this is the holiest, fairest fane in Rome. Sit you down upon these altar steps ; they are cased in wood that officiating priests may not chill their feet; a pope lies buried here, — here where the priests of heathen gods have said their orisons ; and over there, guarded by yon marble angel, rests Raphael ; and round about lie other popes and artists. There beyond, amid funereal wreaths, choice flowers, and many a legend commemo- rative of his royal name and state, all well guarded by a most polite servitor of the crown, sleeps Victor Emmanuel, — a name beloved in Italy, dearly loved and fiercely hated. But who is buried here matters nothing. Look around you. Embrace the scene, — the floor, the modest columns of neat workmanship. Observe the chapels, sunk within the immense thickness of the rounded walls. These were the niches for the imperial marbles that represented various economic parts of heaven and earth ; and over there where the high altar stands, once stood Jupiter, the ruler of the universe. Above the frieze that encircles us, over the capitals, begins the noble dome, — the grandest dome on earth. The prince of sculptors and architects said he would raise it in the air to crown St. Peter's with, and then he died. The plans were changed ; another dome was made, and the Pan- theon still stands unequalled, — the noblest of all earthly repre- sentations of that grand stellar dome that overarches sun and moon. These steeper, loftier domes you see misrepresent the real thought. The dome presents the sky. Thus felt Angelo, whose thought aligned with Nature. This was the thought of architects of Byzantine days, who raised the St. Sophia dome, than which there is none more fair. Yet it is not the shape 356 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. of dome or porch or entablature that makes this church — this pagan-Christian shrine — so fair to me. Nor is it its grand ro- tundity, its age. But it is its aim ; its pagan origin ; its singular preservation while other pagan churches fell and went to naught ; its perfect poise in shape ; the perfect rest it gives to you within ; its genial hints of earth below and the cerulean concave over all ; earth and heaven, — the level earth on which we mortals stay and strut awhile ; the unobstructed way straight overhead through which the thought, the prayer, the disembodied soul may soar away to rest, to heaven, to God ! This is the Pantheon, once dedicated to gods. This is the Pantheon, re-dedicated to many gods in One. And sitting here beneath this brick and marble benediction, this best of all Italian domes, let us not forget to thank the Church and popes that erected here the sign of Christ and made this fane a Christian church ; made it partly secure from wanton sacrilege and brought it down quite safe and sure to us in these far-distant days. A week in Rome ! One hardly gets his eyes open, — hardly gets used to the stateliness, the magnificence, the gran- deur of it all. You go to the great churches to be dazed, to the antiquities to be amazed, to the galleries and museums to be lost in bewilderment. Are you coming to Rome ? If you come to see it all, — to compass its palaces, spiritual and civil ; to understand its an- tiquities ; to know the length and breadth of Rome in time and figures, — come early, come to stay. Come well braced for dis- appointment ; for when you have spent your dear, short life of twent)', thirty, or forty years here, you will know so little, lack so much, that you will not dare to look your neighbor in the face. I envy the man who has been in Rome three days and tells you he has seen it all ! I like him for his obdurate, bliss- ful ignorance, — a state of hopeless mental vacuity that outbids responsibility, — and wish he would \\Tite a book on Rome. You come to Rome. You take a bite to eat, order a vehicle. You are going out to view the city. Where will you drive? Nine times out of ten the pilgrim says, " St. Peter's Church." " A San Peatro," speaks your porter to the whip, and off you go ; off through close narrow streets, hemmed in by tall, tawny, stuccoed houses, that are stores and shops and dwellings R AMBLINGS IN ROME. 357 combined. You cross the bridge of Angels in a trance, you pass the castle Angelo in a daze, you squeeze in through the Borgo in an anxious state, and facing great St. Peter's you are crushed. You hunt your stock of words : they are misfits. You try to tell your thoughts : they are too insignificant. You alight, stare at the colonnades, the great ambitious fountains, the hieroglyphic obelisk, then turn and go inside. If you are wise you '11 say no foolish thing, but keep your silence. You cannot understand a thing you see : the distances are great and over- come you ; the heights are lofty, — room in any corner to tuck away your village church and never miss the space it takes ; the floor a wide expanse of colored marbles ; the piers and columns, niches, statues, cherubs, — everything so out of all proportions that you have ever seen, you cannot take it in and can scarcely find your tongue. You will join the crowd, maybe, and kiss Saint Peter's toe ; you will go to the great bronze canopy and look upon the many lighted lamps ; gaze up above the clouds and find the heavens very high and over-wrought with rows of saints, — tier on tier, with Christ and Mary where the sun should be. You hear church music somewhere near you — some intoned service, — but not a congregation is in sight ; the great floor space is free of crowds, although some hundreds of people wander about just as you do ; you wonder where the singing is, and go to seek it, — go to hunt among the piers, about the aisles and chapels ; at last you find it way off to one side, — a mere chapel service. But look you, that little chapel you see here is larger than any church, perhaps, you have ever worshipped in : its dome mounts up two hundred feet or more ; its floor is costly marble work ; its altar golden bronze and precious stones ; its pictures masterpieces. Put all the people into it that you find in your average church at home, and they will yet leave room for as many more. Nothing is small here. Stay here for weeks, and come here for an hour every day, and it will grow, will take on form and shape, and you will get accustomed to it. It hardly seems the work of man, — more like a vast majestic cave arranged by supernatural hands ; some cathedral of the gods. The work of man can be described so man can understand ; this passeth all description, passeth understanding. You may pace it off, — go around its outer walls, and those of its annexes, 358 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and the adjoined rooms of the Vatican, — and the walk is longer than that which compasses the walls of Jerusalem ! You trudge up to the top and walk about the streets of houses there ; the great paved roof looks like a village, with its street and public square, its homes for the workingmen, of whom there is a large force to keep things in repair. The lofty chapel domes that spring up through the roof are so many small temples, — kiosks. The grand old central dome that mounts up over there beyond this tidy village is the august cathedral, — round, as was cathe- dral shape in later pagan and early Christian times. You wan- der here at leisure ; look up along the eighteen-feet back of the Saviour and the saints that from the roof-village wall look down into the sixty-acre open square that fronts the great St. Peter's ; stray round the sturdy parapets, climb on up and up toward the sun. From below you saw a little ball, — an ornament on the spire, just below the top. It is bigger than your head, and coming nearer, it grows big and bigger still, and when you get up to it you find it big enough to let you in, — you and your wife and children, uncles, aunts, and visitors. If all are good-sized, sixteen can get in, and more of big and little. From the lantern railing just below you may sit and see the world. Men below are mites, and palaces are children's play- house toys. From here you look straight down into the Tiber, down into the streets and public squares of Rome, as you look on a map, or on the earth from a balloon. You may count from here the other Roman churches — one, two, three — three hundred and sixty-five, whose doors stand open every day. Full many of these are marvels of marble, fresco, bronze, and painted scene ; mosaics rare and precious stones, and gild and glint and jewels. In olden times, those times of pagan- dom, the temples were the banks in which men of means could keep their ready funds ; the priests were the safe cashiers who had not heard of Montreal. You may deposit here, as many a one has freely done, but your checks will not be honored. These churches have much of interest ; each has its private curious history ; each picture, saint, and chapel has its tale to tell ; but life is too short to find them out. We look about a church or two, and leave the rest behind. The Forum. You have been a schoolboy, and spoken your piece upon the stage. Then you know the Forum, but as it R A MB LINGS IN ROME. 359 was in the time of Caesar, Brutus, and Cicero. Well, here we are, in a deep, dilapidated place, — an excavation of a recent date, which has uncovered the temple floors and steps, the broken prostrate columns and capitals, uncovered bases, lower parts of upright arches, columns, that the dust of ages had buried twenty feet ; uncovered altars where were offered pious sacrifices to the heavenly gods. Here came and talked and walked and schemed your old friends, the Casars ; here Cicero arraigned Catiline ; here Catiline was strangled ; and — oh, the irony of fate ! — here were his head and hand cut off by Antony, and exposed to public gaze ; and here came Fluvia, widow of his victim Clodius, and plucked out that silvery tongue which once had swayed the senate and heart of Rome, and pierced it with her hair-pin, spat in his face, and went her way. Here was Cicero murdered and impaled by Mark Antony, who spoke so grandly over Caesar's corse, — spake that same speech which drove the murderous Brutus forth ; the same speech that you have shouted out upon the dreaded school-house stage, among tow-headed boys and girls. You may sit here on the rostrum now, here by the grand old Severus Arch, sit here and see the ruined shrines of other days, — the few remaining temple columns, twenty, perhaps, left out of the thousand that sustained so many a rich-cut frieze and cornice rare in the palmy days of Rome. Here is the old-time pavement of the Via Sacra ; the very stones are at your feet that many a Caesar trod upon. Round here strode Pompey, called the Great ; here came the lawyers to the courts ; here trod the senators of Rome, the generals coming back from wars, the victors in triumphal cars with countless spoils, and kings and princes as prisoners. Here, too, came the priests of shrines, the virtuous vestal maidens to the plays, and — no use to tell you more, for you already know what was done here when, from this very region where we sit and muse and try to talk, edicts went forth, eagle-winged, to farthest Europe, to Asia, to Africa, to all the continents of this great hemisphere, to order and control affairs in all the then known world. How small and weak you feel, and how benumbed, — bereft of thought and speech, in this, the centre of a powerful world. It has happened but once, — and happened where you sit to- day, — only once when one man, one power, has ruled so much 36o A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. of earth. We talk of the great powers now, — the great powers of Europe. Why, Caesar's hand covered the whole of it, — this boasted map, this patchwork crazy-quilt ! And this was but a tithe of Rome's possessions. This early June Roman weather is very fine, — just warm enough for thin woollen clothes by day and perfect rest at night. You hear of Rome as an unhealthy place. You need not believe it unless you want to, for it is not so. People do die here ; so they do in comfortable beds at home ; but the death- rate is not in any way alarming. If a sickly traveller comes here and dies, a great many people hear of it at home and lay the blame to Rome. Foolish people come here and tramp about in the hot sun, then cool themselves too quickly looking at interesting things in cool old church caves ; as a result take cold, —die, perhaps, or have a long pull at " Roman fever," — and Rome must stand the blame. This is all nonsense. Come to Rome when you may ; if you are sound of health, and know how to dress comfortably, eat and drink reasonably, work fairly eight hours a day and rest the other sixteen, you need have no fear. If you are not in proper health, then stay at home. Don't come to Italy to find it. The streets of Rome — that is, of old Rome — are narrow and tortuous, a maze of alleys, lanes, and tangled ways, much like the older parts of Boston or New York. But they are better paved and surely quite as clean as are the streets of either. In former times, no doubt, these streets were full of filth. The early Christians must have been a dirty people, rank- ing cleanliness next to heathenism, and took the way most choked with filth as the most direct to heaven. The proof of this is all about. They took no care of streets, removed from them no dirt or filth ; and this Rome of to-day is a good ten or fifteen feet above the grade of ancient Rome. Not that the grade needed raising, but the natural indolence and supreme nastiness of mediaeval Christian Rome let all dirt and filth re- main in the streets, where it piled up and up, year after year and century after century, until the place became a mass of fetid misery. The reason some assign for this is that Christians regarded Roman ways as heathenish. The Roman bathed a great deal. R AMBLINGS IN ROME. 36 1 and gave great attention to cleanliness of person, streets, and their surroundings. In the mind of the Christian this way of living was all wrong, because it was the heathen way. So, as the Christian came into power, he let the baths decay, and let the streets fill up. Even some of the monkish orders — those who went to a life of hermitage — were enemies of soap, and held clean water as fit only to drink. But it is different now here and in most Italian towns. Here every street is nicely paved, and swept up every day. No mud or filth or garbage of any sort is left upon these stones, and there is water everywhere. Street sprinkling is not done, be- cause the streets are so well paved and swept there is no dust to lay. In new Rome, where the streets are wide and macad- amized, or partly paved, they sprinkle them the same as in other towns. There are fountains, — fountains everywhere, and count- less drinking-places. In most of our American cities a thirsty person may travel hours and find no place to drink pure water. Our people talk more temperance in a week than you will hear here in a lifetime ; yet we seldom furnish public drinking- places where one athirst may find relief. All this may not have much to do with the temperance spirit here or there ; but it does not change the fact that in these places of abundant water supply, and where light wines and beers are drunk, you see no drunkenness. In his admirable " Irensus Letters," some years since, the Rev. Dr. Prime said that in his far-and-wide European travels he had seen, with one or two exceptions, no drunkenness. Thinking the statement rather queer, I have kept it many years in mind. I have found the statement true, at least in Continental Europe. It is now almost a year since I set sail from San Francisco ; the way around has taken me to many cities, through the best and worst of many cities' streets, and all the drunken men there seen can be counted on the fingers of my hand. Water, water, every- where, and every chance to drink. Make drinking-places plenty, pleasant, and attractive, and you will help along the cause of temperance. And so with these clean streets and this free use of water, Rome to-day is not the place it was, but very healthy. Most of this grand cleaning up and paving was done during the pontificate of good old Pius IX., who gave great impetus to Rome. Now that the popish rule is changed 362 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. to that of state, the good work still goes on ; beggary has nearly disappeared, much building is being done, and Rome is prosperous. Prosperous or not, it is ever full of interest. There are enough of the monuments of antiquity left to give it zest ; and the collections made of pictures and statuary, by princes, popes, and cardinals, — these and the legends of the ancient time, — the stories told of middle centuries and early Christian days, make Rome a place of never-failing interest. The courtesy of this people is something wonderful. Who among us who have fine houses, galleries of art, and costly pre- cious things, throw open our rich rooms to every curious tramp that comes along, to come in and inspect ? The number is too small to name, if one, indeed, there be. Yet here in Rome a dozen noble homes and villas, yes, nearly every noted palace, hall, or country seat in Rome or round about its walls, are open on certain days for all to come, — come free and welcome ; go about the gorgeous halls and rooms and dainty cabinets ; inspect the rare things there, — collections of the house for ages past, — things that can nowhere else be seen. This is most kind and generous, this worthy, public-spirited, Italian way of making Rome inviting ; of making it well worth your while to come. These people are under no obligation to the world at large. There is no reason why they should invite you to drive up to their private doors, walk in and go upstairs, go tramping about and dirtying their floors and making work for servants ; no reason only this, — they are courteous, obliging folk; they and their ancestors have collected fine things in art for their own pleasure ; and since there is a strong desire on the part of tourists to see these things, they heed the want in real courtesy ; invite you in to see what they have got, and make you glad you came. This is genuine courtesy, and we can't thank them too much for it. Even the grand Farnesina has been re-opened twice a month to visitors. This is the famous Chigi house, built here in Ra- phael's time by an ambitious banker who had wealth to squander. So he built this palace, and he employed no less an artist than Raphael himself to come and decorate these noble halls and rooms. They have not been shown much to the public in the past twenty years ; and all art lovers were much rejoiced when, R AMBLINGS FN ROME. 363 a year or two ago, it was announced that twice a month the Raphael treasure-rooms of the Farnesina palace would be opened up again. In all Rome — not in the world — are there such rooms as these, such lovely frescos. Those of the same great master at the Vatican are fine, but not so full of human interest, and these are much better preserved. You may have read the story of the loves of Cupid and Psyche, and what a row their quiet courtship made among the women who lived about Olympus. You know that Venus tried to spoil the match, and persuaded great Jupiter to interfere. He ordered Mars to straight arrest this human girl and bring her to his great Olympic court for trial ; that it might be fully shown why she had tampered — she, a girl of earth — with Cupid's affections. The court assembled ; Mars brought in his prisoner, fairer than Juno, Venus, — fairer than any there. The painter takes this moment for his glorious ceiling picture, — the Court at Mount Olympus. If one might do impossible things with pen and ink, you might be shown this wondrous composition situate on the fleecy clouds. This and its companion piece, the Supper of the Gods, are gems of art defying ordinary writers' skill. You know that Psyche won her case in spite of all opposing arts, and that, in order to keep Cupid at home, his fair fiancee was made immortal and given a place among the dwellers of heaven who lived about Olympus. The trial over, the verdict on the lovers' side, then came the marriage ceremony, and next the wedding feast. This forms the subject of the second picture, — the equal of the first, and by many most admired. At all events, the feast was graced by the presence of Jupiter and Juno and many another deity, and there aloft upon the mimic clouds the artist shows them all. These and the lunette pictures of the room make up a rare gallery, such as can nowhere else be seen ; and we left them simply because we had to go. The second room — they show but two — is also very fine, but not so fine as the first. In it is shown the famous Galatea, by Raphael's hand ; Perseus and Medusa, the hand of Perseus clinched in the Medusa's snaky hair, ready to decapitate ; the fair Diana driving forth her mismatched bullock team yoked to a golden car. The conception in these two falls far short of that in the other ceiling, — so far short that you feel disposed to question whether Raphael had any hand in them at all. 364 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. The reason why these treasures have been so long locked up from public gaze may as well be told, in the hope that it may do some good and keep some lawless travellers from a similar trespass. These rooms and more were open long ago to visitors. A prowling idiot — a traveller — wanting in man- ners and having no eye for the quality of art, but seeking great- est quantity, went rushing through the opened rooms, in his greed trying the locks of other doors. As ill-fortune would have it, instead of stumbling through some door into a hatchway and properly breaking his worthless head, he opened the very door that chance had left unlocked, and bolted into the but newly wedded princess's dressing-room ! From that time the palace doors were closed against the outer world for many years. In future, let us hope lawless louts like this will stay at home and allow the world to enjoy these most rare palace rooms. Rome is getting dull, they say, — that is, the season is getting late, with only now and then a straggler coming from the North. Besides, the cholera is gaining here and there about the state, which heads off many tourists. But the cholera interferes less with people's comfort and mental rest, so far as my ob- servation goes, than something else. In many days of steady travel from Japan here, cholera has attended every step ; no city seemed to be quite free of it, and in many it was raging. But in the Orient, in India and China, the people seem to have but little fear of it, it being a sort of matter-of-course disease. A cholera death would stir New York all through ; a cholera death at Calcutta would not vacate a seat — not more than one — in the hotel where it happened, so used do people get to it. Now drive once more to Trevi fountain and take of its bright waters yet another drink, to bring us safely back to good old Rome. Once more now to the Pantheon, the shrine of two millenniums ; then once again wander in the marble maze of great St. Peter's shrine, to view the old-time things down in the crypt ; to mount aloft five hundred feet in air to view the real map of Rome, to count her hills, point out her temples, palaces, and walls. Then to the Vatican again to see mosaic pictures made of colored vitreous bits, so firmly fixed in color as to laugh at Father Time and set at naught all fading. These pictures are a wonder. The copy picture stands before the RAMBLINGS IN ROME. 365 workman, — your portrait if you please, or one most intricate, presenting all the glories of the painter's thought and brush. Within his reach lies the vitreous material in every variety of shape and color, — in twenty thousand different shades ! He breaks these bits to proper shape, — and some of them present no more surface than a common needle's broken end, — and patiently shapes them on a whirling stone, arranges them, well fastened in cement, the upward faces showing every light and shade and tint and tone the painting he is copying has. Patience ? Year after year do men work at a single pic- ture. These saintly portraits take two years or more. This picture has been worked at nine years by one man, and is yet unfinished. Patience ! It makes one tired to look at them. The eight-and-twenty thousand different colors are cut in cubes and carefully arranged in cases, each cube or block plainly num- bered. The material ready for use is in other boxes, like the boxes printers use for capitals. These, too, are numbered, the contents corresponding with the sample tints. Take blue, for a Madonna's eyes and outer robe. How many shades of blue are there ? Count them as fast as the clock counts seconds. Try to detect the difference in shade. Count on ; an hour or so, if you have patience, will see you through. So on through all the colors, — all the varying tints and shades you see in flesh and fabric ; all that flora gives and fauna too ; colors of earth and flame and smoke, of rainbow tints and softest shades in fleecy clouds and opening buds, or pansy petals peeping from the dewy grass, — all, every matching tint is here within this checkered case. Aladdin rubbed his lamp, and brought great wonders forth. The artist here rubs bits of colored glass, and evolves miracles. 366 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER XXV. THROUGH THE ALPS. Pisa, its Tower and Temples. — Among the Mountain Lakes. — The Gothard Tunnel Line. — Marvels of Engineering. — Through the Snows on Horseback — Geneva, Lake and City. — A Region of Fine Scenery and Bad Theology. — The Decay of Travel in Switzerland. THE Alps at Andermatt ! A week ago, Rome, briglit, warm, full of summer life. To-day, the Alps, cool, quiet, with weeping clouds. The rail took us to Pisa, which tourists generally cut off with a shilling. It is hardly right, for she has most excellent and curious things to show. The tower is famous in its lack of rectitude. It is not elegant, though built with utmost care, — a place in which to hang and ring cathedral bells, wedding and funeral bells. It has never been copied, no one thinking enough of it to reproduce it. When an architect or a miUiner does a really good thing, there is no end of imitators. Egyptian obelisks were built five thousand years ago, and they are copied yet ; so are bonnets ; but this old tower, never. It leans because the earth beneath it gave way when they built it. It yielded just so much, then stopped. This is odd. Another inch or two of yielding would have thrown it down, and Pisa with it, as a tourist point. You see some men — ministers, perhaps, or yet newspaper men — who lean this way or that about so far, and always stay there. Many who lean at all do so too much, and fall, for it is a dangerous habit. But there are fine things at Pisa. If you like really fine and unique things in marble you should go inside the Pisan temple, — a grand old church, built of black and white marble, with numerous granite columns ranging down the noble naves and transept ; adorned with many a goodly painting, rare mosaic- work, and inwrought precious marbles, with bronzes, dura pietra, and gold lavishly used in ceiling work, — the whole a noble poem around the wondrous altar gemmed with precious stones ; THROUGH THE ALPS. 367 around Galileo's lamp, suspended from aloft, and swinging even now as on that day when the most thoughtful student of the Pisan school watched its vibrations and matured some living thoughts. You will go a long journey to find a church so full of interest. Its great bronze doors are very old and picturesque. They stop you at the threshold to tell you in their bronze relief the Bible history of the world, in simple ways, often ludicrous. You see the many granite columns, so old, mismatched in size and length, patched up here and there, to make the best of it. These columns came from Baalbec and from Ephesus. These and many a precious marble here and round about in Pisa were inherited from the heathen. These Pisans, you may have read, were mariners and prowled about the seas ; took things that belonged to other folks, robbed temples of their shrines and columns, and brought them here because they were richly wrought, and because all their plundering and pious stealings would come in handy in erecting temples, altars, shrines to Mary, Christ, and the eternal God. It looks curious. I like these grand old pagan stones ; would like to hear the story of their lives, their temples in the East despoiled by Christian hands ; would like to hear their thoughts while listening to a sermon on the goodly text, " Thou shalt not steal ! " They say that no good comes of stealing. But the very roofs of this and many other fine old pious piles would fall to earth if restoration were made. We go into the Campo Santo, " holy ground." This dirt was brought from Calvary to bury pious Pisans in. You walk about on dead men's breasts. The ambitious story of their virtues and their power is told in mar- ble underneath your feet. What irony ! So do the thronging tourists — strangers to the mighty dead — obliterate the names of such as built these towers and churches, and smirch their virtues with their feet. Here lived old Nicolo Pisano ; here lived John, his son. Would you see their noble works? Eook you at the pulpit in the Baptistery, — world-renowned work ; look you at the older gates in Florence ; look at marbles and bronzes scattered far and wide, — most precious work. Names of these and such as these you should at least respect. You see Giotto's frescos on the walls, — those florid Bible stories. Here are heaven and hell, — graves yielding up their dead, — and here the resurrection, the souls of men long dead escaping from their 368 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. mouths to be caught by angels or devils, sometimes an angel and a devil tugging at a hapless soul. What interesting mock- ery is this, thus to be pictured by religious man, thus to be nurtured by the Christian faith ! What horrid nightmares this Giotto must have had, to conjure up such orgies as he has painted here ! But he gave the world the precious Campanile tower at Florence, far better than this staggering Pisan one ; so we forgive him. But we must not stop in Pisa, whose curious Baptistery, with columns from Asia Minor, with Pisano's noble work, with its wondrous echoes and most wonderful exterior, must all be left behind. From the grand old cathedral, with stolen columns and unique arches, from the tower, the burial-ground, and all, we rush away, to visit, for a single busy day, old Genoa, — Genoa, with its churches, palaces, the grandest burying-ground in all the world, and an ingenious garden ; Genoa, the home of Columbus, who did n't discover America, — who, if the truth were known, but bravely followed up a long-known fact. The thought that this America, which was known in European ports to lie out beyond the sea some three thousand miles or so, might be a part of the East Indies, might have been original with him, but even that is doubtful. The rest is more than doubtful. America was fairly well known, as to its northern coasts, five hundred years before Columbus sailed. However, we gaze upon his bust and on his portrait picture, wish him well, and go our way. The Pallavicini gardens are beautiful, — a thousand acres of steep mountain-side turned up toward the sunny sea, whicli skill and money and Father Time have made most beautiful in walks and shades ; in caves and lakes and marble sculptures, brought from far and near to grace a prince's grounds withal. The water fantasies are strange and most surprising. We sail to Bellagio, — an anxious pilgrimage to earth's most lovely spot ! There are always some friends, you know, who are better than all other friends ; some city, sculpture, picture, fairer to you than all the rest ; some spot on earth to which your mind will turn regardless of your will, as brightest, best of all. That place in this, my travel world, is fair Bellagio. A noble prom- ontory between the branches of this Como Lake, with shaded nooks and winding paths and arbored seats, from which you THROUGH THE ALPS. 369 look down many hundred feet on dark and pale blue waters ; look far up the lofty clear-lined hills and crests and snow- crowned peaks ; look far out upon the rippling bosom of the lake, — out on lovely villages and villas nestling here and there among the trees and flowering vines, among fountains, lawns, and grottos. This is Bellagio, this castle-crowned Monte Surbellona. Eden ? Better than Eden. There is no avenging angel here to drive you out. It is no fantasy, but a living, ripe reality, — a place for happiest solitude, content, and perfect rest. You might stay for days and weeks upon this queen of all the lakes, hemmed in by mountains and rich foliage ; this place of vistas, busy brooks, perennial flowers, — a paradise. The route lies through other mountain lakes, and the bright scenery of early summer. The mountain streams are frequent ; everywhere long lines of silver brooks come tumbling down the smooth-faced mountain-sides, foaming with restless energy, — countless cascades weaving bridal veils, — then pitching head- long into the deep clear lake, adding fresh tints gathered from the clouds. The route beyond the lakes is up the Ticino, — a good-sized, restless river rushing along among the rocks, falling some twelve thousand feet in less than fifty miles, feeding on wild mountain rills, tearing through the gorges, — epitome of endless energy. We are on the famous Gothard line, — the railroad route that makes sport of difficulties seemingly insurmountable. There are people who challenge your admiration ; and among them is the civil engineer. Give him tools, and tell him where you want to go, put money in his purse, and he will get there, — over, under, through, or round about. The work will ripen, sure as fate. He cHmbed these mountains here for miles and miles without a " reverse ; " made lengthy loops far under ground to gain more altitude, now channelling the mountain's upright face, now striding across a mighty torrent, now burrowing in the mountain's rocky sides, mining at varying grade and curve as though he wrought in open air, and finally coming out at just the point he wanted to. It takes two hours or so after you have quit the lake-shore work to get up to the tunnel, and every foot is a fight with mountain obstacles. Every inch bids the engineer defiance, — dares him to take another step. Coolly he consults his instru- 24 370 A GIRDLE HOUND THE EARTH. ments, plans an attack, and carries every point. Exteriors head him off. No matter, he goes inside. At Airolo the baffled Alpine king mustered all his forces, — presented a solid breast- work to our engineer. Two thousand feet or more of solid perpendicular rock opposed the man of levels, — a stony army ; ten miles of flinty ranks to fight. This is nothing. If the enemy won't fight fair upon an open field, the engineer will quit the surface altogether. He disappears awhile, — delves into the bowels of the earth, — then reappears ten miles or more in the enemy's rear. The Alpine monarch gave it up ; and he who has controlled the march of armies, marking the cost, the time, the seasons when they might painfully and patiently pass his strong dominions, paying him costly tribute at every step, has yielded to this youthful engineering David, and is now as meek and mild as your pliant prairie king. The steam horse comes and goes ; sports among these Alpine limbs and ribs ; puffs smoke into his scowling, helpless face ; and blows his mighty horn in the imperial ear. So are the mighty fallen ! So has the little man of calculating ways, with bits of glass and brass and pencil-stub, subdued this long-time Mediterranean monarch. Thus mind conquers matter, and science wears the crown. We quit the train at Airolo. No proper tourist can afford to rush beneath the glories of the great Gothard pass, to grovel in the earth and smoke, when he can climb such heights as these, and play bo-peep with sun and moon among the clouds. A hasty lunch, a carriage, three stout horses, three saddles, and three men, and we are off for the upper air. A quick lunch here, as anywhere, is a bowl of bread and milk, a piece of cheese, with bread and butter. Goats' milk is common in the Alps ; but many don't like it. One thinks it spoils his bread, the other likes his coffee clear ; but it is wholesome ; and what is taste, after all, but education ? The Chinaman will eat his cat in sweet contentment ; the Malay will relish sea-slugs ; the Gaul eats frogs, the Italian snails, and Americans the oyster. Is the American ahead ; or is the man of cats, or slugs, or frogs, or snails ? Get out your facts, — they are all at fault, for it 's only custom after all. Away we go. We climb the hill by zigzags, — one, three, five, fifteen hundred feet straight up ; then add some thousands more. We found the landlord prevaricated. We asked him if the snow- THROUGH THE ALPS. 37 1 drifts blocked the road across the pass. There was no snow, he said. "What, then, are these three saddles for? " " Oh, you will find some bad roads, some rocks fallen down ; the carriage cannot go, so you must ride a bit. I '11 telegraph a carriage to meet you on the other side." The talk was good enough, but hardly true, A few thousand feet above, the snow was in deep drifts across the way, — deep December drifts that were there to stay till June was far away. The saddles were for snow-drift riding, — one for baggage, two for three full-grown men. What should be done ? Being rather light, we would divide our horse with any other man, and sit behind or front. The doctor demurred \ the bishop said it hurt his corns to ride, — he 'd always rather walk. The air was bracing ; clouds all around us. So in gaiters and a sickly sun- umbrella he charged the Alpine drifts. The doctor chose his nag, — a sturdy sorrel mountain mare, with steady eye and even pace, — and mounted and rode away, defying fate. The other man took his pick of the only animal left, — a chunky wheel- horse. He would n't have chosen such a dumpy cob out of a dozen, but where there is but one you can hardly make a poor selection. The doctor led. Both nags were persistently slow. You might hurry ; they would not. In the Alps a winter snow- drift is as solid as a turnpike. All you have to do is to ride right over it. We had made this very road in twenty feet of drifted snow without a single slump. But when the summer sun gets to work, and drifts get soft and slushy, look out. There is bottom somewhere, and you may find it sooner than you like. The bishop, as was said, decHned to ride ; so he plodded on afoot, picking his way along the top of the wayside macadam piles that were just appearing through the snow, then over deep slumpy drifts, in which long legs were no advantage ; creeping along the gray stone parapets where the snow was thin or gone, fearful lest he fall into the gulf below. The doctor spurred his sorrel nag into the nearest drift. For a few steps all went well ; but suddenly down went the sorrel nag, and off the rider rolled, declaring he would ride no more on snow-drifts. He then took up the bishop's trail and tramped awhile in snow and rocks. But he lacked patience, and soon returned, declaring the pass could not be made ; we had better return and take the next -hl^ A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. train, rather than run the risk of broken legs and bruised heads, up there among the clouds and threatening storm. He might be right. "How far is it to the hospice?" we asked the guide. "Venti minuti, Signore." Only twenty minutes ! Let us make it. That wheel-horse nag had feet like snow-shoes. He could walk a drift with perfect confidence. His rider was not a heavy one, but it was the story of the last straw that broke the camel's back. The crisis came ; the rider made a vaulting leap and struck the snow, all fours spread out, rolled over, found his feet again all right. The horse rolled over too, but, relieved of his rider, he gained his feet again and walked the drift in safety. Mounting again and yet again, the other drifts were safely passed ; but alas ! with many a stumble and many a throw. At last we reached the hospice, — a chilly-looking place. Should we turn back, or go ahead ? The guide declared it was better on ahead. A footman we had questioned farther back declared it worse. However, the top was reached, the rest was down-hill work, and off we started down the grade. The drifts got worse and worse. The bishop waded through in dull de- spair ; the doctor quit his saddle ; the other waited for results. They came. More stranding in the slumpy drifts, more fearless vaulting through the air, more struggling in the drifted snow. The guides got out the horse and stood him up ; but the rider drew a line ; he knew when he had had enough, and swapped the saddle for his feet, — feet already wet with melted snow, and only clad for city walks. Drift after drift barred up the road the next two miles ; but the drifts were getting smaller, so we pushed on, hoping soon to meet the carriage from the other side. Vain hope- Now that the drifts were past and gone, big bowlders choked up the way. We had left our horses far behind to struggle with the drifts, and kept up a brisk walk to keep from getting cold. It was not a happy-looking three ; with straw hats, wet feet, and draggled pants; tired out with long tussles in the snow, and six miles more before a house. Night was com- ing on, and sharp hunger had arrived already. There are suggestions of the hereafter all along these Alpine roads in spring-time, and the snow is not the worst of it. The THROUGH THE ALPS. 373 rocks that beetle out above your head get loosened by the water, frost, and thaw, and come tearing down into the road. Just when they will start, and whom they will hit, is something for reflection. But troubles always have an end, and so with ours ; for turn- ing a sharp point of rocks we saw our carriage farther down, stopped by a bowlder of some forty tons that had just dropped down and filled the road, like a freight-car wrecked across the track. We were going to scold the driver for not meeting us farther up, but this suggestion from the upper crags prevented it. So we rode away to Andermatt, where a good hot plate of soup, a feast of trout from a mountain brook, a good soft bed with a quilt of fluffy down, a good night's rest, and something more to eat wiped out our woes and made us brave again. To-day it was to be the Furca. Last night we vowed not to try it ; but to slip down past the Devil's Bridge to Goschenen and catch the Lucerne train. But vows made in pain are brittle things and generally broken. The Furca is the loftiest Alpine pass that has a carriage road, — ten thousand feet or more above the sea. At ten o'clock the carriage waited at the door for a two days' ride to Brieg, the railroad terminus of the Simplon pass. The landlord said there were no snow-drifts on the way, — just what his Airolo brother had said the day before ; but we were warm, well filled, and consequently brave, and did n't mind much what he said. This town of Andermatt is some five thousand feet above the sea, and yet the grass is thick and green, and flowers bloom, and Nature wears, some months at least, a lovely garb. The herds and flocks are numerous ; fine cattle, sheep, and goats, fat pigs and poultry, — a country well-to-do. Compare these heights with ours across the sea. At this height on our mountain-tops no sign of life appears, scarcely a lichen ; here are fine farming lands, herds, and fields of r}'e, and abundance of hay and gar- den stuff. The " Devil's Bridge " is another sample of the unconquera- ble energ}' of the engineer. The mountain torrent, the raging Reuss, gets jammed in here among the crowding rocks, and lashes itself into a roaring rage, — dashing about and leaping over crags in hissing spray, sprinkling the bridge that spans its foaming flood, then rushing on below, — while you stand awed 374 '^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and dazed at what is at your feet. The road is cut in the Uving rock above the angry flood ; the bridge is a masterpiece. They say the Devil told the engineer the bridge could not be built, — could not and should not be. The engineer thought otherwise, and told the Devil so \ he could build the bridge, and would, in spite of him. But to avoid a constant row, the two compromised in this way : the engineer might build his bridge in peace ; but the first one who should pass over it on foot, after the work was done, should be the Devil's special plunder. And so the work went on. When it was done, who was to be the first to pass? No one volunteered. No wonder. The man is rarely found who wants to leave this earth, even for that eternal bliss he knows lies just beyond ; more rarely one who would volunteer to pass the bridge to an eternal grill. But the engineer was equal to the occasion. He took a loaf, and found a hungry dog. The first he flung across the bridge ; the next went after it. The Devil, wroth at such complete defeat, spat fiery words, but left the spot, and never has re- turned. But he left his name behind — the daring Devil's Bridge. • •••••• Geneva, — a well-known city upon a well-known lake, — a miniature Paris, strongly built, neatly kept, busy, and orderly. You see no loafers on the streets, and beggars are unknown. The crystal Rhone rushes through the town beneath a dozen bridges, bearing away every taint and smell, keeping the place clean and wholesome. Its streets and shops are orderly, with- out police display. Police they have, no doubt, and most efficient, but you would n't know it from any fuss they make. The hackmen here are Swiss ; you pay them their just fare, they thank you and drive away. Pay the London or Parisian cabman exact fare, and ten to one he '11 ask for more and swear if he does n't get it. The streets are clean and smooth : the playgrounds, parks, and people's music-stands are numerous, full of shade-trees and banks of flowers. On Sunday the shops are closed, and people go to church or gather in the gar- dens, ride out on the pretty lake, have home picnics, friends, and music, — seem to love the Lord and have a pleasant time. Such a place for wine ! To ride along Geneva shore you would think they thought of nothing else but grapes and wine. THROUGH THE ALPS. 375 No other crop is seen, but mile on mile of vineyards. Geneva seems steeped in wine ; yet you may come and walk its streets a week and see no drunken man. There must be some excess, abuse of the long-time habit somewhere, but it does n't come to the surface ; and you wonder why it is that it is so ; and wonder why our good Yankee folks at home have to be re- strained by stringent laws, tied down and bound with legal cords and penalties to keep them on the path of sobriety. Are people, then, so different? These Swiss are flesh and blood akin to ours ; they have tastes and appetites. These keep fairly sober all their lives, and all their lives they drink their beer and wine. Americans take it differently, — get drunk as brutes ; get into the cooler ; spend their means in drunks and rows ; make streets a bedlam, home a hell. Like them, we worship in A. D. and break the bread in open church, baptize, have schools, and all of this and that, but can't keep sober. Is it in the tem- perament, climate, way of doing things, or what? No matter, it is so ; and when or how the remedy will come is past our present finding out. I rather like Geneva, so cool and thoughtful and quiet. Such a view from where I sit and write ! — a lovely terrace filled with flowering shrubs and trees, marked off by gravel walks, dotted with turf and rose-beds ; beyond, the clean-kept quay, and then the lake, — the shrubbery and flowers and trees and lake a lovely picture. Beyond the lake, where swells many a lateen sail, are garden shores and pretty homes and villages ; and far beyond, the higher swells and hills, and farther yet, and glinting in the sun like purpled silver, stands forth the glorious Alpine range, burnished with perpetual snow. Yesterday I had a glimpse of this most wondrous chain. It seemed the shining silver walls of Paradise, the outworks of the eternal home, a plain pictured on the softest sky, — the rampart line of heaven ! Geneva ! Home of Calvin, Zwingle, Necker, Descartes, and Diderot, of Bonnivard and Rousseau ; here wrote Byron, Gib- bon, Madam de Stael, and scores of others great and grand in thought and history, making this spot immortal. John Calvin stood upon this soil and almost shook the world. He was a giant ; fanatic though he was, and brooking no restraint, he was about as right as any of the rest. He claimed his doctrine to be right, and dared the world to contradict. He found 3/6 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Servetus on a visit here, — a stranger who had once written a book that came in contact with John Calvin's thought, and him he caught and burned at the stake. Why not? It was the then popular way of arguing a pious point. If your adversary was the stronger, he burned you at the stake. If you were stronger, then he must suffer. All over Europe, in religious lines, murder for opinion's sake was just and proper. If our loving Father in heaven may kindly burn nine-tenths of all. His earthly children in an everlasting fire, why might not His chosen ministers on earth indulge themselves that way? At all events they did, — did so in good old Massachusetts a century after Calvin's time, and called it there the will of God. John Calvin said all things were foreordained ; that God knew everything. You say the same. He said that some were saved and some were damned whether they would or no. You cannot safely deny it. His theory was omniscience. That destroys free-will ; it made election sure. Much of the world indorsed his views ; and though they are tempered down to suit the times, yet, after all, that Calvinistic, clean-cut thought stands out before the world as clear and cold, as perfect, icy, bloodless, as a Mont Blanc crystal. It is not the thought of loving mothers with tender babes enfolded in their arms ; it is not the thought of loving ones and tender friends and those who pray for all mankind ; but it was Calvin's thought, fixed on an omni- scient God. Much of the world denies it. That is nothing : one man and God is a majority. Two Sundays since, in Rome, the stores were open, trade was all agog ; men bought and sold and counted loss or gain as on any other day. They wrought at building ; carts went through the streets laden with brick and stone ; and merchants sold their wares as though the day were Monday. Here in Geneva the shops are closed. No laden teams are on the streets ; no sound of trowel, hammer, axe ; only the drug-stores, and men who sell cigars and snuff from jars, keep open shop. Right here a thought. Smith sells pills and lots of other things. Brown sells boots and shoes. He can't sell boots and shoes on Sunday and keep his Christian character. Suppose he puts some pills into his stock, — pills or cigars or snuff, — he may keep open shop the whole dear day and years, for the pills or pipes or snuff or the cigars will float him safely on to a good seat beyond THROUGH THE ALPS. 377 this vale of tears. It is n't the Sunday working fact that sends you up or sends you down ; it is what you chance to deal in. The clear Rhone rushes from the lake ; you cross his rushing current on a bridge, — the one that leads by Rousseau's Island. You know what Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote, but you don't know what calls so many boys and girls, with wheat and barley, bits of bread and cake, to Jean Jacques Rousseau's island. Come with me. Penned off with netted wire-work, in the clear, bright Rhone flood, are places for the swans and ducks. Right there they have a cosey house and lay their eggs and hatch their young ; and that their partial mothers need n't fight, they are paired off — parent swans and cygnets — each family to itself. So here the children come — gray- headed ones sometimes — and toss in bits of food, and watch the little swans and ducklings race for it ; and watch the pompous mothers make wry faces at each other, peck at each other through the close-meshed wire, as if the other one had made unkind remarks about her feathered little ones. Here, all day long, to Jean Jacques Rousseau's ver- dured isle and spacious bridge, the children come, the little ones with ball and hoop, the older ones with crutch and cane, — yet children all, — to watch the cygnets and the swans, the ducklings and the ducks. They are almost human. The mother breaks up clumsy food to give her chits a chance. She takes them on her back when they are tired, and folds them in her arms — or wings. She makes up faces at her rivals through the close-meshed fence, and is ready to resent their curt remarks. That little swan- mother over there is quite a cripple. One foot is useless — cramped beneath her wing ; yet she paddles about with her one foot, and minds her darlings, takes them on her back, and scolds her neighbors, just the same as though she had two feet instead of one. You notice how the children favor the cripple-mother. They flip her the best bits, and drop them nearer that she and hers may not have far to go to get them. We watch these swans and children, study their ways and pranks, and can't tell which knows most, — which are best pleased, most served, by the other's company. Really, it is the best place here in Geneva, — the water deep and clear ; so clear that you can see a pin at ten feet depth ; so pure and clear that every movement of cygnet's foot or fish's fin is clear as daylight ; so clear that 378 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. when a sinking crumb is pursued to the bottom by a hungry duckling, you can see the httle fellow's beak and eye, and watch the motion of his tiny feet, clear to the bottom. In Venice and Jeypore you may watch the doves, for they are sacred birds ; but here in Geneva are swans and ducks. They have no pious character, as have the fussy doves ; but in their acts so motherly and good, the swan of Jupiter, the canard of the curious tale, has your best sympathy. The water route along the north shore of Lake Geneva is of great beauty. The villages are numerous, and all along the shore are lovely gardens, grounds, and country-seats, with such embellishments as taste and art and wealth can provide. To Geneva, and to these numerous lakeside resting-places, come countless people in the summer months to enjoy the coolness, lavish verdure, pure fresh air and water, enchanting drives and boating. No other place in Europe has so many inducements, in quiet life, in purity of earth and air, in choice of rooms and well-cooked food, as do the lakes of Switzerland. Then add to this the mountain scenes, the perfect roads, and charming walks ; the glaciers, passes, gorges, woods ; the cascades, rivers, tumbling brooks ; the towering heights where winter reigns su- preme ; the quiet valleys in perpetual peace. There is nothing finer, better, more satisfying than is found in travel here. There is fine scenery in our own great land, but not so well improved ; it is more widely scattered, with greater lack of this perfect hotel life, and at far greater cost. To find in America the range of scenery, — mountain, lake, the dashing stream and ever frozen river, — you must travel many thousand miles and put up with much privation. Here it is in a nutshell, — Nature's softest touches and fiercest blows ; her sweetest smiles and cold- est scowls ; her choicest flowers and ripest fruits ; her sparkling fountains and reddest wine ; the rustic chapels, bells, and shrines, — all here together in the wood and shade and open land, with roads and walks and homes on every hand. Stepping from the Interlaken station the other day, the array of handsome omnibuses was a sight to see, — twenty-two of them, in sumptuous upholstery, gayly harnessed horses, drivers and porters clad in livery, — an outfit for three hundred tour- ists, of whom there were less than ten. The great hotel Rit- schard, famous for its rooms and spacious halls and fine cuisine, THROUGH THE ALPS. T^yg with accommodations for five hundred guests, had less than fifteen. This is but a sample. What is the matter? They lay the blame on Americans. Some twelve or fifteen years ago, in the prosperous times that followed the close of the war, this land was overwhelmed with people from the States. There was no room for them. They fairly swarmed, and spent no end of money. The Swiss built hotels on every street, and made new streets to put them on. The highest places and the lowest, and every glacier, lake, and pass and waterfall, must have hotels, one or more, and fine ones too, till Switzerland needed but a roof to become itself a grand hotel. The result can be imag- ined. With here and there an exception, the loss is total. Travel has greatly fallen off. So with cold snows and dripping clouds we cut short our stay among the airy Alps and sought the roily Rhine. But it was no better. The vineyard banks were green, and spoke of count- less flasks of wine ; the castles held their sites, in bad or good repair ; the Loreley sirens and the mountain sprites and elfin folks and water-nymphs seemed waiting for the summer. These legend folks are scantily clothed, they say. If this be really so, they did well to keep within their pearly caves and nooks and glens, for it was biting weather. The Rhine in later June should be a gem of comfort ; but now it 's cross and surly, full of gusts and rain as though it had no care for company. Well, it is a sort of fraud after all. The stream cannot be compared in interest with the Danube, Hudson, or Upper Mississippi. The history that it has — the history, legends, romance, tales of rapine, ruin, wrath, and social wretchedness — make up its measure of interest. It is not what they see in the four hours' ride, but what they have read and heard or may imagine about it, that gives a zest to those who never come but once. 380 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER XXVI. POLAND AND RUSSIA. Berlin to Warsaw. — In a German Sleeping-Car. — Crossing the Russian Frontier. — Passport Abominations. — Farm-Lands in Russia. — The Problem of Tree- Planting. — Some Suggestions for American Farm- ers. — Moscow, City of the Czars. — The Church the Ruling Power. — The Sights of Moscow. — The Kremlin. — Churches and Palaces. — Off to St. Petersburg. — A Sleeping-Car that is Better than Pull- man's. — Czar Peter's Summer Palace. — The Hermitage and its Art Displays. — Our Lady of Kazan. — Sunday in St. Petersburg. — Lib- erty as Expounded by a Russian Colonel. IF you ever make up your mind to go to Moscow, change it right away. Napoleon wished he had ; so has every traveller since. We all knew better, had been told a dozen times by travellers not to make the trip ; but there are no fools like old fools, so we bought our tickets, — Berlin to Warsaw ; Warsaw to Moscow, — call it a thousand miles. You never deal in miles travelling over here ; it is so many hours. It does n't concern you at all to know how many miles it may be from Dan to Beersheba ; it is how many hours it takes to make the jour- ney. Distance is nothing ; time is everything. The porter called it sixty hours. We started. The first night's ride — it was midnight when the train got off — was rather comfortable. These sleeping- cars are not so large and roomy, nor so fine, as ours, but they are full of sleep, and in some respects are better than ours. They are cut up into compartments. A man and his wife may have a bed-room to themselves ; parents and children, state- rooms all together ; single men may room in a more promiscu- ous manner. The aisle, instead of running through the centre of the car, runs along one side, from which doors open into bed-rooms, as they should. You sleep athwart, not fore-and- aft, as on the Pullman cars ; your beds arc the genuine article, — spring bottoms, soft hair mattresses, — not the bumpy seats that you have sat upon all day ; your sheets are snowy linen. POLAND AND RUSSIA. 38 1 pillows soft and large ; and you can get up when you wish, wash and dress at leisure, and not be run over by men, women, and porters, have your back thumped, your stomach punched, and your toes trod on by tramping lunatics ; but you dress in peace, say your prayers, and come out when you get ready. It 's not American, but your modest wife or sister will tell you it is decent, and that is what they can hardly say of Pullman sleep- ing-cars. At Alexandrovo, on the Russian frontier, trouble began. As the train stops, or just before, a much-belaced and silver-but- toned man comes charging through tlie train in quest of pass- ports. This passport business is a remnant yet of heathendom, — required only by semi-barbarians. You start around the world, and give the Government five dollars for a passport. It is good for nothing. You call on your consul somewhere, and get him to say something and stamp something on it. He wants two dollars. Still it is no good. The consul of the country you are going to honor with your presence must put some more ink and seals and spill some sand upon it, and take a dollar more, before you can start. No first-class country will ever ask to see it ; they don't fear or care for you, — don't care a cent whether you have a passport or not. But come to poor old Turkey, get over into half-civilized Bulgaria, or even try to enter Russia, and you must have the cleanest kind of record written out and sealed and stamped and punched and checked as though you were a gunboat crammed full of nitro-glycerine. They know you are a tramp who will come and go within a week ; but men in lace and braid and spurs come nosing round, grab up your pass, draw their pay, and call it business. It is a drivelling humbug, unworthy of any nation in time of peace or decency ; a sort of public plunder by our State Depart- ments, our consulates, — ours and all the rest. It is n't much ; but any is too much. We must have our baggage inspected by all the Russias. This customs examination is a farce, as a gen- eral thing ; the grips and trunks must all be opened, the con- dition of your wardrobe exposed, a question or two asked in an unknown tongue, to which you always answer, No ! and the things are locked again ; nothing is found ; nothing sought for. But it is different here in Russia. If you think there is any farce about it, try it. They open all the trunks, grips, and shawl- 382 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Straps ; out come the contents, — dry-goods, clothing, hardware, boots and shoes, and Yankee notions, — everything is on exhibi- tion. But we were ready for them ; for we had left everything but a single change of underwear, some books and newspapers, till we should get back to Cologne. All the seditious stuff we had was a number each of the Des Moines " Register " and the New York " World." These and a supplement of the Davenport " Democrat" the minion gazed upon with penetrating eye, and whisked them into his private box for future reference. It took an hour to do this much, and no doubt they felt repaid for all their trouble. Onward to Warsaw, — capital once of Poland when Poland figured on the map, but now a great flat Russian city on a great fiat space of ground, devoid of touring interest. Poor Po- land, — "plane land," — once a powerful nation, then distraught by war, now divided up and parcelled out among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, even as Austria might be divided up to- day among surrounding powers ; might crushing right. She quarrelled with herself, her states with sister states, and died. • ■ • • • • • A great, flat, level, listless country. Mile after mile, day after day, the wheels roll on through level regions, level farms, over the levellest of roads. Land, land, land, as far as you can see, — farm-land and artificial groves ; vast forests of planted pine and spruce and other trees. The soil is rather sandy, with now and then a strip of rich bottom land ; but everywhere was wheat ; no end of wheat and rye and potatoes. The land is poor, but worked with the greatest care. No fences j cattle herded out ; the land is cultivated in long straight ridges, and not a weed in sight. Is America the only land of weeds ? The Japs will not allow them ; the Chinese farmer hunts them down ; the India farmer roots them out ; the Egyptian has no use for them ; and here in Europe it is the same, — no weedy roads or fields or farms. Why? Because there is better farming here. They till what they can till well. Weeds sap their soil, the strength of which must be preserved for raising grain for daily bread. There is a personal responsibility in it, too ; for no one has a right to foul his own or yet his neighbors' land. With poor farming here on this poor soil the people would starve. As it is, they meet us in the market with their surplus grain, and undercut POLAND AND RUSSIA. 383 our prices. This land up here is cold and poor ; the various kinds of trees have disappeared, only the slim white birch re- maining, — and you know what that means in a farming sense ; but they have many people, — men, women, and children work upon the land, with plenty of horses, sometimes teams of oxen. Good hay is raised, and summer fallowing done ; the grass lands are top-dressed after the hay crop is removed ; stable manure and forest leafage are gathered up in piles ; nothing is lost. The barren hills and plains are clad with forests. Further south great tracts of pine and spruce are raised. We rob our land of all our lumber trees, and so did these people. Now they raise their timber as they raise grain. Slow business. Yes, if you expect a crop right off. Let us see. You are a farmer, say thirty-five years old. Plant out this year ten thousand little trees. You will get nothing from them, but fifty years hence some one will reap a fortune. Don't shake your head, and try to look wise ; the world is doing this outside of America, and finds it profita- ble. The clothing of the barren places makes a better climate, better soil all round ; brings rain and purer air ; brings wood for fires and shelter, and for making many things. All this you don't do now ; but some day you will, and the sooner you begin, the better it will be for your generations and your country. I sometimes wish our American farmers were familiar with some of the ways of farming here. But it is of little use to wish it. If they knew, they would not heed. They laugh at it ; and yet their levity will cost their descendants very dear. Our farmers should see the industry in arboriculture here. Many tracts are too poor for ordinary crops. What then? Let them lie and run to sterile weeds and idleness ? Not so. If they will yield no profitable crop of food for man or beast, they must then return to forestry. Trees are sown or planted out and carefully watched until they need no care, and prove mines of wealth. Go about New England, New York, Ohio, and many other States, and even Western ones, — what have the farmers done with the worn-out barren hills? Nothing. When their lands could no longer stand rapacious plundering, they moved " out West." Maybe they did the same in this old land in former times ; but if they did, they made it hard for those who followed them, even as too many American farmers are doing. 384 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. We go on the theory that posterity has done nothing for us, — then why bother ourselves about posterity? So, instead of re- clothing sterile places, as they do here, with valuable trees that yield posterity abundant profit, we let them go, let springs dry up, and kill off brooks and rivulets, leaving the land to barren- ness, while we go farther West for further depredation. We slay our lumber tracts as though each noble tree were an active enemy, an armed foe. We hew him down, destroy him root and branch, plunder him of his raiment, let him lie and rot, or eat his flesh and blood, without a thought for the generations to come. But ours is a land of liberty. No law compels us to plant trees and make the barren places yield great wealth ; our weeds may grow and foul our farms and foul our neighbors', too. That is our firm-based right to rule and ruin, if we like. We must have fences, even though the cost of fencing takes away the farm. If fences are not made, how shall we be able to de- stroy our forests soon enough ? And unless the forest-trees are slain, how should we be safe from their invasion? But the day of reckoning w^ill come, and the greatest pity is that they who made the score should escape its payment. The day is already come when there is no West to go to ; no more virgin soil to cultivate ; no more moving on and on toward the sunset to make new farms and homes. What then ? A restless, roving, nomad-farmer race brought to a standstill ! The noble native lumber forests gone, and none to take their place ; the country robbed of all its precious woods, and once good lands now barren, sterile, sweltering in the sun. What then ? They must have timber ; they must plant and grow it. Then why not do it now? Why may not law in some way interfere to protect ourselves against ourselves ; to require the man, as in Japan, to plant two trees when he cuts down one, — two trees for one, lest one might die in rearing; to require men to keep their lands free of noxious weeds, their farms, their public roads ? But all of this is very fine, you say, — too fine for sense or profit. Yes, but time will teach you it is not ; and that time is not now far away when men must do these very things in close pursuit of sense and profit, — even naked sustenance. Why not heed this warning now ? Europe has had to heed, — to plant anew her forests ; to stay her noxious weeds ; to forego use of fence, — of lumber fence, at least ; to make the most of everything. And to POLAND AND RUSSIA. 385 this end a law severer and more arbitrary than despot king could make compelled obedience. You may sin against Dame Nature's laws, but she will make you pay. You may destroy her groves and sap her goodly soil, but she will be avenged on you or on your generations. It is better to keep our country in good trim as we go on, even in the days of our prosperity. What we call liberty, and so dearly love, is often only license, — something to avoid. But if Europe, some one asks, has learned so much in for- estry and in care of lands, why don't her people stay at home, and not come flocking to America? The question need not be answered now. Time will answer it very plainly in American ears some day ; that day when all our lands are used ; when our deserted lands are re-improved ; when steep hill-sides are terraced up with stone, farm after farm, and mile on mile, to hold the hard-gained soil in place, — then will the answer come, as come it must. For it is a fact in human history that the slower the living comes, the faster come the progeny ; so, then, look to the future for your certain answer, and wonder whither your generations will flee when there is no "out West," no vacant land beyond the sea. And it is this self-same matter that is agitating thoughtful minds in Europe now. Where is the overplus to go ? So Stanley is kept at work in far-off" Congo land, the last great vacant resource of the world, where savagery may be displaced with peoples civilized. But this is not the present question to which we should give heed, for we have land enough for all our people for centuries to come ; the question is how to preserve its physical interest, — to keep its condition good as we go along. Now don't quote that most vicious text, — " sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," — but let us keep an eye ahead. Let us have laws for needed forestry, and laws restraining noxious weeds. We are very loud and valiant "out West" about a patch or two of Canada thistles ; but while our farmers pray to be spared that curse, they permit whole acres of weeds to thrive upon their own soil ; the country roads luxuriate in weedy trash, to the det- riment of useful crops. The fences of our farms have cost the people more than all the houses, barns, sheds, and household goods that they enclose. To what purpose? Largely in the interest of weeds, to which the fencing gives abundant shade 25 386 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and shelter. Largely in the interest of lawlessness, or that con- dition which compels a man to stand the expense of fencing, even though he has nothing of his own to fence against. They do bet- ter here. If a farmer has stock, he must take care of it. That is his own affair, not his neighbors'. This is equity. If Smith has cattle for his own profit, why should Brown, who has no cattle, be obliged to help take care of Smith's ? Smith must fence in or herd his own cattle ; and when he takes them to market, must Brown and all the rest for forty miles along the way keep up good strong road fences that Smith's cattle may not eat up their crops? Nonsense! Costly nonsense, too! It may be good for lumbermen and iron mills, but it wrecks more than it builds, and the day must come to us when farmers, as here, will each have to look out for his own stock, and when fence- less farms will be cultivated close to the gutters of the country roads. Why not accept the inevitable now, — let such build fence as need it? Steps to this end have some time since been taken in some of the States, but they are too few and slow. • • • • • . • Railroading in Russia, as to time, is a little dull. Fifteen to twenty miles an hour are the slowest and the fastest times. But the roads are excellent, — well ironed, smooth, and no doubt safe. The average European road is much better than the average American road, in its bridges, bed, and general con- struction. The engines are much the same, the freight-cars also ; our passenger equipments average better, though some conditions here we might adopt with comfort. They don't ac- commodate as well in domestic ways, but this feature is being improved. The railroad-station cooking is better here than in the States, as a general thing ; yet our dining-car system is far ahead of anything they dream of here. But that is coming ; and dining-cars, in ten or twenty years, will be on every road. Some days ago we found a good dining-car on the Oriental Express that is operated by a French company between Constantinople and Paris ; good dining-cars and sleepers. Next year, they say, on this long Moscow line they will run sleepers, and are building them now. So the world moves, and America gives it some of its impetus. The roads out here make more account of human life and safety than in America. No one gets killed or hurt in coupling POLAND AND RUSSIA. l"^"] cars ; no lives are lost at crossings. Accidents will happen everywhere, but here they are rare. Two days by Russian train. Five times each day the train is sure to stop for twenty, thirty, forty minutes, and many a shorter time between ; and everywhere the tables were set forth with snowy cloth and china plates and silver things, and plenty of eatables, — the best of meats and snowy bread, fresh garden stuff, and well-made soups and gravies. Indeed, we lived like lords. The train was rather slow, the landscape rather dull ; but the stated meals and quiet lunches between, with German beer and vodka interspersed, — we never lived better. And then at these and other stops came pretty little girls in bright print frocks and rosy cheeks and dancing eyes, with plates and cornu- copias well rounded up with fresh wild strawberries, all hulled and full of racy flavor, — that flavor you remember as a farmer's lad when you went strawberrying in bright New England fields. There is nothing like it in the wide world ! Your garden fruits are very large and fair and fine ; but to the lips of one New England born and bred, no strawberry so suits the taste, sends such aroma to the nose, as those that grow and ripen on Vermont hills that face the sun. Now where is Afoscow? St. Paul is perhaps forty-five de- grees — Moscow sixty-one or two — way up toward the mid- night sun, where you may work till eight o'clock, and eat and read your evening paper this time of year till half-past ten. We came on here from Warsaw by slow creeping train, through a continuous farm of grass and wheat, potatoes, planted forests ; past well-dressed farming folk, fine horses, cows, and sheep and steers ; through many a low-browed village built up around a bulbous spire and green-roofed hall and church. You hear of serfs and farmers' toil in this land of the Czar. Don't sympathize too much ; don't waste your sympathy on far- off foreigners till you have none for home. Too many people save their dimes and tears for those in foreign lands, — the greater the distance, the more intense the blessing ; but you may safely save your dimes and prayers and tears for those that sin and starve at home. You may think it very good and full of saving grace to send the word afar to heathen hearts and lands ; but were it not better that every cent you have to spare 388 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and every tear you have to shed were spared and spent and shed and wiped away in words of help, in deeds of charity, at home? You know where charity, the greatest of all good gifts, begins, — at Home, that biggest word in all the world, and best entitled to that initial capital. Then keep your charity at Home. Don't mind the poor in other lands till you have no poor at Home. Don't mind the erring far away till no one errs at Home. Don't mind the resurrection day with Bengalese or Hottentots until you are sure that Gabriel's trump will find no sinner on your soil. Remember your neighbors — those within your ward or town — and give them clothes to wear, and bread. But this is Moscow, on the Moskowa. In 1812 Napoleon came to Moscow. We took Napoleon's route, almost as slow as he, and quite as sure of coming to the Kremlin gates. We saw his tracks at Minsk and Smolensk ; went past the monument raised on Borodino's field, some seventy miles from here, — the monument and gilded cross where fifty thousand men went down to death ; where eighty thousand men and horses were burned to ashes on that dreadful September day in 181 2, after the routed Russians had given up all hope of saving house and home in Moscow. Oh, what a day was that ! How those couriers dashed their foaming horse to these gates and shrines to bid the waiting ones to gather friends and goods, and hasten to the lands and wilds beyond ; out to the far-off plains, out quick among the dunes and birchen glens and steppes, — anywhere to seek a shelter from the fiend of France who had won the field that awful day. Borodino ! How the heart of Russian sank ! How he girded tight his coat ; how he gathered what he could ; how he gave up house and home, a sacrifice to country and to God, and found his way across the star-lit plains ! The city is built up again. A million souls now walk these streets ; six hundred churches point to heaven ; twelve thousand priests will tell you why the Frank was beaten and sent back limp- ing to his home. You come to Moscow by the rail, — this old- time city of the czars ; you find long, roughly paved streets, lined with low houses built of stuccoed brick, — a million people without water-works; a million people with no pleasant streets; a million people just breaking through the crust that covers up nomadic life ; two hundred million people coming forth POLAiYD AND RUSSIA. 3 89 from out the realm of pagandom. Britain is strong but old ; she has not in a full century won a full victory alone ; Austria is old, shines by reflected light ; the German realm is powerful, but seeks an ally when she thinks of Russian hordes ; nay, all this European world fingers the Russian map with bated breath, wondering what will be the outcome when from the north comes down the Russian avalanche. The streets of Moscow are much like those of any other place, — wide, airy, paved with round river stones, that hurt your feet clear through your shoe-soles, and make both you and horses limp. The walks that skirt the streets are not too wide or smooth, — better perhaps than none, — and men and women flatten out against the wall to let you pass along. "Why don't you people pave these streets?" was asked a Russian who spoke our tongue. "Why don't we do it? Must we not build fine churches? Must not our taxes — millions every year — go to build up the Church? Who owns this property? The Church. Who owns this hotel, this restaurant, and all you see about you ? The Church. Who owns three fourths of Moscow ; two thirds of Russia? The same, same Church, and holds it in her grasp. Who pays the taxes ? Not the Church. Who is to give us streets well paved, and light, and water-works? No, not the Church. Who is to give us progress and enlightenment ? No, not the Church. The Church has got this city, — this and all Russia. This Moscow has six hundred churches. They must be kept up, and all the priests and days of prayer and feasts and fasts and all the patron saints. Go see the most expensive single house in all Moscow, — the foundling hospital 1 This is a city owned by Church and priest, — no water for the masses, — crowded with churches and with dens of sin and shame ; and this is Moscow ! " Moscow is the olden city of the czars. Here they come to-day — here to the Kremlin, here to the Annunciation Church — to get their regal crowns. Why not be crowned at the capital ? The Church says loudly. No ! Come here and kneel and here be crowned, or you shall be no emperor. The Church is stronger than the State. The Church has wealth, the State has only debts ; the Church is triumphant here in Russia, and all that say it nay are naught. 390 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Some day the State will rise, — even as it did in England in Henry the Eighth's time ; sometime the State will rise, as it has done in Germany, has done in France, and later on in Italy ; sometime the word must pass along the armored line, — " Shall State or Church stand first? " You know the answer States and troops have made. Hark for it here, where State is last and Church stands first ; where the wealth is hoarded in ecclesial vaults, and holy days consume the whole three hundred and sixty-five. Russia is growing, none the less. People are getting thoughts they call their own, and in time the change so needed will surely come, and Russia will be free. Serf slavery died in Alexander the Second's day; that other yet more crushing slavery will surely follow it. What are the sights of Moscow? A great bronze cannon that cannot be fired, and a monster bell that cannot be rung. The former, weighing forty tons, is here for you to crawl into ; was here before the Pilgrims sailed, — its deep, wide-open mouth forever dumb. Do you remember Webster's spelling-book that used to bother our curly pates, and kept us all too near the foot of that hated daily spelling-class? Among its many one-line state- ments you may have clung to this : " The great bell of Moscow weighs two hundred and twenty thousand pounds." The school-book undertold the fact, — it weighs four hundred and forty-four thousand pounds, or two hundred and twenty-two tons. It rests upon a stout stone base, through which you enter by a door. The dome above your head is twenty feet. The bell was hung, they say, but fell and broke a fragment from its rim. The fragment weighs eleven tons, and shows a thickness of two feet. The greatest circumference is sixty-eight feet ; its height twenty-six feet and four inches. The other sights consist of churches, palaces, and treasured things within the Kremlin. Ktcm is the Russian word for " fort," and Moscow was an old-time fort stoutly walled. Here were the palaces, churches, the troops and arsenals with ready arms for two hundred thousand men, — the heart of Russia within two miles of wall, rebuilt in 1492 to defend the place against re- cently invented artillery. Here lived the czars, priests, generals, and soldiers. Here within the holy church was all the treas- ure ; here, too, were people judged and executions held ; here was the heart and central strength of Russia. As the city grew, POLAND AND RUSSIA. 39I great outer walls were added, but the old Kremlin walls were kept intact ; and now, as you enter there through the great Redeemer Gate beneath the emblems of the Church, remove your hat, even as the emperors do, and all his subjects, — all who visit here. You would not do it ? Then stay outside ; no one has asked you to enter ; but if you would go in, observe the custom. Observe the customs everywhere. If you invite your- self to call upon the Pope, kneel unto him and take his blessing. If you would not kneel to him, or here within the Gate of the Redeemer of Smolensk remove your hat, then stay away. The palace here is very grand, has many rooms and lofty halls aglow with polish, glass, and gold. To take you through these halls and rooms and corridors would be to tra\el miles and miles and write for months and months. They cover many acres, are filled with furniture and curious things ; with beds and bedding, costly inlaid floors, arabesques and gilded work ; with carvings, tiles, armorial shields. There are great stables, carriages, and luxurious outfits of all sorts ; a winter garden far above the street, luxuriant in palm and vine and exuberant tropic plants, aglow with tropic heat here in this frozen realm, — a play-room for the queens, who seldom visit it, — all this for the imperial home, but very rarel)' occupied. The treasury is filled with countless priceless gems, with crowns and sceptres, hilts and orbs and jewelled clothes, that here are gathered to form a museum. A czar is crowned ; his crown and sceptre and all his costliest clothes and gems find lodgement here. Even the coronation clothes of the czar and the czarina are worn but once, then hung up here to be looked at through the ages. Here in this regal show are many a costly coach and imperial sledge, built for the coronation pageant, to be used no more. There is no end of costliest luxury, of which you soon tire, and wish for something good and plain. Here in the Kremlin churches lie the royal bones of all the czars and their wives down to Great Peter's day, — here stored away in great stone coffins cumbering the floor, over- cast with purple velvets trimmed with golden stuffs ; fenced in with gilded posts and rails ; waiting in royal state amidst the masses of the church, among the relics of the shrines, among the pictures of the saints, — waiting in golden state the judg- ment day. Most people have ceased to bury human beings in 392 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the public shrines, but here they do just as was done in days of yore. This old-time practice of burying in churches was the effect of ignorant superstition influenced by priests, who pretended that the Devil would have power over bodies not buried in or very near the church ; the nearer the altar the safer. Nor have we yet done consecrating graveyards, even though it is deemed quite safe to bury away from crypt and shrine. These monarchs are the Greek Church popes, — agents of heaven upon the earth to do the will of God. Their word is absolute. They have in their hands the nation's laws to make or break at will ; have in their hands the fullest power, coming to them as a divine right. You don't believe such things, — not of present kings, — it 's not your interest to. We can believe that Saul and Solomon and the old biblical barbaric Jewish kings were really called of God to rule and have no end of power and gold and wives ; but we have to draw the line somewhere, and we draw it before we come to Russian days. The churches here are miracles of the jeweller's art. Here in the Church of the Assumption is Mt. Sinai in pure gold ; the picture of Virgin Mary painted by Saint Luke on wax, and studded with a quarter million dollars' worth of diamonds, — picture of miraculous power, they say. This Bible weighs a hundred pounds, so weighed down is it with precious stones. This nail is from the true cross ; this scrap of woollen rag is from the garment worn by Christ on crucifixion day ; this hand was Andrew's, the apostle. Embedded within the cross of gold is a bit of the wood of the cross of Calvary ; and here the skull of Demetrius, almost worn through with kisses ; and farther on thirty-two gilded silver caskets containing saintly relics. The chrism process may interest you. Chrism is holy oil. It is made in silver kettles, stirred with silver ladles, dipped with silver dippers, strained with silver strainers. The entire silver outfit used in making this consecrating oil weighs about seven tons ! The pious stuff is made of gums and wine and oils well spiced, made by priestly hands, and stored in silver jugs. To make it holy they take some of the same oil that Mary poured upon the Saviour, — some of which had been saved, — take it from a long-necked copper vase, and stir it in. This sanctifies the entire batch. To keep the original supply intact, they return to the pearl-encrusted copper vase as many drops as were POLAND AND RUSSIA. 393 taken out ; and so the quantity, purity, and efficiency are forever maintained, — and tlie attenuation tlieory vindicated. This oil consecrates everything, — czars, crowns, every baptized Russian subject. It is made every two years during Lent, and distributed far and near. The custom is older than history. The domes without, the altars within, altars and shrines, columns and coffins, abound in beaten gold. Gold wrought in endless shapes — gold counted by the hundred pounds — up over the dome and under the domes of this Saint Saviour's church, built here by way of thanks to God for the victory in 18 1 2 over the troops of France — greets you from miles away as you approach this Moscow town. The first thing you see in the bright sunlight, coming across the plain, is this sharp glint and gleam, — a costly diadem suspended in the air ; a reful- gent corona. What makes it so ? You see no gleam like this from the gilded State House dome of Iowa, — only a dull glare. But this is different. The State House gilding is very thin and plain. These domes -we see — you may stand upon the lowest and count them by the scores — are of thick plates, and burnished till they gleam like finest poHshed jewelry, dazzling your eyes. This out-door golden wealth is here prodigious. To gild Saint Saviour's dome took half a ton of pure gold ! The whole church is a gleaming glory of pohshed granite, marbles, costly malachite, and lapis lazuli ; masses of finest por- phyry, such as is sparingly used in Roman churches ; masses of Finland granite ; columns of Siberian verde antique ; black marbles of the finest grain, light violet and gold-lined grays, with altar work of pure Carrara white. These regal stones mount arch on arch, the columns, walls, the arches, piers, and floors agleam with polishing. The pious pictures of the Al- mighty, of the Saviour, saints, and sacred scenes of heaven and earth, are works of hands most skilled. You move about mid golden bronze and silver, mid gems and things most choice and rare, — all stone and metal, not a piece of wood in all the work. The church is not large like great St. Peter's church at Rome, yet it cost twenty millions, and is the finest in all this land of costly shrines ; the finest in the world, they say. These Moscow streets are rough enough, but kept clean and rather tidy. Fine horses wait on every hand, with trim four- wheeled droskies, to pull you round pell-mell, one or two horses 394 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. abreast, three if you like ; our first ride gave us four, — four spanking dappled grays abreast ; a noble span each side the carriage pole ; the gear agleam with silver saddlery. A landau team you may have all day for the same price you would pay for an hour's drive at home ; but here in Moscow the Kremlin has nearly all you care to see, and that is too near to need a carriage. Street-cars have got out here, electric lights, and tele- phones ; and in most things you are quite at home, — in most things except the language. Hotels are fairly good, prices not high ; indeed, one may live at the best for three dollars a day, outside of extra luxuries. St. Petersburg is sixty degrees north. The sun rises at half- past one and sets at half-past nine. The twilight of the even- ing meets that of the morning so closely that darkness is unknown. People go to bed, to be sure ; but if they would enjoy a pleasant evening they must not retire for the night until about two o'clock in the morning, and by that time the sun has been up an hour and a half. A good night's rest is a thing un- known in summer. But the winter cometh. Extremes beget extremes. The greatest thieves have sprung from honest parents ; and honey and venom come from the same bloom. In winter the sun retires at half-past three, or so, and gets up at half-past nine or ten. His rising is a mere matter of form, — not staying up long enough to make much of a stir in the world. People have to burn the candle at both ends — of the day, and fumble about in the dark a good deal at that. But the winter is the gay time in Russia, — the gala season in the cities ; the time of ice and snow, rides, routs, and merry-making. The theatres are in full blast ; the skaters and coasters and sleighing-parties, with fun and shouts and jingling bells, are all agog in the bright dry cold of this silvery northland. Summer is no time to come to Russia seeking sport, for the muses pack their trunks and get away to Paris and London about the first of April. But they leave the Hermitage behind, St. Isaac's and the Ma- donna of Kazan, — thanks for that. Moscow is four hundred miles away. The road is very straight and smooth ; you will never find a better one. The time is not so fast, but you glide so smoothly on and sleep so POLAND AND RUSSIA. 395 softly on the train that you don't much mind the fifteen hours or so. This is a government road. It is said of the Czar, that after looking at the survey, he asked his engineer why he had made the line so crooked. He was told that it ran so as to accommodate the towns between terminal points, — St. Peters- burg and Moscow. The Czar took down his map, picked up a rule and pencil, drew a line straight from point to point, and said, " That is the line to build the road upon. If other towns want to use my road, let them come to it." This is the story as I heard it forty years ago. Perhaps it is n't true ; but the road is really very straight and very smooth, and makes you feel at perfect ease. It was built by the Winanses of Baltimore, and the road and stations and the cars are surely very fine. The first-class express costs fifteen dollars, includ- ing state-room and sleeping-car; about the same as on our American lines for like accommodations. I may have said it before, but will say it again by way of accent, underscored, that these Russian sleepers are better than our Pullmans, in almost every w'ay. They are much lighter. They are more comfortable as riding coaches, having easier seats and backs. They are in compartments, for two or four, arranged with doors between the single rooms as hotel bed- rooms are. The beds are softer, and are not made upon the seat you 've sat on all the day ; but the seat revolves on central pivots, and when the bed is made, the side you sat on goes down underneath ; the under side, a nice spring-bottom, comes on top, on which a nice hair mattress is spread, with snowy linen, pillows large and soft, and thick warm blankets, if you please. The broad thick cushion, that in the day-time forms the back of your sumptuous seat, springs overhead and forms the basis for the upper berth. Now go to bed. The door is closed, you have the room to yourself. How to get into the upper berth ? Rush out and call the porter to bring his dirty step-ladder, — leave his work and bring it quick? Not at all. You see the neat little table at the head of the lower bed? It is for coffee, to write upon, or play cards or dominoes. Fold its two leaves, bringing each on top ; pull out two sliding-steps below, — there is your clean carpeted step-ladder ; up you go, and off to bed and sleep. It stays there to walk down upon, and when quite out of use you push 395 A GIRDLE ROUAW THE EARTH. it in through slots to the corner, out of the way. The car is comfortable, decent, healthy. All drafts are cut off; the passage-way is along the side, not in the middle of the car ; and passengers may come and go, — you are not bothered by them. At either end of the well-lighted passage are ample toilet- rooms, with all conveniences. You may not care to ride in a close compartment car during the day ; you may want to see those who come aboard or leave, to have the doors flying open at your back, to have people crowd by you with bundles, grips, umbrellas, canes ; you would be near the peanut fiend, and have him poking stale stuff and fruit beneath your nose full forty times a day, or loading down your seat with printed trash called books by courtesy. You rather like all this, perhaps ; but when night comes on you would much prefer to go off by yourself, and shut the door, and shade the lights, and having none to tramp your toes or punch your ribs, or drag your curtains round, get leisurely into bed, away from squalls and sleepless folks who sit and talk and talk, and, like a Christian, go right off to sleep. You need not say, unless you like, that this is not American. Perhaps not, but it is truth. We have good things in America, and intend to have more. We have ways that ai-e very good, and those that can be improved upon. We know a good deal, but fail, just now, to know it all ; so the proper thing to do is to admit such faults as we know we have, and try to reform them. There are other thinking inventors besides ourselves, and the fruit of their thought should be gathered in by us, even though it may oust some of our preconceived opinions. Let our sleeping-car service be improved. Let it be made more comfortable, more decent. We pay roundly for it; why not have the best? St. Petersburg is the Chicago of northwestern Europe, — a new city, planted by the waters and sprouted in the mud, even as Chicago was. Its streets are wide and fine and airy. Every- thing is new. More than a century ago Peter the Great, Peter the Terrible, Peter the inhuman brute and heartless monster, founded it. Here he came from his Moscow capital, — well- nigh a barbarian, — to fish here in these northern waters ; to fish and hunt among lagoons and swamps. Here he built his fishing hut, — his cottage by the water-side, the same you POLAND AXD RUSSIA. 397 see to-day ; here built his summer palace just across the stream, — a sort of square two-story house, with twelve rooms down and twelve rooms up, including prison-pen for his recreant gen- erals, throne-room where he held his court, and the kitchen where the empress wife prepared her husband's soups and steaks. Here are the never-covered floors of pine, the never- covered oaken stairs, the good strong table in the dining-room at which might sit, perhaps, a dozen guests ; the covered chairs and bed-room sets brought here from Holland long ago. The rooms are small ; but litde paint is used, save now and then a ceiling centre-piece ; the carvings here and there are things Peter whittled out evenings by the fire, while the Empress mended clothes or knit the great Czar's woollen socks. Such was the imperial residence, where lived the king of a hundred million men. If you go to the other palaces, here or in Rome or Potsdam, — any kingly capital, — you will note a change from plain to most luxurious ways. But there are palaces every- where ; and time spent in seeing them, after you have seen a few, is labor spent in vain. What you will find most interesting here, perhaps, are the Hermitage, — great museum of art in pictures and in marbles, — and great St. Isaac's church. Church of Our Lady of Kazan, Church of St. George, the burial-place of royalty, from Peter down. The gallery is a gem. You hear of Florence, Dresden, London galleries, and the great Louvre display, but very little of the Hermitage, which takes rank with the first and best. These Russian princes began their picture-hunting rather late, and after the older galleries had long been well stocked with gems ; but they bought with great care and persistence, so tliat one may well be astonished at the number and superior excel- lence of the works here shown. The gallery fairly revels in the best works of the Flemish school, having not less than thirty- four select Van Dycks, — more than in any other gallery, except Munich ; forty-one Rembrandts, — no other gallery has as many ; eight Paul Potters, — all the rest have but ten ; sixty Rubens, — Madrid and Munich only have more ; forty Teniers, — Madrid alone has more ; fourteen Snyders, fifty Steens, four- teen Ruysdaels ; and so on through the list, unrivalled any- where, — a court of masters' gems. The Italian and the Spanish schools are also very rich. In 398 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Raphaels, Leonardos, Correggios, Veroneses, Tintorettos, Carlo Dolces, Guido Rhenis, Domenichinos, Delsartos, in Murillos, Velasquez, Riberas, — those and all the rest, the collection is superb. Here is Raphael's famous Madonna of Casa d'Alba, his noted Holy Family, and the Madonna Conestabile, and several others ; while the Murillo room has no superior in Europe, beyond the line of that great master's home. The French, German, English, and Russian schools are also quite complete ; in short, it is difficult to say wherein, in a genu- ine way, this gallery of the Hermitage is a step behind the most famous ones of Europe. The paintings are not church and monastery rubbish brought to the galleries as to an asylum, as too many pictures are from dilapidated religious institutions ; but were selected with great care from carefully chosen private collections, such as Marquis Crozat's, that of Count de Bruhl, Robert Walpole's Houghton Hall gallery, that of the Due de Choiseul, — these and many more, regardless, almost, of ex- pense. These fine works are orders from the most famous artists of the world from Great Peter's day down to the present time, and have made for Russia a most noble collection, with fewer unattractive and unworthy paintings than any other gal- lery in Europe. As in Choiseul's collection, — he had one hundred and forty-seven fine paintings, — Russia's agent selected only twelve from the entire lot, paying eight hundred and forty thousand dollars, while the entire lot brought about two million five hundred thousand dollars. This will furnish an idea of the character of the Hermitage collection, — the best of the best, regardless of cost. In modern marble it is very fine, the best examples of Cano- va's work and the later sculptors. In Greek and Roman sculp-^ ture there is less, — some pieces very rare, — an only existing bust of Sallust, the famous Venus of the Hermitage, Niobes, and countless busts and figures of good or bad degree. Then there are Scythian curiosities and antiques ; no end of coin and old- time jewelry ; great show of tassa, vases, jasper, onyx, with crystals, malachite, and lazuli ; great chunks of opal and of smoked topaz, — a world of precious and curious things that fill a hundred rooms, to see the which intelligently would take you — never mind ; life has a limit. There are churches to be seen all over the world ; and when POLAND AND RUSSIA. 399 you think you hav^e seen the costliest and best, then come to Russia. If people were really good in proportion to the num- ber, size, and magnificence of their churches, what lands of pure delight would Rome, Constantinople, and Moscow be ! Here is St. Isaac's. I can't tell you who Saint Isaac was, but he has a mia;htv monument. It cost a million dollars to drive the piles to build it on. It was forty years in building, and, with- out the ground, cost twenty million dollars. It is not large like St. Peter's, but has a wealth of polished Finland granite, rich Siberian stone, marble, great fluted columns crusted over with precious malachite and lazuli, great solid columns of pure verde antique, grand things in bronze and solid silver frosted over with gold, as though the silver were not good enough ; the work within, without, of solid stone and metal, and not a piece of wood. Outside are one hundred and twelve red granite columns sixty feet high and seven feet through ; single pieces, polished per- fectly and surmounted with gold bronze capitals. Gigantic blocks on blocks of deeply polished Finland granite rise above ; bronze doors of monstrous size and weight. No pen can fairly tell its inner glories. The malachite work alone — the crusting the eight columns with that precious stone — cost one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars ; the marble inwrought floor a million more. Then there is the Kazan, built in compliment to Our Lady of Kazan, costing half a dozen millions. Our Lady of Kazan is there, — at least her portrait is. She is from the Cossack coun- try. A native had a dream. He dreamed that a thousand versts away — away through forests, swamps, and lairs of beasts — there was a picture of the Madonna waiting for him. So, after several repetitions of the dream, he started off"; went miles and miles, for months and months, through dangerous woods, through jungles, steppes, desert lands ; through reeds and swamps ; suffered hunger, bites of beasts and serpents' stings ; torn were his clothes from off" his back ; torn was his flesh from off" his bones ; poisoned his blood : his hearing, sense of taste, and feeling gone ; staggering and swooning, about to die, he dragged his body to the dreamed-of spot ; the picture was there ; he pulled himself unto it with his latest breath and latest ounce of strength ; he touched it ! New life, new flesh, new blood and breath came unto him ; new senses, perfect man- b 400 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. hood, form, and strength. The dead man lived again. The pic- ture in his hands, he ran some weeks, both night and day. No rest, no food, he needed now ; he brought his trophy to Kazan. It healed the ailing far and near ; it made the sick ones well at once, — the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, the lame to walk ; and that is why so many millions were spent here by the Government since 1790 to give Our Lady of Kazan so rare a home in St. Petersburg. This was the story told to me. If you don't believe it, come and see for yourself. It is here ; not much of a picture, to be sure, but being angel-painted, must be good. She has a solid silver home ; her garb is beaten gold, and round her head are clustered gems, — a million dollars' worth. And there the people flock to pray in masses all their days and years, to get cured of aches and pains and human ills that come to us on earth. The doctors here — there may be som.e, what need there is I cannot see — must wait and starve ; for with Our Lady of Kazan to heal all wounds and cure all ills, why will such men persist in coming ? The church is a marvel of costly beauty. Its great bronze gates you approach by a long arcade of mighty fluted columns ; within you see the flash of five polished granite shafts with base and capital of gleaming golden bronze, with princely pavement, massive silver screens, — whole hundred-weights of silver used, — behind which well forth harmonies, praises to God and to Kazan, praise to him who gave us such a miracle. • •••••■ Sunday is a great day in St. Petersburg. The Russian is the greatest churchman in the world, and rather wicked. The Em- peror is the head of the nation, — the army, navy, church, and everything. He leads the priests in prayer ; he leads the troops to war ; and when Sunday comes he takes a seat upon the race- course stand and enjoys the sport tremendously. They have fine horses here. I never saw such horseflesh hitched to cabs as on these Russian streets ; fine mettled stock, that trot or pace with stride and vim that almost take away your breath. At the races they mix some sense with merriment, even if it is done on the Sabbath-day. The riders are not the jockeys, but largely army men, — cavalry officers who need to know how to ride with ease and perfect control. They ride before the Emperor, and so must do it well. What would be the upshot of POLAND AND RUSSIA. 4OI affairs in America if some Sunday afternoon the President were to have a hundred cavahy officers out on the race-course or running turf, showing off their horseback skill? Yet no one seems to mind it here ; no priest or parson makes a row or tells of wrath to come. The Emperor has a custom — as his father had, and several before him — of calling at the Church of Our Lady of Kazan to say his prayers, on his way to the station when he is going off somewhere ; or when he goes or comes from war, or any undertaking. We don't like those Russian churches. There is too much worldly show. The costly columns are hung with signs of war. Here are the flags of all the nations with which Russia has fought since Great Peter's time, — the cap- tured banners of Napoleon's war, the conquered Persians, Poles, and Turks, — emblems of war and carnage, of thousands slain and thousands widowed, orphaned, and made sad. Here, too, are swords yet drunk with brothers' blood, and keys of vanquished castles and of cities brought to grief, hung up among these fer- vent worshippers, — above the heads of such as pray to be for- given ; of such as preach the word of God and call men to sin no more, and shed no brother's blood. It may be all right, this mixing up of holy things with bloody ones, of faith and fight, of peace and war, but it does n't look so. Hang in our churches iDattle flags captured at Bennington or New Orleans ; some Mexican or Shiloh flags ; mix in some swords, a lot of scalps in fancy festoons on the walls, — what would the preacher say ? But things go differently here. Sailing, a few days later, through Russian waters, I fell to chatting with a Russian colonel, a man of intelligence and of information on political subjects not only concerning his own country but others as well. He was a pleasant, smoothly shaved man, with one ear partly shot away by a careless Turkish bullet in 1877. His regiment, he said, was the first to open fight upon the Turk in that unfruitful war. The ear was nothing, so he said ; he could have lost his head and smiled, had the Czar not minded Queen Victoria's pleading note, but gone straight into Constantinople, as he had an open way and right to do. " Oh, heaven ! what a mistake ! When shall we have the like chance again ? How we fought for it, how we bled ; how we gave up our lives for it, but stayed outside the walls, although 26 402 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. our whole ambition was to go in ! The Czar is dead ; and may he rest in peace ! His people never will till the Bosphorus is ours ! " I am a Russian," the colonel went on to say. " I am in the army. There are with us two classes, the rulers and the ruled. You in America have the same, the voters and the voted. The army rules ; the ruled obey. The army is the {qw ; so in your own country the voters are the few, the voted class the many. Who nominates your presidents and governors and senators, — the many or the few? The few, the very few. Who fall into line, whether they know the candidate or not ? The voted class. They come up at the sound of King Caucus's drum, and vote as King Caucus says. They obey the call of the party bugle blast, and vote a vote they cannot always read ; vote a ballot that King Caucus or King Employer places in their hands ; vote for men whose names they never heard, whose capabilities they know nothing of. You call this liberty. Is it not autocracy after all ; and are not the two extremes — your democracy and our autocracy — closer connected than you may think ? " If laborers rise in Russia, — if such a case might be, and sometimes there have been indications, — the troops soon come, and the end comes with them. If your employees rise and will not down, but clog your trade and stop your trains and burn your railroad shops, you do the same ; you send your troops to shoot. The only difference is this : we send our troops before damage is done ; you wait till fire and damage come. You call that liberty. I don't. The best way is to nip it in the bud. Call it autocracy or by what name you will, 't is better to check this rising up at once and then investigate. You may not have too much liberty, but you do have too much license, and you make a mistake in calling license liberty." " But we go upon the principle," said I, " that all men are created free and equal." " The principle is wrong. Look all through nature. Is it so ? Look all along the lines of men upon the street, — they who have stores and shops, and those who carry dirt ; are these all equal ? Do you treat them so ? That fellow there with rags upon his back, and vermin in his hair; is he your equal? Could he be ? Nonsense ! man. The serfs, the underlings, the POLAND AXD RUSSIA. 403 men who grope with ball and chain, are not my equals — cannot be. You may have your pretty theory ; you don't live up to it at home, neither do I. You liberated, twenty years ago, a mil- lion or so of colored serfs. Are they your equals? Yes, they vote ; but do you take them to your homes, and do you offer them your daughters? In the States, somewhere, I saw it printed in your cars: 'No colored folks admitted.' These colored folks were citizens, voters, ' free and equal,' if you please, but no one cared to sit beside them in the cars, or at the hotel tables, or at the household board. I can't see what you mean by this ' free and equal ' talk but to catch votes. I went to Beecher's church, near New York. He was a big man ; wore long hair ; but his talk was fine. I liked him ; he was large, — ■■ large as Peter the Great, — and his talk was bigger than himself. He spoke of chains smitten from negro limbs ; in fact, he complimented the late Czar for turning loose our serfs, and I shall always think that my friend General S. put him up to it ; but I looked about the audience, looked when I came out, and asked the general if there were no negroes in New York, and if they ever w^ent to church. He laughed, and said, ' Maybe they do, out somewhere by themselves.' '• Liberty ! I do not like the word. It is adulterated with so much selfish, wretched stuff. I like much better despotism. We say there are two classes, rulers and ruled. Educate the rulers ; make them as good as you can ; keep the other class in ignorance, to do your will and work." He told a truth or two, but what a sentiment ! Education for the few, degradation for the many ! Horrible ! In the years that are to come, in the centuries to dawn upon this half- barbaric race, in the crystallization of human forces and human thought that is slowly working here, some day the word must come, some day the answer sound around the world, that Russia, too, is free ; that there is no degradation line among people who know their duty and try to do their best. I asked the colonel about the tax system of Russia. " Taxes ? Oh, we are not hard upon the people. We must not be. We pay less taxes than you. We let our money be debased, to make it easier on the taxed. A wrong idea, may- be ; but the tax is not raised yet to put our paper on a par with gold. Your war was in 1S61 to 1S65. How soon did you 404 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. resume? In twenty years or so. Ours was in 1877 ; maybe we shall resume as soon as you. We tax land, — real estate you call it ; a moderated tax of one or two per cent ; not much." " About personal property, — stocks of goods in hand, and money and credits?" we asked. " Nothing on such as that," he said. "Why?" " Because, if the goods be foreign goods, as most of them are, they have paid one tax — a duty tax — when they pass our lines. The dealer has to pay that much more for them. What is the sense of taxing the same goods twice ? And if we did, the duty tax and the second tax would both come on the consumer of the goods, and make it burdensome and wrong. But more than this, if part of the goods are from home fac- tories, the manufacturer pays a tax on them ; should we put on another for the consumer to pay? The dealer — you call him merchant — pays a sort of Ucense tax for doing business, — a merely nominal sum, and that is all." " And the moneyed man ; what does he pay in the way of tax?" we asked. " Nothing in the way of tax. How shall we know his busi- ness ways, his losses or gains ? We tax his income. If he has made nothing in his ventures, why tax him? If he has made w-ell, tax him accordingly. Capital is nothing. What capital earns is something. Tax it. I was in your country a few years ago and studied your affairs somewhat ; and you will excuse me for saying it, but in some things we of Russia, despotic though we be, are quite as liberal, quite as safe, as you. Our taxes are more just. You said to England, ' No taxation without repre- sentation.' That was a catch-word ; you don't live up to it, — don't even try. Millions upon millions, so I found, are taxed, and all representation denied. You call it liberty to say a woman with a million in her hands shall not vote for men who are to dispose of her interests. I call it unmitigated tyranny — despotism, if you please. I was in Chicago. On a fine street there was pointed out to me a splendid building, owned, they said, by an unmarried woman, — a bright young lady. But she could n't vote. The drunken loafer that reeled along in front of this fine property could vote. You call this liberty? " " How would you treat such a case in Russia?" we asked. POLAND AND RUSSIA. 405 " We have no voting, no criterion. When we talk of such a change, we speak of it as quite improbable ; but if voting comes to us, let no man vote but such as have lands or houses, fixed homes. Man or woman, this should be the rule. The right to vote must be a noble right. The man who wants it ought to be able to prove himself worthy of the privilege by owning something. Casting a vote that affects his neighbor's property, when the voter has none himself to be affected, may be a sort of liberty, but I don't understand it." The Russian's talk was not without some sense. His wife sat smiling by his side, — his rather young, plainly dressed, and pretty wife ; his bright boy sitting by his knee. And so we sat and chatted while the boat pushed on, sailed on among the low, flat granite isles, — the verdured granite isles, where all these tens of thousands of years Flora has wrought with frost and damp and grit and moss to coin a sparse spruce forest out of naught. So is the Russian nation being coined from out nomadic savagery, to be some day, when crystallized, when growth and bloom shall come and ripening be felt, the might- iest of the mighty powers of Europe. We shall learn some things, so will they ; we shall have proper, prosperous liberty, and their autocracy will meet it on the way. 406 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER XXVII. SCANDINAVIAN LANDS. Finland. — Helsingfors. — Abo. — The Land of the INIidnight Sun. — Through the Straits of Bothnia. — Norway. — Christiania. — An Over- Population. — Relief in Emigration. — Denmark. — Copenhagen. — From Copenhagen to Schleswig-Holstein. — Kiel. — The Great Surgeon Esmarch. OUR boat is moored at Helsingfors, town of the Swedish Helsings, who setded it. The town is up in Finland. To-day is the Sabbath. The stores are closed, the streets are still, and the people stroll about the park. Helsingfors, the capital of the province, is a place of several thousand, with a good harbor and raihoad terminus, — a well-built, thrifty town away up here in sixty-one degrees or more north latitude, where wheat will not mature. They raise some barley, rye, and roots. The bread they eat is for the most part brown or black ; the meat is largely fish ; and in fish and wood and stone they have quite a trade. You might expect in such a far-off town to find the streets like country streets, the houses low and dull with age. The streets are broad and neady paved, lighted with gas, sup- phed with water, fountains, monuments, and public parks, and houses as elegant as any you would see in larger cities. The wharves are spacious, built of solid granite ; iron bridges cross the narrow sea arm that stretches through the town, and pretty island parks and yacht-club house stand isolated in the bay. Our boat was on the restaurant plan. You buy your ticket, which gives you passage and state-room from St. Petersburg to Stockholm, — about sixty-five hours, — but does not in- clude food, for twenty-one roubles and fifty kopeks. A proper rouble is eighty cents ; and there are a hundred kopeks in a rouble. But one must eat. The morning meal is coffee, — fair, served with real cream and sugar. This and fancy cakes, some toasted biscuits, and some bits of bread make up a slender meal. At nine you hear a bell, and go into the eating-room ; SCANDINA VIAN LANDS. 407 the tables are neatly spread, with casters, plates, and knives and forks. The food is on the side-board. Don't go and sit down and wait to be served. As you enter, go to the table and get your plate and knife and fork. Leave your napkin where you got your plate, in order to keep your place. With plate in hand go to the sideboard and select your fish. There are from six to eleven plates of them before you : cold fish smothered in gelatine ; more cold fish curled up in greens and gravy ; cold fish saute ; cold fish gele ; cold fish with mushrooms stewed in cream ; cold fish with capers and olive oil ; cold fish with greens and jellies ; sardines ; hot broiled fish ; dried and devilled fish. Having finished your fish, you may drink some vodka if you will. After the fish the waiters bring in beef or veal, chicken and fruit, coffee and cognac. You dine at three, and sup at six or seven ; have plenty to eat and drink, at an extra cost of about a dollar and twenty cents a day. The steamboat has a captain, mate, an engineer and fireman ; the servants are Swedish girls. Girl cooks, girl waiters, boots, clerks, chambermaids, — all girls, who catch your grip-sacks when you come on board, show you to your rooms, dust and mend your clothes, blacken your boots, bring you your coffee and your bills, and wait upon the table. At four o'clock we came upon the deck. There had been a regatta before our boat arrived, and the people were coming back in swarms — big steamer-loads with brazen bands ; a score of white-winged yachts came gliding in with no end of yacht- club boys and girls. The Finnish Sabbath ends at six o'clock, then come music and the out-door theatre. We went to a Sunday-evening Finland show in ancient Helsingfors. The ad- mission was twenty cents, the seat and programme ten cents more. The grounds were very neat, as were the stands, the tables, benches, chairs, and lively waiting-lads. They served small beer and full-grown beer ; served coffee and mineral water. Whole families came there to sit and sip and promenade be- tween the acts in the birchen groves near by. The men were dressed like other men ; the women wore Paris bonnets, and storming Paris bustles, on which a child might sit with perfect ease. 408 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. o Abo is an ancient place on the Finland gulf, — the old-time capital of the Finns. " Abo " is the spelling of the word, but it is pronounced " Obo." Once Finland was an independent power ; then Sweden swallowed it ; then Russia made the Swede disgorge ; and now poor Finland is a Russian duchy, — a sort of independent dependency, as Bavaria is to the German em- pire ; making its own local laws, issuing its own money, help- ing the czar in time of war, and taxing Russian goods that enter its ports, the same as Canada and Australia levy duties on English goods that pass their lines. Here once were the castle and the University of Finland, — a place of first importance. But a great fire wiped it out a hundred years or more ago. It lost its stately glories, and is now only a good-sized trading- point ; good streets with gas and water works, the harbor lined with handsome villas. Our ship stopped here five hours ; one is enough to see the town, its park and observatory hill, its casino and its granite quays. It is a pretty place, with Lutheran churches and people talking Swedish. At seven in the evening we steamed down the bay. The ship ploughed on among the birch-fringed isles. At midnight the ship was still surrounded by the birchen fringe and reddish granite rocks ; at one we went below, and still the light was excellent, the fringes plain, the gleaming ripples clear almost as day. Thirty minutes later the sun sent up some reddish gleams, right where, it seemed, he had but just now sunk to rest ! He was up for good, his flaming disk above the water-line, his new day's work begun. The way across the Bothnia gulf from Finland to Stockholm leads you into clear waters and among countless islands. There are miles and miles of these pretty verdured isles, large and small, that make you happy all the way. You sit far into the night to be with them and catch their birches' gleam, and wake from sleep to find them still around the boat, the dark-green spruce lit up with white birch candles everywhere, and deep, clear water all around. Near Stockholm, " fortified home," these isles and shores are used as country-seats. Here are the villa of the merchant prince and the cottage of less wealthy men, clinging to the grass-grown rocks or nestling in the ver- dured nooks, — a happy myriad of homes, with bathing-places and boating-glens, — a green-leaved, rocky paradise. Here SCANDINAVIAN LANDS. 4O9 come families in June for three months' rest among the moss and spruce and bright birch boughs, and soft, fresh, whole- some sky and air. • ■ • ■ • • • I have not seen much of the Norway and Sweden countries, splashed with lakes and fjords, and ridged with hills. These fjords are fringed with birch and spruce, the mountains clothed with spruce and birch ; the land looks cold and raw and weak, the fields are small, their products light ; no wonder the natives come to America. No wonder they send their money home to help their parents and their kin, — God bless them for it, and for the money sent to aid dear ones in coming to America ! The scenery here is very fair ; the inhabitants must love it. But who can live on scenery alone ? The fjords are deep and plentiful, abounding in fish ; but all can't fish. The carrying trade is large, and these brave people brave the sea ; but neither land nor sea can make the bread to fill so many peo- ple's mouths ; so here and at other ports they swarm like bees to far-away America. Sail to America ! Repeat it several times ; then come with me down to the wharf. Do you like to weep? Then come with me down to the wharf and see the ship. See five hundred emigrants bound for America. See the tottering father kiss his son ; hear father, mother, cry aloud as son or daughter goes away to the land beyond the sea. Husband leaves wife, the brother his sister, sister parts from sister, lover from lover, friend from friend ; Father in heaven, count the tears that fall, and heal the hearts that ache, this parting day ! In Christiania. It was years and years ago that a robust Norway king, of flaxen hair and blessed memory — they called him Christian IV. — founded this city. It was done, they say, in that famous year in which our stubborn Pilgrim Fathers snubbed their stout Dutch landing boats against old Plymouth Rock. It is not much of a city, but it is the best that Norway has ; and how so desolate a land could even do so well as this, is rather wonderful. It has no grand effects, like spacious Stockholm streets ; no gorgeous palaces or handsome public squares set out in noble trees, fountains, and statues of stone 41 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. and bronze ; but many people live here in a quiet, comfortable way, and send out ships to sea, — trade here and there and make a decent living. The surplus population is in the States. The busiest place we saw in all the streets was an emigration ofifice, a sort of railroad-steamer agency, which displayed the stars and stripes, and dealt out railroad tracts, — long litho- graphed inducements to settle on the rich farming lands of the great Northwest. To emigrate is the best thing this over-population can do. The poorest of lands raise the most children. The rich have comparatively few ; the poor have an abundance. If Ireland and Norway and many another European state had to keep within their lines all that are born upon their soil, who can tell the tale of want and misery that would befall them ? There are vastly more Irish in America than in Ireland ; as many Scandi- navians, or soon will be, as in Norway and Sweden ; and if these had all stayed at home they must have had a famine all the year around. Well may these and the German peoples, and those of other European states, thank God for America, — the place of refuge, the great safety-valve of all the European land. When her borders become full, and her children fill her spacious lap. Heaven pity the over-product of Europe ! You may write of tariffs or free trade as you please ; but when the day comes on, as come it must, when there are two or three hungry mouths for every single mouthful, at home and abroad, then will the crisis come ; then shall we hear no more of Chinese economy, or deride those who live on less than we, that they may earn and save. Yesterday we saw one man and eight women making hay in the same field, — some old, some young. Where were the men ? At sea, or in the army. Working somewhere, you may rest assured. Yesterday we saw — we saw it more than once — two human beings clad in women's clothes, hauling a plough guided by a lad, ploughing up the stony earth to raise a crop. Where were the oxen or horses? Don't ask foolish questions. You do not know what some poor people must do for daily bread ; read once again what Kingsley said, — " For men must work and women must weep, When there 's little to earn and many to keep," SCANDINA VIA AT LANDS. 4 1 1 and you will understand it better, much better. Indeed, we were sad at heart to see this sight in Christian lands. But we were also glad at heart, when driving, later, in Cliristiania, to see a crowd about an office door, above which was a card, — "A ship for North America ! " Thank God for America ! The Scands who live about the great Northwest — Scand, Teuton, Gaul, and Celt — have reason to thank God for the United States, and for the ships that took them to the Western land ; to that fair, better soil ; to brighter, better lands and hopes. The Scand well loves his home : the lichen loves a rock ; the Scand goes forth to work, and willing work will win. This Norway-Swedish peninsula is a land of lovely scenery, — rock and lake and river ; a land of sparkling, splashing fjords, and verdured mountain crag ; land of scraggy pine and lovely weeping birch and silvery poplar ; land of deep, dark tarns, and rushing streams and fish and birch-fringed glenland, furze and lovely fern ; land of snow and ice and unique scenery. But what of scenery? You can't cook and eat k; you can't trade on it, except as tourists come and go and leave their gold behind. It has no prairie fields, no miles and miles of wheat and oats and corn ; only rocks and lakes and rushing streams and fjords, — ploughable soil the rarest exception. But out of this sterility springs no end of thrifty people. They are hardy, inured to labor, stout, industrious, honest withal, and peaceable. They come to us in America, bringing little minted wealth, but much of health and sturdy honesty. We make jest of them sometimes, — saying they will eat only such stuff as they cannot sell or fatten their hogs upon ; but they pay their debts, and often become the most wealthy and most influential of their communities. • • • « • • ■ We are now through with this far northern land, and seek the sunny South. We go to Copenhagen. The name is barbarous, and you that can pronounce it know little of its meaning. Let us see : Copen is a verb, " to cheapen ; " hagen is *' a haven," — "a harbor." Copenhagen is then a cheapening haven, — a market-place, and so it is to-day, as in all the centuries past, — a meeting-place of ships, where goods are brought from near and far, and sold for what they will bring ; cheapened to the sale limit. It is a good place to visit. The wharves are 412 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. quite extensive ; the streets are paved and very broad ; the houses have a solid business look ; the hotels charge a double price, lest they should make a mistake ; the parks and gardens are broad and fine ; the churches large and fair and tall ; the whole pre- sents a money look- Amid her streets and dikes and churches, her docks and palaces, we spend our time, and wonder how so great a world of wealth was ever garnered here, — up here among the straits and cramped-up patches of low land. But it is the sea and trade with northern lands that built up Copenhagen, and builds her up and keeps her up to-day. Denmark is a little nation, but independent. She is Christian, Protestant ; furnishes crown princes, queens, and other functionaries, for many a Protestant government that must have Christian husbands and wives, but cannot select them from stock that is Catholic. I^eaving Copenhagen we sail to Kiel. The word means " ship." It is a German city in Schleswig-Holstein. !Many there are in America to-day — exiles of the powdery patriotic times of '48, who wear plain battle-scars, and know full well what love of country means — who hoped for Holstein, worked and fought for it. No wonder. It is a noble little country. We rode through it with the greatest pleasure, and wondered not that men should work and write and arm themselves to fight for such a lovely land and freedom from a heavy yoke. Kiel is a pleasing place — its harbor a very hornets' nest. Here Prussian ships are fitted for war. Miles and miles of marine armament ; docks, firm and floating ; miles and miles of ships, waiting to be called to war ; miles and miles of arse- nals, forging death for foes ; but better than all are miles and miles of merchant ships, and miles and miles of merchant wharves. Here in Kiel lives the great surgeon Esmarch, the discoverer of the rubber ligature in amputations. How did he do it? Take a string and wind it around your finger, — wind it tight, beginning at the end. Wind it to the second joint ; unwind the part you wound up first, — unwind almost to the second joint, but not quite. Now look at your finger ; not a drop of blood circulates. You may cut into it here and there, and deep ; not a drop of blood will come. A surgeon may cut the arteries, take them quietly up, and tie them ; not a drop of blood is lost. SCANDINAVIAN LANDS. 413 for the string you wound about cuts off the arterial and the venous flow. Now you want your leg cut off, cut off below or yet above the knee, without loss of blood. Take a flat rubber string ; now wind it tight from tip of toe to knee, — above the knee ; drive back, hold back the blood ; put on the compress fast upon the thigh ; unwind the flattened rubber string ; cut off the leg; the flesh is clean and white, and not a drop of hu- man blood is spilled! Wonderful, is n't it? Every schoolboy has wound the string around his finger, driven back the surging blood, and held it back ; yet it took Esmarch to apply this homely trick to science. He did it. It is the old story of Columbus and the egg, and really a truer and better one. In olden and down to later times the blood always followed the surgeon's knife. Esmarch commanded the blood to stand still while he was cutting away a diseased arm or leg, and it did so. This was his triumph ; a simple thing, you say ; yes, but perfect. He is a greater man to-day than Bismarck. His discovery will last longer than Bismarck, longer than the German empire, strong and well guarded as it is. Surgeons will stop the flow of human blood with Esmarch's rubber band long after Bismarck is forgotten. The one will live forever; the other, — he and his fame will pass away. 414 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. CHAPTER XXVIII. PARISIAN DAYS. Night Turned to Day. — Pleasuring in the Parks. — Place Concord. — An Hour with Pasteur. — Hydrophobia Antidote. — Sending Patients away Cured. — Preparing and Poisoning Rabbits. — Bouillon and Poi- soned Spinal Cord and Brain. — The Uncertainty Remains. — Great is Pasteur, None the Less. PARIS, — Grand Louvre, fifth story, up above the sur- rounding house-tops ; up above the chimney-pots ; way up above the noisy streets, but not above the noise. The noise is not of men, or wheels rattUng o'er the stony streets, but of the feet of myriad horses. The wheels glide noiselessly o'er the asphalt roads, smooth as polished marble ; but the clack, clack, clack of countless horses' feet outrage the quiet air, din your ears by day, and balk your sleep by night. You may have read of Paris, — city without day or night ; no stated time to eat or sleep ; no time to go to bed or rise. When the sun gets tired and sinks away to rest, mankind should follow his excellent ex- ample, — undress and go to bed, even as Nature intended them to do. Paris cannot see it so. When the sun sinks down to rest, Paris wakes up, puts on its best attire, and takes no sleep till morning hours. Awake at twelve o'clock, the street is all agog, — more noise of hurrying hoofs than at the midday hour ; for men are hurrying to and fro, the sporting points are all ablaze, the restaurants are all aglow, ten thousand lights of lamp and cab drive all the darkness out. Wake up at one, two, or three, — the condensed click of horses' feet still finds you out ; breaks through your shutters, dins your ears, for day is not yet done on Paris streets. The lamps are burning yet ; the car- riage lamps are yet twinkling, and men are hurrying to and fro from place to place. The sunrise hour finds all the streets awake. The pleasuring world has gone to rest, but market wagons take the streets, going and coming here and there with rattle, roar, and rumble. The Parisian curtain never drops ; the play goes on forever. PARISIAN DAYS. 415 I am not going to write up Paris. It has been done before. You cannot help Hking it, it is so spacious, airy, clean and bright and gay. You cannot help lingering here, the pic- tures are so many and so excellent ; the gardens are numerous and full of trees and little mimic lakes and many a lovely foun- tain ; the walks and drives are full of very pretty things which stay your footsteps, make you linger, — linger and wonder when you can take yourself away. You eat a bit of bread and drink a single cup of coffee, and go into the gardens. You wander among flower-beds and linger about the fountains. You feast upon the marble folks that stand aloft on pedestals in varying form and figure ; you wonder at the gorgeous flower-beds, the exquisite marbles, and glorious things in bronze. All around are palaces ; here and there are fountains ; here in the Place Concord, the tall obelisk, carved from the granite rock some years before Joseph was born, and which Joseph saw, stands mute and wondering amid the hurrying here and there. Here, where the Egyptian granite stands, once stood the guillotine. You know the guillotine, — that swift-descending bias axe that does not seem to hurt, but leaves a head in a basket, clipped from the neck and shoulders. Ugh ! But it stood there ! — the upright posts, the gleaming knife so swift to fall. Better the obelisk than the awful axe. It is the civilization of the oldest age that comes to stand upon the horror-spot of this great gifted modern city. I have sat here by this machine axe, and wondered if the days of Robespierre, Marat, and the grim Bastile will come again. Here where it stands is the Place Concord. The name is very good, but much blood has sunk into the ground and waits for expiation. France may have changed and put on other forms ; but the blood of Marie Antoinette is fresh upon the ground as though she died but yesterday. But this is history. You can read it in the books. You will not thank me for historic talk ; you ask for something fresh ; and here it is, — a dead rabbit. You have heard of mad dogs and rabies. You know, no doubt, that if you were bitten by a rabid dog you would yourself become rabid, and snarl and bite, foam at the mouth, and die an awful death. The subject is not a pleasant thing to talk or write or read about ; but one must take the world as he finds it. 4l6 A GIRDLE ROUXD THE EARTH. Pasteur, — you have surely heard of him. You 'have read with horror of the Jersey City children who were bitten by a rabid dog. You have heard how sympathetic folks opened their purses, how wealthy men like Carnegie unloosed their dollars, and sent the doomed little ones to Paris and to Pasteur. They came ; the poison in their blood was met and stopped. The children were returned unto their mothers' arms, healed with- out a miracle, made well without a prayer. Not that people did n't pray ; they did. But come with me to the laboratory of science. I would not take from prayer, or laying on of hands, or placing on of relics of the cross or crown or thorns, or any other thing, a single word ; I would not tell the bishop that his printed prayers for rain and bounte- ous crops are vagaries, mere matter of form ; for you, mayhap, and he believe that he has power of pen and tongue to swerve the Almighty's plans and purposes. He has a certain pride in thinking so, and making people think so too. But the rabbit. It is a simple thing. Simples are sometimes very serious. There was a man who met the scourge of small- pox face to face, — dared it, as the enchanter dares a venomed snake, and baffled it. No laying on of hands had good effect. He invoked poison to meet and baffle poison. He took your round left arm, and underneath the quivering skin injected poison, — inoculation. You know full well the result ; you know this latent poison, sent aforetime all along the blood, met there the awful small-pox poison, and thwarted it. Now come away to Pasteur's rooms, over across the Seine. A hundred patients meet him every day. Not one in a thou- sand has the rabies ; but he meets them all and hears each special case, — shoots hypodermic shots into their blood, and each one goes home cured ! You know how it is ; you know how you love to talk about having been very, very sick, — of being on the very brink of death, when in fact you were nowhere near it. But the Pasteur-treated people go home and certainly believe that they were saved from impending death. You would do so yourself; for you have told of ills you never had, and tried to make your friends believe that in your back or brain you were most sorely affected. But we will go and see the rabbits. The operator has a dead one in a basket. The rabbit was poisoned ten or fourteen days PARISIAN DA YS. 4 1 7 ago ; now it is dead ; died of rabies, — hydrophobia. Skin him all along the back, — all along the spinal column. You have a spinal column, just as a rabbit has. You feel it down your back. When you feel stout and vain and proud, you stand up quite erect, and toss your empty head. This is be- cause your spinal column is in perfect order, — exuberant. But when things go rather bad your spinal column wilts ; your shoulders drop ; you can't look up. You think your brain is in your skull, — and it may partly be ; but it is also in your back- bone, — the inner spinal cord, of which the human brain is but the blossoming. The rabbit died, they say, of rabies ; not a clew of proof that he so died, but merely an assumption. Now, then, the most sensitive part of this dead rabbit was its brain and spinal cord. It is the same with you ; for from the spinal cord spring all the nerves. Injure the brain, and you are dead? Not so. Injure the spinal cord ; cut it ; you are dead. Why ? It is the secret seat of life and nervous action. The rabbit is dead, — died last night of hydrophobia. The Pasteur operator takes it from its basket cage and lays it on a board upon its belly. He forceps away its skull and vertebrae. Along the top of the skull and backbone he makes his course, tearing away the protecting bones until the entire brain and spinal cord are all laid bare. It is a pretty job. You should go to the anatomic room some day and see a human figure, — see it when laid upon its face, the skull and spinal bones all torn away, and see the brain and the long white spinal cord laid cold and bare ; most wondrous sight ! Here are thought and act and energy ! You say you think with your brain. Partly right. You think as well with the spinal cord that traverses your back, just there behind your shoulders and your kidneys. You deny it ? Look out ! The man who denies must prove, as well as he who asserts. But the rabbit. He lies upon the clinic board. The Pasteur expert has laid the spinal cord quite bare, — bare from brain to tip of spine. See him ! His cold steel forceps pick up the lower spinal end of the canal of hfe and thought, and as he picks it up, he with his other hand cuts here and there a branch- ing cord, a nerve, a stringy fixture ; the strings he cuts are cords of life, — telegraph lines. One tells of pains within the 27 41 8 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. head ; one tells of joys of hearth and home ; one tells of lusts, and one of hope ; hope, love, and pain, each nerve is being cut, as up he pulls the greater cord of life, — up past the hips, up past the kidneys, up along the body, up between the shoul- der-blades, he snips and pulls the marrow of the spine ; up to the neck and through the neck, up to the brain, he clips and pulls the marrow cord, till cord and brain are, all in one, by skil- ful hand laid now upon the table ! This is the human or in- human life. What good ? Now take a pound or two of beef, and boil it well in water. Skim off the grease. What is left is bouillon. The bouillon is rich water, sterilized; it has been boiled; no life germ left ! Now cut up the rabbit's spine and brain, impreg- nated, they say, with rabies ; cut and macerate it ; mix it now with the sterilized bouillon. What for? To make a poisoned fluid mess ! From this poison stuff and the bouillon, you have a fiendish broth, — an antidote for rabies, for mad- dog poison. Take a little syringe, and squirt this liquid into the human blood with hypodermic push. The poison so sent home into the human blood meets the poison that the hydro- phobic dog implanted in those veins ; the one the other meets, and fights it out, like the Kilkenny cats, till nothing more is left ; the patient lives. Poison from the rabbit's backbone cord has met the poison of the dog's most rabid tooth, — met it in equal fight, as vaccine virus meets the small-pox curse and conquers it ! Dost thou believe? No? Then read over again, and re- member. The rabbit died of poison ; died flayed upon the cHnic cross that you might live, — you, doomed to die of hydrophobia ! Small means, you say ; yet he who sees and won't beheve is doomed. It shakes one up to see this curious test; tries his belief; and yet, when Ave look back and think of vaccine experiments, what have we to say? Nothing. We pause, try to be serious, ask for reasons ; the oracle answers nothing ! It gives results — gives nothing else. The child, the wife, the husband dear, goes home cured as if by medicinal miracle ; this and nothing more. A half dozen pretty rabbits lie within their wicker cages ; PARISIA N DAYS. 4 1 9 food they are for experimental rabies ! Lovely, fluffy rabbits ; eyes of innocence and coats of softest down ; and how we pitied them, — a sacrifice ! Catch up a pretty one. How inno- cent its looks, perfect its form, pleading its eyes ! The attend- ant jams it on a board, spreads out its furry legs, ties each extended leg well out with cruel strings. See how the victim kicks, and tries to spring ! No use. The Pasteur agent holds the gray pet down, and gives it sleepy chloroform. The rabbit kicks and squirms, but o'er its senses steals a deathly sleep, and it lies down, o'ercome, to quiet rest. Now look. The Pasteur man shears off the rabbit's soft hair ; then lays bare the cra- nium ; then with a sharp trephining instrument bores through the dormant skull, and then with silver syringe charged with bouillon sterilized and macerated poisoned rabbit's viscera, he shoots it into the cavity. Of course the patient takes the stuff, and dies in ten or twelve or fourteen days, — maybe from pa- ralysis or poison ; who can tell? This, at all events, is the way in which the poison is prepared ; what follows you must guess. This brings me back again to other days. A friend was bitten by a maddened dog. Death looked him, so he believed and feared, squarely in the face. What to him was allopath or homoepath ? He wanted only life. He went to the " mad- stone " quack, and applied the stone to his wound. It sucked clean the rabid wound ; the patient lived. What shall we say? We ask the doctor this. He calls me a fool to talk of mad- stones. " No such a thing exists or could exist. Your friend had no poison in his blood." " How do you know he had none? " " Because if he had he would have died of it." " But he was bitten by a dog that bit and poisoned others. How do you — how does Pasteur — know whether his bitten patients have been poisoned or not? " " He does n't know ; he takes it on trust, and injects into the blood what he conceives would be an antidote for the poison, should any be present." " Do all his patients live?" " No ; some of them die, — a few, I hear." " Is n't it possible, then, that such as live were not poisoned at all ; and that those who die were really the poisoned ones? " " Maybe ; no one alive can tell." 420 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. But Pasteur is great in Paris. Patients come flocking to him by the hundreds, who are treated without price. Heaven grant his greatness may not vanish ! When the truth of the theory will be established none can tell, for there seems to be no way of teUing whether a patient is really poisoned or not until it is too late to make a cure. We went to see the man the world now talks so much about ; to see his operations, see his way of making cures and preparing the antidote. We went for infor- mation ; we got some, but took a lot on trust, and came away, hoping the theory might some time be proved beyond a doubt. OLD ENGLAND. 42 1 CHAPTER XXIX. OLD ENGLAND. Going down to Essex. — Sunday Rules. — Among the Hounds and Horses. — The Greatness of London. — What London Eats and Drinks. — The Little Island of Jersey. — Jersey People and Cattle. — Farming on the Island. " TT ERE is my card, and when you get around to London Y 1 don't forget to let me know. I can always be found by a note in care of my club, the Junior Carleton. Look me up, and we can knock about a bit, you know." That was what the major said to me one evening eleven months ago at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama. He, — ALajor W. H. Allsopp, of the famous Allsopp brewing-house, — he and a younger brother, somewhat out of health, were cruising about the world with sanitary motives ; had been to Australia and New Zealand ; then across to San Francisco ; looked about among the stables, for nothing fills the major's eye so full as well-bred horses \ then back to Australia again by way of Yoko- hama. As he left to go aboard the " Kasghar," we said a hearty good-by and promised to look him up. You may have heard it said that Englishmen are not quite genial as travelling companions ; that they are too reticent and too much self-contained, hard to draw out and get acquainted with. That depends. We have not found it so ; and yet the major seemed for quite two weeks to support the theory. Though we messed at the same table, walked the same deck, watched the same gulls, we didn't get acquainted. He was extremely self-contained, and seemed to be a man in some way out of sorts with most of the world, as though he had met some great misfortune in business, love, or his estate, and was court- ing introspection. The passengers remarked upon it ; felt sorry that such a fine-looking man, polite and dignified, should mix so little with the rest. 422 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. But there Is a common meeting-ground for all, if you can only find it. With some it is in the field of politics ; with others religion, scientific talk, music, or art. Ours was farming. Horses, cattle, farming tools ; somehow we broke the ice in that direction, and had no further lack of talk material. But the oddity of the thing ! The major had no farm, nor wanted any ; but his innate love for bright, well-bred, active horses, sheep, cattle, or dogs made him a hearty friend of farmers and fields and farming ways. Shut up in London all the while, save his annual six weeks' outing with his regiment, and now and then an ocean trip, he finds his chiefest pleasure down in Essex among the fox-hounds or round about among the farming folk who keep good horses. So, when getting around to London, of course the major was looked in upon, in his cosey chambers in Old Bond Street. Some cordial greeting, some reminiscences of the voyage and passengers, and — " Did you ever see a pack of hounds, — real fox-hounds?" asked the colonel. For since we saw him he has been pro- moted in his regiment, and we now call him colonel ; and as his father has just been made a baron, the colonel is also now an honorable. Well, he carries his honors very easily, and talks farming talk just the same as ever. " No, I never saw a pack." "Would you like to?" " Most certainly." " This is Friday. Meet me Sunday morning at Liverpool Street station, eight o'clock, and we will have a quiet day in Essex, unless you have scruples. I like a quiet resting day out in the open air. There is nothing here in London half as good." I had no scruples of that sort, none I could really think of, and told him so. Broad, green fields and clumps of trees ; springy turf and horses, cows and sheep and shade and run- ning streams, — what other place has such a charm on Sun- day ? The great green country-carpet decked with hedge-rows, trees, and bordering brooks, and bright-blue heaven over all, is indeed a place to worship in. " Now, then, at eight o'clock the train will start. Bring along your friends and have a little party. We can get some breakfast OLD ENGLAND. 423 down at Harlow, see the pack, then take a trap and ride away to Elsenham Hall, see Pedometer and the great Shire horses, drive back to Bishop Stortford, lunch, and take the train back to London in time for dinner." We laid by our napkins, walked around a square or two, and said good-by, to meet on Sunday morning. The doctor and the bishop needed no urging. We were at the station at half-past seven, — so early that we might get a cup and roll before starting. Inquiring the way to the station restaurant, the guard on duty told us it was Sunday ; that they did n't serve coffee on the day of rest ! " But you run trains, do you not? " " Oh, yes ; three or four trains only on Sunday, sir," he said. " But we drink coffee Sunday mornings just as on any other ; now be so very good as to earn our kind regards, and some- thing more, by helping us to find a coffee-room." That was said to music, — pocket sounds ; clinking of small coin. He said he 'd try ; and try he did ; and came right back and led us to the proper door, which was unlocked against the rule, and we were well served. Others banged the door without reply. They wanted coffee, too, but got none. Right here a word. Close by that station, almost anywhere, you could get whiskey, brandy, gin, and wine ; no tea or coffee. This great railroad line could run its trains and work its men all day, sell tickets, — any class you like, — but shuts its restaurant on Sundays. Open on all other days, closed on the holy Sabbath day, turning the thirsty ones into the back doors of the gin-shops. The Sunday morning before, we tramped about an hour to find a coffee-shop. No end of them, all closed ; bar- rooms open at the back. Well, it's a way they have, — " It 's English, you know," but devilish, and should be reformed. In the city there is not a coffee-house or restaurant open on Sun- day, nor at West End till six o'clock in the evening. But you need not go thirsty if rum will quench it ; for while the pub- lics are theoretically closed, they are practically quite open. The way down into Essex is very charming. The landscape is bright and clear, without a hint of the parched and hungry look that want of rain brings on. The hedge- framed fields are very clean and neat, with countless round-topped shady trees, and willowy trees along the brooks, and shady tree-rows here and 424 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. there, and random trees about the fields. The fields are gar- dens, — most part m roots for market use, with now and then a patch of wheat, and here and there a plat of oats. At every station step off a dozen or a score of fishermen, — clerks from the city, men of wage, who come with rod and reel and lun- cheon-box to sit all day beneath the shade ; to angle all day for fish that never come. But they have their fishing, outing, lunch, and have some hours of royal rest, — a taste of beauteous earth and heaven that smoky London cannot give. Stepping out at Harlow we took the footpath through the fields of grass and golden wheat. These English country paths are neatly kept highways for footmen ; as much highways or public ways, and as sacredly dedicated to the public use, as are the broader carriage-roads. They go cross-lots and through the fields, along the winding streams and dells and lovely water brooks. They are not bridle-paths, — no horse could pass the wicket-gates, — simply for such as go on foot, but neat and right well kept. "Could you kindly give us four breakfasts?" the colonel asked the tidy serving-maid at the Green INIan's Inn. She could. " It will not keep you from church, I hope ? " " No, we go to church at eleven, sir ; now it 's just past nine." " Serve it in the commercial room, when we return from the kennels." The kennels were six minutes' walk away, and the huntsman was there to show his pets. First the dogs, — a well-kept pack of forty hounds, tan and white, with pendent ears and keen bright eyes, each answering to his name and coming from the pack on call. The bitches were a jolly lot of thoroughbreds, — better hunters than the dogs, the huntsman said, but not so keen of scent on a dull trail. The crop of pups was splendid, — a kennel full of playful brats just spoiling to get out. The kennels are large airy rooms in long low brick buildings fitted up for comfort. The floors of the rooms and outer yard are neatly flagged with well-dressed stone, and kept as clean as a kitchen. The food consists of oatmeal pudding and minced horseflesh mixed together, wetted and poured into shallow troughs, around which the beauties stand and help themselves, OLD ENGLAND. 425 — coming to breakfast, not in a helter-skelter rush, but as their names are called. The pens are separate ; and many there are for different sexes, ages, and conditions. The kennels are close by Mr. William Bambridge, of the Green Man's Inn ; and Mr. Loftus Arkwright is master, and Mr. Bailey huntsman. Among the pack were several fine samples presented by Colonel Allsopp some six years ago, when the bitch pack had to be shot on account of what they call dumb-madness. The colonel sets great store by his fall hunt, and is never backward in pro- moting the interests of wholesome sport. His friends down there do not forget it, but hold him in high esteem. The Green Man's Inn is very fresh and clean ; we had a comfortable breakfast between four walls decked out with lively hunting scenes. We looked about the stables, played with the bouncing baby, greeted the invalid host, and had a chat ; then drove away to Elsenham. If you have poetry within your soul, or love of Nature's pictures in your heart ; if you love quiet land- scapes, fields aglow with green and gold, bright veined with limpid streams, and dotted here and there with cottage thatch and barns and ricks, and flowered hedge and mossy bridge, and kirk-bells ringing far and near, and over all the well-tem- pered sun, — if you like all this and scenes much lovelier far than words of mine can tell, then you should ride from Green Man's Inn across the field to Elsenham. It is the country-seat of Mr. Walter Gilbey, a well-known gentleman whose apparent mission seems to have been to sur- round himself with a rather large and exceedingly comely family ; to make a home of comfort, tinged with luxury ; to till five hun- dred acres in such a generous way that he and those around him might gain benefits. He is a horse-farmer, gives large attention to the Shire horse sort, — the sturdiest, fairest, best- boned horse of all the large horse kind ; these and the hackneys, not so large ; these and Pedometer by King Tom, a noted hunting breed. The array of horseflesh was very extensive and interesting. The show animals had but lately come in from the general ex- hibition, where they had won great honors ; several of them were the first awards. It was well worth while to see the best of all the English stallions, especially the noble County j\Iember, whose fine movement, with high knee-action, makes his kind 426 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. earnestly sought after for high coach and carriage work. These superb creatures were kept at the hall for the benefit of surround- ing county stock, in which enterprise their owner is most liberal. Pedometer is the colonel's favorite. He sung his praises out on the Pacific, describing him quite perfectly. The colonel keeps no farm or mares, but raises hunting stock by contract with the farmers. * • • • • ■ • Loitering in London these charming August days ; vibrating between Trafalgar Square and Westminster, Westminster and the Bank ; from the National Gallery to South Kensington ; from Soho Square to Covent Garden ; from Haymarket to the Criterion ; from Crosby Hall to Regent's Park and Zoozoo dens ; from Apsley House to Marble Arch ; from London Tower to Dore's gems ; from park to park, street to street, and play to play, — and not forgetting the stores and dining-rooms, — that is a part of what we do in London, waiting here till our ship comes on to take us home. How large is Iowa, how many people ? Oh, fifteen hundred thousand. How large is Illinois, her older sister State? Say three millions and a quarter, — five millions, about, in both, and a hundred and eleven thousand square miles. How large is London? The city covers six hundred and ninety square miles, — about twenty townships ; and the popula- tion is about the same as those two States combined. Huddle all the people in Illinois and Iowa into Scott County, Iowa ; build that county over with streets and parks and public squares ; that is to say, when every inch of land is sewered, gased, and water- piped, and all the people of both States are gathered there, the aggregate would be about like that of London. To be particular, Rome has not so many Roman Catholics as London ; Dublin has fewer Irishmen than London ; Edinburgh fewer Scotchmen ; and Jews — why, all Jud?ea has not one tenth as many. And yet it is growing every day. Every four minutes marks a birth ; even while I spend two hours in writ- ing, thirty babes will have been born, and twenty deaths will have taken place. The evening paper that records the births and the deaths of the previous four-and-twenty hours must give three hundred separate items. Verily, its joys and sorrows are a multitude. OLD ENGLAND. 427 It is thirty-five lumdred miles' journey from New York to San Francisco, You can walk, say, twenty miles a day ; well, it would take you a hundred and seventy-five days at that rate to make the trip. But London has seven thousand miles of streets ; and if you took them afoot at a rate of twenty miles a day you would have to walk almost a year, and more than a year by nearly fifty days if you kept Sundays. And if you v.'ere a thirsty sort of traveller, and could n't pass a drinking shop, don't be alarmed, — the trip has five-and-seventy miles of drinking shops, publics they call them ; so none need think of thirst. How do these people live ? As you do, — by eating. They eat a lot. I can't go into details, but you can take your slates and figure up how much they swallow every day ; for in a year these London folks devour five hundred thousand oxen, two million sheep, two hundred thousand calves, three hundred thousand swine, eight million head of fowls, five hundred mil- lion pounds of fish, five hundred million oysters, two hundred million lobsters. Add to these four million tons of canned goods, no end of fruit and eggs and other things ; but, not to spoil your appetite talking of beans and peas and fifty million bushels of wheat, we might as well forbear. But how they wash all this food down, you might feel glad to know. Look sharp. It takes two hundred million quarts of beer ! A stream of beer about the size of the Jordan would not suffice to quench the common thirst ; for they drink ten million quarts of rum, and fifty million quarts of wine, — the wine, the rum, the beer, two hundred and sixty million quarts ! Any water ? Some, for cooking and sprinkling streets, — about a hun- dred and fifty millions of gallons daily. Taking out the water used for sprinkling, cooking, and fountains, and the actual drinking supply is desperately small. Any temperance people ? Yes ; plenty of them ; but they only seemed to make more drinking for those who are not. The supply is about so large, and has to be consumed. True, the Government says there is a sad falling off of late in spirits rev- enues, but it is difficult to see where. You see more drunken- ness in a single hour in London than on the entire continent of Europe — all Asia thrown in, and Africa too — in a whole year. But London is a great city — and very thirsty. You go to 428 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. Liverpool or Glasgow, go to lovely Edinburgh, or up to Hull or Leeds, Mancliester or Inverness, and it is about as bad, — deep drunkenness and deeper damning sins than drunkenness ram- pant in the streets. On Sabbath-day no such abstemiousness is found in all the world as in these cities I have named ; that is, from midnight Saturday night, when all the dens and boozing kens are closed in front, till Sunday afternoon an hour at one o'clock, and later on at six. You will fail to get a cup of coffee Sunday morning in any public coffee place. Open are the churches and tobacco shops ; no place to eat, no pubhc place to drink, — only at hotels and "round the other way." How happens this ? The policeman said in confidence, " They got so beastly drunk on Saturday night it takes all Sunday up to six o'clock to sleep off sober." Now this is Saturday night from nine to twelve o'clock. You come with me. Leave your watch and all but a few silver coins at home. Dive into the 'worst and through the best of streets. The drinking shops and boozing kens are many, and loafing crowds are all around ; they are drinking full and filling up their jugs. You see the men and women too — God pity us ! — the little ones, — the very children coming out with pots of beer and jugs of rum, scudding home with this the Sunday drinking store. The rich can have it in their cellar stock ; the poor will have it in their pots and jugs ; and so the ruin race goes on. But let us talk of other things. One can't help liking Lon- don. If you come here from Paris you may wish you had not ; but do not hurry ; see her works of art and curious things ; visit her schools and churches, her law courts and jails. Her streets are excellent ; her sanctuaries grand, and sometimes beau- tiful ; her docks spread over townships' space ; her parks are broad and bounteous, springy-turfed, with winsome lake and shade. She has many faults. You know it, for there are over two hundred thousand habitual criminals in her jails ; one pris- oner for twenty-five freemen is rather many, but, — but some great divine has figured out that about one of earth's sons in every thousand manages to get into heaven, while the nine hun- dred and ninety-nine drop into the other place without an effort. So, unless there is some mistake in the calculation, London has a better showing than the averaffe. OLD ENGLAND. 429 Last evening I went up to Spurgeon's church. It was crowded with saints and sinners ; some Londoners and lots of travellers. You can't see London shows and not see Spurgeon's church. He is not a handsome man, nor yet a man of eloquence ; but he has a brusque, positive, sledge-hammer sort of way that hits the kind of a nail he drives square upon the head with such powerful blows as drives it home, and clinches it. So does old Dion Boucicault at Prince's Theatre, who has made more people weep than Spurgeon ever did, over the woes, the sins, the fol- lies of men. Both places seem to me to be a sort of show, — both draw, both call the travellers in, and all feel somehow that they entered neither place in vain. Maybe it 's not quite right to get the pulpit and the stage so close together ; but what you see and feel and what another sees and feels may not be to both convincing truth, so let it pass ; let us talk of things to eat. Since you must eat or die, you have more interest in bread and meat than in pulpit, pew, or theatre You may not like to have it said, but when a sermon or a part becomes too long, and you get hungry for bread and beef, you wish the preacher would " round to " and say amen. I said some hundred lines ago that so many million oxen, sheep, and calves were chewed between these London teeth and sent into the London maw. Where do they come from? Great Britain can't provide them. Why, if Britons had to live on Lush, Scotch, and British beef, they 'd starve within a week. Britons get hungry every day — and thirsty. They can make up beer and rum and wine enough out of poor water and malt and chemicals to quench the general thirst ; but when it comes to mutton, beef, and pork, they cannot ; so they must hunt afar. The doctor said to us one day, " Come down to Ledenhall. Here is a card." We piled into a cab and went. We met a gentleman who said, " Come on ; " and on we went down through a maze of crowded streets, to the Fenchurch region, — to the docks. Then we climbed the swarthy side of a hulking ship, and came on deck. The ship had just got in from South America ; been four weeks on the voyage. " This ship," for so our good guide said, " brought in her hold just five-and-thirty thousand carcasses of beef and mutton. Much of it has landed, gone to the company's cellars; much of it is yet aboard, and you shall see and handle it. 430 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. "But first," he said, "come down into the ship and see how this is done. We use no ice, no chemicals ; yet bring across the ocean all this great mass of meat frozen as hard as rock." We went down into the ship. Tlie engines that brought her had gone to sleep, after the long voyage. The engines that made a frigid zone down in the torrid hold were working at their best. These mighty things, one at each end, catch the common air and force it into an iron cylinder, many diameters in one. You know that multiplying aerial diameters by compres- sion induces heat. The reverse of this — sudden expansion, — creates great cold. So these giant forces first contract to such extent that when expansion comes the very snow flies. The condensing room was very warm, but lift a cover on a box where the expansion starts, and you may pull out snowballs ; it is forty degrees below the freezing-point right there inside an atmosphere of ninety-five above. That is all there is of it. The beeves and sheep are killed out in Brazil. They have condensers there ; and in forty minutes after the animal is dead, it is frozen stiff. It comes into the ship so frozen ; it crosses the great sea still kept frozen ; they land it, sell it, frozen hard ; and, mind you, British butchers sell it out, and talk of tender, well-fed British beef, and tell their customers of fat and juicy English mutton, w^hen neither beef nor sheep is British within five thousand miles. But it is just as good ; better, perhaps, and my lords and ladies who eat this sort of British meat because they could n't relish any other are really doing very well. This way of bringing much Brazilian beef to Britain is one of many schemes that fills this country with meat, — this and others. It comes in cargoes from the States, fresh, canned, and on the hoof; comes here from Canada, Australia, and Neth- erlands across the way ; comes here in quantities, to feed the teeming millions who would famish if they looked to home fields and herds and flocks for bread and meat ; and what is true of bread and meat is true of garden truck, which comes from Holland, comes from France, and keeps the people fed. What then? The English farmer can't compete in bread and meat. The land that once was -worth three, five, six, seven sterling pounds per acre every year is now worth but little. It is tilled, of course, but what the ground may yield must count in value like the yield of acres of the West. This knocks the OLD ENGLAND. 43 1 landlord out. Look at it in the face ; it is not the Land League Irish movement, as these douglity Britons say, that makes rentals cheap in Ireland, but the ingenious ways of bringing foreign food to British ports. It is not Pamell, but Providence. It is not Conservative, or Liberal, or Land League, — nothing but plain and powerful Supply that is telling on the price and power of land. We have wandered far and wide in these itw lines, but you can take the texts and think them over, and do your own preach- ing. London is the greatest city of the world, — greatest in shops and feed and fuel stores ; greatest in mouths to feed and backs to clothe ; greatest in thirst and strife and devious ways of sin ; greatest in charity and pulpit work. Great marts and sins and charities are ever found combined. Down in the English Channel, a dozen hours by land and sea from London, you find the Channel Islands, — the isles of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark, — the largest Jersey, hardly half as large as a single county, noted for its wonder- ful cattle, climate, and its thrift. On the world's map it is a mere speck, so small that you would never find it unless you knew right where to look ; yet so large in its pecuhar influences as to be discussed at every table in the enlightened world. One comes over here from Weymouth or Southampton, and lands at fair St. Hiliers, the only port in Jersey, a place of thirty thousand, — one half the island's population. It is a well-built city, built up of brick and stone. The wharves and slips are massive granite work, the streets and walks are granite, the houses largely so, — a neat and clean substantial little place with railroads reaching out towards the east and west a half dozen miles. It is a very little place, this Jersey garden gem, and yet it has great men, great industries, and great speculations, — in fact, is much like many other towns. In dress and manners, business ways and means, it is very much like other seaports. They have fine turnouts, markets, fashion craze, and broken banks, just like English folks or Yankees. The people are a sort of French and English grade ; they dress and talk like French or English folk, and have other symptoms of belong- ing to both. They speak some French and some English, but 432 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. the common talk — the patois of the island — is a bastard Franco-Anglais that bafiles both French and English. If you turn your mind to understanding them in French, you soon get lost ; if you try to follow them with your English ears, you can't make any speed ; and so you simply let the Jersey tongue alone. But when it comes to business, they are like all other peoples, only more so. They say it takes the Devil to beat one Jew, two Jews to beat a farmer, and the whole crowd to beat a Jer- seyman. This is probably libellous, and I should not have thought of it had it not been taught me by an islander. The hotels are grade hotels, neither native nor thoroughbred. Plenty of them, such as they are, and rather neat and tidy sort of inns, — neither French nor English nor American, but a little of each. You get a room, for which you pay a price ; the meals are nothing. Pay for your room and bed and service, and you can have a breakfast, hot or cold ; a luncheon, cold ; a dinner of hot soups and meats and pastry things. And all this shall not cost you more than six or eight shiHings a day, — a two dollars a day arrangement. In fact, I got a real table d'hote one day of soups and joints, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, bread, and cheese, — a real feast, — for five-and-twenty cents ! But the hotel breakfasts are rather sumptuous. Tea or coffee, ham and eggs, steaks, chops, cold chicken, roasts, or any other kind ; and such a dinner, — a full half dozen meats, and vegeta- bles and sweets. The meats come forth uncut. The guests be- come the carvers, and serve each other as their wants require. At the head sits the President, — the oldest guest, perhaps, — and he will carve the roast. At the foot sits the vice, and he displays his keen-edged steel about the mutton joint. The roasted goose or ducks, calfs-head, and other meats, are placed along the side ; also the puddings, tarts, and other things ; and so one helps the other till all are filled, — a rather social, jolly way. Some take a pint of wine or beer, some prefer a water drink qualified with spirits ; almost every one takes some cheerful fluid. No noise, no ladies at these meals, and nothing boisterous or impolite, — a genial, quiet party. If one must leave before the meal is done he asks permission of the President, and moves quietly out so as not to disturb the business then in hand. We rather like these orderly and helpful ways. They speak of decency and good-breeding. OLD ENGLAND. 433 But we came not over to Jersey to speak entirely of people's ways, but more to look up Jerseys, — that mild-eyed, soft- skinned sort of cow that makes the world so happy. We had seen some in America and other climes ; but seeing a good thing anywhere you rather want to see where it came from. If you see pretty girls and boys and take an interest in their ways, you want to see their parents and their homes ; and every pretty picture that you see, or glorious piece of music that you hear, you would gladly see the artist and the author. So, then, being a fancier of Jersey cattle types, and having a week to spare, we came over here to Jersey, home of the Jersey cow. Not an ambi- tious act, perhaps, but full of real interest ; for he who puts upon your table two pounds of golden Jersey butter where one pound of common stuff appeared before, deserves a costlier monument than he who wastes his wealth to go to Congress. You may never have thought, or cared to think, what consti- tutes pure blood in cattle. In olden times, our English ances- tors abode in factions. They called their factions counties. Separate counties had their own laws and ways of doing things. They held their own to be the best, and cared little to mix with other sorts. They lived among themselves and intermarried. Their flocks and herds were rarely intermixed with other flocks and herds, but were made as good as they could make them by themselves. And so you come to hear of Devons, Durhams, Herefords, and Ayrshires. You hear of Southdown sheep and Hampshire-downs ; and so you hear of Jersey cows and Guern- sey breeds, and of Angus and Holstein breeds and Belted Swiss, and this and that, — the result of special isolated breeding. Some breed for excellence in butter, some in beef, and some in cheese, but all breed for a purpose ; and hence through enter- prise, and through jealousy, too, if you please, have come to us in later days these wonderful cattle products, and horses, trotting, running, and street and roadster kinds. You will, of course, object to what I want to say ; but objec- tions are very cheap and often worthless. The best of thinking men and women, too, believe in the survival of the fittest, especially in brutes. They talk right well upon this point, and really believe in well-bred horses, cows, sheep ; but when it comes to well-bred men and women, to well-bred babes and boys and girls, they curtly draw the curtain, first making the 28 434 •^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. remark that you may have heard before, " Matches are made in heaven ; let no man speak or interfere." No more is said. The weak and puny wed the robust and the strong ; those who are bh'ghted with a taint of blood espouse the pure and vigorous, — to bring forth sickly ones with scrofula and cramped vitality, — because of love at first or later sight ; for " matches are made in heaven." Maybe they are ; but if indeed they be, then what a weight of human ills and human pains and human groans and sighs and tears has Heaven to answer for ! One must, of course, not talk too far, for it is not polite. We must be most careful as to our cattle-breeding, — fittest unto fittest with our herds, fit- test in physique and in disposition ; but with our own dear ones, our very flesh and blood, we may not speak or write or act, for is not all this regulated up there beyond the vaulted blue ? Alas that men should think and speak and write and watch so well in brute affairs, and quite ignore all laws of human flesh and blood ! The island is a garden sort of place. Farms everywhere, and every farm a gem. The average farm is about fifteen acres. If you own it you are rich, and very rich, as things go here. If you don't own it, then you pay five or six or seven guineas an acre annual rent for it — more than thirty dollars ! And yet with raising potatoes and fruit for the markets, hay and grain and roots for stock, many a man has made a farmer's fortune, — a life- long competence, with funds to leave behind. You cannot really understand it ; but crops bring in much profit here, and Jersey cows are great promoters of wealth. That farmers have lived here and prospered under such a weight of rent is patent. That they will continue to do so admits of no doubt. Poor crops, bad luck, and now and then a broken bank will occur, but the average is largely in favor of the farmer. CLOSING UP. 435 CHAPTER XXX. CLOSING UP. The Cost of Travel. — The Hotels on the Way. — Cost of Living. — Our Friends the Officials, Diplomatic and Consular. — Unpaid Ser- vice. — What Travelling Teaches. — Starting for Home. — Good- Byes. — Adieus and Thanks. — Home Again. SITTING in the grill room in Regent Street one evening after dinner, reeling some Oriental yarn with a random acquaintance, he asked the question : " How much does it cost to go round the world? " " About as much as it costs to buy a house." "But that's indefinite; a house may cost more or less." " So will a journey round the world. You can go first-class, second, or steerage ; you can go around and make no stops, or you can make side voyages north and south ; you can push ahead or stop to do the ports and cities, study men and things ; you can spend much or spend little, according to your taste and inclination ; can make it very cheap indeed, or very dear, or moderate in price, just as you happen to be made up." " Well, a moderate price? " " That again depends. I met a man out there in Hong- Kong, who said he had come on fi^om New York in less than fifty days for less than five hundred dollars. He said he could have done it for less, but he was making his expenses moderate, and would reach New York again, and the whole trip would n't cost over seven hundred dollars ; and he had had all he wanted, had seen all he expected to see, was taking it moderately. There you have one man's moderate price for getting around, the world. " But there is another side to it. A San Francisco chap in Constantinople said he had been making the trip, — been ten months at it and had seen much, and had ' drawn on the " old man " for only twenty thousand dollars.' He. too, was doing the round trip moderately according to his gauge." 436 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. " Suppose you strike an average between these two moderate sort of travellers, how would that work ? " " It would n't tell the truth, as I understand it. All depends on habits of various sorts. You may make a twelve months' tour and spend litde or much, and count yourself quite mod- erate. If you have no expensive habits, and want to see how cheaply you can make it, you will not spend over two hundred dollars a month ; and though your habits be inexpensive, and you desire to see everything that is going, right and left, if in making the twenty-four thousand miles you travel forty or fifty thousand, use money liberally to see what should be seen, you will spend about ten dollars a day. You may count on that. This will not include your purchases, which may amount to nothing or thousands of dollars." " Are the hotels good ? " " Good and bad ; mostly bad. There are a few good hotels on the way beyond the Slates. The Grand Hotel at Yokohama is excellent ; the Astor at Shanghai is only fair ; the Hong- Kong Hotel at Hong-Kong is fine. From Hong-Kong on to Cairo, a good long stretch, you will find but one good house, — the Grand Oriental at Columbo, the only first-class hotel in India. India, as a land, has all that is good to eat, but it has the poorest hotels in all the world, — dirty, frowzy, abominable in all that should be clean and pure and decent. Plenty of servants, — every guest has one or more, aside from the many hotel servants, — but nothing clean or orderly. The cleanest and best-victualled hotels in India, perhaps, are those in native towns, entirely kept by natives. It is there you get those glo- rious curries. You get curries everywhere, but best among the natives. " Do you eat curry ? Of course not ; for you cannot get it. You eat something you call curry, or that somebody says is curry, but it is no more like Indian curry than skim milk is like cream. I will not tell you what real Indian curry is, because I don't know; nor how it tastes, for you can't understand; but it is the king of dishes, — the emperor. " The Cairo hotels are fair, — good as any hotel can be without Indian curry. The man who pays four dollars a day at Shep- heard's, and whose tender points are known by Luigi, the man- ager, will not Hve in vain. The man who lives at Hotel CLOSING UP. 437 d'Angleterre, in Constantinople, and knows the manager right well, will never have a fault to find. " If you come up the Danube you will find good hotels at Bucharest, a sort of little Paris ; and not only very good but very dear ; the dearest hotels in all the round, perhaps. " It is a long way from San Francisco to Vienna ; many miles as we zigzag on, and worlds of water, too ; full thirty thousand miles as we travel up and down, — a long distance in which to find but four or five good hotels ! It rather discourages one ; but remember, it is not for good hotels that real travellers go out about the world. They like one, and know it when they see it ; but such are like oases in the arid sand, and, like oases, are not soon forgotten." " How is it here in Europe? " he went on to ask. " European plan. When you have left Constantinople, you leave the American plan behind. So much per day is the lead- ing plan all round, excepting Europe. The price you pay includes the room and meals and lights and service, except perhaps in India, where the traveller is expected to furnish his own servants and something in way of bedding ; his sheets and pillows ; comforters, also, if he needs them. Here in Europe the hotels are almost uniformly good ; you pay so much for fur- nished room, the lights and service, and eat in the hotel or at restaurants outside. " The prices of rooms are moderate, provided you pre- arrange ; the price of food is always pretty high. Take a London hotel : the room and light and service are one dollar twenty-five ; they ask one dollar eighty-five. You take a break- fast, — only a single cup of coffee and a single buttered roll ; the price is fifty cents. You take a bit of cold meat or an egg with your coffee and roll, and the price is seventy-five cents. You take coffee, rolls, some cold meat, and an egg or two ; the price is then a dollar ! " For lunch, some cold roast beef, some coffee, bread and cheese, and a salad call for one dollar ten or twenty-five ; a dinner from a dollar and a quarter to a dollar and a half, — say four dollars fifty cents per day. Now take a New York four or five dollar house. If you order in London what you may order at your New York hotel it would cost you twenty dollars a day. 438 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. " But you need not pay the London hotel prices, — nor hotel prices anywhere. You have your room, and go outside to eat. The coffee and roll you can get outside for fifteen cents or less ; the lunch for fifty ; and the dinner for seventy-five, — about two dollars seventy-five a day all round, unless you drink ; then the price varies according to the kind and quality of drink. The average table drinker spends about as much for his drink as for his food. Then the tips : you are supposed to give the waiter about two cents on every twenty-five you spend ; this being about the only wages they get. But one who knows the ropes may live here in London, or anywhere in Europe, well enough on two dollars and a quarter a day, or on one dollar and a half at boarding-houses, no extras counted in. " And after all it may safely be said that the European plan is the best in some respects, — the best, I think, in point of health ; and that is saying a good deal. On the broad-gauged American plan people eat too much ; eat twice as much as they need, as a rule. If you eat twice as much of this and that as your system requires, the other half destroys your health. The sins of drunkenness are very great ; the sins of gluttony are quite as great or greater. The man who drinks to excess is a drunkard ; he who eats excessively is a glutton. Both are rush- ing toward premature graves. We scorn the one and emulate the other. " You may think you have found out by this time how much it will cost you to go right around the world. But you have not, and you never will until you make the trip." " Well, I can't entertain you ; I am not able to entertain travellers." That is what the consul said, and said it rather curtly ; as though his already overtaxed hospitality had been invoked. It is not a genial sort of text ; but it opens up a pretty broad field, and will do quite as well as any other. One learns — he ought to learn — to love his country more the more he travels. He does, in many things, perhaps ; but there are points upon which we gain very little, if anything, by comparisons ; and one of these is found in our diplomatic and consular service. Our ministers abroad and those who fill the consulates are usually good men, — men of experience, some- CLOSING UP. 439 times of education ; men who would in most instances, or many instances, do credit to the arms that are displayed over their front doors, those doors that too often lead to stairs — too often long and dark and dirty stairs — that lead wearily aloft to low and dark and dirty rooms, — the sort of squalid foreign nests of the American eagle. You are travellers, — respectable, your people say. Many of you go armed with open letters signed by the Secretary of State at Washington, who in printed form, in unofficial way, tells the service So-and-so that Mr. Tramper So-and-so is going here and there \ and that in an unofficial way the service may shake hands on equal terms with such as hold these lines, and in an un- official way grant unto them such unofficial interviews and meats and drinks as may be eaten or drunken in an unofficial way. This unofficial letter is so particularly mentioned because it may hereafter be alluded to. Every one who holds this pre- cious document preserves it carefully, for very rationally he imagines that he is about the only tramp afloat that has one ; about the only girdler of the globe who is on such terms with the Secretary of State as to gain recognition or concession, — preserves it carefully, and shows it to fellow-travellers confi- dentially, as one might show his first sweetheart's photograph, pitying such as are less roundly blessed. If it is on your first trip, you will show this letter at the office desk of every minister or consul on the route, until experience teaches you some lessons ; and after you have learned a few — some more, some less — you find how poor, indeed, your piece of writing is, and how big a fool you are for giving it breast- pocket room ; how stupid the Department is in issuing such a thing. You go about the world to seek your pleasure. What you properly have to do with ministers or consuls is very little in- deed ; what the ministers or consuls care about you is very little indeed ; and how they wish you 'd keep away or make your visits very short, you will surely find out promptly if you have observation. Of course you will hand them the letter of the Secretary of State, and if you are inexperienced you will expect the countenance of the reader to gladden up as he de- vours its contents ; but if you observe him closely as he reads, 440 A CUDDLE ROUND THE EARTH. you will see that he does n't gladden up at all ; and as he in courtesy pretends to read the thing, then wearily lays it down, the thought may creep through your thick pate that it is already time to go. For the man who really has fair business with the diplomat has no such letter, needs none. The man who has one is a griffin, and rather out of place. Why doesn't the countenance of the official gladden? I need not tell the reader ; he has guessed already. He knows you are not in business ways ; that you have no business with him ; knows that you are a peripatetic fellow, perhaps a sponge ; and if you can read his mental slate aright you see upon it : " Sponge, dinner, drinks, — seven dollars seventy-five. I really can't afford it." That is why his countenance does n't bloom in smiles and gladness ; that is why he asks you not out to drink or dine ; but rather, when you came, how long will be your stay, and when you think you '11 go away, — those freezing platitudes so chilling to ardent hopes. This brings us near to business, and to the text, — the ques- tion of inability. Our ministers and consuls, especially our consuls, as a rule, are sons of poverty. They are often young men who don't know what they ought to do, or old men who have broken up in business and are stowed away on the score of political service or personal influence, and hope to tide across some years, or hope to strike a lead that will pan out something good, or have a good time abroad, whatever that may mean. At all events, they are poor, and stand on slender salaries, — enough, perhaps, to pay for frugal board and common clothes, and keep the wife and little ones at home, or the poor sisters, or their parents. Poor, I have said, and can but ill afford to set up food or stand expense of any sort ; for some have been made so sore by over-drafts drawn on them by these letter- holding tramps, and those, perhaps, who hold them not, that they reply too curtly in the quite plain language of the text : '' I am not able to entertain travellers." The answer he got was much too tart, and I have since re- pented it. For he told a grievous truth ; and he was like the rest, — most of the rest of them, — unable to entertain ; really unable to see an old-time friend, much less a perfect stranger, and make him feel at home. And this is why experienced trav- ellers keep entirely away from ministers and consuls unless there CLOSING UP. 441 are special reasons for a visit. Our Government is very frugal in some things, quite lavish in others. Most other nations own decent houses in all important cities, have legation and con- sular outfits of their own, and pay their servants liberal salaries besides, — not salaries alone, but stated sums for entertainment, so that people in distant lands, those who by their rank or their positions should be entertained, may be without taking the bread from children's mouths. Some years ago some magnates of our land made trips abroad, and went right round the world. You might think it strange that through the force of the department letters for- warded or handed to our diplomatic and consular corps, full many a music, many a carriage, bill was paid by our officials abroad with money taken not from any entertainment fund, but from their own pockets, poorly lined. This is not the part for a great country, a rich nation like ours, to act. If it hints to consuls or suggests to them that bearers of departmental letters might properly be entertained, it should also add, at government expense, and furnish the money, under proper restrictions. Our foreign service is not only poor and compelled to act stingily, but, as a rule, it is not well housed. About the best legation outfit in the world furnished by Uncle Sam is that at Tokio, Japan ; and about the best consular establishment is at Yokohama. These are detached, spacious, airy, and whole- some. Why this should be true of almost the least important of all the foreign empires, it is hard to tell. In the great Chinese capital our minister is most poorly domiciled, and so right on around the world ; the exceptions are such as belong to the class of ministers and consuls who are able to provide for themselves. Of course, we are a republic, and so have such simple habits ! But being a republic and having simple ways, we house our consressmen most rovallv ; our cabinet and under officers at Washington transact affairs in rather sumptuous rooms, — comfortable, at least, in all respects ; but why do better by officials at home than those afar? If for other people's eyes we build grand capitols and grand department piles at home, why not impress a little of our greatness on important points abroad ? At Bombay we asked at the hotel to be directed to the Ameri- can consulate. No one knew where it was. At the Bank the 442 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. question was repeated. It was somewhere off from Elphinstone Circus, but they did n't know exactly where ; we had better inquire there. We did, and a policeman told us just where to go, and we went. It was a fine establishment, but it was n't American at all, only Spanish. But we kept on asking and kept on going, till finally we took a cab, and told the cabby what we wanted ; and he inquired from place to place, and finally found the door and the eagle and shield above it, also the flights of tiresome, dirty stairs ; and way up topside, four floors up, we found the stuffy chamber where the consul lived. This in one of the first commercial cities of the world ! VVe must not put on airs, nor must we humiliate ourselves, because we are a republic. We advertise our plain and simple ways in this fair land, but we need n't go officially ragged on that account or live in mean apartments, and put our foreign representatives to shame. We have a lot of national pride and talk about our flag and cotton crops and corn, but not about appearances in foreign lands ; for at consular and diplomatic doors you cannot feel you are welcome unless you have some urgent business to transact. Otherwise, the intelligent traveller, despite the unofficial letter, keeps himself away ; or, if he goes, he invites the official out to dine with him on the express under- standing that no counter-invitation will be accepted, — on account of shortness of your stay. This, like all general rules, has one or two exceptions ; but the exception does not count so far as compensation goes. Our service abroad gets scarcely a living salary. The ministers, with twelve thousand dollar sala- ries, lose money by their office ; our consuls, with twelve hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars' compensation, oftener come back with more debts than credits. They might do better? Yes. They might sit down in their dingy offices, refuse all invitations, and give out none ; live in the very plainest way, ignore all local social customs, — live the life of misers, hermits, in the midst of life and plenty, and save up something ; otherwise their savings will be losses. Living in such a way quite fails to impress the people of foreign lands with our boasted or our real greatness. To require our foreign agents to live thus in order that they may come out profitably is altogether wrong. But they must live this way if they would surely thrive upon their wages. What is to be done ? W1iy, CLOSING UP. 443 do as other respectable nations do, — make the service re- spectable by paying good salaries and insisting upon good per- formance and personal decency in office. And this opens up a new line of talk. What sort of men have we abroad? All sorts. Possibly as good as officials at home, but not good enough. Great distance from home and too much inattention on the part of the Government has an unsafe tendency. Of course the bondsmen of the officials are counted good for financial shortages, but they are not respon- sible for the moral shortages, of which one hears too much in foreign lands. It is not much use to preach at this long range, especially as there are others in plenty to do it ; but gaming and evil living among our representatives abroad have had some bad effects, and it is a pleasure to know that some of the weeds have been cast out. Good service, good pay, and good lives should be found in all these offices. I have said the pay is not large, and yet these offices can all be filled at one half the pay they now command, but it would be at a still further loss. The average is much too low as it is, and the intelligent traveller is too often sorry for his country that things are so much mixed up abroad ; and yet they say it is improving, and such we believe to be the case. And another thing. So far as trade and shipping goes our chances in the Orient are getting less and less, and less and less the need of consular service all along the line. By our style of protecting iron interests, and by our admiralty customs, the States are yearly losing ground, our shipping growing less and less ; and less and less it will grow until it has vanished quite, and the only iron ships that bear our flag out there will be the occasional war vessel. It is a great wrong, and we natu- rally cry out. How long, O Lord, how long shall the interests of a io-w' stand more than equal with the interests of the masses, when to protect the few the sea shall be cleared of our too few sailors and our too few ships, and maritime profits shall all go into the pocket of other nations ? When shall the great United States of America be old enough and big enough and strong enough to stand upon her feet and safely walk alone ? Some hundreds of thousands of Americans go abroad every year, and in so doing they pay the ships, say five-and-twenty millions of dollars annually. Whose ships? Those of the 444 ^ GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. English, French, German, Dutch, and Italian lines. Why not pay this money to our own? We have none. All that we had are driven from the seas by our own legislation ; and the vast sums paid annually as passage-money, and the vaster sums paid out on freights, go into foreign pockets. Even what we here produce — our cotton, corn, meats, and other things exported — go out in foreign ships. All around we may safely say we of the United States build up and maintain this European mer- chant marine to the extent of two hundred and fifty millions of dollars a year, the most of which should go into the pockets of American shipmasters. But what has this to do with our consular service abroad ? A great deal. If we were doing our own shipping as we used to, encouraging and building up instead of discouraging and pulling down our own merchant marine all over the world, then would there be a demand for a more vigorous consular service and more imposing and attractive outfits in that direction, — the same perhaps as other nations have ; but inasmuch as our consular duties are very light, the output must be both slim and unattractive. The service is underpaid and poorly housed ; it is bored too much and boarded on too much by travellers ; and we cannot find it in our heart to blame the much over-taxed service man for what he said in the text first quoted. He thought perhaps we had hinted at something, so he but gave plain words to the thought that occupies the minds of nearly every consul along the great highway of travel : "I am not able to entertain travellers." Lojido/i, Sept. I, 1886. — ^ The trip is almost done. We close our books, pack up our things, lock up and strap our trunks ; our ship will sail to-morrow ; we shall be home again in ten or a dozen days. We have been counting months that lay between ourselves and home, and watched their growing less and less ; then we counted weeks, — only a few short weeks that kept us back from home and those on earth most dear ; and now the weeks are gone, and we count only days, — a few more days and we shall be across the sea, across the sea and land, and home again. Now we may think of it. Our real work is done, and home CLOSING UP. 445 almost in sight ; now we may think of it and speak of it ! You who have travelled far will understand it well ; you who have had great tasks to do will understand it well. Learn to labor and to wait. You are ten thousand miles from home, and every thousand miles is a month of absence ; and home is quite as dear to you ten thousand miles away as one ; but it is better that you think not too much of home, lest it create a hurry in your mind, unsettle you, and make you slight your work. It is hard to give your home a second place ; but it is far away, and you can neither help nor hindrance give ; 't were better far to think of things in hand, do well your present work, and wait. The ship in time will bring you home. So, too, in life's career, mind not so much the promised joys to come, fruition of your faith, but mind you well each present day, the toil the present hour asks, the proper duty of each present moment's time ; and all that lies beyond may safely wait the closing of life's tour. In way of retrospect : What does one learn in going around the world? He learns to unlearn. Much of our best legisla- tion consists in undoing the wrongs of previous legislatures. Much of your time or mine is spent undoing and unlearning things that we have done or learned improperly. You may not relish these verdicts that you are constrained to enter up against yourself, but in way of common honesty you have to do it. So, if you would travel well and see things as they are, or as you really think you find them, you must go prepared to yield as well as gain ; for to give up what is wrong is to make mental room for what is good and true, — true, anyhow. You go to learn that the world is very large ; that men in many and in most of things are very much alike ; that like pur- suits and thoughts are rife with mortals everywhere ; that men who go in ships and those upon the land, that men who trade in stores and they who work in shops, that they who minister to wants of earth and hopes that reach beyond the tomb are very much alike, — most stardingly alike ; that men are selfish after all ; that all have goodness after all ; that no one, of all that is bad or good, has any sure monopoly. The sun that shines on you at home comes forth to shine on all ; the silver moon that you adore has just as silvery beams for us and all who live in foreign lands. The sun and moon and stars and rain are in 446 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. God's hands, and not in yours, my Christian or my heathen friend, and so tliey bless us all. We pray for blessings ; so do all, — some in this way, some in that ; your wants would choke another's wants ; what you ask God to send you, others would avert ; but God is over all, sees over all, and whether you ask or hold your peace, the blessing comes or stays, regardless of your hope or thought. Do but your duty, — not what another thinks it is, but as your conscience speaks to you, — the ship will bring you home. You don't read history for the. reading, but to grasp results ; you do not travel far and wide for merely what you see, but what should come of it. You know full well before you start that in the tropic zone no winter comes ; that men in colder zones are mostly white, in hotter, mostly dark ; that products of the tropic lands are not those of our own ; but when you come to sit on Ceylon shores or Javan hills you wonder at the litde difference after all ; for men are all at work for gain, and he who has money can have most things he wants, and such as have not can't. You learn in travelling round the world that gold is gold the whole world round, that silver lies in most men's thoughts, and all men work for pay, — for hearth and home and things to wear and feed upon. What else are we doing here? If working for pay, hearth, and home is civilization, then all the world is civi- lized. The pay may vary, so may homes, but that is nothing here nor there. You go about the world to learn that men respect you for your guns. Some say the merchant leads the way and opens up all foreign lands. The missionary says that it is he who makes the crooked straight, rough places smooth, and opens up the way of light and power and trade, and holds the fort ; but you go about to learn that both are wrong : that after all it is not the calico or rum that gives you homes in foreign lands, nor yet the Bible or the priest, nor Christian schools or hospi- tals that keep them there, but those deep-throated, murderous guns that float about the world, and breathe out threatening. Was it different in old Pharaonic times, or yet in days of Rome ? We boast of our ways of trade and brotherly love and all of that ; but take away the Christian's shotted guns from China, Japan, India, Sultan's realms, and the merchant and the mission man would very shortly seek his home or find his grave. You say CLOSING UP. 447 it is not so, yet dare not make the test. Remove menacing guns from German forts to-day, — from any nation's battle- ments, — and count upon your fingers the years its rule would last. We say we love our fellow-men, and accord to every man his own. We don't. We love their lands and money, and but for fear of their shot and shell would surely take them in. Your travel gives you greater love of home. Not your travel alone, but that of other men. The American, the Englishman, German, Turk, Chinee, or Arab learns by travel the more to love his own. This may hurt your pride, but it is true. You never think as much or fondly of your native home and land as when you are absent from it ; but while you think this thought, remember that the Arab, India man, or Malay thinks the same ; so you are in this respect his equal only. We are thankful for great privileges that we at home enjoy, and would not be any- body else for all that the world could give ; but that thought spans the world, lives in the hearts of every people, — be it ever so humble, be it ever so heathen, there is no place like home. " Thank God for Home " is in the hearts of all the sons of men, and all the brute creation. You hunt around the world to learn that there are homes for all, food for all, happiness for all, — the whole world round for men and brutes ; for Heaven is over all, — no patents granted on these things. We claim to know so many things that others don't, and yet you learn that most of all we know was copied from these men you pity because they are not of us. Come, now, look about your homes and schools and shops and stores. What have you upon your shelves, or on your floors, or on your backs, that other people have not had and have in like or modified degree, all around the world ? You travel round the world to lose your vanity, for you find yourself a copyist, — copyist in your faiths, your books, your customs, goods, and wares, professions and your practices. At home we wonder why all the world does not copy after us ; when the fact is we have been copying things, the best and worst, from all the world. You go abroad to learn some other things, — that what you eat and drink is not just what it seems. You expect to find the best of teas in China ; but you don't. At home you think that your Old Java coffee comes from Java, and Mocha coffee from Arabia ; but it does not. You buy fine India shawls in India, to 448 A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH. be sure ; but they were largely made in Europe. You buy old coins and curious ancient things, so queer, unique ; but the shops are mostly in Birmingham. You buy soft fabrics from the Indian looms and curious Oriental stuffs ; but the looms that wove many of them are not always to be found in Asia. You wonder at many curious things you find in Eastern shops, and praise the skill of Indian or Chinese manufacturers, and don't feel quite right on learning that the same are fair imitations, made across the sea. And so one travels to become sceptical. A sceptic is one who doesn't believe just what you or your society believes. He is usually thoughtful and inquiring, and ten to one his research will breed conclusions that you will not admit, because you were taught in a different way, and you must needs be right. If you believe that " the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle," it is very sceptical, indeed, to ascertain that they do not ; or, if you believe that " every prospect pleases, And only man is vile," of course it must be so, though the people are not more " vile " than those of Chicago or New York. But after all that one says or thinks of the bright days and curious scenes and faithful studies in these foreign lands, the traveller is glad to pack his trunk even for the hundredth time and leave them all behind for home. The trip has given him many a charming scene and many a thrilling thought ; his eyes have had long feasts, his ears have known strange sounds, his taste new novelties ; and yet the best day and sight and scene of all is the day on which he shuts his books, locks up at last his trunks, and boards the ship that takes him home. The days and months have all been good and free from accident and pain, but the days now just ahead are so much better ; the ship that takes us back to home and friends, the best of ships that sail. So good-by, England, Europe, Asia, — all that 's left be- hind ; the tramp is over, we are going home. At Home ! Four hundred days away. A hundred days at sea, and many a day by cart and car, — full forty thousand miles. CLOSING UP. 449 Yet not a moment's illness, no loss of sleep or rest, no scratch or slightest accident, — a happy thirteen months ; no death or illness among our kith or kin ; what could be better? At home again ! For kind words sent us on the way, for kind words said of lines sent home for print, for good com- panionship the whole way round, — our hand and heartfelt thanks. 29 f^V RARE BOOK COLLECTION THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL Travel G440 .R5 ''■ i^^ktU .0