B 2 7k5 ft* GIFT OF asnovtiAS ^MvvN QHOIAVO THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST A DREAM OF 1915 By COURTNEY ROWLAND With a preface by the REV. CHAS. F. AKED, D.D, and a frontispiece after a design by the celebrated California artist MISS E. ALMOND WITHROW Dr. Harvey H. Guy Says: "I have read every word with great interest and delight. This is more than a dream, it is a prophesy, a far look into the future which shall find only partial fulfillment in 1915." The Hon. Jeremiah Lynch says: "It is an admirable production. What I like above all is the freedom from, what shall I say, superstition, religious materialism or dead creeds? Your Egyptian references are quite correct, historically and in good taste." The Rev. C. S. S. Dutton says: "I read it and reread it: it is a very noble call to the people of the Pacific Coast; I would like to see it placed in our schools. You have given us some very real, very beautiful, and very inspiring pages." "It is among the first and it will prove to be amongst the finest and noblest of the works of creative genius inspired by the Panama-Pacific Exposition of >15. When the Exposition has come and gone, when the crowds have departed and the gates are closed, when the matchless collection of the world s best is dispersed again and the famous men and women of the nations who gathered here have returned to their homes, it may well be that this pamphlet of Courtney Rowland will remain at once the truest account of its meaning and the completest embodiment of its message." Reported in San Francisco Bulletin, February 1, 1915. "In The Spirit of the West Courtney Rowland of this city has written what he aptly calls A Dream of 1915. It is a finely imaginative study of the westward march of progress and culture, and incidentally the author passes in rapid retro spect the whole history of man. The book is finely written and is prefaced with an eloquent foreword by Dr. Chas. F. Aked." San Francisco Chronicle. "A highly interesting book entitled The Spirit of the West by Courtney Rowland has been published by The Grimmett Company of San Francisco. Mr. Rowland interprets the Spirit of the West in a wonderful dream which is beautifully interwoven with poetry, philosophy, history and mythology. His vision terminates at the great Exposition by the Golden Gate." San Francisco News Letter. THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST A DREAM OF 1915 BV COURTNEY ROWLAND p R E FACE: BY THE: REIV. CHAS. F. AKEID, D.D. LL.D. PUBL ISH E RS THE GRIMJVI* T CO SAN FR Copyright, 1915 By Courtney Rowland All rights reserved PREFACE Brooding over our western world is a sense of destiny. Consciously or unconsciously, working through the mind of the individual or in the soul of the race, a feeling of vastness helps to make us what we are. The future of the world is with us. On the Pacific slope our young and brawny western civilization makes its last stand as it con fronts the hoary east. Here our western manhood and womanhood must needs reach their full height. Here is to be produced the consummate flower of human evolution. This and more than this, infinitely more, Courtney Rowland has perceived. His dream is more than a dream. In the deep sense of the word, this is a great prophetic utterance, not prophetic only in the narrow meaning of "predictive" but prophetic in its passion for spiritual realities and in its enthusiasm for human liberty. This dreamer has the imagination of a poet, the largeness and power of a statesman, and the fervor of a lover. The writer brings to his task the equipment of the trained historian. Into a few paragraphs he distils the wealth of hundreds of volumes. He brings back to us the life of Man upon this planet; sketches in bold, strong lines the division of the human family into tribes and nations ; visualizes for us the migrations of successive centuries. He calls up before us the giant forms of empires on their way to ruin, and fastens our gaze upon the triumphant westward march of the race. It has been written in the counsels of the Eternal, he says in effect, that no eastward movement shall ever permanently succeed. Westward, ever westward, the conquering peoples march until they come to a halt upon the Pacific coast! And then what? It is with good reason that Courtney Rowland sets his dreamer in San Francisco and brings to the Panama-Pacific 305671 Exposition of 1915 the Spirit of the West to tell the story of the past, expound the meaning of the present, and enforce responsibility for the future. The City by the Golden Gate, which waits for the dawning of the morning upon the High Sierras and sees the red evening burn down to the sunset wave, facing still the West which is the farthest East, and facing, too, the East which once was West, may yet stand as the herald of a higher civilization, a richer culture, a nobler manhood and womanhood to the world that is to be. Rudyard Kipling s lines are well known: "West to the Golden Gate, Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass, And the wildest tales are true, And the men bulk big on the old trail, And life runs large on the Long Trail, the trail that is always new." This testimony is true. The blindest bluffs are not bluffs at all; the blindest bluffs hold good. The wildest tales are true. And men bulk big and life runs large and there is no touch of meanness in our blood. Florence in the centuries of her renown gave to the world merchant princes, bankers, statesmen, world-rulers, poets, painters, children of genius whose place is with the immortals. We have all that made Florence great, the flowers and fruits of the earth, a sun like that of Italy, air as intoxicating as that of the Alps, the living glory which streams upon us day and night from the mountains and the seas and the skies, and as enterprising, resourceful, and daring a race of men and women as may be found today upon the face of the earth. It is to the people of this efficient and aspiring race that the Spirit of the West by the medium of Courtney Rowland enforces the lesson of a solemn responsibility and an inspiring destiny. CHAS. F. AKED. San Francisco. THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST A DREAM OF 1915 He was an Armenian by birth, a dealer in precious stones. Fortune had led him from the Levant to Alexandria and later through most European capitals. In secret journeys to the ancestral castles of prospective buyers of special gems he had experienced many a rare adventure on roads not trodden by the tourist. From Paris he had taken a commission to New York and then lured by the legends of sapphires in Montana he had wandered westward with the rest of the world, gradually be coming permeated with the optimism of this new land until the spell of the Pacific anchored him in the western metropolis. In that wonderful 1915, strange faces, strange tongues and strange costumes were met with hourly, but I was particularly fascinated by this acquaintance from the land of romance. We often met in the evenings, and many a pleasant hour I spent listening to the stories of his travels. But it had been left to San Francisco to provide him with the most wonderful adventure. I give the recital as nearly as possible in his own words : THE ARMENIAN S ADVENTURE IN SAN FRANCISCO. February, 1915. Between Broadway and Pacific Avenue. One of the view points of the world. The rmlitary park on the left. At one s feet the Exposition build- 12 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST ings gleaming in the sunlight. Flags fluttering in the breeze. A dim clatter of hammers punctuating joyous shouts. The city of St. Francis on the tiptoe of expectation. Fair Tamalpais smiling across the Golden Gate. White sails of newly arrived yachts wafting the craft over the dimpled waves. Great European steamships lying at anchor, their decks under awnings, soft strains of mingled music breath ing through each veering lull of the ocean zephyrs. A cloudless sky above, and the grateful warmth of joyous sunshine tempering the magic atmosphere to that delicious medium in which it suffices simply to be alive and to breathe. A day such as happens now and again in cloudier climes and is there remembered as a landmark of a life. A day that in this favored land is but one of two or three hundred such days in a year and so usual that one presently forgets that there were ever any others. As I rested, drinking in the delights thus offered, there passed near by a clattering calvacade in the costumes of a long past age Crusaders, Canterbury Pilgrims, and Knights of Burgundy. They were going to rehearsal. Benson had taken in hand the pageant of San Francisco and was staging the events in which the city had its origin the march of mankind to the west. It was a grand idea and promised to be one of the greatest attractions of the World s Fair. The conception was in full accord with the genius of the American Commonwealth. Still thinking of this strange procession, I turned slowly southwards and strolled toward the hills. In the fore ground were the shimmering whites and yellows of the clustering houses with here and there a patch of dark red or brown. Beyond were the wooded slopes of Buena Vista and the gray green Twin Peaks with their forest covered neighbors and then purples and the faint distant blues and greys of the Coast Range and the heights of Santa Cruz. Presently in Golden Gate Park the bold bluff on my left A DREAM OF 1915 13 was sharply silhouetted against the sky, the deep green of eucalyptus and pine beautifully contrasting with the cerulean blue above. Intervening foliage near my seat softened the sea breeze and the air inclined to drowsiness. As the dramatic incident is the most successful item for the stage so the dramatic incidents of history would natur ally present themselves for the pageant. The priest kings of Egypt and western Asia, the war chariots of Ramses and Sargon. Darius the Mede entering Babylon. Alex ander and his Macedonian phalanx. The triumphal pro cessions of the Roman generals. The last fight in the Coliseum. The invasion of England by the Romans, the mission of Saint Augustine, the Crusades, the coming of the Norsemen to America, Columbus, Balboa and Cabot. The landing of the Pilgrims. The Indians. Washington and the Republic. All these incidents presented themselves trailing away into indistinct but multitudinous and relatively recent actions, isolated scenes where the supernumeraries were very few, tragic items of the march across the continent to the moun tains and the Pacific. Actions with small staging, yet marking as much progress as the epoch making events of the past. Incidents in such rapid succession that to chronicle them as epoch making is to invite a new definition of an epoch. They are without perspective. They are all in the foreground. Musing thus upon the possible lines of the forthcoming pageant and seeking for a fitting climax, I became aware ot someone approaching. Apparently it was a woman, yet attired as I had never seen any woman. The costume was of no period ; it seemed to change as I looked at it. One moment I felt I could identify an Assyrian robe but even as I looked it changed to a garb of mediaeval Europe and then to the flowing robes of a picture of the ideal such as has only been seen on the canvas of an inspired artist. 14 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST The movements of the stranger were slow and stately giving an impression of superb beauty and grace. Was it man or woman? So many strangers thronged the city that an unusual costume excited no surprise; but there was something more in the present case. Whilst I was wondering, the figure halted in front of my seat and smiling sweetly said, "You are thinking of the pageant and the meaning of the Fair?" I could not deny that my thoughts were wandering in that direction. " Would you wish to know the meaning?" said the stranger. "If there is a meaning, I should indeed like to know it. May I enquire your name?" "They call me the Spirit of the West. I look and lead westward ever. I have come far; very far. I walk always near those who march westward, Those that look sunward, and with faces golden Speak to each other softly of hope. It is not given to everyone to know the full meaning of these things. That is only revealed day by day. To all who follow the setting sun it is given to learn a little, but to those who can visualize the panorama of the ages much more is shown." "How can this be done?" said I. "Have you a time machine such as was pictured by H. G. Wells?" The stranger smiled sweetly. "That was a fanciful idea and did well enough for the purpose, but the facts of the Universe are far better and more accurate." "How so?" I asked. "Listen! No sound or action is ever lost. Every spoken word, every sound, every action since the world emerged from chaos can still be overtaken in the distant ether. A DREAM OF 1915 15 "When you expose a sensitive plate in a camera it arrests rays from the object or scene in front and you have the picture recorded for all time. Had you not inter cepted the rays at that moment they would none the less have been there and projected around with precisely the same force. Those rays pass on through the ether with the rapidity of light and are therefore always in the light and can at any moment be intercepted, provided yes, provided you can move with greater rapidity than light and overtake them. Each impression is there for one moment and each moment there is a fresh impression. The impression you catch on your plate or film is just the impression of that moment and no other. The impressions speed on but they are not lost. They still exist. Nothing is lost." "But," said I, "for all practical purposes they are lost, as they cannot be overtaken. Has it not been truly said that we cannot recall the past to live it again?" "Not under present limitations. You live under con ditions of three dimensions and of gravity and centrifugal force, but think you the Infinite One cannot create conditions of four dimensions or even of five or six? Nothing is impossible. Thought travels faster than light. Every event that ever happened and every sound ever made can be seen or heard again. These are God s witnesses. He can call them when He wills." "And you, Spirit of the West, as you say you are, can you overtake sounds that have ceased and events long gone before?" "To some extent I can, and to some extent I can reveal them to favored individuals." Make me a favored individual. "You are very bold," replied the spirit. "Are you fit for the ordeal?" "In America we dare anything, attempt anything," I 16 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST replied. "In the vocabulary of the American there is no such word as impossible." My visitor smiled again, a sweet ineffable smile, and beckoned to me gently. Then a strange thing happened. My feet seemed to leave the ground and I felt myself float ing in the air. Surrounding objects seemed to recede as when one ascends rapidly in the car of a balloon. A faint blue haze spread over the view and semi-consciousness ensued. Presently I found myself at a great height. At one moment it seemed that I was seated on a mountain and then as if I were suspended over the earth. My attention was arrested by stupendous events transpiring below. Hordes of brown-skinned men and women were moving in every direction. The land was strange to me. Agricultural operations were in progress with primitive implements. The labor was very severe but the muscular strength of the individual was far beyond anything within my experi ence. As they worked, some ferocious wild animals intruded. A few of the men rushed upon the beasts, some with clubs and some only with their hands. The latter engaged in individual combat with beasts, wrenching the jaws of lions apart, seizing horned beasts by their horns and twisting their necks, taking panthers by the throat and forcing their heads back until their spines were dislocated. Long mounds of earth were being formed into inclined planes against buildings in course of erection and huge blocks of stone forced up on rollers and lifted into their place with simple levers. As I wondered, my hand was gently touched and I recognized my guide, the Spirit of the West, smiling at my amazement. "In thought you are in eastern Africa, but in fact, untold billions of miles from the earth. The rays which we have intercepted" said the spirit "were projected from eastern Africa in bygone ages. The events you are looking upon A DREAM OF 1915 17 actually happened many thousands of years ago. These are the early days of the earliest historical race. The people you see are the near descendants of the primitive men and women who battled for existence with dinosaurs and other prehistoric monsters. In that long fight for the supremacy of the earth, human beings developed muscular strength which is inconceivable in these days. Had they not done so there would have been no human race. Gradually as they observed the operation of simple mechanical laws, the advan tage of the lever, the range of the missile, they began to prevail by cunning. And age by age as cunning increased, brute force fell into disuse until we have the modern weakling with the modern rifle. "The scenes before us took place in the dawn of agricul ture and building." As I watched, the same race persisted, but the individuals appeared to change ; their implements improved arid results accrued more rapidly. There were constant periods of leisure, of reflection and simple enjoyment. "We are journeying with lightning speed toward the earth. The panorama of the ages is apparently passing before us. Actually we are passing in front of it. Your earth leaves its trail of events as a spider leaves her silken thread. The thread is stationary; the spider moves away from it. So the earth moves on but actions and words remain. Had we gone further back into infinite space you would have seen earlier ages; hairy men and women living in trees and caves, in constant fear of the huge beasts ; and further back, the days before the advent of man. The record is there. Nothing is lost, matter alone changes." During these remarks I had noticed that the people were moving in mass in a northeasterly direction, whilst some, like a smaller branch, but finer, moved northward and some what westward. The relative position of our observation was constant. My interest was redoubled, and my guide 18 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST continued, "Everywhere in northeastern Africa and western Asia when Semitic ruins are unearthed, they are found to be superimposed upon the remains of an earlier civilization. In the legends of the past, the mythology of the great races, this is poetically chronicled. Mankind is referred to in a beautiful story of a male and female living happily in a garden on a strictly fruitarian diet. This pair had an eldest son who followed the habits of his parents and adopted a diet of grain and fruit. Amongst the ancients it was a favorite allegorical custom to use eponyms, that is to speak of a race or tribe as an individual, just as to-day we personify the British by John Bull and the Americans by Uncle Sam. "Were printed and written records to become extinct and legend alone survive, one could easily imagine, some thousands of years hence, the tradition passing down of two men instead of two nations until the little children of your country pictured a solitary couple Sam and his wife Columbia as the parents of all Americans. It would make a beautiful story, sufficient for many purposes, but for scientific study would require elucidation. The story would not be spoilt by elucidation, and poetically regarded would yet be quite true. Poetry is not spoilt by science. Poetry and science are twin sisters. "Thus it happens that this earliest historical race is spoken of as the eldest son. Later, a second race appeared, feeding mostly on meats, and that race is spoken of as the second son." As I looked and listened and wondered, the fields became green and then golden and were reaped. Richly garbed officials moved to and fro directing the crowds of workers. Ox carts of ancient design lumbered along filled with the fruits of the field. Massive buildings appeared and a great placid river flowing northward. Then processions of white robed priests and faint sounds of music and chanting. A DREAM OF 1915 19 Season followed season in dreamy succession as one genera tion succeeded another, the face of the land ever changing as civilization advanced. "This is prehistoric Egypt," said my guide. "You have watched a thousand years go by. We pass on. Here is southern Arabia and we see the main part of the same race spreading itself eastward and northward. Retaining their old customs of agriculture they reach the Hindoo Koosh mountains and there meet the second and later race engaged in pastoral pursuits with sheep and goats and cattle. The agriculturalists plough the soil and grow grain, but the people of the second race resent this method of life, wishing their flocks and herds to roam everywhere. They are powerful mountaineers and ride horseback. They are overbearing and turn their herds into cultivated ground and so a quarrel begins. The priests of the two races dis agree, one claiming that the gods are more pleased with oblations of flesh and blood than of fruit, the other claim ing the preference for the harvest festival and thanks giving and pointing to their brilliant civilization as evidence of the favor of the gods." As my guide explained these events they unrolled them selves before me in animated pictures. Groups succeeded groups in changing conditions. These were fresh generations developing. The vexed question grew in intensity, the turmoil increasing. Here and there blows were exchanged and soon the encounter became general. The herdsmen were confident in their greater stature and strength, but they had not sufficiently regarded the alarming numbers and organization of the older race. A fearful conflict ensued and utimately the herdsmen were driven over the mountains to the north. They were overwhelmingly defeated and dis appeared from history for several thousand years. So crush ing was the defeat that they might be said to have been wiped out, although great numbers escaped with their 20 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST cattle. The older race, being peaceably inclined, did not follow up the victory by pursuit but turned eastward and calmly continued its agricultural career. This greatest of battles," said my guide," has come down to you in the form of a story of two brothers fighting and the elder killing the younger. Perhaps you have heard it!" I thought of Cain and Abel and wondered still more. "The younger race the second son was referred to occasionally as dwelling in Cimmerian darkness. Later in history faint glimpses appear of Scythians moving westward, and long afterwards the second race descends once more from the gulf of Bothnia and swarms over Europe as Goths, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, changing the course of the world. "The first race the elder brother spread eastward to the shores of the Pacific ocean. There we leave them. A fairer race is emerging the third brother." And as I watched, the scenes pieced in with more familiar knowledge. There was the great plain of Chaldea being redeemed by irrigation; Babylon rising on the banks of the Euphrates. The seven tiered ziggurats blazing in gold, silver and colors, where the priests watched the stars. The inflated skins floating down the river bearing the mules for the return journey up stream, and the huge rafts laden with products of Armenia to supply the demands of the great city. Then appeared Assyria with its military gran deur, hordes of slaves, triumphal processions, splendor and untold cruelty everywhere. In spite of all hindrances the patient people surviving and toiling onward. A tribe of shepherds from Ur, journeying westward, across the northern part of Assyria, settles on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea; I recognize the fore fathers of the virile Jewish nation. They journey to Egypt. I see the Exodus and their return to Palestine. A DREAM OF 1915 21 They increase in numbers, and the Philistines or Phoeni cians, as we know them are forced by the pressure of population over the mountains to the narrow but fertile seaboard of the Levant. Tyre and Sidon become world cities facing the setting sun. The pressure on their hinter land increasing, the citizens colonize, and Carthage rises to eminence. From thence an expedition crosses to Marseilles. Its members navigate the Rhone as far as possible, then cross France to the upper waters of the Seine and so float down to Havre and with a fair wind from the south reach the Cassiterides and discover tin. It was the bronze age and tin was as eagerly sought as was gold in later years. For centuries the descendants of these hardy merchants went to and fro by the same route bearing the rich spoil to the empires of western Asia and the Mediterranean. They took their wives to England and also intermarrying with the earlier British settlers colonized the southwestern portion of the island, instilling into the blood of their children the venturesome spirit which in after years drove them across the Atlantic ocean. Thus, as we sped toward the earth and the present day, the panorama of the ages unrolled before me. Persia, Media, Parthia, each rising to empire, and further west the early blossoming of Greece and Byzantium. The great Hittite kingdom establishing itself over Asia Minor. Swaying like waves of the sea, first eastward and then westward, the great third race of men and women formed fresh combinations. Hundreds of years passed, generation succeeded generation, but ever the gain was westward. Every conquest of the east was ultimately futile. The east lay down and let the western wave pass over it. Then rising again it engulfed the invader and started a fresh wave westward as a rising tide appears to recede and then gathering up the receding waters makes a still higher wave and marks a further advance. 22 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST "Do you understand?" said a soft voice beside me. So absorbed had I become in this vast spectacle that I had almost forgotten my guide and the strange circum stances of the day. "Tell me the meaning." I eagerly replied. "This is the meaning. You are all of one nation and of one kindred. Those earliest dwellers on your earth were rightly spoken of as brothers. Battles and wars rarely have more to do with real history than the petty squabbles of a normal household have to do with the real life of the family. Add together all the years spent in war and in the greater residue you have the real life of the people. The years of the building of a great epoch are not dramatic periods, just as the years of the building of a fortune are but little noted. When the results are wasted by the warrior and the spendthrift, people are dazzled. They record the incident of the pyrotechnic display and forget the lives devoted to chemical research and the patient work of the miner and agriculturalist which made the dis play possible. The man who applies the match is applauded; the others are forgotten. "On the crest of a wave in the rising tide you see a fish or a piece of wreckage. You forget the tide in your interest in the object on the crest of the wave. That object is like the prominent warrior. He is the creature of the moment illuminated by the sunshine on the crest of the wave ; but the wave was fashioned far out at sea and im pelled by forces unknown to him. His appearance is dram atic ; the people with their hopes and fears, struggles and sorrows, ever striving, they are the tide, and the wave is the battle. It is a mere incident or perhaps an accident. The socalled nations which succeeded one another from Chaldea to Rome were the same people in different generations, different combinations and different conditions of progress, A DREAM OF 1915 23 modified by thought and environment, later developments of great mobility crossing with the more stationary. "Thus new ideas were born and new movements made. The empires had different names just as the particular group happened to be paramount for the moment, but the people were no more altered by that circumstance than would the American people be by a change of the seat of government from Washington to Carson City. "Every change caused modifications, or perhaps was the result of modification, environment and generation, just as a party which wins no support today will under new conditions come to power through the new electorate of the grandchildren of the present generation and millions of immigrants. Yet the nation is the same; the same human wave rolls on. "The really important history of the world, the history that matters, is the history of human relations to material or spirit, economic and religious history, the march of man from the cave dwelling to the cathedral and the capitol, from the hardened stick and the flail to the motor plow and the modern harvester, from the earth basket to the steam shovel, from the walking stick to the airship, from picture writing to wireless telegraphy. America has made more of such history in fifty years than Asia made in fifty centuries. "But this is only progress in so far as its goal is to provide leisure for reflection, for thought and for true religion the binding again of man to God or Good. The march of humanity from the first dim conception of spirit gathered from the cataclysms of nature, the deification of the consuming fire of the desert which burnt up the crop in seasons when irrigation failed, the deification of the moun tain storm which caused the shepherds to offer sacrifices to appease the anger of an imaginary fiend; from the morning twilight conception of God as a super-king demanding presents and atonements to the glorious light of eventide 24 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST with its new heaven and its new ideal of earth, when the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind; this also will America accomplish. With giant strides she is making anew the human relation to material and out of it shall come the new spirit. "Can you see it now?" "Yes indeed," I responded. "I see one tide from northern India to Rome, wave after wave of progress, but ever westward." The hands of the Spirit of the West moved as if with drawing a curtain. Far away to the north the darkness lifted and masses of people of hugh stature emerged. They had countless beasts of burden, and wagons and war horses. "Look!" said the Spirit. "From this period onward the descendants of the second brother rejoin the human tide moving westward." As I looked, the northern hordes swept down southward and westward, Goths, Visigoths and Ostrogoths with their kindred, and mingling with the Romans, Etruscans, Greeks, Berbers and Iberians, filled the valleys of the Rhine the Elbe and the Danube and the lands of France and Spain and swarmed into Rome itself. This was the race supposed to have been exterminated, returning to the arena after a hundred generations to intermingle with the tide of empire, to alter the stature and attributes of the western stream, to give it new life and vigor for further adventure. It was typical of the marriage of the effete European with the daughter of the Montana miner. Yet another mighty movement from the east followed, a still further reinforcement of the western human tide, though not so beneficial. It was the advent of the Hiins. Little Asiatic men and women in countless numbers and well organized, indifferent to pain, irresistible as an ava lanche they pressed on the rearguard and forcing through like a wedge clove the settlements of Europe until the base A DREAM OF 1915 25 of the wedge was in the Urals and its apex nearly to Paris. Compared to the Gothic impetus it was beneficial as is a surgical operation in comparison with a course of strenuous athletics and outdoor life. For more than two centuries the pressure of this force was sustained and then, ceasing to be recruited from Asia, it fell back and was absorbed. But its mark remained as a permanent factor to be further impressed later on by a fresh incursion from the east. The scene became blurred as the Dark Ages passed in review. But in Spain the Moors could be seen like a rainbow of hope laying the foundation of science for the work of the western world to follow. The rays of a setting sun gleamed on western Europe, and from Iceland to Morocco, from the islands and from the mainland, the westward moving host gazed over the dark waters of the Atlantic. "And I awakened in them desire and longing," said the Spirit of the West, "and they wondered what was beyond the waters; and as rank after rank filled up and the popu lation thickened on the Atlantic seaboard the desire increased. Watch the hardy seamen from island to island feeling their way to Greenland and Labrador. See! they return; the time is not yet. Now behold four centuries later." Suddenly I was alone again and seemed to be high above the Bay of Biscay. Some way in front my companion was poised in mid air beckoning with both hands to the crowds which gazed longingly over the ocean. Their enthusiasm increased and there was much reasoning amongst the people. From one port and another small but sturdy ships put out. Fair winds followed them at first, but midway on the mighty ocean storms arose. Some of the ships were lost. On others there were apparently disagreements, but when it seemed that they would have turned back discouraged, the Spirit of the West beckoned smilingly, and so, some reaching one 26 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST point and some another, the whole coast of the New World gradually became known. The returning ships spread the news, and more, ever more, sailed westward, until from Patagonia to Baffin Bay the peoples of Europe made a footing. But the land wa:* not quite desolate, for here also were the footprints of the eldest brother and little by little the legends of the long lost centuries were gathered. Legends of a vast island and chains of islands where now the billows of the Atlantic roll, and of other similar links between Peru and Malacca and between Korea and Alaska. Possibly before the birth of the second brother some descendants of the firstborn a red skinned race had passed across the north of Africa and by way of the Azores and the now sunken lands had reached central America and there planted the civilization of Ancient Egypt. And possibly after the great parting with the second brother in central Asia, other descendants of the firstborn had passed eastward and southward far into what is now the Antarctic and by a great circle route reached Peru. Whilst thus meditating, the spirit was once more at my side and reading my thoughts, said: "It was never ordained for any eastward movement to permanently succeed. Only those who follow me can ultimately fashion the future of the world. They alone prevail. Fresh waves of men and women will sweep you forth westward, westward ever, around the path of the sun. I am the Spirit of the West. Follow me." Then from every shore of the blue Mediterranean, from the homes of the descendants of the pirate swarms of the North Sea, from central Europe, the Balkans and far off Russia, by hundreds and by thousands and by hundreds of thousands, I saw men and women crossing the ocean to the New World, many seeking liberty of thought, liberty of religion, liberty of residence, liberty of action, but the A DREAM OF 1915 27 greater number seeking improved conditions of life to make the other things possible. I saw these different kindreds intermingling, with no political barriers from one side of the continent to the other; well fed, emancipated from serfdon, wild with the first taste of liberty, yet with some of the old brutal instincts surviving, with mutual congratulations and sympathy evolving a very lovable disposition. Here at last were the descendants of the same races which had struggled in mortal combat in that distant past, the progeny of the three brothers; mostly of the third, less of the second and least of the firstborn. Through long generations separated into rival factions under kings, forcibly intermingled, then estranged again; separated by mountains and seas, some passing to the north some to the south of the obstacles to their westward wanderings. Changed in feature, in dialect, in manners, by different environments, remingling in kaleid oscopic forms and now at last gathered from all the earth in a new land and thrown together, once more to blend in language, in custom and environment, a vast human family gathered for the Festival of the World. I saw them pressing forward over the Alleghanies, across the Mississippi and the wide prairie beyond, and then over the great mountains, right and left, north and south, widening their lines of march till with one vast front of thousands of miles they halted once more on the shores of the ocean; not this time the Atlantic the ocean of mystery, unsailed and uncharted but the Pacific, the ocean traversed every hour of the year by hundreds of vessels, its every island charted, its every mood known. As the panorama of the ages swept past I seemed to be floating over the Rocky mountains and then the Sierras and gently yet with lightning swiftness the earth seemed to come nearer, and nearer, until I rested suspended over the 28 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST Bay of San Francisco and at my side once more was the Spirit of the West. "You have seen," said the spirit, "you have seen the childhood of the human race, you have seen its growth and westward march, my beckoning of the toilers across the Atlantic, the mighty rush across the continent, mankind as children in a vast new garden, exploring it and claiming it, occupying in a hundred years a territory which in earlier times would not have been covered in thirty centuries. The circle of the earth is complete. Here in this wonderful western land problems of civilization await final solution. It took five hundred years to even partially blend the Danes and Saxons and Normans, and to this day many a pure bred Roman treads the hills of Somersetshire whilst Syrian girls walk the southwestern shores of England scarcely changed in feature since Joshua drove their ancestors over the hills of Lebanon. Here in this western land are con gregating Saxons, Danes, Celts, Iberians, Goths, Etruscans, Huns, Greeks, descendants of Tartar hordes, descendants of all the Semitic races, Jews, Arabs and Moors. It is not a nation: it is mankind. Not mankind indiscriminately selected, but such of mankind as have felt the inspiration of Democracy, the chosen people of the world; of every possible differentiation of ancestry and antecedents yet of one spirit, the selected of mankind brought together from all the corners of the earth for the final consummation of the objects of creation. San Francisco invites the World. Proud as that invitation sounds it but dimly indicates the proffered destiny of the Golden City, peerless in position, the Jewel of the West. "Unless another glacial epoch or some vast cataclysm sweeps civilization from the face of the earth and a new dispensation begins, there is no fresh circle of the globe to be made. In this western world, in this Pacific Empire, is the terminus of the journey. It requires no A DREAM OF 1915 29 prophetic insight to realize the vast aggregation of human beings who will one day people these glorious mountains and fertile valleys. The guerdon is offered to this far western land, and the eye wanders from Alaska to Panama, and from Panama to Peru, tear-dimmed with joy for the hope of the ages, the hope of what is to be. "The age of superstition is dying; the age of materialism will end; you are entering the age of the greatest reverence the world has ever known. It is for this western world to realize these things. Of its people is required reverence for the source of the lavish beauty of the land, reverence for the marvelous relations of the hidden powers of nature which, as each day unfolds its tale, make the hitherto im possible become easy of accomplishment. They must attain to a consciousness, as of old, that it is not their power nor the might of their hand that hath gotten this wealth/ and realize the responsibility which accompanies the gift. Never before in all history has such an opportunity been offered to any land, never such a glorious destiny made possible. Only in reverence for the true, the good, and the beautiful can this proffered destiny be grasped. "Whether the people will once again ask a king, whether they will revert to barbarism and civil war and perish like the former nations, or whether true liberty, equality and brotherhood will be attained; whether they will at last under stand the Declaration of Independence, the self-evident fact that all men are created equal (that is, have a right to be born equal), so self-evident as to be overlooked by most people, so overlooked that the evils of the old world are already being repeated here with greater intensity, men every day being born more and more unequal one a pauper, another a hundred million dollar baby. Whether these things will continue, inviting class and caste to a reincarna tion, or whether the people will raise a new standard, create a new ideal, making living more important than getting a 30 THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST living, wealth and work but a means to an end, the destiny of the Pacific Empire is to answer these questions aright. Nothing is impossible. "You went forth with the world a wilderness before you, you leave it a garden behind you. You went forth in unconscious infancy, in ignorance and need; you shall attain to thoughtful manhood, with wealth, philosophy and art for all. Hoping all things, believing all things, welcome the message of the Pacific. Ever as of old, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. You have seen in part; in love then believe all things possible. All the peoples of the world are gathering here. Help them to understand. Addio!" My visitor had gone. There was no one in sight. In a glory of radiance rarely seen, but once seen reckoned worth the waiting of many days, the sun was slowly sinking toward the ocean. A pale yellow sky silhouetted the moun tains as they changed from blue to purple and grey. Faint flecks of clouds above were taking a roseate tinge, and then in a blaze of living light across the waters the glory of the Golden Gate was revealed. Twilight lingered, and one by one the stars peeped out as I looked once more from the heights of the Presidio. Myriads of points of light glittered in every direction. San Francisco s welcome to the world was ready. Had I entertained an angel unawares? UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. ie> SEP 3 1982 RECEIVEP BY OCT 1 19b2 CIRCULATION DEFT, 50m-7, 16 5 05 toll UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY