THE, J-H-CURLE ;> *- THE SHADOW-SHOW BY J. H. CURLE ' For in and out, above, about, below, 'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadoui-Show Play'd in a Box, whose Candle is the Sun, Round which we Phantom Figures come and go" RUBAIYAT NEW xr YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOREWORD THIS world of ours is the Shadow-Show. We men and women are the silhouettes on the cur- tain. Adjusted to hidden wires by the finest mechanism, we are seen to be dancing furiously; and this we call life. A Shadow-Show indeed ! And the sense of our unreality at times overpowering. What are we? Whence do we come 1 ? What does it all mean*? The stage is fantastic, and the players; the only real thing is that mechanism of wires which science calls the "reign of law." "For man is man, and master of his fate," sings the poet, and Smiles, Lubbock, and other genial and wealthy persons chortle in the same strain. But old Omar knew better, and men of the calibre of ^Eschylus and Shakespeare and Ibsen have always known; free-will is very nearly an illu- sion. We are puppets. We are the sum of all dead men, the sport of all past happenings. We are present links in the endless chain of cause and effect, and as our structure is, so does our life inexorably unfold. Given the structure a a man will rush into the 2135016 vi FOREWORD world's arena and succeed; given /S some weak link is indicated, and he will fail. An atom the more, and a man will enter the Church, marry, and breed an immense family; one the less, and he will find himself in prison for burglary. A Lord Shaftesbury and a Charles Peace, a Father Damien and a Ravachol in how much do they differ? In a cerebral convolution the eye cannot measure, in a certain molecular instability, so inevitable, were it understood, as to chasten our judgments for evermore. "To understand all is to pardon all," said the wise Frenchman, giving voice to the profoundest of our maxims. The reign of law is inexorable. The wires that hold us never break. Yet from that source whence all things flow, a source no man knoweth, come to us philosophy and humour alleviatives ; they are the anti-friction grease for the mechan- ism, and I commend them at all times to your use. The stage setting of the Shadow-Show is ex- traordinarily beautiful. A dawn on the Karroo, the higher Alps outlined by moon-light, a spring morning in Kashmir, a drive over the uplands of Java, a bougainvillaea seen in the Dictator's garden at Caracas, are worth all the pains of our puppetdom. A favoured one, I have stood in the wings nearly all my life, and have seen the mounting of a thousand tableaux; I have, indeed, FOREWORD vii viewed our beautiful, unreal world from end to end. Here, then, I present myself as Showman; whose moods pass, as the shadows themselves, whose assets are travel and reflection knowledge of many lands and many peoples ; whose qualities are a little philosophy, a little humour, some tolerance, a worship of Nature, and a love of his fellows; yet, such as these things are, they came to me slowly, apprenticeship to the Shadow-Show being a life's work. J. H. C. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING ... 13 II IN SOUTH AFRICA 35 III THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 55 IV "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 74 V WOMEN 95 VI GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 113 VII THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND . . 148 VIII WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA . . 182 IX "By THE WATERS OF BABYLON" . . 212 X A GRAVE IN SAMOA 225 XI MINE OWN PEOPLE 239 XII "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" . . 272 The Frontispiece is from a photograph by Lehnert and Landrock, of Tunis, and is reproduced here by their consent. THE SHADOW-SHOW THE SHADOW-SHOW CHAPTER I A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING I HAVE led a glorious life. Of all the men I have known, who has been so free, who has revelled in this beautiful world as I? What dawns I have seen! What rivers I have sailed on, down to what seas! I have traversed the forests, the food belts, the deserts, the high ranges; I have passed from the tropics to the arctic, from the tundra plains back to the rice fields; I have been to all the ends of the earth, and look back on a great and splendid phantas- magoria. My thoughts will not be controlled to-night, and as I write, on this sick-bed in Warsaw, it is the little incidents that crowd on me. Well ! I take them as they come. On a Christmas afternoon, in the country be- hind Manilla, I watched cock-fighting. In a great bamboo structure some two thousand Filipinos and myself sat, lost to the world. There were 13 14 THE SHADOW-SHOW a hundred cocks, the din was hideous, and the betting high. I have spent many a worse Christ- mas. I was in the first motor-car that penetrated the sombre Death Valley, on the Nevada boundary line. We went to value a "prospect" in the Funeral Range that I had already named the "Shadow"; but it failed to satisfy, and we re- turned over the great desert. Passing once through Chicago, at the height of her municipal corruption, the posters of a "French Ball," patronized by the city fathers, took me. My baggage had gone astray; but I went to the Jews with $2.50, and presently ap- peared, in hired garments, at the ball. Waiving introductions, I danced through the programme, and while the band played the newly composed "Georgia Camp Meeting," supped with a noto- riously corrupt alderman and two ladies of less municipal status than humour, spending one of the nights of my life. I lay in the Connemara Hotel, Madras. It was the dead of a stifling night, and save for my waving punkah all was still. Sitting outside my door, a wretched, casteless creature pulled this punkah the long night through, receiving for her labour, and that thankfully, the sum of four- pence. A woman did this ! while I, a strong man, my vitals primed with boiled brisket of beef, lay A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 15 easy in my bed. And as I lay I reflected why these things should be; why one must be up and the other down, yet in what if we both stood at the Judgment Seat in what was I this poor creature's real superior 1 ? The hours passed. The punkah moved steadily; it was now six o'clock, and the dawn. I rose, and taking from the table a tin of chocolates, laid it in her hands. She tasted one, and began to wolf them greedily down: "Joy cometh in the morning" was written on her hideous physiognomy. I was breakfasting in a garden. It lay in Seoul, capital of Korea, and was enclosed on three sides by the palace walls. My host told me of the intrigues of the court, the struggle against the domination of Japan, the murder, by Japanese, of the Empress, and the schemes of the Emperor to be free. Pointing to the roof of a small pavil- ion, but thirty yards distant, he said: "The Em- peror stays in there, in terror of his life. Three nobles, sworn to guard his person, sleep by turns on the threshold. Thrice he has tried to escape over the wall and seek protection with me. The last time, late one night, he nearly succeeded. His hand was on the coping, and his royal outline stood out clearly. But before he could jump, rude Japanese hands reached up, clutching him, and with a cry he fell backward" At two o'clock, one night in the year 1902, 16 THE SHADOW-SHOW there was a running of police through the streets of Lima; their whistles were blowing, and some- where beyond the plaza a bugle rang out. What did the authorities fear? Was it those shrill cries raised in the night? It is true that the sinister and pock-marked Casceres, ex-President, was back that week from Paris; it is true, moreover, that a political rival from the mountains was just then threatening to march on the capital But that night, at least, Peru was not in danger. A breath- less figure, lacking coat and hat, that stole within the deep shadows of the cathedral, and later reached Hotel Maury unseen, could, if he would, have thrown some light. I was staying in Melbourne, and a request came from a leading paper to write a critical article on the mining industry of Victoria. "Ah," I thought, master of my subject, "I will show these colonials how things are done!" I wrote, and sent it in. It duly appeared; not my strong and reasoned critique, but an emasculated thing of appalling flabbiness. "Why have you done this?" I asked. "I had your word you would alter nothing." "Yes, we know; but we didn't like to offend advertisers. But your article is causing discus- sion; here are three letters for you." I opened them. Two were from lunatics, and incoherent; and the third, that took an hour to A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 17 read, from a geological crank. It was quite irrele- vant, and left me mentally dazed and jaded. My article fell utterly flat, and remained so; but that it was at least read and pondered over by three madmen I have to this day irrefragable evidence. Here, again, is the bull-ring in the City of Mexico. The procession has entered, the "Car- men" music has been played, and Mazzantini, . the famous torero, has been acclaimed ; bulls lie dead, and a dozen gored horses have been dragged away. Ten, it may be twenty, thousand people crowd the tiers, the men sodden with pulque, the women gloating on the flowing blood and longing for a human death. All are shouting, swearing, spewing, and the reek of gore and of filthy, bestial, gloating humanity is almost overpowering. But above the roofs utterly pure and lovely in the southern sky, two snowpeaks stand out, mute, yet insistently calling men's thoughts to the best. A vivid contrast this, if ever there was contrast. Yet it was more; this clinching of abstractions was the old struggle of good with evil, of Ormuzd with Ahriman, fighting for men's souls on the sunlit plains of Old Mexico. Who, having seen, has not felt the glory of the high white mountains'? Not alone of these two in Mexico Popocatapetl, and that other which may not be spelled but of Chimborazo, seen 18 THE SHADOW-SHOW from the coasts of Ecuador, of Aconcagua, from the bay of Valparaiso, of Illimani and Sorata, rising from the Bolivian plateau, of Kinchin- junga, seen from Darjeeling, of that ring that shuts in Kashmir, of Elburz and the Jungfrau, of Fuji, seen from Lake Hakone of Rainier, ris- ing behind Tacoma, and of Egmont in the country beyond New Plymouth. But for the mountain view most glorious, stand in Arequipa's plaza, in Southern Peru; the peaks that rise up behind her cathedral are peer- less. And the beauty of falling water! It needs no eclectic to choose for us Nature's masterpiece. On Zambesi River you shall find it, where the Vic- toria Falls descend into the mist. Drenched by spray, I stood in the Rain Forest, over against the cataract. The waters, near a mile in length, were hurled thundering into space, my eyes failing to pierce the depths where they descended. A double rainbow hovered hovers for ever above the chasm, guarding by day as Pillar of Fire once guarded by night; and in this filament dwell 'Nkulu 'Nkulu, Great Spirit of the Waters, re ceiving from strong white men agnostics worship denied to the hierarchy of Jehovah. Nature's second masterpiece is that view from the mountains behind Rio Janeiro; where earth and sea, mountains, lagoons, primaeval forests, a A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 19 dense tropic verdure, and a great city lie spread at one's feet. Rio Janeiro is the haven of the world. Not all the others may so much as touch the hem of her garment; not Stockholm, entered from the Baltic, not Naples, not Sydney, not Stamboul, nor Sitka, nor Galle, nor the Romsdal ; she stands alone, unapproached. In a wooded park, outside the walls of Peking, rise the shrines of the Temple of Heaven, purely classic, the gem of all China. While we still lived in forests the Chinese had evolved the highest order of beauty, and ever since have dom- inated the Far East in art. From the temple of Confucius in Peking, to the least roof or arch or gateway in the Empire, the lines of Chinese art are austere, reserved, and yet the creations of an absolute perception. Japanese art and beauty is but a transplanted cutting of Chinese. The shrines at Nikko, where the dead Shoguns lie in the cryptomeria forest, are Chinese shrines; the small temples in Korea, in whose groves I have heard cuckoos calling in the spring, are Chinese temples. Even as far away as Siam, though bas- -ardized by an effeminate people, Chinese artistic i-ifluence is supreme; Wat Prakeo, the royal tem- ple of Bangkok, is Chinese in every line. Nor have I told of Taj Mahal, in its garden by the Jumma that one perfect shrine. Among the buildings of men there is nothing like this. 20 THE SHADOW-SHOW The monuments of this very India Mount Abu, Chitoor, Kutub Minar, Madura, Tanjore, the Mosque of Wazir in Lahore, and the Shwe Da- gon these wonderful and romantic piles, cannot dim her glory, and if the shrine by Peking be named Heaven's Temple, the Taj is the very Vestibule of Paradise. To some of us, who have failed to find God among the theologians, Nature alone is left. In Nature we find the "Permeating Essence" ; stand- ing before her greatest works, we see God Him- self. I enter no church; but I have worshipped in the Rain Forest, in the hills behind Rio, on the plaza of Arequipa, on Lake Lucerne in the early days of June, and in the cherry groves of Japan. I have worshipped at Cintra, by the Temple of Heaven, and before the Taj. I wor- shipped with the people of Samarkand in the mosque of Tila-Kar. They cried on Allah; my prayer went to the God who gave colour and that balmy autumn air, who gave the old Persians art and me perception. My parents' home lay at the base of the Eildon Hills, in the South of Scotland. Thence, when twelve years old, I was sent to a preparatory school in Worcestershire, a featureless youth, with red hair, above the average in sports, below it in scholarship, cutting no figure to speak of. I A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 21 was very fond of music, and was invited, in my second term, to the supper of the school choir, held three times a year, where the authorities had set out an extremely good repast. I joined the choir next day. The headmaster, a peppery clergyman, hit me once in a fit of anger, so that I slipped and fell. Though not hurt, my fall frightened him; help- ing me to rise, this contrite, bearded person of fifty kissed me but on the whole my school life was not unhappy. An overcharged nervous system prohibited thoughts of a public school ; a generous father sent me to travel instead, and I started off in 1885 for Australia. The ship was one of the Aberdeen wool clip- pers, a sailor, and cockleshell on the waters; after we had dropped the pilot off Plymouth, in a heavy sea, I retired below, with a foretaste of hell, and was seen no more of men for three weeks. It was a weary voyage; for seventy-five days we saw no land, and the thirty passengers, cooped physically and mentally, came to present an acute study in humanity. There was a nest under the bowsprit where a boy might retire with a book, but for sedater people, aft, there could be but satiety and reaction. I had been put under the care of a young physician, returning to Australia to practice, whose passage my father paid. Be- 22 THE SHADOW-SHOW ginning on the brandy in my flask, a disappear- ance he explained as "evaporation," this individ- ual worked his way steadily through the ship's stock of liquor. Later, in Sydney, he lay three days unconscious; but in the end presented him- self to his family, and so passed out of my life. Long ere the voyage ended scandal and hatred were rife in the saloon, several of the ladies, in- deed, being beside themselves. Sniffs of contempt were heard at first, and nostrils curled in disdain ; one afternoon a hideous epithet was hurled, on another, a cup of cocoa these, as between grown and well-nourished women. At times, in spite of my youth, I was drawn into the orbit of intrigue. I co-operated with a young Irishman on the first and only number of a ship's paper. It duly appeared; but there had been a written indiscretion: a man was knocked down on deck and a drunken brute put under arrest. That the indiscretion was mine, the pen- alty my colleague's, was beside the mark; the cap- tain stopped the paper. The brute, released, vented himself on his wife, who spat full in his face, hissed the word "peacock!" clutched to her bosom a young family, and retired precipitately to her cabin. In the fulness of time the voyage ended, and I found myself in Australia. I was fourteen. My guardian lay in his bed in the Sydney Hotel, A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 23 while I roved round the Chinese slums and sailed into every cove in that wonderful harbour. Then I went South, to relatives in Melbourne, and from there to a big station far up in the "bush." Mem- ory of this place is vivid. I recall the park-like scenery, the immense gum-trees, and the great merino flocks in their io,ooo-acre paddocks; rid- ing the boundaries, one discovered stretches of heath in fullest bloom and sheltered glades car- peted with maiden-hair; the flights of brilliant parrots were ceaseless, cockatoos screeched and circled in mid-air, and in the early mornings the exquisite notes of magpies were heard ; many was the opossum, too, I dragged from its lair up in the gums. Kangaroos swarmed here consumers of good grass and big hunts were organized. A five-mile gallop over the rough after an "old man" beats fox-hunting; at bay, his back to a tree, I have seen a kangaroo rip three powerful dogs to pieces. At Ballarat I went down my first gold-mine, saw Sheet Anchor win the Melbourne Cup, crossed the straits and travelled in Tasmania, and after nine months at the Antipodes returned to Scot- land. In the autumn of that year, 1886, I went alone to South Africa, sailing in the "Drummond Cas- tle" that doomed boat which in after-years foundered off the French coast, carrying to the bottom nearly all on board. 24 THE SHADOW-SHOW A theatrical company for the Cape Town theatre travelled out, and on arrival there my evenings were spent "behind." Leaning over the theatre bar one night was an out-of-work actor, to whom I was made known. His name was Booth, brother of the great American tragedian, and of that other who assassinated Abraham Lin- coln. Passengers for Natal transferred at Cape Town into the "Mel rose." On this steamer Carey, the Phcenix Park murderer and informer, had recently been shot, and the chief steward pointed with pride to the bullet mark in the woodwork of the saloon. His body had been carried ashore and buried at Port Elizabeth. Durban was a quiet little place in those days, in the grip of the Wesleyan Methodists. The prosperity that came with the Zulu and Boer wars had worn off, and the excitement over gold dis- coveries in the Transvaal had not yet reached the coast. I was staying with a dear old relative, who, to enliven his days, had undertaken some years before, in the columns of the local press, a fierce religious controversy with Bishop Colenso. The subject was St. Paul, against certain of whose doctrines the old gentleman held strong views. But the Bishop had died, and it was only at this time a new Pauline champion had come on the scene. This was, of all people, the chief A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 25 customs officer of the port, an intimate friend of my cousin. Long letters were being printed daily from one or the other, and Paul's prestige seemed to wax and wane with each issue of the "Advertiser." Once, being discovered in the cus- tom house, I was made to sit for over an hour behind some bales of wool, while the virtues of the seer were revealed to me in about thirty pages ot MS. ; but with whom victory finally lay I have forgotten. One night the customs officer came to play chess. Talking of the game, he said: "When I was in England I several times beat the. champion of South Shields." He then proposed a game with me. I disliked chess, was a wretched player, was nervous and overawed ; but I sat down and won that game. Then I said, "Do you con- firm what you mentioned before, that you have several times beaten the champion of South Shields'?" He said, "Certainly," and I knew my chess career had reached its zenith. I have never played since. In those days the railway from Durban stopped at Ladysmith, transport thence to the interior being by ox-wagon. Hundreds of wagons were leaving Ladysmith with goods for the lately found Barberton goldfields, and on one of these, drawn by sixteen oxen, I went as passenger, the journey of less than 300 miles taking six weeks. We crossed the Biggarsberg, went through Newcastle, 26 THE SHADOW-SHOW skirted the lower slopes of Majuba ("Mountain of Pigeons"), and passed over Laing's Nek. The story of the two battles, and all those graves on Mount Prospect, gave me furiously to think. By Christmas Day we had crossed the border and were trekking over the plains of the Transvaal. At Lake Chrissie a wild herd of 2,ooo blesboks gal- loped near us, a sight later years were never to wit- ness. A track was passed going off to the West. The transport rider said it led to a new goldfield called Witwatersrand, but thought it a poorish field, not to be compared with De Kaap. The name of the Sheba mine, near Barberton, was on all lips, and when we got to Komati River we heard the shares had risen to a hundred pounds. That same night the chief owner of the Sheba put up at the road- side shanty by the river; he, poor fellow, was on his way back to Maritzburg to drink himself to death. A coach took me from De Kaap back to Lady- smith; I had been only two days on the gold- fields, and didn't see the famous Sheba until seven years later. One day, on the desolate highveld, the coach stopped for the midday meal at a superior farm, by name Rolfontein, and I noticed there, out in the wilderness, a small observatory. It belonged to the farmer's nephew, John Ballot, a student and abstract thinker of high order, des- A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 27 tined in after-years to become one of my dearest friends. I bought a horse and saddle on the market square of Maritzburg and rode north, a week's ride, through Greytown and the thorn country into Zululand. On the lonely Natal frontier, by the Tugela River, stood the ruins of the most famous building in South Africa the store at Rorke's Drift. Twelve miles distant, over the Zulu border, lay the battlefield of Isandhlwana, ("The Little Hand"), where Cetewayo's impi, crescent shaped, had closed on our doomed men, and again one saw where British soldiers had passed through the bitterness of death. On the return ride, twenty miles out of Maritzburg, my horse began to foam at the nostrils, sure sign of the dreaded South African sickness, and in half an hour lay dead. I buried him where he lay. Returning to Scotland with nerves still awry, I passed two ineffective years, mainly at St. An- drews. Studying leisurely at the University, I played golf and football with young men destined for the Scottish ministry, who, though amongst the heaviest of whisky drinkers, were good com- pany. But I was restless, and penetrated in those days to Heligoland, Copenhagen, and as far as Stockholm. Then I was sent to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, passing matriculation, but the authorities had to 28 THE SHADOW-SHOW wink at a lack of Greek and other stock subjects of erudition. My knowledge, if not impressive, was bizarre. For instance, in my first year I became a high, perhaps the highest, undergraduate authority on Paley's "Evidences." Even students from other colleges were led into my rooms to study my mural cryptograms, for by mastery of these any one might face with assurance the approaching "Little Go." I have quite forgotten Paley. His arguments were no doubt based on unsound pre- mises, but my business at that time was to absorb his ideas, not to put forward my own. I only be- gan thinking about religious questions when twenty-four. In my second year, having served a term as secretary, I was elected president of the college debating society ; yet I cannot debate ; my extem- pore speeches, then and since, have always been rehearsed in bed. A college mission for the East of London was mooted at this time, and I was chosen, one of three, to visit the Metropolis and interview a certain suffragan bishop. What happened about the mission I don't recollect but we had a deli- cious dinner. The Bishop narrated how once at early celebration, three notable converts the principal Punch and Judy showman of London, with two associates took the cup. Again at the A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 29 midday service, to his amazement, he saw the three lining up. "We thought we couldn't have too much of a good thing, my lord," said the leader, as he again lifted the chalice. My rowing career at Trinity Hall, the rowing college, was a poor one. Weighing over thirteen stone, I was marked down as an ideal "No. 5." In those days the Hall supplied a No. 5 to the 'Varsity boat as a matter of course, and with any aptitude, I had no doubt been trained with this high objective in view. Fortunately, for I dis- liked rowing, a still more bulky Australian, with a rowing pedigree, showed such talent as to bring about my relegation. After much coaching, he came to rival his famous brother as an oar, and did actually row in the 'Varsity boat for several years. This year, '89, Trinity Hall went head of the river, and that winning night there was a "bump supper" such as Cambridge will not see again. Pleasantly excited on lemonade, I was one of perhaps five sober men in that big gathering. Supper over, the ral lying-point of the evening was a huge bonfire in the quadrangle, fed with chairs, tables, curtains, clothes, spirits, and any- thing that would burn. The demand for fuel, indeed, nearly brought about a tragedy. Charles, assistant porter to the stately Thurlow, was caught and saturated with paraffin; eager hands 30 THE SHADOW-SHOW were dragging him to the pyre, when he broke loose, and fled shrieking round the quadrangle, seeking an exit. I saved him. The wrath of the pursuers was diverted by one who rushed to me, crying, "Come on; there are Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in the fiery furnace, and you know who you are" I turned, to see three maniacal figures standing in the flames, horribly contorting; these, too, were saved. Meanwhile, extraordinary sights were to be seen in ground-floor rooms. In one of these, all denuded for fuel as it was, a score of men were fighting, shouting, and drinking, while in one corner, oblivious of their surround- ings and stark naked, two sat quietly at a piano duet. A crashing of glass in the quadrangle now called for notice, and it was seen that every win- dow in one of the tutor's rooms had gone. He was a man who was not liked; he had a bitter tongue. It recked not that his father was to be- come in after-years a President of Wesleyan Con- ference, he, himself, Principal of another Uni- versity and a knight bachelor. In vino veritas. So the empty bottles did their work, and twice a week, while that term lasted, those windows suf- fered a like fate. Before going to Cambridge I had decided on mining, an unusual profession in those days, yet one I had seen the value of in Australia and South Africa. Neither my father nor I knew in what the education of a mining engineer should con- A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 31 sist, nor of the existence of a School of Mines. The University authorities were approached as to a mining course, but it was soon evident they knew rather less about mining than I did; it was outside their ken. It ended in a scratch course in geology, chemistry, and hydrostatics; but of their practical bearing on mining I learned nothing, and left the University in complete ig- norance of the profession I hoped to enter. While at Cambridge I improved my scholarship not at all, but contact with so many men did me good. I had had the handling of money for a number of years, and understood, as the others could not, the bald facts of finance. I realized that, though only one of eleven children, I was spending several hundreds a year of my father's money, and wondered what my own exertions would ever represent. I knew the world, and didn't squander money at Cambridge; but there is inducement to do so, and you will find the University man, as a rule, a poor financier. More remembered by me are the long vacations of '89 and '90, spent in Southern Germany. I lived with two of the kindest old ladtes, in the Neckarstrasse of Stuttgart, and entered fully into the life of the old town. In the mornings I studied music and the German language; after an early dinner I might have been seen drinking coffee under the Konigsbau, a little later taking tram for the baths at Kannstatt, or for a swim in 32 THE SHADOW-SHOW the Neckar itself, and walking home through the park. Some evenings I went with the ladies, who were abonniert, to an opera at the Schloss Theatre, or to the concert in the Stadtgarten, and as often as not played billiards in the Residenz Cafe with a student of the Conservatoire, now a composer. When the handsome "Kaiserhof" was opened as a cafe, we honoured the event bv, playing billiards till seven in the morning, and about eight-thirty I shocked my lady teacher of German by falling asleep. On Sundays, escorted by me, the ladies took dinner at the home of a sister, the widow of a famous piano-maker. Twice a week, once by us, once at the house of some other member of the circle, delicacies were set out, and six old ladies and myself played whist from four till seven. I have reason to believe the youngest was sixty- three, but though unskilled they all played with a zest. Playing pfennig points, I often won as much as a mark at these sittings, but always strove, by the assiduous handing of cakes and such like, that this fact should not rankle. The second summer, I spent some time in Ba- varia, and Munich became to me, as it has re- mained, one of the cities of the world. The mad King was then not long dead a suicide. Stand- ing by the Starnberg Lake, I saw in my mind the scene, and located, as it were, the very spot where the faithful physician, hastening to his succour, A SHOWMAN IN THE MAKING 33 had been pulled under. Poor King! and not so mad after all. Did he not befriend and finance Richard Wagner, when saner people would have none of him? He had an eye for beauty, too. Such palaces as Chiemsee, Linderhof, and Neusch- wanstein may have drained the exchequer, but they are beautiful to look on. Reaching the village of Oberammergau, in the Bavarian Tyrol, I dwelt at the house of Caiaphas, the High Priest. This one year, in ten, the villagers were performing their Passion Play, and to my host had been allotted this not unimportant part. On a Sunday, from eight till four, in the open air, the scenes of the play were unfolded a reverent and a wonderful performance. In my attic room in this village lay a litter of old papers, among them many in the hand of the good Abbe Deisenberger, to whom, long ago, Oberammergau owed the inception of the great idea. Perchance he, too, had slept under these old eaves. I returned to Stuttgart for a while, to the quiet life in the Neckarstrasse, to the bathing and the whist parties, but a pending event was beginning to excite me ; then came a night in the train, a day and a night in Niirnberg, and I was at Bayreuth. Early that afternoon I stood outside the theatre in the forest gift of the mad King to Wagner waiting in a state of nervous exaltation. At half- past three the trombones were blown. At four the last sounds from the great audience died 84. THE SHADOW-SHOW away, and as we sat in the darkness, the first notes of "Parsifal" were heard. This was the most stirring moment there had yet been in my life. The prelude ended. As in a dream one saw the mediseval forest, the passing on his litter of the stricken Amfortas, the wild swan fall, dying, by the lake, the sacred feast in the hall of the knights; as in a dream one passed through it all, till that final moment when the voice of Titurel is heard from his coffin, and the grail glows with increasing lustre. If the mountains of Gothic Spain ever had a dweller, it was I, during those throbbing hours. I couldn't really understand the music of "Par- sifal," but could feel its depth, could see the gran- deur of the story itself flowing from the composer's brain and know that here was a work of transcendent genius. For days scenes kept passing before my eyes; in my ears sounded the Gral motiv, and those strange orchestral effects. The world seemed to have opened out; "Parsifal" was a true climax to my German period. Then suddenly the course of things changed. My father had invested in Transvaal mines, and wished me there, to see things for myself. A milestone had been reached. Cambridge and Stuttgart knew me no more, and at short notice I set out again for South Africa. CHAPTER II IN SOUTH AFRICA EARLY in 1891 I landed a second time in Natal. Things were stirring in South Africa. Rhodes, the Colossus, had taken over the premiership of the Cape. The Kimberley diamond mines had become one, in De Beers. The year before, guided by Selous, the pioneers had entered Mash- onaland, and Fort Salisbury was a town; tales of rich mines up there were coming through. And there was Johannesburg! That transport rider on the Barberton road was no prophet; the Wit- watersrand had become the most important gold- field in the world, a great future was opening for it, and from Cape Town to Lourengo Marques the seaports were building competing lines to this objective. This was no loafer's atmosphere. I made at once for the goldfields, and a few weeks later saw me at work on the Nigel, a mine lying by itself on the rolling veld, thirty miles from Johannes- burg, where I stayed a year, working in mine, mill, and office, and absorbing, although slowly, the principles of sound mining. 35 36 THE SHADOW-SHOW The Nigel ore, at that time, was the richest in the Transvaal. For days together 5-oz. rock would be going through the 2o-stamp mill, and amalgam lay on the copper plates like Devon- shire cream. Once, after my night shift, when the mill manager had scraped the plates, he said, "You could have taken 800 oz. last night, and I shouldn't have known." 1 The Kaffirs working in the mill were trusted, the plates being fully exposed, but I don't think amalgam stealing was then one of their vices; it came later, of course. I may say now, to my shame, that when on night shift, and overcharged with cocoa, I several times slept in the mill towards that fatal 3.30 a.m., and woke to find screens broken and chaos on the plates. A man is dismissed for less in these days. The mine lay alone on the veld, nine miles from the small town of Heidelberg. Visitors from the Rand came now and then to look round the district, but we were an isolated little com- munity. We were self-contained; there was some shooting, good tennis, and frequent musical even- ings; we had enough talent, too, for theatricals, and put an abridged version of "The Mikado" into rehearsal, with myself as the ruler of Japan. Just then, one of the engine-drivers, a valued member of the chorus, got three fingers crushed to pieces, and my friend Dr. Nixon came from 1 About 1,200. IN SOUTH AFRICA 37 Heidelberg to operate. I assisted. He gave chloroform, but the man's heart was weak, and he had to be shaken back to consciousness. In a drdwsy, sodden voice he said to me, "Sing the Mikado's song," and Nixon, hearing, took up the scissors. Holding with both hands the poor wretch's head, I sang out : "A more humane Mikado never did in Japan exist," and in place of that staccato chord which follows, the scissors snapped, and a finger fell off. There was a shriek of agony, and writhing, and the bind- ing up of the stump. Then I went on : "To nobody second, I'm certainly reckoned a true philanthropist. " Again comes that staccato chord, and again, in perfect tempo, a finger dropped. After more shrieks and more sewing up, I sang on, and at the words "A source of innocent merriment," the third and last finger disappeared. The opera- tion was over; Nixon had added to his surgical laurels, while I went out on the veld and was violently sick. On the night we played "The Mikado" there was nearly a tragedy. The house was crowded. A variety entertainment, forming the first part of the show, was in progress, when some one rushed into the dressing-room crying to us that Day's 38 THE SHADOW-SHOW house was on fire. Day was the Koko of the evening, his wife the operatic pianist. In a mo- ment Koko, pianist, a male Katisha, several in variety costume, and a Japanese chorus, were tear- ing over the veld. Beside them, strangely decollete in the moonlight, rushed an immense ballet-dancer. We were just in time; the fire was within a foot of the bed where two babies lay asleep. It was soon put out. The house was slightly damaged, whilst amongst the rescue party, I, in ballet costume aforesaid, had burst my stays. These repaired, we rushed back to the hall and continued the programme without a stop, scoring a success. From the Nigel, a period I look back on as one of the happiest, I went to Johannesburg, which became my headquarters for the next six years. I worked at first in the City and Suburban and Ferreira mines. Later, through friendly of- fices, I became director and managing director of several gold and coal properties, and gave much of my time to their affairs. In these years I travelled a great deal, inspecting and reporting, and at one time or another saw nearly every mine in South Africa. Besides the Rand, with its forty miles of mines, I got to know what was worth knowing of Heidelberg, Klerksdorp, De Kaap, Lydenburg, the Low Country, and the coal meas- ures; and outside the Transvaal travelled in IN SOUTH AFRICA 39 Natal, Zululand, the Free State, Cape Colony, Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Mashonaland, Mo- zambique, Madagascar, Reunion, and Mauritius. It seems to me no one ever soaked himself in the charm of South Africa as I did in those years. Perhaps its charm lay subjectively, in me, for I find myself unable to analyse it. South Africa is not a scenic country, but there are beautiful spots, the grandest effects of sunrise and sunset, a clear, clear atmosphere, which lends itself to illusion and memories. From the very harbour of Cape Town, where you first land, there is a view! At sunset, look over to the Blaauwberg Range. Its dying outline, seen through that at- mosphere, is one of the loveliest things in nature. Then walk under the avenue of oak-trees behind Parliament House, thinking of the old Dutch days. Go out behind Table Mountain, and see the oaks and the vineyards of Constantia. Gaze through the trees at Hottentots' Holland, and again take a long look at the Blaauwberg. Every- where there is charm. The very Karroo is trans- figured by the sunrise. In September, ride out to the Boer farms; in that month the green young willow leaves and the pink peach blossoms are seen together, and the ugly little farmhouses are forgotten. Then there are the natives. My memories of South Africa are full of them. All the races in- 40 THE SHADOW-SHOW terest me, but the Zulus I love. They are a race of gentlemen ; they are, physically, the aristocrats of humanity. Before my mind's eye passes a panorama of the kloofs and dense bush of Natal and Zululand. I see myself a boy again (Mikwazintlelen, they called me), riding into a kraal to exchange col- oured beads for assegais, or bartering by the road- side for a warrior's plume of the sakabula. Then I can hear, towards evening, Zulus calling from hill to hill, with that long rest of theirs on the penultimate, and a Kaffir postman runs past, sing- ing, into the night. Once, as I walked down Pil- grim's Creek, Swazies were on the hills above, crying long messages to each other. Their voices reached me faintly; they seemed to mingle with the notes of birds, then died away. And once there was a Hottentot shelling mealies, who sat in the hot sun looking out over the plain. Why, I know not, but there was that in the picture which seemed to symbolize Hottentotdom ; it is stamped for ever on my brain. In 1894, with my friend Henry Wiltshire, I made a memorable journey through the Eastern Transvaal, the Low Country, and Delagoa Bay. In those days Lourengo Marques was a primitive place, with a deadly climate, and just then it was the tail end of a bad fever season; people had been dying like flies, and the overworked sepul- IN SOUTH AFRICA 41 ture department collapsed. In the height of the fever, coffins were simply not to be had. A "prop- erty" coffin, fitted with a false bottom, was being used, and the corpse dumped through into a thing called a grave, but rather less than two feet deep. After a heavy rainstorm, this earth covering was mostly washed away, and large patches of corpse could be seen, calling aloud for re-interment. Another death-trap was Komanti Poort. From this point the Selati Railway was being built, to so-called gold-mines in the Murchison Range. It was alleged that the Selati concessionaires had bribed most of Kruger's Volksraad, a trap and horses, in individual cases, being mentioned as quid pro quo. The Poort was a great game cen- tre. The rivers swarmed with hippo, and the bush with lions; travelling to railhead, on the contractor's engine, we saw tens of thousands of koodoo and impala. The line itself was a white elephant, and was abandoned some months later. From Komanti Poort we went to the De Kaap fields, already but a shadow of the fields of '87, and at last I saw the famous Sheba. From Bar- berton we rode over the Kantoor and Spitzkop to Pilgrim's Rest and Lydenburg; we walked all one night down the Ohrigstad Valley, swam the Croco- dile River unscathed, and striking out through the Low Country, duly reached Leysdorp. After inspecting the small mines of this field, 42 THE SHADOW-SHOW we again struck across country for Klein Letaba. Some days later, weary and footsore, we walked into the store at the Birthday mine, and sat down to corned beef that stank and weevily bread that was uneatable, and I stood up and cursed the little Jew proprietor in rounded periods. Seven years later, in Dawson City, Klondike, I went into a small goldsmith's shanty to buy nuggets, and behind the counter stood that little trader. But my curse held; he was not thriving in the bleak North. In 1893 I had to do with some mines at Klerks- dorp, staying there with my friend, E. J. Way, then manager of the Eastleigh. His house, lying on a lonely stretch of veld near the Vaal River, had been built by an earlier manager the notori- ous Deeming. This was the man who murdered his wives and children, burying the bodies under fireplaces, which he cemented over. He was caught I think in Liverpool extradited to Mel- bourne, and there hanged. I slept in the room that was his. One night, about two, I awoke trembling. Close by my bed, in the clear moonlight, stood a shrouded white figure. I got up and moved towards it ; but it re- ceded, and at a spot by the wall seemed to sink through the floor and vanish. I went slowly to the spot and looked down. // was a cemented fire- place. Shall we say that a stray moonbeam woke IN SOUTH AFRICA 43 me, and mixed with my unadjusted faculties'? for I am no believer in the occult. The incident is offered, without prejudice, to the Psychical Re- search Society; the lonely house on the veld is still there, the cement undisturbed since Deeming laid it. At St. Moritz, on a Christmas Day fifteen years later, I told this. Among those who lis- tened was one who made entry in a note-book. "That mine and house belong to me now," he said; 'Til have the cement up some day." An early financial venture of mine in Johannes- burg was the purchase of two Cape carts and six horses, which were leased to a Malay from Cape Town for 12 a week. When I said to one of my friends, a very wealthy man, "I hope you won't cut me now I'm running two cabs," he answered, "Be easy, I once owned a shooting gal- lery." These cabs returned 50 per cent, for the first six months ; but after that, wear and tear, and the loss of a horse or two, ran away with most of the rent. Then the Malay, seeking a state of holi- ness rare among cabbies, departed for Mecca, and died there, and I sold out. After days spent underground, or roaming along the reef, I often went to the theatre. A frequent companion there was the theatrical writer for the "Star," whose work I did at one time, adding dramatic critic to my professions of gold- miner and cab-owner. 44 THE SHADOW-SHOW The best acting I remember to have seen in my life I saw in Johannesburg. That was in "Forget-me-not," played by Genevieve Ward and the late W. H. Vernon. I don't expect again to hear anything so fine as the verbal duel in the second act. And what a scene that towards the end! Stephanie, the traitress, in terror of her life, is hiding in the hotel in Rome, where Sir Horace visits her. As they talk, the sound of a chant is borne in from the street. Sir Horace watching her, says slowly, "That is the Miserere of the barefooted Carmelites, whose duty it is to carry to the grave the bodies of those found as- sassinated in the streets of Rome." Stephanie raises her ashen face, to see, looking in at the window the avenger. It was melodrama, but superb: when are the Colonies to see the like again*? Theatrical ven- tures, like many other things on the fields, were largely in Jewish hands. Especially was the "Empire" Jewish, and the performers therein. One night, visiting this music-hall with a club acquaintance, we made friends after the perform- ance with one of the company, a young Jewish lady from Whitechapel, and repaired to Mrs. Joel's cafe for supper. Mrs. Joel, herself a Jew- ess, was reputed full aunt to Barney Barnato, the millionaire speculator, who, some time before, had jumped overboard from the "Scot." For IN SOUTH AFRICA 45 years the "Scot" was the crack boat on the South African run, but Barney's suicide was also her deathblow. From that time no Jew travelled on her; although so fine a ship she fell upon financial trouble, was sold cheap, and now, under another name, carries tourists from New York to Ber- muda. We ushered the young woman into Mrs. Joel's private supper-room. There, refusing all offers of a more varied diet, this inferior artiste sat on my friend's knee and ate pickled gherkins till the atmosphere reeled round us. It was the apotheosis of cucumber. During the eating she entertained us with homely facts of her life, en- tering with some detail into her stomachic troubles. When we could, we fled, but since that night my supper guests have been chosen with more dis- crimination. At one time there was a talk of a new morning paper for the Rand, and I was asked to suggest a name. I said, "Call it the 'Main Reef Leader' J>1 (subdued laughter) ; then added, "And let its aim be sound mining rather than un- sound politics." Though the scheme fell through I was dead right about the policy. The Rand's business was mining, not politics. The mines were run extravagantly. To put these on an economic basis, and to do their duty by the shareholders, was quite enough work for those in control. In- *The name of one of the gold reefs. 46 THE SHADOW-SHOW stead of doing this, those people put their brains and energy into abortive political agitation; and mining reforms, which should have been initiated between 1893 and 1897, were actually not put in force till ten years later. The Rand capitalists ought to have let politics alone. If they felt they had grievances, there was a man like the late W. Y. Campbell, a big red-bearded Scotsman, the best the Rand ever knew, to whom their case might have been handed. In his fingers the threads of Uitlander agitation should have centred. Some well- equipped mediator of this sort might have done something with the Pretoria Government; the course adopted, that of browbeating, was certain of failure. But the capitalists had no grievances. The mining law of the Transvaal favoured them more than did that of any English Colony, there was no direct taxation, three railways were built to Johannesburg from the coast; finally, from 1894 onwards, the public in Europe bought scrip almost as fast as it could be printed. The capitalists wallowed in money. Nor had the rank and file of the Uitlanders grievances. There was employment for all who would work. Salaries were enormous; white miners got over-l a day, for a poor day's work, and all other pay was in proportion. We were told in the columns of the capitalist IN SOUTH AFRICA 47 press, or by speakers from the platforms of the National Union, that the Boer Government was corrupt, that Kruger had gone back on his promise to give us the franchise, that the sight of thousands of Britons without a vote was de- grading. All true, no doubt. But what really concerned those thousands of Britons, at that time, was the state of the share market ; so long as that was booming, their political aspirations were dead. What on earth did I, for example, want with a vote 1 ? My only direct tax was a poll tax of 1 a year. I was earning good money, supple- mented by occasional share deals. I was perfectly content. What if the Boer Government was corrupt? Did I not see corruption in Johannes- burg, among people who declared themselves more civilized than the Boers'? And as to a vote well, if that entailed taking the oath of allegiance to the Transvaal, ceasing to be a British subject, I saw no possible reason for such step. That insoluble question of the suzerainty was the root of the trouble. People argued, Britain being suzerain over the Transvaal, that British subjects were entitled to the Transvaal franchise, while retaining full British status. On the other hand, President Kruger, I think with better rea- son, argued: "If these people, who in a year or two will outnumber us, are to have the vote, and if they remain British in sentiment, their first 48 THE SHADOW-SHOW action will be to vote the Transvaal into a British Colony. This doesn't strike me as likely to benefit us Boers; I shall keep them from voting as long as I have the power." It was no use appealing to the wording of the document which defined the suzerainty. This was vague, and had made no provision for so unfore- seen a position. Each side could only put its own' interpretation, but, as I have said, I thought the President's the more logical. "Briton or Boer!" When I first went to the Transvaal, racial feeling was dying out. For ends that were mainly selfish, the capitalists re- vived it, and their newspapers fed the flames for years. Jameson completed the schism although, be it remembered, against the instructions of the Rand leaders when he crossed the border with his police. After the Raid, war was probably un- avoidable; to that extent I absolve the British party. But the beginning of the agitation (ex- cepting that of a few enthusiasts of the Fitzpat- rick type) was discreditable to us. I had no great respect for Paul Kruger. Some of his acts didn't seem to square with his pro- fessions of religion, which, outwardly, were very marked. I had to see him once, arriving at his house, by appointment, at 5.30 in the morning, while it was yet dark. Passing two policemen on the stoep, I entered the sitting-room, and found IN SOUTH AFRICA 49 the family at devotions. Some one was playing a harmonium, and heavy, tuneless voices were dron- ing out a psalm. We knelt, while the President read long prayers; after which the little servant girl handed round coffee, and the work of the day commenced. I am not prepared to say that Kruger was in- sincere ; it is rather an expression of opinion. His government, and many of his agents were cor- rupt; but the man is dead, and I would rather think well of him. He was a great man and a true patriot. \ I first saw Cecil Rhodes in 1894. He rarely came to the Transvaal. One night, however, he dined at the Rand Club, and for half an hour I never took my eyes off his face, repeating to my- self, over and over again: "That's the profile of Julius Csesar." He had a face of extraordinary power, and the immense nose so often found in men of that type. Some years later, before leaving London to report on Rhodesia for a small syndicate of which he was a member, I called on Rhodes at the Bur- lington Hotel. A big map of Africa lay on the, table; as he discussed some of his schemes, he ruled it off in pencil lines, casually, as one of lesser calibre laying out a garden. The last time I saw him was at Groot Schuur, a few weeks before the war. I remembered him 50 t THE SHADOW-SHOW saying, in that falsetto he rose to when excited, "Oom Paul won't fight. He'll back down." After lunch we sat outside and listened to the band of some up-country mission station, come to earn his approval; but I doubt if he knew one note from another. Even after death the Colus- sus was not to follow in the ways of lesser men. As the train, bearing his remains, rushed north to the Matoppo Hills, the shell burst open. His great spirit was passing uneasily to its rest. During these years, drawn there as by a mag- net, I often found myself back in Natal, where, for the time being, the more strenuous life of the Transvaal was forgotten. Natal is a country with a small white popula- tion of farmers, while for every white there are ten natives, of Zulu extraction. In the Zulu War of 1879 these natives mostly remained loyal, and in the old days many were glad to place their kraals on the farms and to work for about 8s. a month. The children often became house ser- vants, and between the natives and the whites, all of whom spoke Zulu fluently, was much good feeling. In more recent years, owing to the Trans- vaal's demand for labour, wages have risen to three or four times the old figure, while the qual- ity of service is not what it was. Many of the younger men come back dissatisfied from the Rand, where they have received big wages, ac- IN SOUTH AFRICA 51 quired dissolute habits, and learned to think and speak disrespectfully of the whites. More and more, too, the natives are coming in contact with the mission stations. A mission-station Kaffir is no use to any one, for he has acquired the vices of the white man without his virtues. In return for a smattering of education and Christianity, he is liable to become conceited, insolent, and se- cretly disloyal. He has learned that all men are equal in the sight of God, without the useful corollary that they are not equal in the sight of men and that the world conforms to the lat- ter usage. Missionaries, both white and black, liquor-sellers, and all men who lower in the native mind the respect due to the dominant race, may be laying up for us a future store of trouble in Africa. Natal is a fertile country, with a beautiful climate, yet there are great drawbacks to agri- culture. Droughts or locusts can ruin a crop, and animals are susceptible to strange diseases. I have seen my friends lose their horses, cattle, and poultry more than once. But the balance remains on the right side. Life is easy there, the farmer's condition is comfortable, if not affluent, and the colonists get more pleasure out of life than most; a Natal country tennis party in the old days, followed by supper and a dance, con- 52 THE SHADOW-SHOW tinued often for a second day, was as good amuse- ment as I remember. Passing to and fro through Pietermaritzburg, 1 used to put up at the Horse Shoe Hotel, where there was a first-rate billiard-room. One day, noticing a new marker, I asked him to play, and he flattened me out badly. I said, "You play a fairish game. What's your name 1 ?" "It's Stev- enson." Since then he has stood in the great Roberts's shoes as world's champion of English billiards. Talking of Roberts, he one night gave an exhibition at the Rand Club, and when it was over, stayed on with me alone talking. About 2 a.m., Roberts said, "I'll show you a shot no one else in the world can do." It was a cannon off either nine or eleven cushions, and required a terrific hit. He did it. Then I took the cue, gave a tremendous smash, and achieved ! I put my hand familiarly on his shoulder, saying, "Rob- erts, you and I are the only people in the world who can do that shot." It broke him up alto- gether. I don't know if he wept, but I must have helped him to his cab. John Roberts in his prime was wonderful; his stately presence and finely fitting clothes, added to his iron nerve, and his then unique knowledge of billiards, was a combination worth going far to see. Natal is a country neither rich nor important, but has for me an extraordinary charm. A win- IN SOUTH AFRICA 53 ter evening on the uplands, the sun low on the horizon, a slight chill in the air, as of the coming night, a patch of rich bush not far distant, a native kraal, from which the smoke rises lazily, a Kaffir maiden perched high above the mabele to frighten birds from the ripening grain, and, borne on the clear air, the plaintive song of the natives bring- ing home their cattle such a picture is among my treasured memories. In the heart of Natal, just off the Grey town road, there is an old farmhouse, where at different times have been spent the happiest days of my life. The giant gum-trees which surround it were planted more than fifty years ago by one of the earliest colonists. This charming old man, Dr. Charles Bird Boast, was the first of my friends to die. . In dying he faced, as a thinker, a deep, unknown sea, yet when he knew, as a physician, that his hour was come, he called his family round his bed and passed out conscious and smiling, and I was proud of my old friend's manner of death. He went in 1897; but the little brook still mur- murs under the gum-trees and the doves are coo- ing in the branches. When the longing for Africa comes on me I leave the utmost ends of the earth for that old farmhouse on the Grey town road. Towards the end of 1894, when I reached the Rand from the Low Country, the great "boom" was just beginning. It lasted a year, and has 54 THE SHADOW-SHOW become historic. Before its height, on a realized profit of modest dimensions, I visited Europe. How well I remember, typifying this boom year, that big crowd on the steps of the Paris Bourse. Above the roar, stentorian voices shouted, "Mos- samedes ! Mossamedes, a soixante quinze !" Here were shares of a district a thousand miles from the Rand, where no gold existed, and I knew then that the French investor was doomed. If he, why not others'? That night, I wrote to a friend on the Rand, "Sell everything you hold. The world is gone mad." When my letter arrived, he told me afterwards, he could have turned the scale at 60,000. He hesitated, and was lost. Next year he cleared out with only 17,000. When I got back, in October, '95, the "boom" was breaking. Johannesburg was still rolling in money, and people were intoxicated with success; but there was an undercurrent of uneasiness about, and the share market was nervous. Clearly some- thing was in the wind. CHAPTER III THE TORTOISE'S HEAD ON an evening in early December, I sat at dinner in the Rand Club. I was alone, at my favourite corner table; sipping a chocolate ice, I mused pleasantly over my affairs. One of my friends came in and sat by me. He said, "I'm going to tell you something, and you must swear to keep it secret." "Oh, all right." "Well, there's going to be a revolution in a few weeks. I don't know all the details; but it's to get us the franchise. Rhodes is behind it, and Jameson will come in with the Chartered police to put it down. But the first thing is to capture the arsenal at Pretoria. They're getting five hun- dred picked men to volunteer for this; I've joined, and they asked me to get you. Of course, it'll be dangerous work." I seemed to swallow something. I heard my voice saying, "Oh yes, I'll join," and I ordered another ice. Promising to give details as they came to him, my friend went off. I sat on quietly. But how hot it was ! . . . To 55 56 THE SHADOW-SHOW take the arsenal ! Why, the place simply bristled Of course, if II be dangerous -work! In a flash I realized that I wanted no vote, that it was shameful to rob the Boers of their country. But there I was pledged. One of five hun- dred picked men ! Passionate lover of peace as I then knew myself, I could do nothing. Then I thought of my shares that were being carried on the London market. I went back to my rooms and put my selling orders into code. For the last few years of his life Cecil Rhodes was the biggest man in the world, as I believe Porfirio Diaz of Mexico to have been for some years after Rhodes's death. He had not the great- est intellect; but a strong brain, a fixed purpose, a gigantic personality, unrivalled achievement, and immense prestige set him on the pinnacle. He was Premier of the Cape, Life Governor of De Beers, and Dictator of Rhodesia a great stretch of territory he had added to the Empire. He was a millionaire by his holdings in the dia- mond and gold mines. In the latter his power was not openly exercised; but, from the capital- ists downward, he was looked up to by all as the leader. He was the uncrowned king of South Africa. Rhodes's greatest scheme, unification of South Africa under the British flag, still remained to THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 57 accomplish. But he suffered from a weak heart; he knew his years were numbered, and tried to force things which could not be forced. As a lever in his scheme, he seized on the political agitation in the Transvaal. The large English community there was demanding the franchise. But as these people promised soon to outnumber the Boers, and made no secret of their British sympathies, and as the wording of the suzerainty document was vague, one can at least understand President Kruger's action in refus- ing it. Towards the end of 1895 th e Uitlander leaders planned a revolution. They worked in collusion with Rhodes; his brother joined their inner com- mittee, his money and influence were behind them. The scheme as outlined was this: On a given day five hundred picked men would seize the arsenal at Pretoria, capture the President and his advisers, and paralyse the Government. Si- multaneously the English along the Rand would rise and proclaim a revolution. The Adminis- trator of Rhodesia, Dr. Jameson, would be sta- tioned on the frontier with the Chartered com- pany's regiment of police, and being appealed to by the Uitlanders, would come in to establish law and order. A formal letter was drafted and 58 THE SHADOW-SHOW sent him, and it remained only to fix the day. No one seemed to anticipate failure. Beyond this stage the plans of the inner circle were not clear. Some were for annexing the country to the Empire, others declared in favour of retaining the Republic and its flag. There was a deadlock. On Christmas morning, as I went into the club, Charles Leonard and F. H. Hamilton came out and drove to Park Station. They were leaving for Cape Town, to lay the flag question before Rhodes. That some member, or members, of the British Government knew unofficially of the plot, I be- lieve; but that Rhodes told the High Commis- sioner what was going on is unlikely if he did, he garbled the facts. It is also doubtful if Rhodes was sincere toward the inner circle. It is said that he assured them the British Govern- ment knew, and would act in sympathy when the time came. Either Rhodes lied, or they, as we were told the High Commissioner would at once come up and recognize the revolution, and a member of the inner circle swore to me that, so far as he knew, the British Government was going to help us. As to the ethics of such action on England's part, or its inherent probability, we didn't bother our heads. Rhodes was all-power- ful; if he said the thing would be, it would be. To me it mattered not who was, or was not, THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 59 behind the plot. A small pawn in the game, I was in because my club friends were in. I had no politics. I wanted no franchise. I failed to see why any Britisher did. What really worried me was the taking of that arsenal ! As December waned, the excitement in Johan- nesburg became intense. We knew Jameson and his police were waiting, encamped on the border, and we expected hourly to hear that the day had been fixed. But the Boers were getting suspicious. Too many people were in the secret. The Presi- dent got to know something; in a speech at Mid- delburg he compared the Uitlander agitation with the tortoise which is only scotched when it puts out its head. The next we heard was that, Pretoria being on the alert, it had been decided to drop the attempt on the arsenal, and some of us took the disap- pointment wonderfully well. Then, at Christ- mas, the trouble over the flag question leaked out. Immediately the discovery followed that enough guns and ammunition could not be got through in time. This altered everything, and the rising was postponed for three weeks; but that there had been postponement was known only to the leaders. The guns were coming through from Kimber- ley, hidden in trucks of coke. Only 2,300 Lee- 60 THE SHADOW-SHOW Metfords, three Maxims, and a small quantity of ammunition had arrived, and that was all that ever got in. And then, just at the end of the year, as tension was relaxing, a rumour spread like wild-fire. Jameson had crossed the border ! He had cut the wires; he had taken the bit in his teeth, and was galloping to the Rand ! When postponement was decided on, three messengers were sent to Jameson post-haste. One went round by De Aar, another rode direct to Maf eking, and the third by a route I have for- gotten possibly through Lichtenburg. One, at least, of these reached him, to receive in reply the words, "They may send me fifty messen- gers, but I'm coming." In those days, with a little luck, I might have perhaps changed the face of history. A week before Jameson started, there went to Mafeking at my expense an ex-officer of the British Army, with instructions to report on the position. He carried a private code, dealing ostensibly with mining affairs. Duly reaching Mafeking, he rode out to Jameson's camp at Pitsani, spent the whole of that Sunday there, and returned to Mafeking at sundown. But where was his prescience? Where his mili- tary instinct 1 ? Within an hour of his leaving to THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 61 return to Mafeking the whole of Jameson's regi- ment had broken camp and crossed the border. Next morning I got a wire which, de-coded, read : "Jameson is here with seven hundred men and eight Maxims. He will not move for a few days." As a matter of fact, he had less than five hundred men, and had moved the night before! If any man had grasped the position that Sun- day, and had actually seen the start, how differ- ent might things have been. I got his wire at eleven on Monday morning. Had this described the true state of things I should at once have handed it to the inner circle, who had no infor- mation till five in the evening. With that six hours in hand, and a peremptory message sent out to Jameson from Rhodes and the High Commis- sioner, it is conceivable he might have turned back. As it was, the inner circle was staggered, and there was consternation in high places. Jame- son's action had upset everything; their schemes, Rhodes's schemes, were ruined. What British Government, what High Commissioner would support action of this sort? There were no guns to speak of, and little ammunition. The Boers, warned in time, were arming to the teeth. Their commandos already converged on the Mafeking road. At the club, that first night, the air was electric. 62 THE SHADOW-SHOW The leaders were not there, and no one seemed to know just what was happening; but it was taken for granted that Jameson would ride through the streets in a day or two, and at the thought of a successful revolution, of the final overthrow of Krugerism, we shouted so that the rafters rang. Quite a number of members were drunk. Patriotic songs were sung in unison, and as this or that man came in he received an ovation. In a moment of exaltation, a gigantic Afrikander jumped on the bar. Piled upon it were immense numbers of glasses. With his powerful legs he swept these to destruction, and stood poised up there, the only living thing. Flushed with in- tense excitement, he had shattered some hundreds of tumblers. Rising early next morning, I dressed deliber- ately as for a revolution. I wore my oldest suit, leggings, and my golfing boots, but discarded trousers for riding breeches, as looking a thought manlier; then I pressed a wide-brimmed hat on my head and made for the streets. My appear- ance at once impressed some one in authority, whom, I cannot now remember. Taking me to Heygate's stables, he pulled aside a heap of straw, disclosing a number of rifles. These he instructed me to carry, secretly, to a rendezvous in Doornfontein, and disappeared. I proceeded to commandeer a Cape Boy driving THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 63 a wagon and four mules. Loading the wagon with rifles, which we again covered with straw, I mounted beside him. As we trotted down Com- missioner Street, several of the police looked sus- picious, but in the general excitement no one challenged. I reached Doornfontein safely, and handed over my cargo. That afternoon there was no need for further secrecy. The Government had withdrawn the police into the fort, and we were free to act. The inner circle had not been idle. The Reform Com- mittee was in being, a manifesto had been issued, volunteers were pouring in, and military prepara- tions were in full swing. Our regiment, nucleus of that "five hundred picked men," assembled in Government Square at 5 p.m. It was the Old Guard of Johannes- burg, the aristocracy of the Rand ! Many of its members belonged to the club, some drove their carriages, and there were men in its ranks who played poker with a 2 "ante." . Nor did we stand there mere revolutionary riff-raff. It was already known among us that some generous source behind the Reform Committee was financ- ing this rising, and that we were to receive each l a day for our services. As the sun was setting, our captain rode down the lines on a white horse. We cheered him. He rose in his stirrups and made a speech; we 64 THE SHADOW-SHOW cheered again. Then, following blindly and sing- ing, we marched out of the square and up Hos- pital Hill, into the night. We marched on to the ridge above the town, and were dismissed. We were there, the place of honour, to guard the reservoir, and in the probable line of attack. It was late, and most found shel- ter and sleep within the walls of the unfinished Nazareth Home. That night, in the brilliant moonlight, the old year died. Lying on the ground, I took mid- night by my watch, and wondered what the New Year would bring forth. At the dawn a bugle call summoned us. Turning out, we found our camp was increased, Cornish miners and other sturdy volunteers having been sent up during the night. Arms were being distributed and maga- zines filled; in the grey light unaccustomed hands fingered triggers and two rifles went off. An un- easy feeling was generated, but there were no casualties. Two Maxims were being placed in position; these we were set to build round with rocks. In the afternoon the Nazareth Home was trenched. Blankets, stores, and food were pouring in, and our regimental cooks began to serve up fairish meals. Every now and then some smartly dressed young fellow on a polo pony would gallop up, give instructions to our officers, and dash off THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 65 again; these were staff officers from headquarters. I listened to two Cornish miners handling their Lee-Metfords. "What's this 1 ?" said one, point- ing to the magazine. "That's for sandwiches." That day, too, one of the staff officers, halted in his gallop by a bank clerk disguised as a sentry, and told to "Stand, and give the counterfoil!" was greatly shocked. At sunset a bugle called us out to drill, and sentries were placed a mile out. The next night was the most thrilling in my life. At dusk, with four others, I went out on all-night sentry-go. We were placed beside a small wood on the ridge above the town, some half a mile from the police fort. It was pitch dark, raining heavily, and while two patrolled the wood-side the others lay soaking under such shel- ter as waterproofs gave. Suddenly we started up. From the police fort two signal balls of coloured fire had been thrown into the air; they were continued, with intervals, for an hour. The enemy was stirring. This was about ten o'clock. Quiet fell again. The rain was heavier than ever; as the time passed we were uneasily alert, and kept peering into the wood. Then from Johannesburg came two rumbling explosions. We looked at one another, and some one said, "The railway's been blown up." The 66 THE SHADOW-SHOW Staats Artillerie was being rushed through to Krugersdorp. We were painfully excited. We knew Jameson was not far off and that the Boers were closing in on him. By two o'clock the rain had nearly ceased and the air was clearer. At half-past two, from somewhere on the West Rand, came a long, low growl. Then another, and another! From that distance it was just the growl of a dog. It was Jameson's Maxims. They were on him al- ready ! Five or six times before the dawn there were spurts from the Maxims, and then long, silent intervals. All the time we patrolled up and down and kept peering into the wood. Day broke to a renewed burst of firing. The rain had stopped, but we were drenched to the skin. A feeling of impending calamity was on us ; I was disillusioned and depressed; another mem- ber of the patrol, in ecstasy of abandonment, dragged behind him a mud-covered blanket. So, marching two and two behind our corporal, we returned to the camp. Six hours later I awoke, refreshed. I looked round surprised, for Nazareth Home was empty; there was no one in sight. Taking up my rifle, I went outside, and there, lining the trenches to overflow, lay the Old Guard. "What's the matter 1 ?" I cried. 67 Some one raised his arm and pointed; coming up Bezuidenhout's Valley was a cloud of dust. "It's the Boers," said several, and I, not know- ing how Boers approached their foes, thought, "It's come at last." But it was not the Boers. Some Kaffirs were driving a herd of cattle up the valley; as the leading animals showed through the dust, the trenches disgorged. There had been distant firing all morning, and we felt things were going wrong. A dozen of us roamed disconsolately over the veld, and about lunch- time were outside E. P. Rathbone's house. He was State mining inspector then; officially an enemy. But what an enemy! We were sum- moned indoors, and, in less time than I can write the words, were sitting down to a superb round of beef, with two vegetables. Rathbone and his wife served us themselves; and what with the good food and the cheerful talk, our spirits went up with a bound. I have never forgotten that kindly act. Was it not the chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney who ten- dered a dying soldier his cup of water"? To us, guardians of Johannesburg's reservoir, such an offering had lacked in subtlety. But this stout joint, to men downhearted ! It was of the very essence of fitness. Before night fell Jameson and his little army 68 THE SHADOW-SHOW had capitulated at Doornkop. Next day Cronje and his Boers marched them to Pretoria. Far off, towards the line of march, rode parties of mounted men, and we could see what some one called the "heliotrope" flashing the news from hill to hill. In those few days we only knew dimly what was happening. But the air was full of wildest rumours. Jameson and his officers had been shot ! The High Commissioner was on his way in a special train! Britain was enforcing the suzer- ainty! War had been declared! Our Sergeant- Major I will call him Mclntosh brother of a then famous prima donna, announced that two hundred and fifty men, with led horses, had ar- rived from Natal, and were camped at the City and Suburban mine. I was fed up with this sort of thing. I said : "I'll bet you a pound that's not true." "Done!" I was "done!" The story was a lie, like the rest ; but to this day I have not seen the colour of his money. A fact of psychologic interest at this strange time was the curse of militarism which now de- scended. Jameson had been for days in Pretoria gaol, Boer commandos surrounded the Rand, the Staats Artillerie waited the word to blow us to pieces, we knew by this time our poverty in arms THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 69 and ammunition ; yet, in spite of this, our military leaders, carried away by brief power and author- ity, busily built up a fabric of red tape. Promo- tions were made, new drills were put into force, a poor brute was put on to practise bugle calls, and the smart-looking men on polo ponies gal- loped faster than ever. One morning the bugle summoned us out; a mounted officer rode down the line and held up an official paper. "Men," he shouted, 'Vou will be glad to know that Captain Goddard has been promoted major." (Cheers.) "Sergeant-Major Mclntosh has been promoted to regimental sergeant-major." (Some cheers, and a loud voice from the ranks, "Why don't you give me that pound*") There were other promotions which I cannot recall. After the officers had left, the Old Guard still stood to "attention." I stepped from the ranks. I said, "I have been asked to present the regi- mental medal for bad drill." All eyes instinc- tively turned to G. C. Fitzpatrick. on whose breast, with a few gracious words, I pinned the tinsel. Then a supreme moment came to me. The Old Guard now lacked a sergeant-major. A deputation begged that I would accept the post. I said, "Gentlemen, I thank you. But it can- not be. I went into this thing a private, and a 70 THE SHADOW-SHOW private I intend to remain." As a matter of fact, I saw where we were drifting. Before my mind's eye had come a vision of sunrise on the veld, and a band of officers, including sergeant-majors, be- ing led out by the Boers for execution. So I declared for no responsibility. After Doornkop I saw the game was up. We were under arms for another week, and hard at work drilling before daybreak; but I used to walk down to the club for lunch. One day I heard Lionel Phillips and John Hays Hammond address the crowd from the Goldfields building. Another, I stood next Sir Sidney Ship- pard as he harangued from the balcony of the Rand Club. In the afternoons I drove back to camp, taking a few luxuries to eat and drink, and we sat down to a game of poker. The last phase came on or about January Qth. The Boers sent in to demand our surrender. If we refused, they were to blow Johannesburg to pieces. It was no idle threat. There was indecision in the councils of the Reform Committee ; still more among our military staff. Our position was, of course, hopeless; but there seemed to be a feeling that the rank and file under arms would refuse to lay down their rifles, and that much futile bloodshed might follow. The Old Guard w-as summoned, informally, to confer with its commander. He laid the case THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 71 before us. The gist of his argument was, "Keep your rifles. Fight it out." It was bad advice indeed, sheer madness; but the men were flattered. They saw themselves emerging bloody, but vic- torious. There were cries of "We'll follow you !" "Never give in !" "Stick to our rifles !" When the uproar had calmed, I said, "What's the use of talking about rifles? The Reform Committee will have to surrender, and the rifles will be the first things to be given up." A howl of execration met me. I saw in their eyes the glare of men waiting for a scapegoat, and knew if I said more they would tear me limb from limb. So I left the meeting and went off to lunch at the club, where I learned the true drift of things. That evening, by command of the Reform Committee, every rifle was handed over to the Boers. The camp was emptied, the Old Guard was disbanded, and I slept comfortably in my own bed. The revolution was at an end. We had been nine days under arms, and received each, some thousands of us, a cheque for 9. Among the Old Guard many presented their cheques to the Johan- nesburg Hospital. Mine I spent on myself, thus losing for all time to come my amateur status. The statement has often been made that the people of Johannesburg were cowards, who, after 72 THE SHADOW-SHOW asking Jameson to come to their aid, left him deliberately to his fate. This is just as much a lie as the rumours which gained credence in those days. From the leaders downward, the people of Johannesburg had their full share of pluck. Had there been fighting, as was expected daily, they would have put up a good fight. The Reform Committee, sitting day and night, shirked no responsibility. The leaders them- selves showed they possessed other virtues than money. They came out of the thing well. It is to those few days in council, for example, that George Farrar owes his present position. What could we have done? Jameson, by his action, had ruined everything. To rise, after he had cut the wires and crossed the border, gave us no political status. We had few arms and little ammunition. We were unmounted. Ere we had gone a mile to meet him we had been blown to pieces. The leaders stood by Jameson through it all. When the world, not knowing the truth, called them cowards and craven, they answered with never a word, taking the obloquy. There was much of the essence of farce in this revolution; but the men who ran it did their duty in the face of heavy odds, and the rank and file were ready to do theirs. We were not shirkers. THE TORTOISE'S HEAD 73 And the strangest thing of all is Jameson's career. Handed over to our Government by Kruger, he went to prison for a season. In after- years, the political mantle qf the dead Colossus fell on him. He became Premier of the Cape. There, by his magnetic charm and real ability, he did the work of a statesman. He was loved by the English, respected by the Dutch. The man who once set Africa ablaze lived to become a potent factor toward its ultimate unification. CHAPTER IV "LIFE'S Liguon" THE passion for travel, which has given my life its bent, was to tear me from my beloved South Africa. I left there in 1897. Like others, I needed to work; since the old Nigel days I have inspected more than five hundred mines. But, work or no work, I had to travel ; my brain, my whole being, never left that in doubt. Be- fore I was forty I had seen the world from end to end. After the most fatuous "mining" course on record, I left Cambridge just one of that mass of well-reared, half-educated, almost useless young men whom the British system turns out year after year. I was a gentleman, but no mining engineer. I could row, and play billiards, and drink claret cup, but was no earthly use with a theodolite. Yet mining is a fine profession; it calls for char- acter, ability, and men fit for any station, and that the social Universities practically bar the would-be mining engineer is one of the many lines along which they fail. We have need of our best in mining, brainy men, men of breeding, because 74 "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 75 the interests at stake are national for example, we control 60 per cent, of the world's output of gold. We must, too, keep in the running with the United States. The Americans lead the world in mining, and have built up a stupendous indus- try. They have great mineral resources to draw on, it is true, yet not greater than those of the British Empire. But in America the mining engi- neer is high in the social scale; he ranks with the best; he is a college man, following up with a technical education at one or other of the Uni- versities that puts our technical system to shame. He is credited with brains far above the ruck. An American mining engineer, well known to me, was offered, and declined, the post of Minister to China. Now what is the position of the mining engineer in English society? To many people he figures as a superior mechanic; to others he is the superintendent of a coalpit ; to women, who are extraordinarily vague in these things, he is a sort of stoker, and to a mother in society, even where no butler might be kept, a mining engineer as a parti would be unthinkable. I want to see these things altered. Some of our best and brainiest are needed in mining, be- cause its value to the nation increases each year. Your great engineer of the future will mean more to the state than any bishop. 76 THE SHADOW-SHOW I developed a great love of gold-mining. On the Rand, in 1893, I spent my Saturday after- noons walking along the deep levels, and gauged their value. I bought block after block, in my mind's eye, while Alfred Beit bought them for cash and made his millions. In later years, when the Rand went deep-level mad, I was first to point out that these mines were poorer than the shallower mines, and the finance of many of them unsound. I was laughed at, then reviled. But I knew my facts, and time proved me only too right. In any mining question, instinct guided me at once to the money aspect. Would it pay? I saw clever men absorbed in side issues in geol- ogy, in machinery, in electric schemes things of secondary importance ; for me, if a mine was poor, if it even looked shaky, all the geology of Lyell, all the electric erudition of Siemens and Halske, were as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Specializing in my own branch in mine valu- ation I gave up the executive side; not through dislike, but because I wanted freedom to travel. I valued mines, I wrote reports, but my physical labours, except in sampling work, were at an end. I have often regretted this; not deeply, but a little wistfully. It is pleasant to visit a mine, to spend some weeks over a valuation, and then to be off elsewhere ; yet deep down in me is the idea that the man who sticks to one mine, who builds "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 77 it up from a mere prospect into a great organiza- tion, has chosen the better part. Such a man builds up his character with his mine; he creates, he gives to the world more than he takes. Re- tiring at length, a master craftsman, he looks back upon a work begun, succeeding, carried through upon an existence holding all the elements of thoroughness. I feel I was born to manage a great mine. The qualities were there financial, executive, admin- istrative though I did not use them. With na- tives, too, I could do anything. I have known for years that the greatest problem of the Rand lies in the technical not the mental education of the Kaffir. Given a mine to run, I had carried this education of black muscles some stages for- ward a decade ago. But these are vain imaginings; I have never run a gold-mine, and now I never shall. Yet those ideal assay plans! Those ore-reserves "probable," and "on three sides," and near the million mark! Those clean, narrow stopes, through which I should have passed by day, and often, too, by night! Those wonderful analyses of labour and of expenditure ! things that once flowered as daydreams, that seethed in my brain as actualities, are now withered and nearly dead. Still, I can value a mine, clarify facts into small 78 THE SHADOW-SHOW compass, and write a report. These, in their way, are proper things, and I must not complain. For fifteen years I was more or less behind the scenes in metal-mining. I knew the managers on every field and the leading engineers in every cen- tre. I knew just how mines were developing all over the world how this one was improving, this declining, and that other being forced for stock- jobbing. My knowledge of the personnel of the mining world was unique. I knew that one man's nod meant everything to me, and another's twenty-page report nothing at all. I carry in my head a list of technical blackguards that is pe- culiarly replete, and in the streets of San Fran- cisco it was given me to cut an archplotter of these gentry dead. As to the speculative side of mining a differ- ent sphere the more I got to know, the less I gambled. I found out early that the market value of a mine need have no relation to the intrinsic; that nearly all mines are over-valued, and that bargains are few and far between. Not that I disapprove of speculation; far from it, but one wants better value for money than is seen in the mining list. Beware the mine that is puffed. Beware the type of director who takes the cream off early information. Mines are harmless things in themselves, but the men who control them are rarely harmless. How needful it is that the men "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 79 who work them shall be above suspicion ! Mining shares are bought, as a rule, on sentiment on the swing of the pendulum. One day sentiment is good, and a hundred Rand shares go up. Senti- ment continues good, and they go up further. After a time there is a burst of buying, almost a "boom," and yet there has been no change what- ever in intrinsic values. The public gambles in this way because it must. It is in the nature of things. They take immense risks, and rarely stand to win; but if they choose so to act, who is to interfere 1 ? I once thought it my mission to educate the public about mines. I got over that, even as I got over trying to edu- cate my friends. A mining engineer should not give casual advice. Let things go well, and the recipients fawn upon him; but let the pendulum swing, and vituperation is not the word. He meant well ; but he stood to gain nothing and to lose a lot. Believe me, it is a fool's game. Advice given free is little valued. I was closeted once with a merchant in Glasgow. He said, "You wrote a report on West Australian mines for my friend, which I saw, and acted on. I bought shares which to-day show a profit of 180,000. What am I to do?" I said, "It is no concern of mine, and in a matter like this you are not likely to be guided by any one ; still, I beg of you to sell out at once, and realize." 80 THE SHADOW-SHOW But, like Naaman the Syrian, the advice he got was too simple. Worse, he had gotten it for nothing, and gave it therefore little heed. He decided not to sell. The market, in course of time, fell appreciably, his great profit melted away, and presently, like that other in the Scrip- ture story, "He went out a leper as white as snow." In speculation there is a sound maxim: stick to what you know. Mines I know, and, with patience, chances come. But Rails I don't know, and some years ago stood to lose a large sum of money. I had bought shares in a line I shall call the New Central; but the better times foretold for this road had failed to eventuate. The price was sagging away; I was disgusted, yet unwilling to take definite action and cut my loss. The line was controlled, and its bonds held, by a man we will call Murphy, a great capitalist, whose knowl- edge of the psychology of share markets was re- puted profound. One day I read a cable in the press. It said something like this: "Mr. Murphy, the railroad magnate, has presented a cathedral to New Edin- burgh." I read the words again, and my hands that held the paper shook as with palsy. Holy Moses! Did I, a child, think to match myself with such "as these? But there was yet time. I cabled that day to my agents, "Sell my New "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 81 Centrals at once." They were sold, and my loss was considerable; but within a year the road was in the receiver's hands, and the shares went for an old song. I keep to mines now. I find it safer. I want a new goldfield. The baser metals fluctuate too much; gold only is stable. Except- ing the fields in Nevada, and the dredging of gravels in Siberia and Alaska, there has been no big field discovered for twenty years. I rack my brains for a locality. I travel to and fro unceas- ingly. I watch for the slightest sign. I pray that a great goldfield lies in the womb of the near future. As I sought out the world's beauties, so I have searched for her best peoples. The nations, first and last, have passed before me. They are like men good, bad, indifferent to be judged, too, like men, with tolerance, for environment is the controlling factor. The peoples to whom I find myself closest the virile and intelligent among the nations are the Americans, the Scandinavians, the Chinese, and, if we may call them a nation, the Jews. With these races I find myself in sympathy, from them I can learn; I can respect them in brief, they are my affinities. I would we had the vitality, the wit, of the average American. The Americans come first 82 THE SHADOW-SHOW with me. They must come first; they are largely of our blood. Foolish old George III, whom chance made a king, and Nature endowed with the stubbornness of a mule, sundered us. Inde- pendence Day, the revolt of common sense against autocracy, should be a festival for all men of British race. The American is changing. Other strains begin to course in his blood, and environ- ment, that potent factor, is creating a new type. The climate chisels those clear-cut Indian profiles that are so attractive, even as it causes the nasal twang that is not. The strong points of the American his energy, his big ideas, his mastery of material problems are known to all the world. Those who will not acknowledge his supremacy in these are distorted in vision or jealous. In my own profession I find a visit to the States quickens me. I feel new thoughts at work, big brains shaping big schemes, energy all around me. My brain catches something of this, and responds. These men make me think, and I am grateful. Where money is concerned, the average Ameri- can's standard is held to be lax. Yet who are we to judge? Beside other men, is his sin more than a matter of degree*? We have our own under- world, where army contracts are given out, where municipal jobbery exists, where our retired, dis- tinguished men become City parasites, and where "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 83 titles are flagrantly bought and sold. The Ameri- can's sin (though I do not extenuate it) is largely the product of environment: for in this great, new, rich land, where fortunes are to be had for the grasping, and where the able men, the leaders, are still amassing, public opinion is yet in flux. In time, they will turn from private to national affairs, public opinion will crystallize, and the States settle down to such a stable moral level as our frail human nature permits. It is not all money-making with the Ameri- can. Some years ago a funeral passed under the flamboyants and tamarinds at Bangkok, and a grave received one Strobel, legal adviser to the King. Chulalongkorn, that intelligent monarch, attended for the first time a Christian burial, and said these words to those there assembled: "This man was a foreigner, an American, yet he was my trusted friend, and the best adviser Siam ever had. I deeply mourn his loss." The American, to sum him up, is crudely emotional, weak in his handling of women, and sets dollar-making as the goal of life; he is men- tally alert, can concentrate on and succeed in any path of life, he is a compeller of nature, above all men a doer of things, humorous, and sound at heart. I am for the Americans first, last, and all the time. The Scandinavians, that is to say Danes, Nor- 84 THE SHADOW-SHOW wegians, Swedes, and Finns, are the most ad- vanced peoples of the world. They belong to what we call the "Minor Powers," but in the value they extract from life are altogether ahead of British and Americans. Scandinavians are, without exception, soundly educated. Tending to things of the mind, they produce artists, scientists, and men distinguished in life, out of all proportion to their numbers. This high note of intelligence is reflected in the faces of their women, adding quite markedly (if I except the Finns) to their sexual attractions. These people have solved problems we have not begun to solve. Life is evener with them ; money and happiness more divided than among us. There is still the struggle for wealth; but there are many who do not participate, who, with mod- erate, even small possessions, are well balanced and contented, drawing from education and their own minds a satisfaction with life which we often lack. The problem of poverty, easier no doubt for small States than for great, has been solved, and the old are well cared for. The drink curse, much less rampant than with us, has been taken in hand. In the Swedish city of Gottenburg a man cannot get drunk; but, by way of compen- sation, for the payment of one penny can spend his evening in Tradgardsforenigen. This garden, "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 85 on a summer's night, is perhaps the loveliest spot in Europe. It is full of fine old trees and thou- sands of flowers; there is a good restaurant, and a first-rate military band: if the weather is cold or wet, the concert is held under cover. Thus Gottenburg treats its citizens, and a more lovely garden or a more contented crowd I have rarely seen. Denmark has solved the problem of agriculture and stock-rearing, or, more correctly, the problem of the peasant proprietor. The thriftless, unedu- cated Briton of the same social grade, handi- capped no doubt by the land laws, is many years behind the Dane in this great branch of progress. The Swedes are a scientific people; they are advanced in the application of chemistry, and in the use of the telephone lead the world. A Swede is one of the greatest living physicists. They are blessed with a fair land. Stockholm, in summer, is the most charming city in all Europe, and the steamers that sail out nightly for the Gulf of Finland or the island of Gotland traverse a sound of surpassing beauty. The Swede is a German with a Frenchman's polish. He is the least stable of the Scandina- vians, and is held to be rather insincere. The Swedish woman is a fine creature; together with the Austrian, I place her first of her sex. The Norwegian, living by rock-girt, stormy 86 THE SHADOW-SHOW coast or lonely fjord, is a gloomy man. The sound of the waves beating in winter has echoed in a hundred generations of Norwegian brains; how shall he then be else? Note in his capital, Christiania, the psychologic gloom the effect on architecture of his predominating mood; the pal- ace, the parliament, the national theatre are som- bre in the extreme. Christiania is a city in a minor key. Yet, beneath his gloom, the Norwegian is a thinker, an intellectuel. This cold Northerner is fired by imagination, his soul finds expression in art, and that Ibsen, Bjornson, Grieg, foremost in the art of their day, should have been born, and lived, at one and the same time in this small com- munity is a fact of profound interest. A people less thoughtful than these, at the time of sever- ance from Sweden, might have declared for a re- public. They pondered the matter; they declared for a constitutional king, and this small people's action against the wave of republicanism is again matter for serious thought. The sad note in the Norwegian is undoubted; yet it is the sadness of the sea, not of despair. Statistics show that he takes his own life one-third as often as the more joyous Swede, and one-fourth as often as that deep questioner of life, the "melancholy Dane." The Finn I sometimes think of as the most Christlike of men. Longsuffering, his ideals "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 87 stifled by his ethical inferiors, his ugly face seems stamped with sadness. Those who know, while admitting his virtues, point to a dourness in him, to a political stubbornness, which Russia met with tolerance, and to his bitter jealousy of the many and more enlightened Swedes who live in his land. Granted. Yet I know the Finns to be mild, kind, simple-natured. A Finn has given me his berth on a crowded steamer, railway guards have refused my tips, and to others of the race I owe many a kindly act. One does not forget these things. The forests, with their clearings, and the lakes of Finland are not the least among the pleasant stretches of Scandinavia; they shel- ter a people from whom we have much to learn. Now, here should have stood the German. A man cannot forget the joy of his youth; and the joy of mine, over several years, lay in South Ger- many. Here were spacious and seemly cities; pleasant country roads, where hung unmolested in summer time apples and plums and peaches; deep forests, where you walked for solitude; riv- ers banked by mediaeval castles, and by vineyards yielding incomparable wine; and over all was the glamour of music. I could not but feel for the Germans what I felt for Germany. I was wrong. These gifted, diligent, disci- plined people were already organising a dreadful 88 THE SHADOW-SHOW sin; and a time was coming which would prove them traitors to our human race. But let the past bury its dead. We, Britons and Americans, have got to give the Germans an- other chance. Common sense demands we should trade with them; fair play demands they should have a hearing, and justice, and that we bear our- selves even with sympathy where it is possible. I, the agnostic, tell you that. In the Bible, five righteous men were able to save Sodom and Go- morrah; and there are more than five in Ger- many. I do not say we shall succeed. But we may sometimes. In the war my brother was mortally wounded. The Germans carried him to Bohain hospital, and there came later to my sister "quite a nice letter from the chief doctor, who seems to have been a decent sort of man." I am going to give this man and his fellows a chance for my brother's memory. The German, in the years to come, may do one of two things. He may harden his heart, and seek revenge. To do this, he will ally himself with Russia, raising Russia from the dust, organ- ising that vast population, those limitless re- sources, and later, it may be, link up with Japan in a powerful alliance. Or he may soften his heart, and seek that respect he has lost. This is not so wild a surmise. The Law of Reaction (we "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 89 cannot formulate it, but it is a law) will keep pulling the German for decades to come. When in its grip, if we handle him wisely, we may yet see good come out of evil, and things develop to a human solution. The Jews are the most gifted among the na- tions; they are, truly, the "Chosen People." Their eminence, relative to their numbers, in art, in literature, in music, in finance and in many other paths of human effort, is quite extraordi- nary. Their women, as I have remarked in Odessa, Warsaw, and other Jewish centres, are in their youth notable for their beauty. The Jew is many-sided; his facets are those of the diamond his chosen stone. The dirtiest, the vulgarest people I have known have been Jews, and some of the most refined; the grossest ma- terialists are Jews, and the truest idealists. There is in the Jew a strong vein of poetry, running to mysticism; he is an Oriental still. The Jew is not so much intellectual, as in- nately, weirdly shrewd and gifted; he rises with lesser effort than others. His cast of countenance is rather repellent, his manners are too florid, he is rarely what the British call "good form" ; but he is goodnatured, he does not hit back, his women are extraordinarily faithful to him, and, setting aside my admitted predilection, I believe him an 90 THE SHADOW-SHOW altogether better man than his jealous Christian rivals allow. And the Chinaman ! As the Englishman is the personality among Western peoples, so us the Chinaman in the East. The personality, the char- acter of China, of these 400,000,000, is a very profound fact in the world; beside it, Japan re- cedes in the distance, and Siam, Korea, the Malay peoples, and the rest, count for nothing at all. There is only one man in the East who can stand up to the Chinaman the Hindu, and he lacks character. These two, between them, will eat up the smaller peoples and stand some day face to face; but in time even the Hindu will go down before the better man. I do not speak of war; in the unchanging East these things are left to time. The Chinaman, a giant among men, is, and may ever be, a child in war; he is so peace-loving that the "Yellow Peril," so far as he is concerned, is the crudest of conceptions. The Chinaman was civilised while we dwelt in forests. He had evolved religion, philosophy, and the highest conceptions of art and beauty while we yet stained ourselves with woad and pur- sued our quarry with a meat axe. To-day, with our blissful ignorance of China, we call the peo- ple heathen, and send a swarm of missionaries to preach doctrines that our ablest men have already discarded. These men preach twenty different "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 91 creeds, they advocate love, peace, longsuffering; but let so much as one missionary be killed or injured, and the clamour for compensation and revenge, backed always by threats of armed re- taliation, resounds through the land. The China- man, highly intelligent, sees the irony of it all. Our various creeds, jealous, narrow, preaching sal- vation through twenty channels, bewilder him. He wants none of our religion; he has told us so a hundred times. What is needed in China is the doctor, man or woman, who will live among the people, cure their ills, and make their temporal lot happier. There are, I am glad to say, many of this type already in China, and they are doing a great and noble work ; but the missionaries, after due consid- eration, I should keep out. The regeneration of China, along the lines of Japan, I do not look for in our time. By "re- generation" I mean reorganization of govern- ment; for the Chinaman, industrious, honest, peaceful as to the great majority, is not in serious need of regeneration. But good government is mainly a matter of sound finance, and the system of corruption in Chinese official circles will pre- vent anything like sound finance for a long time to come. Can the leopard change his spots'? Can the Chinese official can any Eastern official look at the money question as many of us do*? If 92 THE SHADOW-SHOW regeneration keep out the missionary, if it keep out the European, except on reciprocal terms, well and good ; but a civilized China, with armies and navies, entering into the hierarchy of the "Great Powers," is not the sort of China that appeals to me. The spirit of change makes headway in China, as it is doing in all lands, but along Chinese rather than European cleavage lines. There are think- ers who fear that China, equipped on an industrial and manufacturing basis, would swamp the world with cheap goods. I do not hold with this; but if such a condition does come, it will in any case come slowly. The Chinaman is conceited; he will try to organize and run these industries himself, and he will fail. The biggest new industry of China might be in steel, for the coal and iron de- posits in the interior are almost limitless; but the menace of cheap Chinese steel, produced with Chi- nese capital, under Chinese organization, will not happen in our time. The Chinaman as an agriculturist, a merchant, a banker, a miner, a sailor in fact, in almost any branch of life is a success. With his shrewd, humorous face, his character, and his per- sonality, one is bound to like him ; he is a general favourite. Of all Orientals he is nearest to us. He, like us, is a materialist, whose God is his belly, and where other Orientals eat to live, he "LIFE'S LIQUOR" 93 eats for the relish and delight of eating. The Chinaman is ubiquitous. Turned from Australia, Java, and the Pacific Coast, he has overrun the Sandwich Islands, Borneo, the Malay States, and all the islands of the Far East. He is slowly ab- sorbing Siam; he swarms in Rangoon, and as I rode through the Shan States, his mule trains passed me bound for the ruby mines at Mogok. He has made Hong-Kong for us, and the Malay States. Singapore is his elysium; he drives his brougham there, gambles in our mining shares, sits on our town councils, and watches his sons play football and cricket. If I add any other to my affinities, let it be the Zulus a black and a minor race, yet the physical aristocrats of humanity, and as cheerful, kindly and right living a people as one may hope to see. Mentally, the Zulu is a child; yet for many of these men labourers on farms, wagon drivers, house servants, or quiet dwellers in their own kraals I have the sincerest liking and respect. To the memory of N'Konjane ("the Swallow")' and to Shingaan, a kehle or head of a family who came every year from the thorn country to the farm, and who, after many years of faithful work, at last came not, I raise my hat. I am a favoured person with the Kaffirs, as, in- deed, with many of the coloured peoples. They 94. THE SHADOW-SHOW see that I like them, that I sympathize, and, just as whites do, they return sympathy fourfold. But why aren't we all beloved by these children? Why isn't every white man a god in their eyes? Tactfully handled, the subject races can be moulded as wax, for good. I pray my dealings with them K e never for evil. CHAPTER V WOMEN IN a market-place, on the shores of Victoria Nyanza, an animated crowd of women bought and sold; it was market-day, yet some hundreds of women wore neither bead nor fig-leaf. To one moving in good feminine society much has been revealed, a few inches of cloth, indeed, being neither here nor there; that in this instance they should be there, not here, was the only re- flection I allowed myself. These women of Central Africa, who go thus naked and unashamed, are of the Kavirondo tribe. They rub their bodies to a rich polish with oil, which under an equatorial sun gives forth a sicken- ing stench; with small skull, and retreating fore- head, they rank low in the African scale. Riding alone in the Bolivian Andes, I have passed Indian women who raised their hats an uncanny thing. I knew these women to be primi- tive, filthy, given over to drunken debauches, yet the idea that they should defer to a man was not nice. I don't want hat-raising or curtsey from the lowest woman on earth. 95 96 THE SHADOW-SHOW Not so with the black man. "In this part of West Africa," said an official, "I have seen prob- ably eighty funerals of men and only three of women. When the women become too old for the last offices, those of carrying wood and water, they are led out one dark night into the forest, and they do not return" A gruesome profession this of "leader out" to the village, loathed of incipient beldams; yet once in a life-time we may conceive him leading-out with a relish, and his wife next day going into deep mourning. Those Kavirondo of the market-place, like the women of so many coloured races, were perfect in figure. I have noticed that civilization is not kind to the female form. The well-cared-for woman of the West compresses her body into a corset, her feet into small shoes ; she does no work, she eats, instinctively, the indigestible foods. In spite of all she sometimes retains a figure, but, such is the cunning of the corsetiere^ one can never be certain. I am, I hope, loyal to the women of my tribe ; but there is this advantage in the scantily clad savage her husband knows what he is getting. There is no false hair, no false bust. Hers is no "make-up" figure. She "delivers the goods." In many of the uncivilized races, right up to the high castes of India, the young women under- take hard, manual toil, and carry heavy burdens WOMEN 97 on their heads. This, with open-air life, regular hours, no clothes to speak of. and extreme sim- plicity in food, usually leads to physical perfec- tion. Up to the age of twenty-two, these women put all others, physically, in the shade. After that, what with climate, environment, and lack of stamina, they go to pieces, and the women of civilization, buoyed up with hope and whale-bone, come into their kingdom. Evanescent though it be, there is real beauty among coloured women. The most perfect female form I have seen was a Hindu girl in Mauritius ; the loveliest face, that of an Arab girl of Tunis, who already, at the age of twenty-five, is aestheti- cally dead. There is, among the Arabs, a strain of wondrous beauty; but, as with all Mahometans, the women live in complete seclusion, or go veiled from the eyes of men. The women of India are comely when young, and often beautiful. In Kashmir, where the average standard is low, I have yet seen, here and there, the most beautiful women in Asia. These are of the bold, Romany type, finer than the hand- somest gipsy women of Hungary. I should like to match these picked Kashmiris with the hand- somest young Jewesses of Odessa. For comeliness of the negro type, there is no one to compare with the Zulu girl. South of the equator she is the native belle. Deep brown in 98 THE SHADOW-SHOW colour, her head is large, and her forehead well developed. She has perfect teeth, she is tall, and her figure is superb. She dresses in a loin cloth, or, in the hot weather, in a little arrangement of beads, but is never entirely nude. Judged on her own plane, she is strikingly handsome. Later, her tendency is towards fatness. Among the Zulu chiefs, genuine fatness in women is highly valued ; I even imagine "likely" looking girls to be fed up, with the idea of catching a chief's eye. Among the wives of Cetewayo were women who must have scaled their 300 Ibs. The almond-eyed women of Asia, judged by our standards, are not beautiful. As to figure, they rarely come up to the five-foot-five a tall man finds so attractive, and many, especially among the Japanese, are so short as to lose aesthetic sig- nificance. And yet these types of women, among whom may be classed Japanese, Burmese, Siamese, Javanese, and Malay, are quite alluring. They are fastidiously clean and dainty, they are shapely little creatures what one may call well appointed they take their calling, as women, seriously, they lay themselves out by instinct to attract, and if the male who comes along is white, so much the better. At the back of my head lies the idea that these almond-eyed ones take love lightly, refusing their caresses to no man with a purse; yet why carp at this if they are charming*? WOMEN 99 The women of China are downright plain, and because of their distorted feet have no grace of movement; but in one respect they are above rubies. They are, probably, the only race of coloured women who are not attracted by the prestige of the white man, and who, with rare ex- ceptions, will have nothing to do with him. With hooked noses Armenian rather than Jewish and mostly spectacled, the Parsee women of Bombay are the plainest in the East. But they are "advanced" women beyond all in the East, educated, and highly serious, whose interests be- gin to lie outside the home. In Europe, too, the plainest women the Finns are politically the most advanced. They may do whatever they please ; they may even be mem- bers of Parliament. Anything that takes plain races of women from their homes would seem to be encouraged; but whether this be mere coinci- dence, or something profoundly sinister, would be hard to determine. Among the white women of civilization, to whom, think you, is the palm to be given*? Here is a typical English girl good-looking, well-built, caste-ridden as any Brahmin, mentally insipid. Beside her is a young American, paler in face, more nervy and spirited a racer beside a trot- ting mare. Mentally alert and more of a com- 100 THE SHADOW-SHOW panion, she is nevertheless spoilt, and takes herself too seriously. Here is a Frenchwoman. Not so handsome as intelligent, yet exuding feminity, an artiste in sex, and the charmer of man par excellence. Here is an Austro-Hungarian and in her you find beauty and passion together. Reckless her love may be, nomadic oerhaps, but to me a most alluring creature. There is beauty in the Balkans in Servia, and little Montenegro beauty, but, withal, discre- tion. Here are dark Latin women of the South. Narrow of outlook, priestridden, splashed with powder they do not charm. For me, dark eyes flash behind lattices in vain, and the light guitar twangeth to no response. My affinity lies in the Gothic North; Aus- trians, Russians, Germans, and Scandinavians are the women of my dreams. A wintry land- scape, with a fairish woman in her furs, is civil- ization's masterpiece. Who is this? So blond, so physically fine, so entirely neat, in her face intelligence and a trace of the devil! She is a Swede, and the woman whom we have sought. By a short head she bears the palm from the Austrians. Step for- ward, Froken, and deign to accept this chaplet! WOMEN 101 With women, as indeed with man, flattery is still the trump card. It need not be gross ; as her status rises the trowel may be discarded for the camel's hair, but the surest method of attack is always going to be through her vanity. This is sound reasoning, for her instinct, the whole busi- ness of her life, is to please; nature's doing this, yet recognized by man as a strong weapon to his own ends. But the world is obsessed by this adulation of the woman. If one picks up a novel it is written round incidents of romantic love and marriage. If one goes to a play there is more love and marriage; everywhere you find the female inter- est pandered to, until at last this orgy of senti- mentalism begins to pall. And the world goes further. Praising not only admitted virtues self-denial, the brave facing of drudgery, sym- pathy, pity it ascribes to her exceptional intel- lect and high ethical status, qualities the average woman does not possess. In novels and plays women are not only beautiful, but often creatures of depth and subtlety, twisting strong men round their fingers. In real life one does not see these things; when strong men are twisted, they are twisted through their senses, not by the woman's brains. And so with ethics. On the stage you will hear a woman say, "Reginald, rather than think you 102 THE SHADOW-SHOW guilty of dishonour I would see you dead at my feet." (Loud applause.) But in real life the female code of honour is not highly developed. A badly dressed Reginald would cause her a far acuter grief. There is a fish in Australian waters, the bar- racouta, that is baited with a red rag. You will find a red rag, too, the deadliest bait for women, for it is glamour what Scripture calls the "lust of the eye" as much as their vaunted intuition which sways them. Women worship appearance. Tremendous value is attached to symbols; and caste, titles, precedence, uniforms, fine clothes, jewels, coats of arms, elegant carriages and cock- ades red rags all are the baits at which they rise. The worship of the military caste by woman also has its psychologic explanation. She notes the uniform; and even as the brilliant tail of the peacock attracts to it the hen, so do the clothes of soldiers draw the eyes of women. The soldier is of good physique, smart and erect, and above all is held to be brave. That hits the female in a vital spot, for instinct makes her seek a pro- tector, and who shall protect like a brave man? Here again, with the woman, appearance is every- thing. In real life the barrister, the chemist's assistant, the under gardener, is as brave as the soldier, and possibly cleverer; but he doesn't look WOMEN 103 it, he isn't so erect, he has neither uniform nor medals, so her eye passes him over. The military caste lives in the light of woman's eyes, withdraw that light, and soldiering would become unpopu- lar, the supply of officers fall short, conscription itself be barely tolerated, and organized war even come to an end. Woman's influence, therefore, for or against war, is a prime factor. It is here we note that interesting product, the American woman; I play her at this point, my strongest card. Generations of republican training have left her a woman; lover of glam- our, aristocrat at heart, she worships appearance; for titles, caste and precedence she will sell half her soul. Sexual cold-bloodedness in women is no rare thing. That the American woman should pass over her physically fine countryman, for a man on the average physically inferior, but surrounded by the glamour of title and precedence, is hardly noteworthy; but that she should pass over a man who puts her on a pedestal, for one who treats her with a lesser consideration, is of psychologic interest. The woman's instinct is to look up to the man, not down; when her own men resume the position Nature intended, she will come to value them more. Meanwhile, the sight of hundreds of staunch republican females buying themselves titles is not 104 THE SHADOW-SHOW without humour. It is not without significance; just how many more would do the same, given the chance, is a relevant subject for inquiry. American women, by and large, are losing re- spect for their men. This seems to be nation- wide, and is perhaps the most interesting fact in, all human relations. And the reason for it is unreal. The men are forceful and virile, they originate; yet they delight in proclaiming in- feriority, in grovelling, as it were, before the weaker sex, and the women are taking them at their own valuation. If Americans but knew it, they do their women an infinite wrong. In her heart, the true woman craves a mate stronger than herself, and nothing in this wide world can ever mean to her more. A strong man is more to her than dollars poured in her lap, than living her own life, than all those absurd social activities. But when the strong man comes not, only men who proclaim them- selves weak, her heart begins to atrophy. It has been quaintly said that woman is the last animal man will tame. I certainly believe her to live in a world of her own, and feel sure her mentality and man's progress along parallel lines and are never destined to meet. The man is much to the woman, but not for his mentality; an observant man knows how hard how nearly WOMEN 105 impossible it is to rivet a woman by his brains. His world is not hers, nor does it greatly interest her. He may talk well and forcibly, he may ring the changes on money-making, politics, travel, science, or art; he may draw polite attention or rapt gaze; but there is a something he cannot rivet, an impish inner-woman, whose mind is fly- ing from his moustache to the timbre of his voice, the colour of his eyes, the dresses of other women, the colour of their eyes, and to a thousand futile nothings the very negation of intellect; and he will learn in time that there is one chord, and one only, that he must strike SEX if he would cap- ture and hold her elusive soul. Weakness of the judicial function is strongly marked in women; they may talk well, but they seldom argue well, and rarely take advice. In my experience I have hardly known a woman, against her inclination, to be convinced by rea- soning; and it may be laid down (as interesting rather than sinister) that the sex is not open to this form of intercourse. There are three subjects about which one can talk people, things, ideas and the student of woman (I speak always of the average woman) will note that it is the first and least intellect- ual of these subjects people that she mostly choses. One may go further, and lay down that two women speaking together will discuss a third. 106 THE SHADOW-SHOW To prove this, let the student walk in some popu- lous thoroughfare and listen not vulgarly, but in the interest of psychology to all pairs of females as they pass. If they are of the upper classes, "So she said to me," are the words he is most likely to hear; if of the lower, "Says she to me," will be wafted to him, "For the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady Are sisters under their skins." This tendency of women, to discuss other people and brood over their affairs, in preference to entering more fully into the great world of inter- esting things and sublime ideas, is deplorable. There is a quality of earthiness in the woman's mind; contrasted with her delicacy of face and form, it is one of the inscrutable things in nature. Woman is lacking in proportion. To man, her standard of values is philistine, her serious- ness over non-essentials a source of wonder. Tra- dition and dogma flow in her blood; she has put herself under priest or medicine-man of some sort since the world began. Of all things woman hates the abstract; her world is on the surface. Here, taken at random, is a stout lady in black silk, moving in the very best society. Do you think, for one moment, that she ponders the mystery of things, regards herself as other than fixed and ultimate? A pup- WOMEN 107 -pet on strings! A phantom built of electrons! A shadow in a shadow-show! Impious man! Impertinent and ridiculous scoffer! She dines with the Bishop to-night! Spiritualism, a result of indiscriminate educa- tion on half-baked minds, fed, too, by the hysteria which is in us all, is becoming rampant; but mostly women are drawn into the vortex. Women often tell you they commune with the dead, or live in the world of the occult, and probably those of the sex who are normal in outlook are now in the minority. There may, or may not be a spirit- world : intellectual minds look on the problem as not knowable; but what we do see is a number of men, and a horde of women, accepting it on most ludicrous evidence. The most interesting phase in all this trend is the spread of Christian Science by a woman. Mrs. Eddy held no patent for healing through the mind. She annexed it from a man-practitioner, who, in his turn, was using a healing force known for thousands of years. There is no doubt she took herself seriously; she was already self-hypno- tized ; and that is the precise condition into which her followers fall, who now number several mil- lions. Self -hypnotism, auto-suggestion, is the key to Christian Science, the one mental condition in which it can flourish; in the cold light of rea- son and intellect the fabric fades away. 108 THE SHADOW-SHOW Mrs. Eddy, who had no education to speak of, wrote a bible. She named it "Science and Health." I have tried to understand this book, to read a meaning into it, even as Mark Twain tried, but upon my honour it left me dazed and uncomprehending. The recurring theme of it, like a motiv in a Wagner opera, is that there is nothing but mind, that the material world we know, in the last analysis, does not exist, and that the All-Mind, which only exists, is God. I, who see this world as a Shadow Show, shall not deny its immateriality; but I don't let my reason run wild outside accepted Science. My reading of the riddle of life, and Mrs. Eddy's as shown in that fantastic book, are as the poles asunder. Well, Mrs. Eddy died; and although nothing mattered or existed except mind, she left two mil- lion dollars. She had made big money selling her bible; which each follower was expected to possess. I believe the cheapest edition of Mrs. Eddy's bible costs three dollars. A more stylish edition, which the sellers "feature," costs five dollars. It is called a "Key to the Scripture," yet the Scriptures, in the shape of the New Testa- ment, may be bought anywhere for a few cents. As the chief healer commercialised Christian Science, so did her followers. There grew up a number of journeymen Scientists, mostly women, who took up mind-healing as a business. They WOMEN 109 will treat you at your home, or concentrate on you at a distance, for cash down; and they do well at it. A novel idea, this treatment at a dis- tance. You are in the Waldorf-Astoria, let us say, with a diseased mind, and you call up a journeyman Scientist to concentrate on you from the Bronx. She may be genuine; she may not. You take pot luck, as it were ; you are souled and healed at one dollar fifty an hour. Mrs. Eddy has a rival. Another woman has done well out of her own creed. Living in a great house outside Madras, Mrs. Besant, the high-priestess of Theosophy, is spending the eve- ning of her days. Her followers surround her not only with mystic rapture, but with great worldly comfort, and most evenings you will see her taking the air in a superb Rolls-Royce. Understand me. If men and women down in their hearts are straight they may be Christian Scientists, Theosophists, anything they please. It is this commercialising of religion that I think so damnable ; there is no record of Jesus Christ using a cheque book, or of Buddha placing a lakh of rupees on fixed deposit. If you would reconcile widely differing opin- ions about women, go to the man of the world. He knows. He has dealt more intimately with women in his time than ever did Schopenhauer 110 THE SHADOW-SHOW or Nietzsche, who denounced the sex, or than that wishy-washy class of men who laud women to about the eighth place of decimals. He will tell you that there are two opinions about women, be- cause there are two sorts of men to hold them. You will see two men standing together. One is a man who dominates women, who attracts them instantly, into whose arms, in his time, dozens of women have flung themselves in love and abandonment. The other, perhaps taller and finer looking, and as likely as not a more moral and scrupulous person, instinctively repels the opposite sex. Outwardly he stands there the sexual equal of the other. Yet no female glances are shot at him, no woman desires him in her heart, none has ever thought of him in the long watches of the night. How can these two men hold the same views about women*? The first man knows. A hundred women have opened their souls to him. He can read most of them like a book. But the good, tall man does not know. In his eyes women are for ever unknowable, mysterious, creatures of a finer clay. The magnetic man de- fers to women; but he cringes to them even in his thoughts he cringes and so they think of him as of a docile dog. The two types will persist forever. Woman deeply human woman will put up the eternal WOMEN 111 bluff, which the first man will reject, and the second will fall to; the first man will be bidden into the parlour of life, the second will sit and lick his chops in the antechamber. The man of forty, who has seen much of the world, has learned a deal about women. First of all, he finds it no drawback in women's eyes to be forty. He thinks more of them than when he was twenty-five, and is surprised to find women think more of him. He now appreciates them fully, He knows too the worldly value of stand- ing well in their estimation, and how easy this is to achieve. It is the small attentions to women, the tiniest courtesies, which yield the richest re- turn. On the more intimate side, he has learned things about women which are never given out from pulpits. The church's idea that they are shrinking lilies, forever seeking safety from man's desire, is seen to be false. They have desires of their own, and often don't hestitate to show them. In the real world, as opposed to the conventional, world, women seeks her mate just as man does. She has quite a clear idea which man she wants, and is able in the cunningest ways to bring the fact to his notice. On the whole, in our Western world, it is the woman who makes the advances, and in the in- terests of the unborn it is right that this should 118 THE SHADOW-SHOW be. The man of forty, by this time gauging woman's reliance on her instincts, should never force his attentions. If he pleases, she will show, him so unmistakably. If he does not it is waste of time to think about her. This is what young men never know. The established relations of the sexes will, I believe, continue through all woman's emancipa- tion. Man is man, and is meant to be strong. Woman is woman, and remains weak. No true woman chafes at her weakness mental or other- wise. Her instinct is to seek out the very strength she lacks to look up, to lean ; in the virility of a fitting mate she has been destined by nature to find all her heart's desire. Weakness, inability to dominate her, is man's cardinal sin in a woman's eyes; the weak men of the world, and they are not a few, are woman's real tragedy. Woman strives for mastery, and is unhappy when it comes. She knows it is not her destiny. I will hold, in the face of the world, the happy woman to be she who can look up to and respect the man, and the ineffective man he to whom no woman looks up. There is just one way with a woman. Carry her in your arms, physically or mentally, and she is yours; but God help you if you can do neither. CHAPTER VI GLIMPSES OF THE EAST IN this, our Shadow-Show, there is a land whose glamour has never faded, where men still walk as in a dream; it is a land where pipes are playing and distant drums throb ; where the shut- ters have ears; where crows cry at the dawn, the water-wheel creaks through the long day, and crickets sing the weary to sleep; where shadows pass in the breathless nights, and the dead are carried forth at noon. Jama Masjid, the great mosque, lies sweltering in the heat. In its minaret, high over Delhi, I have sat alone these two hours. Spread out below me rests the imperial city, white, flat-roofed, crowded with life: the very heart and spirit of India. Down from the mosque a stately flight of steps leads to a commonage; cross this, and you are at the palace gates. Built in their not-to-be-mis- taken red sandstone, this is the old citadel of the Moguls. Below its ramparts the Jumna runs, bounding the city on this side; beyond the river, "3 114 THE SHADOW-SHOW north and east, are the crop-laden plains of Oudh and the Punjab. Note well these palace ramparts of Delhi; they have seen the making of history. They have seen strange things marble floors splashed with blood, impious hands dragging at a peacock throne and what do they not know of intrigue, of im- perial caprice, of whispered words to the eunuchs, of moonless nights, and of erstwhile gunny-bags, bulging with their loads, sent hurtling into the muddy waters. Beyond the city walls, towards the south, the vista is of rolling, untilled country, ruins, old tombs, and mosques. Two miles out stands the citadel of Firoz, builder of an earlier Delhi. Those farther ruins, this being no city of yester- day, mark her site a thousand years ago. That stately dome, rising in the distance among lesser domes, is the tomb of Humayun, father of great Akbar. Thither, after the siege in 1857, fled the young princes of Delhi, the nuclei, the rally- points of the Mogul tradition. Here Hodson, riding out with a patrol, took them captive, and by the roadside, fearing a rescue, shot them down with his own hand; this in the presence of many natives. Poor Hodson ! there are flabby people who call him murderer. When omelettes shall be made without breaking eggs, we may essay to run our GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 115 Empire in kid gloves; till then, his act must be written down as strong and far-sighted. That tower on the ridge, beyond the city, is the Mutiny Memorial a hideous thing, degrad- ing to good taste. And in India at Delhi of all places! Look south, you British philistines! Against the horizon stands Kutub Minar; yet in presence of architectural majesty, you have dared assert the style of your provincial town halls. Or come with me to Rajputana; mount this ancient elephant, and let us ascend the heights of Chitoor. In broad daylight I shall show you a Tower of Victory such as your dreams never imagined. It is now past midday, and a Friday. The mosque is filling. As they enter the great court- yard, the Faithful repair to the central tank foe ablution; this ended, with turban and sandals adjusted, they press forward towards the canopy. After one o'clock, when the multitude is on its knees, the chanting of the ulema is heard, and shouts of "Allah !" rise from a thousand throats. The sun beats fiercely down, but in God's fresh air the worshippers heed not ; in serried rows they sway to and fro, their foreheads press the flags. In the Mahometan world of old, when religion absorbed men's lives, holiness, actual or reputed, stood for power and social prestige ; it was a com- modity, a great asset. 116 THE SHADOW-SHOW And as asset, what trade in it did they drive*? Were these old saints innately virtuous, or did the ablest men of the time ply saintship as a profession^ When a family could specialize in holiness for generations, for centuries, and be- come, withal, great and powerful, the more worldly or professional view of saintship would seem established. Here, in India, flourished for centuries the Chishti family of saints, rising to fame not only in their own line, but as lawgivers and the friends of kings ; their graves cover India. Dying in 1324, Nixam-ud-din Aulia, of the Chishtis, lies amid that congeries of royal tombs to the south of Delhi, a still venerated grave, while the princely sleepers around him are for- gotten. Two hundred and fifty years later the Sheikh Salim Chrishti, grandson of the saint Farid-ud- din, dwelt, a hermit, in a cave some twenty miles from Agra. For love and veneration of this man this professional saint, if our diagnosis be cor- rect the great Akbar built around his cave a city, and dwelt there. And this famous city of red sandstone, with its carved palaces, was Fateh- pur Sikri. But this was misplaced zeal, which Akbar lived to repent. Here was a city wanting water; but there was no water, and the saint could cause no GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 117 gushing from the rock. On the head of drought there came pestilence, then, saint or no saint, the city was doomed. So, on a morning, the Emperor and his court returned to Agra, and a beauteous and brand new town was turned over to the jackals. Deserted it stood, as it stands to-day, in splendid silence. Time has dealt gently with Fatehpur Sikri. Akbar departed over three hundred years ago, yet lay on water, and Maple's would give you entrance within the week. No cave is now to be seen, but in the courtyard of the great mosque, behind carved screens of marble, rests the shrine of Sheikh Salim. To this shrine many pilgrims repair. Childless women, Mahometan and Hindu, seek it out, interceding, in the words of our rubric, for a "happy issue" out of all their afflictions. The grandson of Sheikh Salim, it is written, became Governor of Bengal; but no later saints are reported in the Chishti annals. The family's prestige, and its specialied faculty, would not seem to have survived the disaster of Fatehpur Sikri. What of the Hindu world of India those two hundred millions those Brahmins, Rajputs, Vaisyas, Sikhs, Jains, and Mahrattas, whose tem- ples and palaces cover the land? What indeed is 118 THE SHADOW-SHOW Hinduism; can one man of these millions tell? A religion 1 ? A fetish? In the beginning, Brahma sat on his throne the Permeating Essence, the All-Pervading in Nature a fine conception, to be worshipped in singleness of heart. Then some metaphysician, some Hindu Athanasius, pondered, and behold! the Trinity Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva (yet not three Brahmas, but one Brahma) an entity for evermore. Ensued the gradual decay, the running to seed, of Brahmanism. On the back of the god, as time went on, a whole mythology came into being. Vishnu they credited with nine incarnations as a tortoise, a bear, a dwarf; while the quaint vatic- inations of the god-beasts, the elusive and indeli- cate manifestations of Shiva, the vagaries of Saraswati, wife of Brahma, astride her peacock, and a hundred other fantastic myths, show to what depths the conception of the Divine Essence gradually sank. To-day, in the temples of Hindustan, the Brahmin caste babbles to images, and before pot- bellied idols the millions fall prostrate. From the recesses of the priests wicked faces look out, and the air is heavy with a feeling of corruption. In the great temples of Trichinopoly garlanded cows moved to and fro; in the fanatic eyes of the priests I read myself inferior to these ruminants. GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 119 In another temple monkeys surrounded me; fat- tened on the tenets of Hanuman, they longed for the order to tear me in pieces. But nothing is all bad; there is a human side even to Hinduism. Animal life is venerated, the mild-tempered Jain stepping aside to oblige even an ant. The bodies of the dead are burned (I have watched the fires flare by night at Benares), and the ashes scattered to the winds or consigned to the sacred river. There is no slow festering of the dead in the ground, no choosing of leaden coffins by old ladies, to whom the resurrection looms more physical than mystic, no dropping of morsels from the gorged throats of vultures, as at Bombay. The burial rites of the Hindu must indeed become our own. And to Hinduism we owe a great architecture. Each cycle furnished its masterpieces the rock caves, with their rich and original figuring, the great Dravidian temples in the south, the temples of Mysore, Gwalior, fortess of the Mahrattas, Amber, and the palaces of Rajputana, and golden- templed Amritsar, of the Sikhs. Lastly, note the small sect of Jains, building at Chitoor that tower aforesaid, and at Abu, in the hills, a temple of white marble whose glory will never die. I thought to write down the Jains as the Wesleyans of Hinduism, for in each is seen a revolt against sacerdotalism, a return to simpler forms. But 120 THE SHADOW-SHOW when I saw Chitoor and Abu, comparison was dead. To liken these princes of architecture to the men who can design Methodist chapels must be forever impossible. Over the desert from Abu a camel track leads to Udaipur, most picturesque spot in India. This city lives, surely, to glorify one man. The gay turbaned throng seem there but to yield him revenue. The narrow streets clear as his elephant train makes for the royal stables. His vast palace and its gardens blot out the landscape. Behind the grated windows of its harem dwell the loveli- est women in the land, and on its fairy-like lake none but his rowers may ply to and from the pavilioned islands. All is his! "Less than the dust beneath thy chariot-wheel," I sang out, as might sing, on the house-tops of this city, some love-sick maid, some Rajput Lady of Shalott. "Less than the dust . . ." With its escort of horsemen the chariot itself flashed by, and presently, at the palace gates, the retainers bowed them to the ground. This black- whiskered bejewelled prince, Ma- harajah of Udaipur, has the bluest blood in India to-day, a strain from the old Kings of Oudh. In olden times, I have been told, another prince of Rajputana, great of birth and prestige, was as the sun of Udaipur's moon. This Sun, impover- GLIMPSES OF THE EAST ished, and casting about him for some lakhs, came to Udaipur's palace, where that chief did him honour, and when, lying on their divans, the Sun graciously offered his water-pipe, Udaipur's satis- faction was not to be hid. After some time they met again. When the salaams had been spoken, Udaipur said, "Mahara- jah, wilt thou now repay me those lakhs ?" Then slowly the Sun raised his eyes, "Repay thee lakhs ! Didst thou not draw at my hookah*?" The Maharajah of Udaipur bowed his head. Chains of white mountains encompass Kash- mir. Their peaks, pure but sterile, merge under the line of perpetual snow into fir forests. Below these are the barren uplands, and so we descend to that strip of eighty miles by twenty, the valley itself. Through this valley, rising at the Tibetan end, meanders the Jehlum River, with its lakes and waterways. Green meadows, stretching mile upon mile, line the banks. That row of poplars denotes some boundary. Here is a village with its orchards. Sheep are feeding on the meadows, and a flock of geese pushes off into mid-stream. Is this Kashmir? It might be Northern France, and those sheep potential pre sales. It might be Holland. But the sun is setting, and under an apple- tree on the grass white figures kneel, their faces 122 THE SHADOW-SHOW Meccawards. It is Central Asia after all ; tonight Allah, Answerer of Prayer, will hold Kashmir in His keeping. This is mid-April, spring-time, and though the rain may fall, the sap is fast rising. The grass is emerald green, and the poplars and planes burst from bud to leaf in a night. Wild flowers will bloom later on the hill-side, but a red-and- white crocus is coming up, and where meadows verge on the swamps beds of iris are blooming. The many orchards are in flower white and pink; and when, of a sudden, you catch almond blossom against the distant snows, you have caught the spirit of this spring. Tugged by four swarthy fellows, and preced- ing the mat-shaded doonga of the domestics, the little houseboat came in due time to Srinagar. Punting up the main highway of this straggling, dilapidated city, we passed the palace of the Ma- harajah, and drew into the shady Chenar Bagh. From open windows, as we passed, the keen eyes of curio merchants had summed us up, and now, laden with wares, their canoes were con- verging from all points. Set out on our decks were embroideries, damascenes, and carvings, such as only Kashmir can show, silver wares of Tibetan pattern, reliquaries from beyond the mountains, matrix turquoise from Ladakh and Persia, old tapestry of Bokhara the presentment in excelsis GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 123 of the curio. Lying there in the Chenar Bagh, those astute Kashmiri salesmen marked me as their prey, and I fell horribly. On a day, the houseboat lying thus moored, there happened the festival of Moy Shareef, a personage in the Sunni or Orthodox hierarchy. This was held at the Mosque of Hazart Bal, on the shores of the Dal lake, a league from Srinagar. The mosque, reputed to contain a hair from the Prophet's beard, was of Kashmiri type a bastard pagoda; red tulips, blossoming on the grass-grown roof, relieved its dull lines. Outside the edifice a vast crowd waited. At three in the afternoon the service culminated, and some eighty thousand of the Faithful, their vigil over, spread through adjacent orchards and under the old chenar-trees that here line the lake shore. A multitude, taking to boats of every description, put out on the lake. As our canoe threaded its way among a thou- stand craft, I saw that many who sat therein were drinking tea. Others listened to the distant music of pipes, while boatloads of professional singers, moving through the crowd, gave delight to those who listened. Here and there, with eyes intent on some wealthy merchant, courtesans reclined on cushioned barges. They were very beautiful in- deed. Shades of Fadladeen ! and of Moy Shareef, shades ! This was no place for rich elderly men. 124? THE SHADOW-SHOW As the day waned our rowers brought us past the Shalimar to Nishat Bagh, on the further shore, the garden pleasaunce of some old king. In the gloaming we passed the floating gardens of the Dal, bright with beds of mustard and with fruit blossom, and in the darkness were rowed into the city. All that night crowded boats from the lake passed down the Chenar Bagh, and to me, lying abed in the houseboat, came fragments of music and song and laughter. It was festival night in the Happy Valley. Sailing south from Bombay, some hundreds of miles, the traveller will come to Goa of the Portu- guese, and its small town of Panjim. This futile little place, exporting coco-nuts, with a side-line in cabin stewards, has a history. Four hundred years ago Portugal took it. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a city of 200,000 souls, the richest in India. Great merchants owned its warehouses. Great men walked its streets; Albuquerque and Vasco da Gama were among its viceroys, Camoens knew it, he who was to become St. Francis Xavier lived here. Goa was early a famous headquarters of the Jesuits; from their college missionaries set forth for Malacca, for China, for Paraguay. As a re- ligious centre Goa's fame kept growing; it became GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 125 the see of an archbishop, and convents of the Dominicans and the Carmelites were built. In 1560 the Inquisition was set up, and the proces- sions for the autos-da-fe were seen daily. For the good of their souls, eleven thousand were put to death in this corner of India. Ravaged by pestilence, by raids from the in- terior, and by the attacks of the Dutch, the glory of Goa faded as it had come. To-day the city does not even exist. Coco-nut groves cover the ruins of its streets, and where the palace of the Inquisition had stood native children were play- ing tipcat. Still standing, well cared for, are some half-dozen fine old churches; these, with a con- vent, and the dwellings of the clergy, are all that remain of Old Goa. In the church of "The Good Jesus," in richly wrought silver coffin, rests the embalmed body of St. Francis Xavier. It is the glory of Goa, and is exposed to view perhaps once in a decade, at some high religious festival. At a certain ex- posure, among a crowd of devotees, a Portuguese countess pressed forward, and in the act of devo- tion bit off the saint's toe. Thinking to escape with the relic in her mouth, she rose from her knees, but keen eyes had observed the act; as a priestly hand closed on her gullet, the oesophagus disgorged its trophy. Another relic of Portugal in the East is the 126 THE SHADOW-SHOW island of Magao. This little spot, south of Hong- Kong, just clear of the mainland, is perhaps two miles long. In a garden of Magao, three hundred and fifty years ago, a Government official sat each afternoon writing, and one day appeared the "Lusiad." Thus did Camoens, Shakespeare of Portugal, bring fame to Magao. I sat in the old garden, with its high walls, one evening as the day faded. The bust of the poet peered at me through the bloom. To-day, Chinese have overrun the island ; smug- glers and opium-runners make it their headquar- ters. It is a gambling centre, thither resorting wealthy Chinamen from Hong-Kong, Canton, and Amoy, and one may spend a night round the tables, travelling from house to house. The game played is fan-tan, and the stakes of foreigners, who sit in upper chambers looking down on the tables, are raised and lowered in tiny baskets. As these baskets of Mexican dollars went up and down, I thought of that biblical lowering of a basket, from the walls of Jericho, and cast my eyes around for prototype of her who had low- ered it. It is daybreak on the Shan Hills that lonely stretch of country on the outer fringe of Burma daybreak, and a white man steps from his tent. The huts of a Kuchin village cluster round him. GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 127 Outside these, in the grey dawn, stand muscular young women at the hulling of rice; little hissing sounds come from them as the wooden pestles strike truly home. Old hags, too, weeders of the grain and pumpkin patches, are moving afield, but one and all, old and young, are hugely goitrous, and the eyes of the young man are turned sadly away. The village lies on a mountain slope, at 4,000 feet, and now, in the broad daylight, there unfolds a panorama of half the Shan States. What a forest! When the mists rise from the valleys it will be seen stretching to China. To this mountain, which they called the "Ele- phant's Neck," Chinese had come in days gone by, to work silver ores. Here, and at Baudwen, thirty miles to the south, they set up little mining republics, built smelters, cleared the forest for charcoal and prospered for many years. Old legends speak of the "great silver mines between Pekin and Mandalay," but as to the date of their greatness, who shall guess? Baudwen must be two hundred years old; it may be five hundred years. Stone dragons, crouching before its ruined temple, when adjured to state their age, vouch- safed no clue. Mo Ho Tchwang, the "Elephant's Neck," was wrapped in mystery yet more dense. Tradition, among the scattered villages, placed the departure 128 THE SHADOW-SHOW of the last Chinese about 1840; but what they had worked, what left behind, was hidden by the dense undergrowth. Hence, for solution of these things, came this white man these two men climbing to the vil- lage with pack mules, twelve jungle cutters, a tent, and no little enthusiasm. What they sought they found ; but those tracks hewn through the bamboos, those lead slags lying on the mountain-side, those old mine workings, unsafe for penetration these things are pigeon- holed in London offices, and concern this story not at all. The hamlet of Weng Pat, on the further side of the mountain, lay stricken with malaria. One midday, as the two men passed from the country, they rested under its great tree, while word of the bitter white drug they carried passed from house to house. A deputation met them under the tree; it was gratified when a small stock of quinine, with instructions for use, was placed in the poongye's hands. This courtesy to Buddhism, in the person of a fever-stricken old priest, met its reward. Two nights later, drenched, their mules astray, the travellers reached a village. "White guests," cried its headman; "where should they sleep but in our little temple?" So in a trice they lay, naked and dry, on its clean floor; and later, when GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 129 the mules came in, mattresses were stretched on the very platform beside the gods. In the watches of that night he who writes awoke. Resting on him, luminous in the darkness, was the divine gaze of the Buddha. As our little caravan passed from hill to hill we sickened of malaria we, our Chinese drivers, our Indian servants, our very mules. There came a night, on the China frontier, when I lay in a hut and waited. About nine, my companion laid the thermometer under my tongue; it said 106 rising fast ! He forced some sweetish liquid into my mouth; his voice was a mile away, but I heard him saying, "You must keep this down''' I thought I might be dying . . . but thirty-six seemed too young . . . then it was broad day- light, and my temperature down to 95. I tested my vitality that day by walking twenty miles. It held, and for three days more; it carried us down to the plains, and into Bhamo. Lying then at ease on the deck of a river steamer, I sailed for a week down the Irrawadi down past the wooded defiles, where monkeys peered from the high crags; past Sagaing, with its tombs of the old dynasty; past Mandalay, city of the lotus, with the cloistered Arrakan and the palace of deposed Thebaw; past the thousand- year-old ruins of Pagan ; down into Lower Burma, where multitudes were at work in the paddy- 130 THE SHADOW-SHOW fields ; past Prome, and finally to the city of Ran- goon, where Shwe Dagon towers the Golden Pagoda. Standing at its base, on a night of high festival, I saw that blaze of colour and of gaud that the Orient itself can nowhere match. There are calm, stately townships near the equator. White-clad Europeans traverse their shady allees, and the air is of old-world repose. There is closure of shop and office at midday, the gorging of the reistafel, slumber through long tropic afternoons, a harnessing of mincing pony stallions, and the driving out of stout couples to- ward eventide. This is Java under the Dutch Java, shady and beautiful, where the mild-tempered native gives no trouble, hard work is barely known, and life passes sleepily and easily. Yet the Dutch know their business. A climatic lethargy grips them, but there is no slovenliness. Their government is sound, contenting the abori- gines, their railways progressive, their hotels ex- cellent, their houses spacious and graceful; the lawns of Haarlem and Utrecht are not more trim than their gardens. The Dutch have made a real success in Java. Finding an island rich and apt, they have fash- ioned a first-rate colony. The soil is of the best, and the contours set no limit to irrigation. Water in never-failing supply makes their task easy, and GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 131 Java the last word in tropical culture. The Javanese, swarming, yet adaptable, and very cleanly, are the happiest of the world's peoples. To the Anglo-Indian, Java must carry the les- son of content. Here is no feverish hastening on European leave, no eternal girding at the heat, no undue cursing of natives, no God-damning of the condition of things. The Dutchman, more or less, goes to Java for life; he settles down, builds a graceful house, lays out a charming garden his children are taught to call it home. In often taking to wife a woman of the country he errs; not in himself perhaps, but towards the children who come after. This crossing of the strain is not a matter of bulbs, not a hybridizing of tulips it is a mistake, the blot on Java. Yet the large half-caste population lives seemingly under no social ban. At school the children mix; when the band plays the eyes of white maidens ogle dusky youths; at the social clubs the castes come together with no undue reserve. Take note of thees things, Eurasians of India! You, Honorary Lieutenant Castries, and that family we know, take note! There is sanctuary in Java for sallow complexions. And these Dutch women of the true blood how robust their outline ! What a genuine plump- ness! Yet are the men of Holland blind to the finer shades? The "fault of the Dutch" has long 132 THE SHADOW-SHOW been notorious; their liking for "too much" would seem to have evolved the fattest women in Chris- tendom. In the interior of the island are sights not to be overlooked. There is Buitenzorg, among the wooded hills, world-famed for beauty, and Soeka- boemi, the Cheltenham of Java. Here, on cool uplands, dwell retired Dutchmen of leisure, civil servants on their pensions, and well-to-do half- castes. Their gardens are a delight to the eye. From the upland town of Garoet I drove through the tilled rice-fields, through groves of bamboo and coco-nut, to Lake Bagendit, and stood there enraptured. The air was fresh and cool after heavy rain, a zephyr whispered on the water, the mist was lifting from green forests and from mountains ; on the horizon a volcano smoked. An orchestra of young musicians, with instru- ments of bamboo, had approached unseen, and was squatted ; the peace of God descended on me to a minor repetitive. In the gloaming I left Bagendit, bestowing on the musicians a largesse of one guelder; the bam- boos throbbed a furious farewell. The Javanese in religion are mildly Mahom- etan. In art they are as children. Digest these facts; then travel, as I did, to Djockja, and view strange ruins, Buddhist and Hindu, gigantic, of the first order in architecture and sculpture. These GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 133 are surely Indian in origin, the outcome of colossal religious propaganda; their date would seem to go back a thousand years. One may picture these remote events : the com- ing of the princes and priests from Hindustan, the fine frenzy of the proselytes, the conceptions tak- ing form, the voyaging to and fro of architects, of stonemasons, the steady rising of the fanes, pre- dictions, by many, of the golden age of Java; great events these, in their day, pregnant, nevertheless, with the mutability that is in all things. What of our own great affairs a thousand years hence massacres of Jews, of Christians, encycli- cals of an infallible Papacy, Welsh revivals, Eucharist congresses, the consistency of a wafer, the cut of a reredos, the passing over of neurotic spinsters to Rome 1 ? Verily, these things will show in truer perspective. To-day these great Indian ruins of Java stand desolate among rice-fields. Buddhist and Hindu are there extinct as the dodo. "In the red bamboo forest, down by the shrine of the goddess Kwannon. ..." I sat in His Majesty's Theatre, in London, and watched the "Darling of the Gods." Night after night, from that strange cry in the prologue, until the death chant of the Samurai by the forest 134 THE SHADOW-SHOW shrine, the sights and sounds of this play thrilled me. In truth, they sent me to Japan. On the morning appointed, with Honolulu twelve days astern, a high coast-line rose from out the sea bleak hills, sparely crested with firs ; five hours later we steamed into Yokohama Bay, and I set foot in Japan. It was early April and the cherry-trees in fullest bloom. There were hun- dreds of these trees; for joy I could have knelt to them. That afternoon, taking train, I went down the peninsula to Kamakura. A rickshaw drew me thence to where, in a grove of the flowering cher- ries, his eyes closed in fathomless contemplation, sits that great figure of the Buddha. Before him I stood, lost in long reverie. What repose lay in those eyelids! What wisdom in that brain ! How many centuries had rolled over him! And that this profound personality should be a bronze casting it was unthinkable ! I crossed, and stood on the rising ground among foliage. Beyond this grove were orchards and gardens; an old temple stood on a hill, firs, bent and fantastic with age, outlined its horizon. The air was full of the spring. Near me a red camellia drew the eye to its thousand blossoms. A cloud passed from the sun, and the white mass of cher- ries began to sparkle. Under this canopy of bloom, divinely suffered by the Daibutsu, a hun- GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 135 dred children played happily. Down the valley there was a glimpse of the seashore. . . . That hour at Kamakura will always be mine, for I had grasped a country's soul. I had gone forward. Yesterday I had been what? A bridge-player on the Pacific. Yesterday ! ere my train reached Yokohama that evening I had been in Japan a hundred years. Journeying to Tokio, I lived at a native inn, and so passed, by hill and dale, over much of Japan. I saw those things that had fired the imagination the "red bamboo forest," "the shrine of the goddess Kwannon," "the Bay of Monkeys by the Inland Sea." I viewed Fuji- yama from Lake Hakone, fed the deer at Nara and on the sacred island of Myajima, walked in the cryptomeria forest at Nikko, and in blinding rain reached the hill-tops above Ikao. I saw the camellia, the cherry, the wild azalea, and the iris bloom. I lived through days, through weeks, of heavy rain, without which there had been no glory of tree and flower, no vivid freshness of early morning. The Japan of these things of forests and blos- soms and running water does not fail one. There the idea is safe. But this is no land of glamour, no India. Over-population is driving this people with a goad. With poverty ever near, their dili- gence excels that of all others. Every foot of their 136 THE SHADOW-SHOW fields every shoot is tended by hand. To fertilize, they use liquid manure, and from each house by the rice-land comes the stench of a cess- pool. This is nasty, but in the way of nature. The advance to a materialism, to the slavery we call "manufacturing," is a worse thing by far. The smoke-stacks of Tokio and Osaka keep rising ; the ugly commercial era has dawned that is to drive out beauty and joy. A coolie, a factory hand for what will he count in this new Japan? As I pondered these things a coal-mine of the great Mitsui family was flooded. Not knowing, I came to that island in Na- gasaki harbour, and would have descended. "You cannot go to-day," said one in authority; "a hun- dred of the drowned have not been recovered." Listen! At night, in a lull of the rain, there is a tapping along the empty streets. It is a blind masseur, recommending himself to the peo- ple. Poor devil! Ushered to the door of my room, how humbly he crawls forward; and yet cheerful withal, a master of his craft. A yen is not wasted here, if his poor face but lights to its touch. Ama San! what with your crawling in, and your crawling out, my eyes are wet. The scene changes, but not the note. This is Canton, greatest city of China. Within its walls is uttermost congestion of human beings; pushed GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 137 into the very river, a quarter of a million dwell in boats. Its streets are alley-ways, where no sun enters; they exude filth, yet in their fetid air a multitude lives and moves. Here is a prison yard ; it, even, is crowded to the gates; to-morrow the headsman relieves the pressure, but it will only be for a few hours. In this warm, moist clime humanity spawn riotously, wriggles its day, and dies. What is its t~le to date"? I know not; but around the city, over hill and dale, the graves extend for seven miles. Wherefore, then, O God, this monstrous spawn- ing? Wherefore this fecundity of female Can- tonese? For how many of these millions, of the millions yet to be born, will filth, hunger, and crime, disease, and misery be the certain lot? The traveller, returning to Hong-Kong, cried a truce to these vital speculations; he surrendered to the eating of young ginger. Satiated, we next see him sailing up the Yangtse, six hundred miles, to Hankow. There, taking note of its million people, of its Chicago-like location, of much coal and iron in the hinterland, of the converging upon it of the railways, he made prediction. With clear eyes he saw this city a century hence; he saw it a world-centre, the commercial pivot of all the East. Hankow is indeed a city to be watched. In the harvest-time he crossed the plains of Honan. The grain was bounteous, and as the 138 THE SHADOW-SHOW villagers cut and stacked they sang and made merry. At the inn of some small town the land- lord, his family and his domestics would crowd smiling round such unwonted guest, thinking to please his palate by the presentment of nauseous titbits. And this, readers of "Yellow Peril" lit- erature, is a lonely Chinese inn of the interior! Indigestion, certainly, but not death nor danger lurked within its walls. One day an event occurred still notable in local annals, namely, the scattering of "cash" to the children of the village. Of these trivial coins some forty go to the penny, and it is here recorded that the foreigner appeared at the place of scat- tering carrying thirty thousand. As the handfuls were thrown, and ere they reached the earth, four- score children, delirious with joy, closed on them. For an hour the air was black with copper spray, and there was dust and flying pigtails, joy, strug- gling, and excitement, such as come together once in a lifetime. At a certain stake two aged beggars of the village entered the melee. They were car- ried out presently, bruised and bleeding, whimper- ing, their wits gone; their begging-bowls lay in atoms ; grasped in their skinny fingers was the sum of nearly three farthings. The small steamer of a Chinaman, running from Chefoo, used to cross the Gulf of Pechili GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 139 nightly. At daybreak one morning, after such crossing, I stepped from her cabin. I was swathed to the eyes, for it was mid-winter, but the sky was clear, there was no wind, the sea was as glass. A mile ahead lay the entrance to Port Arthur. This unique opening looked to be little more than a hundred yards wide, a mere slit in the range of hills fronting the coast. Over the crest of these hills muzzles of big guns pointed, and the figures of a sentry or two, some flags, and a semaphore, showed against the skyline. In the offing, on the glassy sea, rode half a dozen Russian warships; as we steamed through the channel, and passed to the inner harbour, fifteen in all were to be counted. This basin among the hills was bleak and ugly. On the right lay the naval dockyard, the strag- gling Chinese town, the lines of barracks. On the left, some two miles distant, lay the unfinished Russian town; on the rise above stood a half-built cathedral. The place bristled with soldiers; whole bat- talions were drilling on the heights. The narrow streets of the eld town were blocked with trans- port trains. As usual, Chinese were doing the, hard work. Fur-clad, these adaptable creatures had already acquired Russian, and were now being roundly abused in that tongue. They coaxed frightened mules, set up overturned sleighs, shifted 140 THE SHADOW-SHOW masses of metal and timber, and did the general dirty work of Port Arthur that day, whilst some dozens of Russian officers, a young Scotsman, and an indeterminable riff-raff looked casually on. Round the palace of Alexieff, Russian Vice- roy, was great coming and going of military, with the war rumours fiercer than ever. Japan, threat- ening for years, Japan just over the straits there, was surely on the eve of action at last. It was touch and go. That evening, at an eating-house, I heard the situation had taken a turn, that the outlook was better; the naval officers were on shore, too, where they had not been for a week. But in the night sinister news must have come through. When morning dawned the fleet seemed all drawn to the inner harbour; the funnels were belching out dense black smoke, the decks were cleared for action. As my train steamed out for the North the sky was overcast, the town and harbour hidden in smoke. I thought it at the time an augury of evil. I was not wrong; two weeks later four of those warships had been pierced by torpedoes, and the investment of Port Arthur had begun. I passed on to Dalny, where Russia spent those, millions on a commercial port for the Siberian Railway; then to Harbin, in the heart of Man- churia. Harbin, central point in a food-producing GLIMPSES OF THE EAST area, will have a future. Several big flour-mills had even then been erected, and ice-bound in the Sungari, lay a small fleet of river steamers. As I stood at the confines of the town a cart approached over the snow-covered plain. This was guided by two Chinamen, drawn by a superb mule, and piled high with dead pheasants. There must have been four hundred. It was borne to the mind that Manchuria is this bird's home; but the "how" and the "whence" of this fine bag lay behind two inscrutable physiognomies. At Vladivostok the political news was vague, but there was again notable congestion of mili- tary. Four cruisers lay frozen hard in the harbour ; the contortions, in their interests, of a powerful ice-breaker enlivened the Sabbath afternoon. Four hundred miles north of Vladivostok, joined thereto by rail, is Khabarovsk. This Cos- sack town and strong military outpost owes its being to Amursky, he who seized for Russia her trans-Baikal Empire. On a cliff he stands there, hewn in stone, gazing down the great river which gave him his name. A two-horsed sledge drew out from Khabarovsk at a gallop, and passed up the frozen Amur. A journey of 2,200 miles stretched before it a journey that was to last nineteen long days and nights. Lying in hay, under a felt blanket, I staved off THE SHADOW-SHOW the great cold, while felt boots that came above the knee, furs that covered body, head and ears, and thick fingerless gloves, gave real immunity. There was food, too, on board; white chunks of ice, that I knew for milk, brown chunks, denot- ing soup, a sack of bread, and some dozens of roasted rebchicks. Brick-tea and cakes had not been forgotten. At twilight after a three hours' gallop, a cluster of huts come into view. This is a Cossack settle- ment and posting station. Driver and shaggy Tartar ponies are changed, the modest tariff is paid, the sledge takes again to the river and to the darkness. At the next station, reached towards nine o'clock, supper is decided on. A peasant, taking up a hatchet, retires with the soup to an inner chamber, and presently there emerges a steaming tschi. Then once more into the starry night. By morning the seventh stage has been reached. Khabarovsk lies eighty miles behind. The ice is rough, at times heaped up and impassable; the sledge, seeking a clear way, diverges to right and left, now into Siberia, now Manchuria. So we travelled, for five days and nights, nor did I close my eyes. On the sixth day a sleepless wreck, I came to the town of Blagoveschensk. A guest in the house of her richest man, I ascended to my room and slept heavily. GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 143 To me, having slumbered six hours, entered an awakening handmaiden. She bore a tumbler of Roederer. The Governor-General of the Amur Territory was supping below, and would I not come down? Convivial sounds, and a clinking of glasses, indicated the entertainment as under way. The champagne worked wonders. I rose and went down. Supper was over, but, after introduc- tions, I fell on the remains of what had been a princely repast. Wine flowed freely, and toasts were being given; I was asked for mine. I said, "Gentlemen Excellency I will give you a toast: 'Vive I' Amur!' ' There followed perfunc- tory raising of glasses, but, likewise, the sickening silence of non-perception. I saw I was among the Scotch of Russia. Nothing daunted, I went to the piano and sang to them, and they raised a cheer. I sang again. There was more wine. They all sang at once, the welkin of Eastern Siberia rang, and we made merry far into the night. This was the very eve of the war. Blagoveschensk, on the Amur, is an appreci- able town, indeed the only town in a stretch of 1,200 miles. This unwieldy name will go down into history. Some years before, the Russians had been engaged in absorbing Manchuria. There were acts of aggression on their part, fierce re- prisals by the Chinese. One day there was move- ment on the Manchurian shore. Rumour of an 144 THE SHADOW-SHOW early attack spread through the town, and the tocsin was sounded. Four thousand unsuspecting Celestials were rounded up from streets and houses, then driven like sheep into the river. From the river none returned. It is said that none reached the Manchurian bank. Again the sledge gallops on its way. Again the Cossack posts roll by, and the long swell of Siberia rises and falls. Heading for outlying mines, we bear due North. Now we glide along some river, now take to the plains. Anon, we traverse a forest of birches. Is it "mimicry," or mere wantonness? for their trunks are whiter than the very snow. In this solitude there is no wild life, no stirring tale of wolves. Yet what a figure I might have cut ! The rising with clenched teeth, the revolver drawn on the howling pack, the last cartridge fired, the quick command to cut loose the third horse, the sacrifice of Ivan, by devoted driver, and my scalding tears as I realize he has saved me ; finally, a verst ahead, the stout walls of the fort ! My mind's eye saw it all. Yet there reigned in that sledge a fear more insidious than of wolves the fear of a man who cannot sleep. For sixteen out of each twenty- four hours I lay in the dark, sleepless, jolted, suf- focated by the thick felt covering, my nerves utterly unstrung. At dead of night I would enter some post station and cast myself on the floor. GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 145 There were ten minutes here, and once or twice, in a few stertorous breaths, sleep came to me. But for those sixteen hours each night my mind fed upon itself. For its diversion I told myself the story of my life, from earliest days, and in minutest detail. I set myself problems in mining. I worked the Rand at twelve shillings a ton. I ran eight hundred stamps on a small island of my own. I became the greatest expert the world had known. One long, weary night I stood for Parlia- ment. At first my religious views gave offence; then the wives of my constituents heard I dressed for dinner, and it was all right. Later, I became Prime Minister. After each twilight, before the drawing of the felt blankets, I gave a concert. I sang "The Yeoman of the Guard" and "The Rose of Persia" from beginning to end. One evening I sang the "King's Highway" six and "The Garden of Sleep" eight times, their sad note accentuating the horrors of the coming hours. Assuming a rich bass, I sang nightly the "Calf of Gold" and the "Serenade" of Mephistopheles. As the words came from my lips they congealed; they coated my mouth with ice. Had the dead Gounod, I wondered, sung them at forty below zero? And so I sang, and shouted, and romanced, and my brain went to seed, and my depression hung ever heavier, until one midnight we drove into Stret- insk The journey was over. It had cost me 146 THE SHADOW-SHOW nineteen nights of hell, and an injured nervous system. I vowed I would not go through it again for a thousand pounds a night, and from that de- cision I do not waver. The train that left Stretinsk next day started three days late. War had broken out. The main line was blocked with traffic, and on this branch things had to adjust themselves. I lay huddled in my furs, feeding at intervals, sleeping much, hardly noting the lapse of time. When we came to the main line refugees crowded aboard; at the eating-places strong women fought for food, and in these struggles for sustenance my lethargy fell from me. Every hour we were side- tracked to let pass a train with troops or supplies ; our stops seemed interminable. We lost two days more, but there was no gap in that procession of trains to the East. At Lake Baikal there was transference to sledges, the passage of the lake taking some five hours. A military railroad crossed the ice. As the wagons, drawn by horses, came over one by one, all the menageries of the world seemed to be on the move. Regiments were marching across the lake Cossacks of a roughish type ; Russia was not yet sending of her best. On the far shore, solitary, gazing out over Baikal, stood one clad from head to foot in rai- ment of snowy felt. He was tall, and bore him- GLIMPSES OF THE EAST 147 self with a noble mien. This knightly figure "Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful," as it might be some Arthur, come again to Game- lot, proved to be Prince Khilkoff, Russia's trusted Minister, guiding brain of the line that was to transport and feed a million men. An aristocrat, he had begun life in the shops of the Pennsylvania railroad, and working steadily up, mastered his craft. Now, in the fullness of years and wisdom, he stood there, called to solve Russia's tremendous problem. Two hours later there came in sight a green- domed cathedral. It was Irkutsk city of con- victs where Russia's political prisoners live and thrive. In Irkutsk one sees men who, in cattle or gold-mining, have made millions, who live in big houses, who drive fine horses, yet who will never leave Siberia alive. But they seem happy enough. Here, in winter, night takes the place of day. The restaurants, the dancing halls, open at eleven, at two they are in full swing, at five, filled with wine and wassail, the wretched convicts take them- selves to bed. Irkutsk, as they say in the States, is a "wide open" town. I was still in the Orient, in the longitude of Singapore, but affairs now called rue to the West. Taking again the Siberian railroad, I set out on the nine days' journey to Moscow. CHAPTER VII THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND AT Seraglio Point, where the waters of the Golden Horn mingle with those of the Bosphor- us, I stood one evening in the twilight. As I gazed out over the expanse, the high outlines of Pera and Galata faded and Scutari became no more than a cloud. The air was balmy, the night utterly calm, and upon me lay the glamour of the East. Where, amid these shadows, lay "Cape Turk"? I stood there till the moon, bloodshot and golden, rose up over the Asiatic shore, and the night entered into her enchantment. This was the real Stamboul. By day I had judged her squalid, her soul escaped me ; but in the first hours of this night, as the moonbeams played about her minarets, comprehension came. It was Ramazan the month of months and after a day of fasting the people in their houses were entering on a night of festival. The streets were empty, but from behind the closed shutters came bursts of music, and the quivering falsetto of some Mahometan soloist rose and fell. I stood 148 THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 149 alone, a silent listener to those weird cadences, and as they died, vanished into the recesses of the city, as had vanished, some sixty years before, the intelligent Arminius Vambery. Through the horrid purlieus of Galata a pro- cession passed next day to the palace gates of Dolma Bagtche. Some twenty closed carriages conveyed the harem from a mosque, and some threescore shrouded female forms were whisked rapidly past. Singly in the first three vehicles rode figures of a massive and elderly outline. Those I placed with certainty as wedded wives. The rest, riding four to a coach, were plainly of a meaner condition perhaps the ladies of the en- tourage; but a certain grace -of outline, and a je ne sais quoi in the air, seemed to indicate them as "those others." By each carriage, stately in the black frock and fez of their land of adoption, rode two Nubian eunuchs. As their Arabs pranced and curvetted to the crowds, they looked to be determined and pitiless guardians of the proprieties. With blare of barbaric music, a road lined two- deep with soldiers, with forced and mirthless cheering, Mahomet V, first constitutional Sultan of Turkey, drives to the Selamlik. He passes, this puppet, alone in his gorgeous chariot an elderly man, flabby, washed out, he looks round weakly on the crowd, and shyly salutes. A captive for 150 THE SHADOW-SHOW near thirty years, he was dragged by the Young Turks from prison to throne. But figs do not come from thistles. If this dazed old man shall blos- som into a king into any personality at all my eyes will have played me an unwonted trick. This elderly prisoner is no solution of Turkey's troubles. But Central Asia lies far away, and I must move on. Passing up the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, I came next day to Odessa. Here, on high natural terrace, above bay and shipping, stands a spacious and attractive city. A hundred and fifty feet below lies the sea and a great har- bour, and in the distance a vista of endless Rus- sian plains. It was Sunday evening; a military band played, and along the boulevard that fronts the sea a prosperous-looking crowd moved to and fro. The Jewish face was predominant, and I called to mind pogroms of recent date, and the Jews of Odessa going to their death in droves; yet here they were, well-dressed, uncringing, smil- ing, and here, moreover, were hundreds of hand- some young Jewesses, on whom it was a delight to gaze. Famed for her export of wheat, Odessa is to me henceforth the city of good looks. The Russian woman showed well on the boulevards that night; but it was the Jewess the despised, immemorial Hebrew who easily bore off the palm. I was now to coast the Black Sea, and a day out from Odessa landed at Sebastopol a naval harbour and considerable town, that has played its part in history. The Crimea was the freak of a century Britain's insanest act in modern times. Russia was altercating with Turkey on a religious matter on the treatment of Christians in Asia Minor. As I understand history it was nothing more; the arriere-pensee, if present, was faint. Constantinople was not aimed at, Turkey's integ- rity not even threatened. Yet in we dash, cats- paw of the Emperor Napoleon, with bagpipes playing, flags flying, and our corrupt army con- tractors cheering from the windows of Whitehall. It may have been magnificent but it was not war : moreover, we were on the wrong horse. And then the tactics of such a war ! If we had gained these few barren miles, where would we have been? Out on a little tongue of land, no more formidable to great and holy Russia than a hostile Anglesea to an armed England. We called ourselves the victors: but what a victory! What had we fought for"? I doubt if the good Queen Victoria (R. but not yet I.) could herself have told. The result of it all was Russia's hatred for fifty years, her rapid advance into Central Asia, our expansion blocked there, our failure to absorb Afghanistan, the defection of Persia and Tibet, 152 THE SHADOW-SHOW and a host of minor frontier wars and troubles too intricate to unravel. We have paid for our "vic- tory" ten times over. Let me say this : our Indian frontier is in superb strength; to this extent good has come out of evil, but I shall ever hold Eng- land's presence in the Crimea matter for repent- ance. The eastern shores of the Black Sea are moun- tainous, wooded, almost beautiful, and skirting them you come at last, in the south-east corner, to Batoum. A poor place this, but of some im- portance; for an 8-inch pipe-line brings refined oil from the wells of Baku, five hundred miles away, and tank steamers, lying at the quay, turn a tap, load up, and are off to the ends of the earth. It was at Batoum I first met the Armenians; and even as the pious ^Eneas suspected the Greeks, so henceforth I watched this tribe of evil repute. They say Jews may not enter the Caucasus. What Jew would want to*? These subtle atroci- ties could run the Hebrew nation off its legs. Far in the mountains of Armenia the Ark rested on Ararat. Proud, we must suppose, of this tradi- tion, they adopted the Christian mythology, and entered their unquiet heritage. A thousand years of oppression has evolved a strange, not a Chris- tian type; prince among schemers, the nth power in subtlety, if his breadth of vision matched his cunning, the Armenian would rule the world. THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 153 One Balthazar, an interpreter, was my first. He served me well and faithfully; born of a race of linguists, he spoke six tongues. He knew his tribe. "These Armenians are bloody liars," he said to me one day, and I have found this ma- tured opinion universally endorsed. Let it now be revealed that Svengali, who came "out of the mysterious East," was of this race. He was born at Erzeroum, Turkish Armenia, in October, 1818. He mastered music at Vienna in the forties, and, returning for a while to the East, developed strange powers of magnetism. He first saw Trilby in 1861. How do I know these things'? I know more. His son is cashier in the Armenian Bank at Batoum. The black beard is deceptive, but he must be turned fifty; he speaks excellent French, and is going bald. We discussed the terms of a draft on Odessa, and no hint of recognition passed. But that high, thin nose, that hawk-like visage, Jewish, yet not Jewish! There could be no mistake. He saw I knew, that I was deeply interested, and that it would make literary capi- tal and lie raised the discount an eighth, In the mountains, forty-five miles behind Batoum, in the heart of the Caucasus, is a copper- mine. It has been one of the tragedies of the last decade, but let that pass. The mine lies at 5,000 feet, and through a distant nek in the ranges can 154 THE SHADOW-SHOW be seen the white top of Mount Elburz, high-point of Europe. This country is Turkish in all but name. Turks worked in the mine, and Turkish mountaineers, armed to the teeth, sauntered down from their villages. In the valley, 3,000 feet be- low, lies the smelter, and at long last its furnaces were fired. Then a strange thing happened. As vultures, wheeling invisible in the heavens, swoop to the carcass, so Persians appeared before these furnaces. At the mine, at the works, Turks, Rus- sians, Georgians come and go; but at these fur- naces, gazing into their molten depths with the eyes of men long dead, and stoking, it seemed to me, as men would stoke for a rite, are always Persians. Now tell me tell me, Zoroaster ! Or, you, perchance, Loge! Is this atavism? Is it the throw-back? Were these fortuitous posturings, or was it fire-worship I saw, in that lonely moun- tain valley at the back of Batoum? Tiflis, capital of the Caucasus, a large town in barren country, did not attract. On the exhibi- tion of roubles a motor was forthcoming, and at five on an October morning I drew out on the two hundred versts that led to Vladikavkaz. Two American ladies honoured my car. We followed the famous Georgian military road; and rising slowly up autumn valleys on to bleak moorlands, found ourselves by midday at 7,000 feet, the top of the pass. THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 155 From here the road led down and down. The mountains closed in. The scene was obscured, but the road's fine engineering, the long, stoutly built snowsheds, made on me due impression. Still down it went, and we passed into a rugged and tremendous gorge, where, with sound as of artillery, a tyre burst, and whence we emerged, at the darkening, into low, wooded country and well-watered meadows, with the domes of Vladi- kavkaz no more than a league away. That evening, at the Hotel Europe, several were witness of a pathetic sight. The chauffeur, a young Swiss, flushed with wine and above him- self, suddenly entered the salon. Possessing him- self of the piano, "Daisy, Daisy" and several of the less intellectual of our folk-songs were terribly butchered. Intimating to us that this effort was in honor of the English, he disappeared again into the night. Of Vladikavkaz, a featureless Russian town, I have nothing to say; but on the return journey, a few versts out, there was a sudden tremor, and the car collapsed. The danger looked mortal ; and there we were, trudging the road for help, "marching through Georgia" for an ox team. Things went to glory with us that morning; the songster, jaded and morose, brought us into Tiflis a day overdue. Baku, on the shores of the Caspian, is the city of oil, and the ugliest spot in Europe. On three 156 THE SHADOW-SHOW sides there is desert, dotted with groups of un- couth-looking oil wells. On the fourth lies the great inland sea, whose shallow waters, so easily lashed to fury, were now blue and sparkling in the balmy autumn sun. There is great commerce on the Caspian Sea. It is the highroad to North- ern Persia and to the territories of Central Asia, is the scene of big fisheries centring at Astrakhan, in which the sturgeon so handsomely plays a part, and outlet for that great river, the Volga, up which Baku oil, Astrakhan caviare, and Central Asian cotton crowd, from the spring melting of the ice until the month of November. In the streets of Baku, whose population is above a quarter of a million, walk Russians, Ar- menians, Persians, Tartars, Lesgins, Kalmucks, Jews, Greeks, Turkomans a mixed and lawless throng. A few years ago Baku was in revolution. Many of the wells were maliciously fired, prop- erty was badly damaged, and a deep upheaval against authority seemed certain. But as at Odessa, where an organized massacre of Jews, by Christians, put the mob in humour, so here there was a throwing to the lions. This time the Tar- tars were let loose. The Armenians perished, but the Government was saved. They call this in medicine the use of the "counter-irritant." The method in politics is scientifically correct; it might conceivably one day save us India. Let us hope THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 157 not, for the method is cynical; but then the va- garies of the religions, the hatred of creed for creed, tend to cynicism. The revenue Baku yields is fabulous. The Government tax on oil lands, leased out on a royalty basis, averages not less than 30 per cent, of the gross value of the oil pro- duced. Thirty per cent. ! And in the old days, when Paul Kruger and his "corrupt oligarchy" put 5 per cent, net on the gold-mines of the Rand, we thought the end had come. Baku has done the British no good. A number of wells were bought by us, but bought too dear ; they lacked good management, their owners had no local knowledge, some wells ran dry, a number lessened their yield, and the record is of loss from beginning to end. Fortunes have been made here, many fortunes, but these wells are no longer a speculation for the outsider. As I sailed down the shores of the Caspian the desert aspect changed. A greenness crept into the plain, forests came, then mountains, and at Enzeli I landed in heavy rain. So this was Persia ! I had looked for blue sky, barren wastes, trains of camels, and here were drenched green meadows, groves of mulberries, mud, and a people ragged and bedraggled. Such was the land for fifty miles as I drove South ; then the rude postchaise ascended through forests, and 158 THE SHADOW-SHOW by evening came out on the tableland of Persia. Here was the desert, the real thing, the Iran of song and story; and as for camels, under a full Eastern moon, heavily laden, there were thou- sands passing along that highway to the interior. At dead of night, with honeyed words, keepers of the post-houses bade me stop and enter. But never a toman charmed they from me, never a kran; for I carried my sustenance, I took my rest in the chaise under the sky, and my eyes, as the eyes of Rhoda and Minna, were fixed on the dis- tant hills. Yet because of this fixity I sinned. Next day, as we travelled, a horse failed. With lash and goad a brutal driver forced him on. The stricken, willing brute struggled gamely, till at last eyes and nostrils suddenly suffused with blood, and he fell exhausted. And I had let this thing be. Angered at any delay, I had protested all too feebly. Even now my desires seemed so vivid, those of the beast that lay there quaking so remote. It was not I, to my shame, but the Armenian, who laid a blan- ket over those sweating limbs ; yet had I done this for my dumb servant, or laid my hand a while over those tired, frightened eyes, I had gone into Persia a better man. I do not even know if he lived. In an hour a driver with fresh horses came from the post-house. Mounting to his seit, and THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 159 galloping, he burst into a shrill song of love, hold- ing merry converse with Balthazar. I, who had come again to my right mind, lay back degraded and ashamed. All that day, and a second night, I drove on over the wastes; through the old city of Kazvin; past the oasis of Karaj, where grapes were grow- ing, until the giant white peak of Demavend stood out. At the fifty-third hour the open gates of Teheran received me. The Persians are sunk in squalor and in apathy. Weak in character, unstable as water, they look to be desperately poor material. Yet let us be fair, let us get to the root of these things. Cast- ing our eyes around, let them light on this stout burgess of Tunbridge Wells in the county of Kent. See him, breakfasted, complacent, emerge from semi-detached villa, wherein are found a buxom spouse, a warm bed, clean sheets, beef and beer, coals, hot and cold water, and the usual domestic offices. See him, fitly clad, wending his way to shop or business, working in comfort, and emerg- ing toward evening, richer by a pound sterling or more, to return to a dinner of meat, tobacco, and a good book. Take this man typifying this our England and mark him well. There, but for the grace of Cromwell, goes a Persian. For it is freedom, more than all else together, that has placed the English- 160 THE SHADOW-SHOW man where he is, and it is despotism bad, hope- less, vile despotism that has put the Persian, physically and morally, where he is. Oliver, I salute you! Without you, where had we been to-day or Europe ? What a way you had with a despot ! What a touch ! Do you recall that little procession through Whitehall? Can you re-pic- ture that mounting of steps, that removal of Flanders lace, that mystification of the worthy Juxon? Did you hear that thud, Protector? That was a man's head as it bounced into the sawdust. Quite an important head too; quite a good place, all things considered, for it to bounce. Charles died like a man. We grant him that. But hurrah for Cromwell and the axe! Should the liberty of these dear islands be ever in jeop- ardy, let it descend again and again. Under the Kajars, Persia has run utterly to seed. This dynasty, for a hundred years, has fur- nished debauchees, spendthrifts, fools, murderers, but never a financier, never a statesman. The land under them went fallow. It mattered little that men should sow or reap fine crops, for the officials took the crops; that others should breed flocks, or start thriving industries, for the Shah, his myrmidons, or the tax-gatherers marked them down. Holding absolute power, these Kajar des- pots, debauched to enervation, bored to extinc- tion, flattered out of their senses, have squandered, THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 161 robbed, murdered, while Persia, their unhappy country, went to seed, and its people sank to the rags, squalor, and apathy in which I now see them. In the year 1909 they rebelled. Men from the mountains, the grizzled Bakhtiari, appeared before the capital. The cowardly troops of the Shah fled. The city fell with hardly a blow. A leader came forward, and a revolutionary gov- ernment was formed. The Shah, failing in a coup d'etat, was deposed. His life was spared, and with six of his women he drove out of his city, bound for distant Odessa. His son, a child, they proclaimed king, with a regent of the princely family; but I could wish this damnable Kajar dynasty swept neck and crop out of the land. Teheran is a city set on a plain. Her earthen ramparts, that keep out no foe, extend for eleven miles, and are pierced by twelve stately gates. Behind Teheran, at half a day's journey, lie the mountains, whence, by cunningly wrought under- ground channels, water is carried to the city, and so she lies embowered in trees, an oasis in the surrounding desert. This city lies at near 4,000 feet, in the latitude of Southern Spain. The autumn sun is yet balmy, and the vendors of melons and pomegranates are still in the streets, but the nights are already cold, and the snow is lying far down the mountains. 162 THE SHADOW-SHOW Teheran is a poor city, in a poorer country ; yet a, quarter of a million people must live and trade; so we see, converging over the desert, from the oases, from villages of the plain, from cities more distant, from Ispahan, Yezd, Meshed and Kazvin, and from the shores of the Caspian, a motley traf- fic. Here are camels from the mountains, with firewood; here are horses from Enzeli, packed with conical loaves of Russian sugar; here are asses from Karaj, with grapes, their weary driver him- self freighted with forage ; these horsemen, ragged and dusty, are pilgrims, returning from Kerbela; this creature is a beggar, this other a dervish from Khorassan; the shrouded objects in that cart are women off to a wedding, and the sewn-up thing lying across that mule a corpse. Thus runs the world at the gates of Teheran. The bazaars of the city, arched vaults of brick, that are but dimly lit from above, cover a great area. They form an endless twilight labyrinth of booths, of caravanserais, of eating-houses, where, in a day, one will see pass all the peoples of the East ; where heavily laden trains of camels, with soft deliberate tread, stalk dimly through, scattering to right and left the unwary; where beg- gars importune, merchants beckon, mullahs glare, and fanatic Shiahs jostle; and where, hour after hour, I wandered alone, unoriented and utterly happy. THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 163 This I noted : at two of the clock the bazaars were at their height. At four the crowd melted; at five the bazaars were empty, the booths closed, and the people making for the evening prayer at the mosques. In the squares, crowds would lin- ger awhile round some frenzied holy man; but with the fall of night the streets were bare, the gates closed, and the city fast settling to her rest. Just where the bazaars pour out their crowds toward evening stand the high walls of the palace. Within this considerable rectangle, in fact, is found not one palace but many caprices of a spendthrift dynasty and all at random are seen galleries, throne-rooms, an orangery, a circus, tiled kiosks, flower-gardens, and small lakes. In these revolutionary times people came and went at will. Unchallenged, I penetrated to the inner- most recess, where old trees hung over running water, and where kiosks, flower-beds, and small, placid lakes made an altogether lovely scene. Groups of Persians, without doubt the leading men of the realm, strolled here, and some high officials in uniform, but to the barbarian and his companion gave no thought. Suddenly there was a cry of "Naib Sultaneh!" and the Regent of Persia, an ancient bearded man of dervish-like aspect, passed from behind some trees, and with a small retinue entered the palace. This old man, 164 THE SHADOW-SHOW head of the Kajar tribe, and a prince of the blood, is but a cipher in the hands of the revolution; a personage for the moment, his day will soon pass. And then there came another cry of "Sipahdar!" I turned, to see the obsequious Armenian, hat in hand, bowing low, and a man in black, with strong, flashing face the only strong face in this land of apathy moving towards the palace. As he reached the door, all those in the garden seemed to be there. They parted, some dozen men of note, and as he passed through bent themselves to the very ground. Such was this man head of the revolution, commander of the army, Prime Minister, and the real ruler of Persia. A wealthy landowner of Mazanderan, a governor under the old regime, this strong being may, or may not, be the instru- ment forged to pull Persia from the mire. But, gentlemen of the inner circle, ye who adulated just now in the garden, a word with you ! This revolution, that has thrown you on its crest, is a very serious thing. The fighting is over, it is true ; but there is much thought, much spade-work entailed, and this dalliance in the royal pleas- aunce, this mere bringing of yourselves before the master's eye, will not see you through. Up, and away to your desks ! Up, and administer Persia ! You, my dear sir, on whose bosom repose medal- lions, are you aware that the drainage of Tabriz cries aloud to Heaven^ You too, sirs, members of the Cabinet! The postal service of the Southern cities is in abeyance, and robber bands beset the highways, the people of Ispahan clamour for jus- tice, and the men of the capital for stability. Per- sia is festering. Get to work, I say, each accord- ing to his capacity. Now is the accepted time. You, and your country, are in the balance. Eng- land and Russia knock at the door, and the sand in the glass runs low ! The vision of Teheran that will linger, was that seen from the ruins of the ancient city of Re. Springs gush here from the limestone, and for a mile round are old trees and a rich vegeta- tion. In this oasis stands the mosque of Shah Abdul Azim. On Fridays visited by thousands from the city, it was here, a dozen years ago, that the Shah Nazr-ed-Din fell by an assassin's hand. Standing on the old ramparts of Re, the oasis and its mosque behind me, I gazed out over the desert. Two leagues from me Teheran lay under its foliage. Above the tree-tops the eye rested on the minarets of Sipeh Salar, and on the castle of Qasr-i-Kajar that lies on a crest beyond the city walls. But the glamour lay on Sar-i-gabr-i- Agha, whose tiled dome was flashing among the trees like a great jewel. Clouds cross the heaven, and the dome sinks to a dead blue ; anon, it deep- ens, glows, the sun strikes, and then bursts out 166 THE SHADOW-SHOW the glorious colour of turquoise, Persia's stone of stones, and her dead craftsmen become sacred in my eyes. This is my last night in Teheran. Waiting for Hatim Tai's cry of "Supper," I wrap myself warmly, and pass into the little garden where I am domiciled. As I pace slowly in the darkness, I reflect thus : Of later Persia, her Nadir was her zenith; but this cycle, that opened with paradox so auspicious, has rolled itself out. Bankrupt, her people sunk in apathy, vitiated by opium, her priests fanatic, her officials corrupt, her kings hopeless can regeneration come *? Does this revo- lution, whose echoes still reverberate, mean some- thing true and deep, a stirring of the bones, or is this one-time great country and her people now passing to the chamber of death? I fear for Persia. This is no garden of Shiraz where I walk; yet oleanders are blooming, and they tell me Shiraz herself has gone the way of all things Persian. How the illusions go here! Yet see! Rising as it rose of old when Saadi and Hafrz sang, when roses blossomed by Bendemeer, and Ispahan reigned Queen of the East the lovely orb of night moves up the sky. And this, truly, is no il- lusion. "Ah, moon of my delight who know'st no wane, The moon of heaven is rising once again: THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 167 How oft hereafter rising shall she look Through this same garden after me in vain!" Over against Baku, on the Eastern shore of the Caspian, where no Englishman used to land with- out permit from Russia's Minister of War, lies the desert town of Krasnovodsk, starting-point of the Trans-Caspian railway. Some twelve hun- dred miles in length, this line was built to cement the Central Asiatic conquests of Russia and, as we are told, to menace the existence of our own Hindustan. If one travels by the evening train for the authorities run two, if not three trains daily, seek- ing from this line, it would seem, no commercial result he will pass out of Krasnovodsk toward six o'clock. It will be already dark. The long train will be nearly empty: in first and second class perhaps five passengers, and in the third a few natives of the region huddled in their first sleep, and the traveller will reflect on so strange a procession of empty trains disappearing into the Central Asian desert day after day, year after year. Then he will spread his bed, blow out the spluttering candle, and seek oblivion. Next morning the train is far out on the Turko- man Steppe. As flat and desert-like an expanse as can anywhere be found, this is seen stretching north with never a billow. Far to the south the faint outlines of a mountain range mark the bor- 168 THE SHADOW-SHOW der-line of Persia. There is sustenance in this desert. Camels are browsing on the scrub, and now and again horsemen ride into view ; their vil- lages lie south of the line, toward the frontier. But what a day of days! What exhilaration in the air! What a blending of sky with horizon! I was to learn from this moment that the Central Asian autumn is most perfect of all earthly cli- mates. Presently the train comes to Geok Tepe. Standing in full view are the mud walls, high and wide, of the famous fort, where, with assured water supply, forty-five thousand Turkomans cast the die, where upon a day in 1881 their power was broken for ever, and in the name of Skobeleff flashed across the world. I wandered inside the great rectangle of the fort, that might be a mile long by a third wide. I saw the Turkomans' well of water, and by it the national memorial to the victor. He attacked, it is there stated, with six thousand men, losing eleven hundred a great but surely a foregone victory. Outside the fort, by the station, is the Skobeleff Museum. Kuropat- kin, chief of staff that day, himself no mean sol- dier, built this when Governor of Trans-Caspia, but the relics now rest in Tashkent. "A flighty, ill-balanced creature, this Skobeleff," said one who knew to me: "a character in no sense admirable. Yet place him on a battlefield, and in a flash its THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 169 strategy lay bare before him. He was unerring a genius." Again the train rumbled over the steppe. In less than two hours Askabad came in sight, the capital of Trans-Caspia, an ugly desert town close on the Persian frontier, with a large garrison and many officials. Yet Askabad has claim to recog- nition. It is the chief centre of Babism, that re- ligion evolved and preached by the truly good Mirza Ali-Mahomet of Shiraz, executed in Ta- briz in 1849, a man I take to have been one of the inspired teachers of the century. There is food for thought in contrasting his end on the scaffold, his followers scattered to the winds with that of another founder of a religion, Mrs. Eddy, dying in her bed in Boston, with the elect round her, with two millions of dollars in the bank, and in the sure and certain hope that her name will become venerated and holy. At sunset we were travelling under the Persian mountains. Mentally, I stood on their crest and gazed down into the fair land of Khorassan, and I saw Meshed, with the tomb of the Imam all aglow, and the throng passing in the Khaiban. But the night came down, and the "vision splen- did" paled, and the next I knew it was eleven o'clock, and we were at the oasis of Merv. I left the train and entered a dirty Russian inn. There was a market in Merv next day. From 170 THE SHADOW-SHOW dawn horsemen and men on foot, but mostly horsemen, for these Turkomans of the oasis are well-to-do, poured in. At ten o'clock I came on to the great market square. There I found some three or four thousand horses, each at its tether; their owners, tall bearded Turkomans in high sheepskin hats and quilted gowns, well-looking men of a strong Mongolian type, talked in groups, or sat at tea in the booths. It was a great market. There were camels laden with raw cotton and asses laden with melons; there were young camels for sale, and horses and sheep, and piles of native crockery, and grains, and sweet- meats, and silver-sheathed knives. One saw these people had money, and realized the cash value of a first-class oasis. Old Merv, very famous city of antiquity, was located a few miles from here; the ruins are still to be seen. Near its site, at Bairam-Ali, the Czar had laid out a private estate, with a cotton-clean- ing mill, orchards, and a jam factory; the fruit crop is enormous. At this season no green thing was showing in Merv. The trees were leafless, the cotton and the fruit plucked, the roads lay deep in dust. But the irrigation furrows were running full, and with spring there would come that burst of verdure that has made this oasis famous. From Merv a branch line runs south to Kushk, THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 171 on the Afghan frontier. It is Russia's great mys- tery line, not to be traversed, even with special permit. There are, doubtless, troops down in this corner, and forts, and, it may be, as I have heard said, great stocks of railway material. But write these things off. The Russians will not cannot invade India in our day. The thing is a myth. They know it. We know it. Kushk, with its branch line, need not worry us. I left Merv and passed again out into the wastes, that evening crossing, by a bridge that is near a mile in length, a classic river. This is the Oxus, or Amu Daria, that rises in the Pamirs. Its waters, fertilizing the land in the upper reaches, flow down to these Central Asian deserts, and discharge finally, five hundred miles to the north, into the inland Sea of Aral. Towards mid- night I alighted at the station of Kagan. I awoke to another of these glorious days of autumn. Taking scant heed of the ugly Russian settlement that clustered round the station of Kagan, I was soon driving over the plain. I was in Bokhara. These plains were the Emir's terri- tory; Bokhara the holy, the learned, the goal of travellers, and the mart of Central Asia, lay but eight miles away. Here was a fertile land, watered with many furrows. Cotton in the pod, yet unreaped, stood in the fields; there were green meadows where- 172 THE SHADOW-SHOW on the fat-tailed sheep browsed, and many mul- berry-trees. There was a great volume of traffic on the level road, which ever increased, and at length high walls appeared, and I passed into the city itself. I passed into a city of a hundred thousand people, congested, teeming, fetid, a city of dried mud and bricks, resting on a foundation of the refuse of centuries, with little architectural merit, with no vistas within or without, yet with a human, living interest that is not to be equalled in the whole world. It is Bokhara's colour that takes the eye. This is a wealthy city, a great cen- tre of the silk trade, and thousands of her people go clad in rainbow gowns of exceeding fineness and beauty. The poorer wear gowns of like bril- liant hue, but of a cheap Russian material; their vividness, and the leavening of these many fine silks, give to the Bokharan streets a matchless colouring. Then there are the men themselves for the women of Bokhara you shall not see. Predomi- nant are the Sarts the Bokhariots in white tur- ban and silken gown, city-dwellers to the casual eye, with pale, intelligent, ultra-lascivious, bearded faces, effeminate, yet fanatic. These crowd the bazaars, many astride handsome horses, or spreading carpets on the open spaces before the mosques, sit to gossip. When the muezzins call, they leave their tea and melons, trooping to THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 173 prayer; but if the prayers of these Sarts of Bok- hara avail in the ears of Allah, their faces do belie them. The Sart is not a Mongolian type, as are these tall, unpolished Turkomans and robust Kirghiz who pass through the bazaars. These men of the desert, with their fine physique and open face, are good to look on. They wear sheepskin hats and rude blouses; their religion, too, lacks the subtlety of the medresses; yet I declare their sim- ple desert invocations to be of a sweeter savour than all the prayers that rise from this fetid and corrupt city. The Jews of Bokhara, who have lived within her walls from time immemorial, are said to num- ber eight thousand. Often assailed in the olden times, tortured, robbed, killed, they have never- theless held their own, and are to-day a prosperous and tolerated community. In business they are held in high esteem; it is said the word of a Bokharan Jew is a bond, and indeed the words and bearing of those with whom I dealt impressed me. To-day he still may not bind his gown with a girdle, but with string, and by the Emir's edict there is enjoined a certain shaving of hair behind the ears; but take things for all in all, the Jew is contented in Bokhara, and he is her honest man. Afghans mingle in the throng of the bazaars. 174 THE SHADOW-SHOW But with them Bokhara is no abiding city; they come with the camel caravans from Herat and Kabul, and will even so depart again. The pres- ence here of Persians is not so easily explained. What do these Shiahs in this holy centre of Sun- nism? In the past, beautiful Persian women were brought to Bokhara as slaves, and in the proud Sarts their blood still flows; but for the men of Iran, craven and schismatic, Bokhara can hold naught but a superb contempt. Here are strange people! Hindus with their caste marks, natives of India, who have no word of English, who, like grey friars of the East, steal about in prescribed cap and gown. There are four or five hundred of these here, without their women, living mirthless in caravanserais set apart. They are moneylenders a trade forbidden to the followers of Mahomet and have come, without exception, from the city or district of Shikarpur, in Sind. Their fathers, and to the same number^ were in Bokhara thirty-five years ago. Schuyler describes them. In his day, too, they knew no English, but then, as now, "Shikarpur, Shikarpur" was on their tongues. They trade with small cap- itals, turning their money often, and earn, it is thought, 25 per cent., but they are secretive and hard to fathom. You will find these men again, in their sombre dress, in the bazaars of Tashkent, THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 175 and always from "Shikarpur," where this special- ized profession must be now firmly set. Here is a large caravanserai of a better condi- tion. In it dwell some eighty Peshawaris Brit- ish Indians, Mahometans, men of some status, among whom are English scholars. They are, to a man, agents in tea, covering not only this city but the trade of Central Asia. It is Chinese tea they deal in green tea from Shanghai, r. univer- sal beverage here; but that the men of Peshawar should sell Chinese tea in Bokhara, and none but they, is one of the strangest bits of specialization in commerce. Outside the city walls, at meat in an upper chamber, sat three Englishmen. This was surely strangest of all. A stray Russian or two there might happen, but that the population of Bokhara should number three English wool-buyers let this quaint fact be given to the world ! They fell on my English neck the third in two years and, placing before me kosher meat, bread, and dried apricots of the oasis, we talked until the sun set. Bokhara is a protectorate under Russia. To her Emir is given a measure of self-government and the power of life and death over his own people, whom he rules through his kushbegi, or viceroy. He himself, son of that traitorous Emir who led the Russians into his own city, is not 176 THE SHADOW-SHOW loved of the Bokhariots. He knows this; they say he has not yet entered his capital. Bokhara, the holy city, is no beauty spot. Be- hind those crenellated walls stretch no vistas; the mosques are not fine, their mosaics are sadly dam- aged; there is no architecture of note. One high brick tower alone stands out, from whose battle- ments, within a century, two Englishmen were hurled. There are many medresses, where elderly, bearded students from the confines of mid-Asia come to hear exposition of the Scriptures, for the learning, no less than the holiness, of Bokhara is far-famed. But the first and last of Bokhara is her human interest. It is the vivid crowd in their silks, thronging bazaars and mosques and tea- shops, that makes this city of the plains unique in all the world. I gave a supper-party at Bokhara a cham- pagne supper. The little hotel at Kagan was hard pressed to provide a menu, but the owner, a lady of the Baltic Provinces, rose to a great occasion. There were present the three English the only domiciled English in Turkestan two Belgians, of official standing in St. Petersburg, and a worthy Jew from the South of Russia. We were seven. The wine having circled, I stood and raised my glass. I said : "Gentlemen, there is only one toast to-night. It is to Russia, and her great work in Turkestan. We wish her right well. Whether THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 177 she has got here all she hoped for, it is not for me to say. Her deficits in this country are still enor- mous, and it will take much irrigation, much cot- ton-growing, and many lamb-skins to bring about a financial balance. She is fortunate in the na- tives, who are contented, and will give her no trouble. She need not have, she will not have, so far as I can see, political trouble with any one ; certainly not with us. She will be able to develop in peace. Having put her hand to the plough, she will now carry through her big work, a work, in my humble opinion, that is for the ultimate benefit of humanity." * (Applause, during which the lady of the Baltic Provinces approaches with wild ducks, in her face the look of incipient victory.) One of those long, empty trains that lumber for ever out of Krasnovodsk to traverse the Turk- oman desert, left Kagan toward midnight, and in the freshness of an early morning I alighted at the station of Samarkand. The city lay some miles away. I followed a rising road: there was heavy traffic of native carriages, of horsemen, of laden camels, and a Russian regiment of cavalry recruits galloped by. I came to the Russian town, and passed under avenues of tremendous trees. Planted when the city fell, more than forty years ago, those avenues will create for Samarkand a fresh renown. a Alas! poor Russia. 178 THE SHADOW-SHOW At the crest of the rise, on breezy uplands, all in view of snowy ranges, lay the ancient, the im- perial city. Delhi! I cried, as the vista opened; Delhi, of the open Maidan and the imperial tra- ditions. Yet a colder Delhi, open and wind- swept, for this is high above the fetid and clois- tered Bokhara; the very Sarts look manly, and the Khirgiz of the steppe, seen here in numbers, are in radiant health. But look around! See these fanes of beauty, these deep colours flashing in the sun! Under this dome of blue is the tomb of Tamerlane. He lies in the crypt, beneath that block of black jas- per. One of humanity's greatest, he died in his city of Samarkand in 1405, Master of Asia. Ninth in succession from Genghis Khan, and great-grandfather of Baber, who conquered India, Tamerlane linked Mongol with Mogul; he gave distinction to the greatest line of warrior-states- men the world has known. The city in his day, one great mosaic, was fit setting for this imperial figure. His own works to that end are still seen. It is true the glorious tomb of him was not yet built; but his embellish- ments of the Shah-i-Zindeh, whose scrolls and arabesques are even yet in pristine perfection are extant, as are the ruins of Bibi Khanum, that im- mense mausoleum to his beloved Queen. Stand with me in the Registan of Samarkand THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 179 ne plus ultra of world travel a small square of seventy yards, open as to one side to the ba- zaars, bounded as to three by mosques, high and square and old, whose fronts, covered in mosaic patterning of blue, yellow, green, and white, flash the autumn sun from a thousand facets. These mosques of the Registan, with their medresses^ are not from Timur's day. Replacing earlier buildings, they date back but two hundred years; yet their colouring, that is now a lost art, is fast crumbling, and one must pass into their open courts, that lie behind, to view them in finest preservation. I stood on a Friday in the great court of the mosque of Tila-Kar; the mullahs cried on Allah, and the men of Samarkand knelt at His holy name. The sky was blue, the face of the mosque and the walls of the courtyard sparkled in their rich hues, the silken gowns and praying carpets of the worshippers hid all the earth. There was nothing at all but colour, yet ungarish, a perfect whole, and I knew that I looked on the world's best. The tiles of Samarkand are from the Persians those rare and facile artificers. The scroll and the colour scheme is Persian or Arabian always one sees here no Chinese influence ; blues, light and dark, yellow, green, and white, are used, red is rarely seen, and black not later than the time of Timur. But these are colours indeed! Their 180 THE SHADOW-SHOW deep, rich glaze, compared with the modern, tells of a great art that is dead. No less than Titian, master colourist, these old Persians took a secret with them to the grave. But for how long are these beautiful things'? These tiles, of so royal a facing, are but a small, poorish brick; they do not endure, and Samarkand's glories are crumbling to the dust. Pondering these things, I came out on a sandy waste, the ancient burying-place of the dead. The sun was setting, and I turned to gaze over the city this city of a dream. Near by were the tombs of the Shah-i-Zindeh ; yonder, above the trees, rose the blue dome of the Emperor's mausoleum; be- low me lay the supposititious and ever-lengthen- ing tomb of Daniel; in the city itself stood out the ruins of Bibi Khanum and the three mosques of Registan. And all around me lay the dead of Samarkand, a great company. On these breezy uplands, in view of the far-off hills, tens of thou- sands are lying with their prince. A dream city truly! For these things are fast melting away. Even in the last years the mosaic minaret has fallen from Timur's tomb, and the inlaid cupola from the mosque of Ishrat Khan. These fell to a slight shock; the next, as like as not, may level Samarkand with the dust. God knows what were its one-time splendours ! THE DREAM CITY OF SAMARKAND 181 What the old travellers saw! It is even now a treasure place of the world, and I see it crum- bling before my eyes. Its glories, "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples," are melting into thin air. The day is not distant when they will be gone. CHAPTER VIII WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA AMONGST the ugly happenings in our Empire's history was the loss of the Argentine. We draw a veil at times, and you will hardly find these things in our school books; but about one hun- dred years ago a British general and his troops were driven from Buenos Aires, a British town, by three thousand Argentines, and the Home Gov- ernment, beset as it then was with trouble, ordered our withdrawal from the country. Thus we lost the Argentine, and who knows what else on this continent. Firmly seated there during the nineteenth century, Britain had to-day been arbiter in South America. As for the Argen- tine, adjacent territories had fallen into her as comets fall into the sun; within her borders had now lain Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and South- ern Brazil. And what a country to lose! One travels in the train for days over plains more fertile than Kansas or Nebraska. As I have watched these roll past, with their wealth of maize and wheat, their endless herds of horses, cattle, and sheep, 182 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 183 I have shouted out in anger against the fates which drove us from this fair land. There is, to be sure, the law of compensation. Had we owned this country, diverting thither our people, our capital, for a hundred years, other parts of the Empire had suffered; Australia and New Zealand would not be where they are to-day. As it is, we have a big stake in Argentina, our in- vestments there figuring at 400,000,000. To this extent the past has been retrieved. The English have not gone to the Argentine in numbers, but about seventy years ago some thou- sands of Irish settled there. They took up land, and throve, and are now, in the third generation, very well off. Retaining a strong accent, and the shrewd, rather wizened physiognomy of their race, they have drifted in sentiment far from us. To all intents they are now Argentines, and should a Senor Murphy wed a Sefiorita O'Flannigan, it is no British Consul who ties the civil knot. This same Buenos Aires is become the South American centre of gravity. It is a wealthy city of 1,600,000 people, partly Italian, growing fast, and to me least interesting of the world's great towns. Its people are crude, but strenuous; on their faces is deeply written the lust of greed. I dislike Buenos Aires, but am not blind to its future. It will grow this century, as Winnipeg and Hankow will grow. Because of a shallow 184 THE SHADOW-SHOW water frontage it may never rank with the great- est ports, but in population is destined to be a world centre. You may sail from Buenos Aires one thousand miles up the River Parana, and come to Para- guay. This is a quaint, undeveloped State, that reached three hundred years ago, under the Jesuits, more civilization than it can now claim. But the Argentine railways are reaching out, and in time Paraguay will be brought in touch with the outer world. About thirty years ago a number of people left Queensland for Paraguay, to start a socialist colony. This was a failure. Practical socialism, for some of these Australians, proved too altru- istic; but it is fair to say the chief reasons for failure were the false estimates of the leader on whose advice they had come, a lack of capital, and the great distance of their colony from the markets. A second colony was started, leavened by idealists from England, and promises mod- erate success; in 1905, when I was in Paraguay, it was getting on its legs. To-day Paraguay exports cattle, timber, yerba tea, and oranges. Between it and Brazil, on the Iguazu River, are falls, only exceeded in gran- deur by those on the Zambesi and at Niagara, and as yet visited by few Europeans. The Paraguayans have a deep Indian strain, WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 185 and stand low in the South American scale. Revolutions and fighting in the streets of Asun- cion, the little capital, still occupy much of their time. Their finance is rotten as their politics. When I was in Paraguay the paper dollar stood at eight cents having gradually fallen from a gold basis. A recent revolution had given the currency its death-blow. On the eve of the out- break, with a keen prescience of his coming politi- cal extinction, the Finance Minister had possessed himself of the Government printing machine, and was known to have worked far into the night printing currency "on his own." Next day, in the excitement of revolution, he disappeared. Paraguay has had three dictators of imperish- able fame. The first was Dr. Francia to me, greatest of all South American dictators. When Paraguay threw off Spain, in 1815 for Francia came to power the year Napoleon fell he became her first President. He was said to be the son of an In- dian woman by a French father, hence "Francia," but deep mystery surrounded his birth and early life. He was educated at the University of Cor- doba, in Argentina, was a Doctor of Law, and in 1815 was fifty -five years of age. For twenty-five years he was absolute ruler of Paraguay, so much so that, when he died, an old, old man, he left no rival. Those who failed to honour him, who 186 THE SHADOW-SHOW in any degree asserted themselves, were got rid of. Executions were wholesale. Standing in front of his house of a morning, smoking a cigar, he looked out over the plaza and gave the signal for the volleys. In private life he was modest and retiring, spoke in a low voice, was a kind friend, and scrupulously honest with the State's finances ; but where power or ambition entered, he was a fiend, showing no mercy. Afraid, in his later years, of assassination, when he passed through the streets of Asuncion all were bidden to stand facing the wall; those who disobeyed were shot down by his body-guard. Coming sud- denly upon this little figure, dressed in black, women and children were often heard to scream. He ruled as never man ruled. He died quietly on Christmas Day, 1840, eighty years old. Some years ago, in Asuncion, lived a very old woman, a lace seller, who remem- bered the day of Dr. Francia's funeral. He was buried in the cathedral with great pomp. Next day, the flagstones covering the tomb were found strewn about and the body had disappeared. The common people believed believe to this day that he was taken by the devil ; but the alligators in the river close by, to whom his corpse was un- doubtedly thrown, could have told a different tale. It was many years before the fear of his almost supernatural power died away. WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 187 He was followed by another great dictator- Lopez. Lopez came to power as a middle-aged man a schoolmaster, if I recollect. With schol- arly leanings, and of a private life the most re- spectable, he, too, was absolutely upright with the public money. I picture him as short and stout, gazing at one benignantly over spectacles, not unlike Phiz's prints of Pickwick. Coming to autocracy late in life, he nevertheless developed lust of power and ambition to a remarkable degree. For many years he ruled with a rod iron as Francia's. Those who thwarted him, who con- spired, who asserted their wills in any degree, went inexorably to their death. Hundreds, prob- ably thousands, were thus put away by Lopez. He died in his bed, absolute master of Para- guay. To him succeeded his son, the younger Lopez. This was a man of different calibre. Not lacking in ability, he was weak, vain, and a deep drinker antithesis of those two fathomless men who ruled before him. As envoy to France during his father's dictatorship, he met there a woman who was to exercise an extraordinary influence on South America. This was Madame Lynch, widow of a French officer, by birth an Irish girl. She went with Lopez to Paraguay as his mistress. There her character developed; Lopez, who after 188 THE SHADOW-SHOW some years became dictator in his father's shoes, was as wax in her hands. Exercising great power, and with a hellish cruelty, she wreaked vengeance on those who had slighted her. Hundreds were done to death by her orders. Her ambition for Lopez was military glory; playing on his vanity, she involved him in war successively, then simul- taneously, with Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. From 1867-70 this Irishwoman plunged a large part of the continent into bloodshed. The men of Paraguay fought like demons, Lopez himself displaying valour and skill in many battles. When the war finally ended, through exhaustion, young boys were still living, and a few men over seventy, but the manhood of Paraguay had prac- tically ceased to exist. The dictator lay dead on the field. Having written her name large on the page of history, Madame Lynch retired to Buenos Aires, and died there not many years ago. In the summer months, after the melting of the snow, one can cross the Andes from Argen- tina into Chile. The summit of the pass is at 12,000 feet, and on the boundary line, erected by Chile, stands a colossal figure of Christ. Some years ago, when this figure was unveiled, the ceremony was made the occasion for a demonstra- tion, and many political and religious personages WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 189 from Santiago attended. Afterwards champagne was served, and having drunk heartily, the com- pany proceeded to break the empty bottles against the statue for luck. There are quite a number of statues of Christ in Chile. Their erection has been coincident with a marked deterioration in the national character. From hearsay I had expected to find the Chilenos rather above the other peoples of South America. I came away disillusioned. They have the best navy and army, no doubt, but in the things which really count honesty and character they are lacking. Much of this deterioration, I believe, is due to that accursed heritage, the nitrate fields. In the old days Chile was poor but self-reliant, working hard to make ends meet. Then came the success- ful war with Peru and the annexation of Tara- paca. With Tarapaca came the nitrates, and from these, as export tax, the Chilian treasury was soon receiving some one and a half millions sterling annually. This large unearned increment debauched the little community. With such a revenue to cut up, politics became a thriving business at Santiago; senators, deputies, and their friends and partisans went into politics for what they could make, and hundreds of parasites grew to batten on the reve- nue. Public money was squandered, the State 190 THE SHADOW-SHOW robbed, and an era of corruption set in. It is true that Chile has never defaulted, nor do I think she will, but her internal currency is rotten. The gold dollar note, when I was in Chile, was worth nine- pence. The climate of Central Chile is very delightful. As against a small rainfall, there are streams fed by never-failing Andean snows, and under judi- cious irrigation the coastal valleys yield bounte- ously. Chilian wines are good, flowers there are glorious, with care the fruit might be unexcelled; at roadside stations, in the seasons, peasant women display piles of figs, peaches, nectarines, and pears most fair to look on, but, through careless culti- vation, lacking in flavour. The watermelon crop is gigantic. But the palm must be given to the Chilian grape ; those of Huasco and Coquimbo are such as Californian vineyards cannot rival. At the hot baths of Cauquenes, where sciatica took me, the vegetation, the surroundings were those of old Cape Colony. I might have been living outside Paarl or Stellenbosch. Beyond the mountains, on the plains of Argentina, all was life and energy; but here, in this quiet valley, was only repose. After the midday meal the world slept. I, who did not sleep, strolled lazily under the oak avenues or sat in the old garden dreaming. For days, as I dreamed, a verse eluded me. Long WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 191 after, when he who wrote it had passed to the grave, it came to me : "Here, where the world is quiet: Here, where all trouble seems Dead, winds and spent waves riot In doubtful dream of dreams; I watch the green fields growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams." Such was Cauquenes, of Central Chile. There are majestic views of the Andes from many spots in Chile, and Aconcagua highest point in the New World can be seen on a clear day from the bay of Valparaiso. The traveller southwards will find beauty of another kind the park of the late Madame Cousino, at Lota. Here, on a bold headland, is a landscape in which flowers and foliage mingle in gorgeous profusion; half nature, half art, it is a thing of real excel- lence. Beneath this spot, and stretching out under the ocean, lies the coal seam from which the Cousino family won the largest fortune of Chile. As one sails still southwards the climate be- comes wet and ever colder. The coast is rugged and broken, and mists often hide the land. Wrapped heavily up, I stood shivering, and watched the steamer enter the Straits of Magel- lan. Here, though bitterly cold, it was more sheltered. The mists lifted ; that night we passed between snow-clad mountain ranges, their purity 192 THE SHADOW-SHOW of outline heightened in the brilliant moonlight. At daybreak the coasts were again low-lying. We dropped anchor off Punta Arenas, capital of Chilian Patagonia and most southerly town in the world ; across the straits lay Tierra del Fuego. It was a frosty autumn morning, but as yet no snow had fallen. Landing at the wharf of Punta Arenas, I started rapidly for the interior of Pata- gonia. This was new ground to me, and as ever on these occasions I was mentally exalted; I fan- cied myself on the eve of great things another Valdivia, another Almagro. When I had walked about two miles, heading due N.E. by N., a hoarse droning sound came up from the straits; the steamer's siren was calling passengers on board. My day-dream was over; turning my back on the interior, I walked rapidly back to the wharf. Punta Arenas began as a gold-mining centre. It was started, strange to say, by Austrians, who came to work the alluvial gravels of Tierra del Fuego. The richest of the gravel is now ex- hausted, but the winter storms still concentrate this material on the beaches, enabling some hun- dreds of men, during the summer, to earn a pre- carious living. Gold-dredging on a large scale has been tried on Tierra del Fuego, but has failed. Several thousand Austrians now make Punta Arenas their headquarters. A number of these are WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 193 still gold-washers, but more regular work is found in wool-shearing, or on the big sheep farms of the Tierra or the mainland. Sheep-farming has really made Punta Arenas; it is now the centre of a great grazing area, and already equipped with two freezing works. Tierra del Fuego, a No-Man's-Land till gold- washing and sheep-farming drew there a small population, belongs in part to Argentina, in part to Chile. A great man has already written his mark on its history. Between twenty and thirty years ago, in the days of the richest gold finds, Julius Popper became despot of Tierra del Fuego. This man was a Roumanian by birth ; entering the Russian army as a private soldier, he in time rose to be captain. He is next heard of at Buenos Ayres, securing from the Government Fuegian mining right; setting up his headquarters at Se- bastian Bay, he brought out the first Austrians to work his concessions. He found gold in plenty, and squandered it regally. It is said he acted as unofficial governor for the Argentine, but was too formidable for his power to be questioned. He did as he liked, among other things making an issue of gold coins. The Fuegian Indians he regarded as animals; when angered, he would go out and shoot them down as one would shoot birds. Once, finding six Indians working gold gravel for another white 194 THE SHADOW-SHOW man, he shot them all with his own hand. Fear- ing attack from the Indians, or discovery of his workings, he built a tower, where, telescope in hand, he sat for hours each day scanning the horizon. Hearing of mineral richness, prospecting bands came over, ever and anon, from the Chilian side or from the mainland. These he always disarmed or sent back; I have heard it said that some he shot down. At last there came a band, among whom was a determined Frenchman. These men Popper disarmed as usual, and despatched, over barren and hostile country, into Chilian territory. By a miracle they escaped with their lives. But the Frenchman vowed Popper's death. Following him, shortly after this, to Buenos Ayres, he is known to have tracked him to his hotel. There is no proof of these things one can but piece together. Next morning Popper came downstairs and drank his coffee; an hour later he lay dead. Leader of men, strong, unscrupulous, the despot of Tierra del Fuego had gone to his reckoning. Northern Chile is a land where it never rains, possibly not an inch in a century, and is therefore a desert. But note, again, the law of compensa- tion. There is no rain, no green thing; but be- cause there is no rain, deposits and chemical salts in the earth, such as guano, nitrates, borax, and WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 195 copper carbonates, are not dissolved nor washed away, and this desert region has therefore yielded great wealth. Beyond this desert, in the interior, lies the extensive though little known country of Bolivia, called after Simon Bolivar, the great Liberator the George Washington of South America who freed much of the continent from the misrule of Spain. The misrule, be it noted, is still there, though Spain has vanished. But it is more seemly to see a country misruled by its own people than. by strangers, and to this extent Bolivar's heroic acts have borne fruit. The Liberator accepted the position of Bolivia's first President; after a short rule, bigger affairs required his departure for Peru, and he did not return. Bolivia's most picturesque ruler was Melgarejo, who rose from peasant boy to be successful gen- eral, and finally dictator. During his time, about the year 1864, the British Minister to Bolivia was found to have taken part in some internal political question, aimed possibly at Melgarejo's power. The story runs that the President ordered him to be strapped to a mule, facing its tail, and lashed out of the capital; but an old American, living in Oruro, who in those days was Melgare- jo's coachman, gave this tale the lie. The Min- ister was handed his papers, he was asked to leave 196 THE SHADOW-SHOW the country, and he went. This insult, report says, so enraged Queen Victoria, that she blotted Bolivia from the map; and it was only in 1919, after an interval of forty-five years, that we were again represented at La Paz by a Minister. Malgarejo, having made the country too hot to hold him, fled to Peru with a handsome woman and considerable booty. He was afterwards as- sassinated in Lima. The far interior and trans-Andean Bolivia is low-lying and unhealthy. Its forests yield rubber in increasing quantity, which mostly finds outlet down the Amazon. The valuable Acre territory, rich in rubber, was sold some years ago by Bolivia to Brazil for two millions sterling. About the same time a territorial deal with Chile brought in a further half-million. With two-and-a-half millions liquid in its treas- ury, Bolivia made a resolution. It was deter- mined that all this money be spent on railways, and with this in view, the Government entered into a comprehensive financial and railway deal with New York bankers. But human nature is weak, Bolivian politicians rapacious, and I venture to guess there will be gigantic leakages. It was told at La Paz that a high personage, whose longings turn towards Paris, had already cut into the fund for an im- mense slice. WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 197 The South American politician is a stickler for etiquette. He may rob the treasury, it is true, but he will do so in a well-fitting frock-coat. His manners are charming, and he alone, in this continent, wears the tall hat. Up in the little Andean capital, smartly turned out men of this type are now working their will on Bolivia's nest- egg- The centre of energy in Bolivia the mining region is the plateau, at a height of over 12,000 feet. Here, over two hundred miles apart, lie Sucre and La Paz one official, the other actual, capital. The location of La Paz, lying in the shade of Illimani, and near to Sorata, is indeed striking. But the strangest town of Bolivia of all the New World is Potosi. It lies at the base of Potosi that mountain whose discovery altered the history of the world. It was in this wise : > In the year 1545, an Indian found silver veins in the mountaiij. These were so rich that their fame reached Pizarro at Lima, and conquistadores came to Potosi, to annex the mines for the King of Spain. They yielded fabulously. The one-fifth roy- alty payable to the King amounted, in the first fifty years alone, to two hundred and fifty-nine million sterling. It was this huge revenue from Potosi, more than from Mexico and all the Span- 198 THE SHADOW-SHOW ish Main, which set Spain at the head of Europe. But for this wealth she would have sunk centuries before she did; history is clear on that point. With this revenue pouring in, Spain overawed, her poorer neighbours, she gained vast prestige, she bought the friendship of the Church, and of its brutal lever, the Inquisition, and she acquired and consolidated her Western Empire. But for Potosi, Spain's dealings with South America had perhaps ended with a few bands of adventurers, who, finding no second Inca treasure, had departed in disillusion, leaving that continent to France, Holland, and England; but for Po- tosi, the Church of Rome had languished for funds, and the worldly power they bring, and, it may be, had adopted the meekness of its Founder, who said: "My kingdom is not of this earth"; but for Potosi, there had been no Spanish Ar- mada; but for Potosi, there had been no Spanish- owned Cuba, no Spanish-American war, no charge of rough-riders at San Juan, no elevation of Mr. Roosevelt to the Presidency, no denunciation of the trusts, no panic in Wall Street in the latter part of 1907. A long chain of cause and effect reaches out from the discovery of silver in that far-off mountain. Spain has set her mark on Potosi. Once the greatest city of South America, it is to-day small and decayed, yet boasts a score of fine old WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 199 churches. Quite intact, a superb building, is the Royal Mint, from whose portals there passed those wonderful royalties to the Kings of Spain. In this strange town Indian hovels stand beside stone facades and carved doorways of real beauty. Twenty thousand Indians, and few besides, live to-day in Potosi. They work in the mountain, as their ancestors did three hundred years ago, and though the yield of silver is now insignificant, its tin lodes are profitable. Made roads in Bolivia are few, and one rarely travels but on muleback; a second mule carries food and bedding; a day's journey is ten leagues thirty miles. At night you reach a small Indian village and enter a filthy hut; you spread your mattress on the mud floor, eat some bread and tinned food, and, wearied out, fall asleep. Nights are cold on the plateau, yet be- fore daylight your muleteer can be heard fitting the animals with their cumbrous saddles; you rise, stiff, shivering, depressed, roll up mattress and blankets, and are off at the dawn. It is the nadir of travel. The Indians of the Bolivian Andes, degenerate descendants of the Incas, are a mild people, gain- ing a scanty subsistence from their poor patches of cultivation. They supplement this by mining and as carriers, their herds of llamas, laden with stores or with tin ore, dotting the roads. They 200 THE SHADOW-SHOW are filthy in their habits, much given to strong drink, and of a deep religious strain. On a Good Friday I stood in the plaza at Oruro and saw the Holy Image carried in priestly procession. Thou- sands of Indians followed, reverent in mien; an Indian band played holy music, and the Host was raised: all hats were doffed; many fell on their knees muttering hoarse cries. Such is religion in the Andes a religion of the senses, not of the brain. Next day, feast-day and holiday, these people, men and women, lay in the very ecstasy of drink. For days they wal- lowed in it; then got up and went about their business, good-natured, ignorant, superstitious, filthy a little higher than the beasts of the fields. I went out from Bolivia over Lake Titicaca, that lies 12,500 feet above the sea. On an island of Titicaca, so runs the legend, took place the mystic birth of the Inca race. There stood the sacred temple of the sun, whose stately stone pil- lars, brought we know not whence, are still to be seen. On the far horizon, beyond the level ex- panse of the lake, all red-tinged in the sunset, rose Sorata and the white peaks of the higher Andes. When it became known, on November 15, 1889, that the Emperor was deposed, and the Re- public proclaimed, there was rejoicing in the WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 201 streets of Rio Janeiro: Brazil had ceased to be an Empire. All accounts show Dom Pedro to have been a charming man and a learned scientist. His faults were he was old, his grip over the country had not been firm, his successor was a woman, and, some say, priestridden. He himself was liked, but the monarchy was not liked. So the republi- can party, then in the ascendant, gave him twenty- four hours to leave the country, and he went. With the Republic came party politics and the spoils system, and as there are a Federal and twenty State Governments in the country, the division of the spoils in Brazil is a big industry. The Brazilian is lazy; he is not a pioneer, and does little to develop the huge country lying at his front door. But he must live; he is not lack- ing in shrewdness, so he takes the line of least resistance and goes into politics. Politics is his business. One may compare the Brazilians to those people cast on the island, who lived by tak- ing in each other's washing; all Brazilians, in like manner, seeming to live on the Government. While the abler acquire more or less power and a firmer grip on the spoils, there is not enough to go round, so the average functionary, wretchedly paid, supplements his income illicitly. To me, this is all very strange. Hardened trav- eller as I am, I yet look on Brazil as one of the 202 THE SHADOW-SHOW loveliest and most romantic countries in the world, while its richness is a byword. Brazil should con- tain a race of Nature worshippers, revelling in its glorious scenery, its harbours and waterfalls, its primeval forests; lusty pioneers, converting its fertile soil not only to coffee, but to a like yield of sugar, cotton, maize, tobacco, fruit, and any other staple the world needs; covering its uplands with homesteads and its plains with cattle; work- ing its minerals with energy, and making, at least of the southern half, a great, brilliant, all-em- bracing land. Such is my ideal. In reality, the educated Bra- zilian is a town-dweller, guiltless of romance, given over rabidly to politics and their spoil, a parasite, and with it all ineffective. His good points are a certain polish, relic of the days of the Empire, a kindnes of manner, more marked than in the Spanish Republics, a readiness to be amused, and an intense love of music; but in es- sentials he is a failure. Brazil is of course progressing, but this progress is due to the energy of British, Germans, Italians, and Portuguese. The present Federal Govern- ment is the best Brazil has had; but woe betide the victim on whom any State official casts his snaky eye. Who can describe the beauty of Brazil? In the mountains behind Rio Janeiro there is a peak WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 203 named Corcovado; the view from this of sea, har- bour, forests, mountains, and a great city appals you with its beauty. Rio Janeiro is the jewel of the world. Where, too, will you see fairer spots than the bay of Bahia or the inlets to Victoria and Santos? Such as these are the doors of fairy- land. In the interior, too, there is charm and beauty forest-girt Petropolis, the mountain capital, the wonderful railroad from Santos, the picturesque and wealthy Sao Paulo, the vistas seen from coffee estates, the dead city of St. John del Rey, with its fine old churches, the thriving German home- steads in the south, and a hundred glimpses of forests, waterfalls, trees blazing with colour, and distant mountains in a word, Nature unsur- passed. But when the hour of food draws near, beware ! The Brazilian cooks with a rancid lard, whose savour is of dead bodies ; his relish for this horror is not to be comprehended by us. Yet at the same meal one will be offered oranges and coffee of a taste divine. But how they exasperate one, this nation of officials ! I arrived at Rio once, and on the next day went to the Custom House. My trunk lay there; but it was a saint's day, and the place was shut. "I wish your saints were in Hades'" I shouted; 204 THE SHADOW-SHOW "What right has a saint to keep me from my trunk 1 ?" A man passing gave a sickly smile, and edged away. What a farce are these observances ! The edu- cated Brazilian has about as much use for saints as I have. Yet his calendar is full of them. Their days are officially observed, Government of- fices are closed, and business disorganized. Next day I went back for my trunk. I waited an hour, cheerfully, in a queue of Portuguese im- migrants, and was passed by time and again. At last, receiving my papers, I waited another hour, while the official, for reasons of his own, passed me and attended a group of compatriots. When I got my trunk it was twenty-six hours overdue, and the Brazilian Customs had made an enemy for life. One notes how many Brazilians are dressed deeply in black. Unlike the Poles, vowed to that colour till one shall reintegrate their kingdom, I can only assume they are sworn thus sombrely to await the return of the milreis to par, whence their misguided actions have far driven it. Northern, or Equatorial, Brazil is divided into the States of Para and Amazonas. This vast territory lives by one industry rubber, and con- ducts its business along one main highway the Amazon, down this stream passing perhaps one quarter of the world's rubber supply. WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 205 The Amazon's tributaries number among them mighty rivers. On these, small steamers ply, carrying into the interior labourers and stores, and returning with cargoes of rubber. The labourers who go into the rubber districts return in reduced numbers, for the mortality, due to malaria, small- pox, or, it may be, the poisoned arrows of Indians, is ghastly. It is said that one in three does not' return. From Para the steamer "Lanfranc," of 6,000 tons, passed up the great river. Rich tropical forests lined each bank, but here and there rude huts, natives in their canoes, or a small clearing of cocoa or bananas, denoted a scattered popula- tion. The heat was excessive ; flocks of parakeets clove the air, mosquitoes descended on us, and the loathly snouts of alligators appeared above the muddy waters. On the fourth day, 1,000 miles up, we reached the junction with the Rio Negro, and the town of Manaos. Manaos, centre of the rubber trade, is the cap- ital and only town of Amazonas, and has some fifty thousand inhabitants. It is a half-baked place, with a high death-rate. Its main feature is an opera-house, with mosaic dome, built by the Government at great expense, but it seemed to me the money might have been laid out to better advantage. The opera-house was completed twelve years before, but the town in my time still 206 THE SHADOW-SHOW lacked drainage. An Italian company duly ar- rived to open the opera; but yellow fever got there first, so they opened the new cemetery. The Government of Amazonas has been cor- ruption personified. While the Federal Govern- ment receives the customs dues on imports, the several States are entitled to those on exports. Levying, then, an export tax on rubber of over 2O per cent., the Amazonas Government has been in receipt of a large revenue, this being supple- mented by a loan, equal to several million pounds, issued in Paris. What has it to show for all this? An empty treasury, with salaries six months in arrears, an opera-house, a number of unfinished Government buildings, many retired Brazilian and Portuguese contractors living abroad in luxury, certain flash women departing with well-filled purses, and a stream of Governors, Ministers, and functionaries making for Paris or Lisbon. One head of the State there was with some pretence to statesman- ship. In a forest clearing, three miles out of Manaos, I saw the house in which he was found strangled. The rest were vile. A recent Gov- ernor cleaned up a million pounds during his four years of office. This person visited Paris before taking over the government, and in a cafe got into trouble with, and insulted, a French officer, who promptly knocked him down. Rising, and wiping WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 207 his bleeding face, he said, "Do you know I am a colonel in the Brazilian army, and the Governor- elect of Amaonas?" Said the Frenchman, bash- ing him over the head, "Well, take that for being a colonel, that for being Governor of Amazonas !" and felled him again to the ground. But Brazil is a strange country; before he dies this man will have his statue in the streets of Manaos. Justice in Amazonas is for sale. On the front of the law courts, in large letters, is the word "LEX." I looked up at this and smiled. The Brazilian with me said, "That's Latin." I answered, "Yes, I know. The Law and the Profits" Round the warehouses of Manaos there is a smell as of a million herrings. It comes from the piles of smoked rubber perspiring workmen are packing for export to New York, Liverpool, and Hamburg. While Southern Brazil is a paradise, and Para, even, habitable, there can be but one excuse for living in Manaos a big income. It is a place of too much heat and too little comfort; the cost of living is enormous, the risk of dying is appre- ciable. In Lima, capital of Peru, the city he founded, Pizarro's corpse lies in the cathedral in a glass coffin. Standing by this, my thoughts went back to Atahualpa, last of the Incas, made captive by 208 THE SHADOW-SHOW Pizarro, ransomed with the treasure of Cuzco, then brutally murdered. By this act of treachery Spain set her foot on the neck of South America, while Holy Mother Church, herself torturer of men's bodies, looked and palliated. "You brute, Pizarro," I remember saying, "I could kick your coffin to pieces!" The mummy's face grinned placidly. From Lima I went up the mountain railroad to Oroya, riding thence forty leagues over the pampa to Cerro de Pasco, 15,000 feet up, highest town in the world, and a mining centre since 1630. Unable to sleep at this altitude, I rose next morning before dawn, and throwing my poncho around me, went into the street. It was bitterly cold, and a dense fog lay over Cerro de Pasco. Indians, wrapped in their blankets, stole out of the mist and passed silently. I heard a flock of llamas go shuffling by, and a hideous face half sheep, half camel came close up and peered into mine. For a time all was silent, then, from out the mist, came a drunken sigh, and some belated reveller turned in his sleep. A ghostly dawn of day indeed, this, on the roof of the world ! The cold alone seemed real; it cut to the marrow. I returned to my bed in the strange little hostelry, and at last slept. Arequipa, in Southern Peru, is a town of charm. Lying at 7,500 feet, the climate is nearly perfect, WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 209 while three great mountains, rising white into the sky, lend to it extreme beauty. A river skirts the town, its course marked for miles with gardens and orchards. Walking along the streets, I looked through doorways into old Spanish patios. Tended with care, many of these were filled with rich colour, while in some, masses of blossom, rising above the roof's horizon, rested against a background of the eternal snows. A centre of the Roman hierarchy from early Spanish days, Are- quipa is full of fine old churches, and is still an ecclesiastic stronghold. Standing one day in the plaza, the swell of music from the cathedral reached me, and I went in. Boys' voices, alternat- ing with men's, were chanting; these ceasing, the organ burst into glorious sound. I sat entranced, as one lifted up. I had been drinking strong coffee, and the music ran through my nerves as it were wine. And then, it seemed to me, I crossed the aisle and ascended the pulpit. A stream of words rolled from my tongue: "People of Arequipa ! People of South Amer- ica ! Listen to me this morning, for I am inspired. I have studied you, and have seen that you serve God with your lips only. But God is a Being of infinite common sense; He wants something more practical. Listen! You are filthy in your habits, but the real God hates filth ; only be clean, 210 THE SHADOW-SHOW and He asks for none of these forms. You de- voutly raise your hats when you pass a church; but God would sooner you installed a drainage system. The real God loves justice, rather than the celebration of saints' days; He would sooner your courts were pure and your saints forgotten. "The real God loves honesty. I say therefore to your politicians, work for the State, not for yourselves. Cease to take bribes, or to rob the treasury, and let nepotism cease. Take no credit for your suave manners or your fine clothes. In His eyes uprightness is more than a frock-coat, and a pure heart than a tall hat. "States of South America, pay your debts! Brand-new cathedrals weigh less with God than the rights of European bondholders; statues of Christ do not offset the ninepenny dollar. "As you fail in the eyes of God, you fail in those of man. You are making a mess of South America. This great country, won for you by men like Bolivar and San Martin, shows no progress in the things which really count. She is futile. Her name is a byword for bad govern- ment, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. I tell you that common sense is God's greatest attribute, and I adjure you to govern and develop South America on right lines. Be clean in your habits, honest in finance, just to all men. Be these things, people WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 211 of South America, and I promise you the respect of the world, which to-day despises you in its heart." Thus do I seem to have spoken in the cathedral of Arequipa. When I came to myself the music had ceased and the place was empty. CHAPTER IX "BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" ON a day that I remember, there was a throng in the bazaar of Delhi and traffic stood still. A procession of the Shiah sect was passing, and a tinselled model of the sacred shrine at Kerbela was borne aloft. Each ten steps it halted, while a leader and fanatic chorus, shouting, "Hassan, Hosein! Hassan, Hosein!" savagely beat their breasts till the sweat poured off and their ex- hausted natures all but gave way. Native police guarded these zealous expatiators and their shrine; to the Faithful of Delhi they are schis- matic and not to be tolerated. Just as great effect may spring from small cause, the Shiah religion sprang, if I can read human nature, from a matter of jealousy. There was a young cousin of Mahomet, named AH, who took Fatima for chief wife, the Prophet's well- loved daughter, and became father of two sons. These youths, Hassan and Hosein, grew to be objects of love and reverence to the Mahometan world, and when their father Ali, as fourth suc- cessor to the Prophet, assumed the Khalifate it- 212 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 213 self, they leapt to actual holiness became sacro- sanct. "Aha!" said then one day the families of Abubekr, Omar, and Othman, the dead Khalifs; "Aha!" echoed those who nursed secret aspira- tions, "we see how things are shaping. We see the Khalifate passing utterly to this family, de- scending then from father to son. All the holi- ness, and power, and prestige in their hands this will never do !" So those astute insiders put their heads to- gether, as astute insiders do to this day, and caused things to happen. Thus we see the deposition of Ali and his sons, and the succession passing from this family; we see their partizans seceding outwardly on points of doctrine, inwardly just on personal issues from the Faith; we see the rising of the shrines, and the crystallization of the Ali tradition into a great Eastern religion. Hence came those breast-beatings, those shouts of "Has- san, Hosein !" in the bazaar of Delhi ; hence, too, the disorganization of that city's tramways, which took place even as I watched. The Holy Family thus suffered temporal eclipse, and their graves are scattered through- out Arabia. Fatima and Hassan lie in Medina. Ali died by violence at distant Nejef, and is buried there, and Hosein, acclaimed holiest of all, with his half-brother Abbas, lie where they fell 214. THE SHADOW-SHOW fighting for the Khalifate, at Kerbela. But though dead their cause was not dead, and the followers of AH came in time to be numbered by millions. North-East Arabia is Shiah, and there are many of the sect in India. Persia, to a man, has ever been Shiah. Her support meant everything; it endowed the sect with a subtlety of mind the Arabs never knew, and with an ecclesiastical architecture as delicate in imagina- tion as it is exquisite in colour. Dotted about the northern desert, where the Arabs live primi- tive as of yore, are the shrines of Samarra, Kadhi- main, Kufa, Nejef, and Kerbela. These, and I doubt not many more unknown to me, are the fruits of Persian genius a genius which flowered richly, gave to these desert places its masterpieces, then went down in atrophy. Near the head of the Persian Gulf a great river flows into the sea. They call it Shatt-el- Arab. Date groves fringe the banks, behind which Arab husbandmen plough and reap in the low-lying fields, canoes skim the muddy waters, fishermen cast their nets into the teeming depths, and great dhows, heavily laden, are pulled along the towing paths or sail by on favouring wind. This river may well be great ; the waters of Tigris and Euphrates have met eighty miles above, while those of the Karun, flowing south out of Persia, swell the main stream ere it reaches the Gulf. "BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 215 Ocean steamers sail forty miles up Shatt-el- Arab to Busrah ; in the season one may see a dozen vessels lying here in the stream. This is export- point for a great hinterland; here the river steamers converge, and the laden dhows, in their hundreds, come sailing down day and night. Busrah, with the river and the hinterland, is in Asiatic Turkey, a land that stretches from the Bosphorus to the Persian Gulf, from just south of Batoum to the confines of Aden. Not only a vast but a rich land this ; cut off the great southern deserts, and there yet remains, actual and latent, a splendid and fertile Empire. I was in Smyrna last autumn. They were packing the world's supply of figs. Here I am in Busrah, twelve hun- dred miles away, and they are putting up crea- tion's dates. Not only is Busrah metropolis of dates; it exports to America, where the tobacco interests hold a monopoly, nearly all the liquorice of the world. More arresting than liquorice, perhaps even than dates, are these big piles of barley on the banks, which Arab women and children are win- nowing. This must be grain from a thousand up-country patches, surplus grain for export, yet clearly of fine quality; if the haphazard Arab, watering with his goat-skin, can produce such grain, and this strong autumn sun not even shrivel it, modern irrigation has here an ideal field. 216 THE SHADOW-SHOW With such a climate, such rivers, such soil, such fruits and there are bitumen wells in the interior, a southern extension, it may be, of the Russian oil zone Turkish Arabia might progress under the fairest auspices. I say might progress. It must rest at that; the Turks cannot run a modern Empire, their sway is futile from first to last. Turkey is doomed to disintegration I believe in our lifetime. She cannot keep in the running. The Turk is quite a man in his way, but his sys- tem is the Mahometan system, and Mahometan finance is all wrong. Modern government is re- solved, ultimately, into one factor sound finance. Where that obtains, as in England, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, nations emerge and rank as the fittest. Where there is financial slack- ness the nations tend to sink. Where there is widespread financial corruption these nations must soon be at the mercy of the fit. In finance all the Mahometan Governments are corrupt, and all are futile. This is no new thing; but modern international trade and commerce do not tolerate^ such futility, and the fitter nations are preparing to take over these and govern in their stead. This I find seemly; not as moralist, but as evolutionist. In this cycle material progress is the keynote; the world's material development and the creation of wealth is the ideal we set before us. Another "BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 217 cycle, the pendulum may swing, and Islam, with energy reborn, overthrow an effete Europe; but that to-day these nations, which lie corrupt and worn out at our feet, should be bolstered to a further futility is against common sense. These are reflections by the way. This is the broad River Tigris, some hundreds of miles from the Gulf. It is barren here, almost a desert, a great plain, and the river flows muddy and slug- gish. Here and there Bedouins are encamped, with their asses and their fat-tailed sheep; slovenly and squalid, nomads rather than tillers of the soil, these tribes live as their fathers lived three thousand years ago. Far to the right lie the Persian mountains, the border range; it is but early November, yet their tops are white with the first snow. We are now come into Mesopotamia, a biblical land. Yesterday we passed a blue dome by the river, rising in a grove of date palms. It was the well-attested grave of the prophet Ezra. To- night, a moonless night, and the boat tied up, I walked over the desert to the ruins of Ctesiphon, the palace of King Darius. My lantern was car- ried by a Chaldean. And here at last, after a tortuous waterway of nearly six hundred miles, is the city of Bagdad, lying on both banks, with its bridge of boats. Seen from afar, with the date palms and the 218 THE SHADOW-SHOW slender minarets, this is the romantic city of the Khalifs. But do not pry into Bagdad. The mosques are lacking in glamour, the bazaars are tawdry, with the tawdry wares of Europe, and the streets, that are alleys, are slimy with the filth of seventy thousand Jews. Yet this may be said: one should not miss the bazaar of the two thousand coppersmiths, nor a certain vista on the river, when the moon comes sailing over the date palms. And but two leagues away there is Kadhimain a mosque of burnished gold, a venerated shrine, where the pilgrims are kneeling; it is in such proximity that Bagdad lays her claims on Shiahdom. , Each morning, at three o'clock, from a cara- vanserai on the south bank of the river, a convoy of wagonettes leaves Bagdad for Kerbela. Each is drawn by eight mules, and holds some ten pil- grims, who sit shaded under coarse white canvas. This is a land of robber bands ; on one vehicle in three or four a soldier sits beside the driver, his rifle across his knees. If the day promises dust there is much manoeuvring, many a hand-gallop in the dark for first place; but a European of condition, travelling with his consulate's qawass, will be given precedence. So we travel through chill dark hours, and when the sun rises our cavalcade is already far out on the desert. Another hour, and a village "BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 219 is reached, a changing station for the mules. From its humble coffee-shop an attendant is summoned, who brings me, lying in the sun, cups of Mocha from the Yemen, whose fragrance and strength, blending with the buoyant desert air, shoot through my nerves in a thousand harmonies. These pilgrims who drive are the moneyed folks. It is true that a seat to Kerbela costs less than a medjidie a matter of three shillings but how many there are tread this desert track with less ! Here are some, with their women, who ride asses. These, returning, bestride emaciated horses. This considerable band, who rally round a green flag, go all afoot. There are Arabs, and Indians, and many, many Persians. There are the sick, too, and the old. If it please Allah that they lie down in holy Kerbela it is well ; if it please Him that they waken not again it is still well. Presently we reach the village of Musseyib, and the Euphrates, which is spanned by a bridge of boats. We are fifty miles from Bagdad, and the desert we have crossed is the richest soil in the world, virgin now for centuries, awaiting the irrigation that shall make it a garden. Four miles from here French engineers built a barrage; but Turkey was in control, and it was never fin- ished. To-day a great British firm carries the work through on a new site. But the fat Turks are waiting. They smack their lips. From this 220 THE SHADOW-SHOW coming fertility they are like to wring a princely baksheesh. Twenty miles south of Euphrates holy Ker- bela is seen on the plain a town among date palms. As it draws to evening the mosques of Hosein and Abbas stand out clearly, their golden- tipped minarets catching the sun ; as we drive past these the muezzins have already ascended, and are calling to the evening prayer. Night falls like a thunderbolt. The Shiah is a fanatic. Inspired by the mullahs^ he denies approach to his mosques, and for the sacred places of Kerbela fears desecration most of all. As I passed next day through the bazaars that lie adjacent to the two shrines, I stood now at this gate, now at that, viewing the spacious courtyards, gazing upon the walls of mosaic, the wide Koranic scrolls, the high old doors, upon those who prayed, and those who sold, and upon a great human spectacle. At my side a soldier stood and two consular guards in uniform, so this was permitted me ; without them I had found but poor welcome in Kerbela. A whispering now took place. There was a stealthy transfer of silver, and I was led up on to two roofs, whence the golden domes and the minarets stood out in their glory, and the date palms that encircle Kerbela, and the long horizon of the desert. "BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 221 Later, I stood before the grain booths, where naked men, slaves in all but name, plied the heavy grinding mills. An overladen ass dropped at my feet, and I became aware of horses and asses and camels suffering from grievous sores. Of men, too! Lepers sat there, and the blind, and the epileptic, and the abject, while the awful stench of cesspools stole into the sacred courtyards. In the afternoon I walked alone to the out- skirts. There were wells here and patches of irrigation. Beyond, at the verge of the desert, blue domes stood out, and among the many tombs an Arab funeral was wending. Before sunset I returned to the bazaar, to a caravanserai of the Indians that stood near to the mosque of Abbas. Out on the roof a group of pilgrims stood waiting, and with these I spoke. "I," said one, "come from Karachi." "And I from Porebunder." "I am from Ujjain. We stay here forty days, and at Nejef forty. On our way home we shall play at Kadhimain, and at the tomb of Ezra." Small rooms were perched about the roof. The doors of one were thrown open, and a venerable Indian within, noting that the sun was about to sink, spread his carpet towards Mecca, and began a solemn chant. On the roofs around figures were now kneeling, and all the hubbub from the mosque's courtyard was suddenly hushed. At this 222 THE SHADOW-SHOW moment, as the muezzin came out on the golden minaret, a thousand cloud-flakes, floating in the western sky, became shot with rose, a tremulous evanescence, which yet lay on them till the last notes of the call had died away. That night I lay awake in Kerbela, and as I lay, long before the dawn, an Arab's voice rose in a chant. Wrapping myself round, I went out on the roof. But the voice was deeply myste- rious. It came I knew not whence. It rose thin and high, it passed over Kerbela, and the date palms, and the tombs, and I think it reached some wandering holy man, who stood a listener that night, far out in the desert of Arabia. On the northern bank of Euphrates, a short day's ride from Kerbela, are the vast, shapeless mounds where an ancient city stood. At a dis- tance of two miles another mound, solitary and high, would seem to denote some huge monument of antiquity. This ancient city was Babylon; that monument, no other than the Towel of Babel. There are date palms down by the river, and in a house among the palms four German scientists sit at the midday meal. They receive me with open arms, and I imbibe coffee and much arche- ology. The Tower of Babel, a hundred yards square "BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON" 223 at the base, as like as not was pyramidal. It is not even certain that it rose two hundred feet. But Babylon, whose hewn records date from script back to hieroglyph, from hieroglyph back to the very dawn of things, was a city indeed a city for some thousands of years. And it was great. I wandered for a square mile, for perhaps two miles; I saw where they excavate now, and where the great uncouth mounds date back untouched to B.C. Blue pigeons flew from the caves, and a jackal stole from his lair in the ruins. These blond-bearded scientists, financed by the German Oriental Society, are minute in detail, intensely thorough. Yet fortune does not greatly favour them. There is no rock in this region; Babylon was therefore built of brick, much of it unburnt brick, and it has melted. How easily might it have been a Timgad, a Palmyra, a Baal- bee, a Persepolis, and remains a melted Babylon ! Still, there is Nebuchadnezzar's gateway of victory, where the plaster reliefs of animals, laid over the bricks, are in fine preservation, and there is a great stone bull, and the ground-plan of the palace, and all the archseological minutise in which the Germans revel. And there is hope; a turn of the spade, any day, may lead to a great find. I am soon to depart, and the visitors' book lies THE SHADOW-SHOW before me Babylon requests my p.p.c. ! There are able sketches in this book, verses too and a Frenchman has penned clever words. My mood calls for a diatribe : "What is progress? Do we not mistake change for progress, greater complexity of life for real advance? Human nature does not vary. We are, for good or evil, as the men of Babylon were. In ethics, Napoleon was as Nebuchadnezzar. "These hieroglyphs indicate crude scholarship in the few, ignorance in the many. Is the world better to-day when all men read and write? Your tenth man can thrive on learning; your other nine become anarchists, socialists, spiritualists, senti- mentalists wayfarers along a thousand paths of ignorance. These are the hewers of wood and the drawers of water; they should be left to hew and draw. "Democracy and flabbiness drag Europe to the abyss. So she will continue, till a new era shall dawn and the world revive to the touch of the 'overman.' I commend Nietzsche to you." I came out at sunrise to-day, the Germans being already up and about. I was bound for the wide world, for the future; their minds lay with Babylon and the past. In the date palms a bird was singing of youth and joy, and all the air was buoyant. A flight of pigeons passed, head- ing for the mounds of Babel. A young Arab went by driving donkeys, and herdsmen were moving their sheep across the dried-up channel of the river. The present channel of Euphrates has shifted from here, and this ancient bed awaits the barrage ere it will flow again. Thus it was I did not see the waters of Babylon. CHAPTER X A GRAVE IN SAMOA ON a day in 1898 I landed at Apia. It was tropical high noon, and the village slept beneath its trees all but slept; in a nightdress, at the door of her liquor saloon, stood a white woman. I drank lime-juice at her bar, waiting while she refreshed, at my expense, with a bottle of beer; then, "Can you direct me to Vailima?" I said. As she pointed, a young native girl ap- peared, with hibiscus in her hair, and for the payment of sixpence became guide. Walking a mile, or it may have been two, we left the road, and passing through coco-nut groves came to Vailima. The house stood deserted. Windows were broken, furniture had been taken away, and the dust lay thick. In the spacious library, where Stevenson had written, the books remained, among them a large French collection ; but many lay torn on the floor, stripped of the autograph, and damp was fast claiming the rest. An old native appeared, the caretaker, who told me house and property were for sale; he men- tioned the sum of two thousand pounds, and I sat 225 226 THE SHADOW-SHOW on the floor among the torn books and did some hard thinking. It would have meant half my capital, and Scotch caution carried the day; but that library floor haunted me for years. A Ger- man was to buy Vailima. Leaving the house, and alone, I followed the track through the forest and up the mountain the track cut for Stevenson's funeral. The long, weary ascent to the grave exhausted me. I had received a sunstroke that equatorial morning, and for an hour I lay over the grave-stone oblivious of my surroundings, lost to the outer world. ****** My eyes are shut tight. My forehead presses something hard, and there is terrible buzzing in my head but I know where I am. I am swim- ming in the sea. Over there the figure of a widow rises and falls on the swell. "Madam !" I cry across, "your husband's library is become mouldy," but at that she dives right under, and is gone. How my head aches! I want to think of Stevenson, yet am obsessed by Dolores. . . . There is something about a grave. . . . Let me think. ... If the gods "Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores The myrtle to death," then what about the English cemetery at Rome? // is all cypress. Shelley is lying there, with A GRAVE IN SAMOA 227 Trelawney and the elect, and Keats by himself in a lonely little grove. I went from there, I mind me, to the church in Ara-Cceli, where Gib- bon was sitting when it came to him to write the "Roman Empire," finished twenty years later at Lausanne but I don't think anything came to me. Yes, I remember! I decided that the "Last Supper" on the refectory wall at Milan was greater than any work of Raphael or Michel- angelo. One was always told they come first. Ruskin, who had nothing to say, and said it with great charm, put that about, but I've learned for myself since then. It wasn't even Leonardo;. it was that time in Madrid when I walked into the big Velasquez room, and stood stock still for ten minutes. Here was the greatest painter in the world ! I knew it before I moved again. . . . (I feel sick as a dog. Patterns form and re- form in my eyeballs.) . . . There was Murillo next door, with his fifty assorted altar-pieces, Madonnas and saints; a colourist certainly, but a harper on one string. "Murillo, my lad," I re- member saying, "you fall a bit flat ; all you Pope- pleasers do. You are damned monotonous, if you must know." Now turn to Velasquez. What did he care for tradition? "You can take it or leave it" was his way with the cardinals. Painting dwarfs, 228 THE SHADOW-SHOW beggars, topers, cities, kings, courtiers, children, animals he saw all things dead true and painted as he saw. Master of simplicity, master of light, utterly versatile, transmitter of intellect not of beauty, he stands head and shoulders above them all. Look at that "^Esop" ! it is the picture of the world. "JEsop" and "Don Quixote," greatest of pictures and of books; and to come nearly together out of priestridden, ghoulish Spain ! The Velasquez of these days, master-handler of the painter's all-in-all light is one Whistler, a cantankerous eccentric, whom critics deride and men laugh at, whom Carlyle, who sat to him, called the most absurd creature on the face of the earth. He may be, but, take it from me, this unpleasant person is going down to immortality. Picture the scene a score of years hence. Whistler, sipping an absinthe, is seated in the Elysian Fields. He listens to heated remarks by Rossetti, on the fat women of Rubens and their tendency to wal- low. To them enters a boy from the "Mundane Messages Company." "Are you Mr. Whistler?" he asks. "My name is Whistler." "Well, there's a message up to say they think Velasky, Remnant, and you the greatest school of painters." Fixing his eyes intently on the Attorney- 'A GRAVE IN SAMOA General * I mean the messenger Whistler will say acidly, "I presume you mean Velasquez and Rembrandt." And then thoughtfully to Rossetti, "But why drag them in? No, boy, there is no tip!" . . . How my head goes round ! That widow is swimming there again. "Madam!" She hails me : "I know what you would say the mouldy library, n'esf-ce pas? . . . The in- evitable must" "Gilbert's wittiest pun! Then you are not utterly heartless 1 ?" But she is gone again. . . . How happy Stevenson was that night in the wood, up in the French hills, when he rose and made chocolate and heard the turn of the night! Surely it was only the other day, and yet he has lain here, in the forest, for four years. I wonder how "Weir of Hermiston" was to have ended? . . . And "St. Ives"? . . . That marvellous first chapter of the "Ebb Tide" ! . . . Why did he never use Austrailia? He was there, once, at least. All that material, too! Did the bushrangers leave him cold? Did he never hear of Fisher's Ghost? Nor of the Bunyip that ghastly thing, half-calf, half-man, that is said to raise its head from the depth of some inland 1 This strange allusion would seem to be connected with the trial Whistler v. Ruskin, described in Whistler's book "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies" (p. 10). 230 THE SHADOW-SHOW pool at sundown? Did he never meet a certain police magistrate of Albury? I can fancy such one saying, "Mr. Stevenson, our best romances are 'Geoffrey Hamlyn,' 'For the Term of His Natural Life,' 'Moondyne,' and ahem! 'Rob- bery under Arms.' Read these, I beg of you, and such other material as I shall delightedly put be- fore you, then write, and make Steve Hart, Gaird- ner, or the Jew Boy immortal." . . . The "Bulletin" ! Why was he never asked to edit the "Red Page?" Or was he asked, and did he refuse? He could have done the work from Vailima. Perhaps he didn't like the "Bulletin" ; there are many very respectable people who do not. But Stevenson was not very respectable he was great. To me, it is the cleverest paper printed, its editor the ablest journalist of his time. On the Australian national idea it is sound as a bell inspired, one might say. But it has faults. It exposes and pulls down shams, but does not always build again. A merciless critic of men's errors, it rarely approves their virtues. Of the rich it is unsparing, showing thus a lack of propor- tion. The rich are not worse than the poor; they never were. "Hearts just as pure and fair May beat in Belgrave Square, As in the lowly air Of Seven Dials!" A GRAVE IN SAMOA 231 The "Bulletin" must grow as a force, for it is desperately clever. It has more than half made Australian poetry. Pegasus there was a brumby^ peeping shyly from the "bush." The "Bulletin" tames him by 'kindness; but as yet he does not amble, a lady's hack, along Pitt Street. . . . No horse for me! I am lying giddy some- where. . . . My eyes are still shut tight ; crystal- lizations were forming on the retina, till an arabesque appeared on a blood-red ground. It is the scroll of Ali. It is the shawl flung over Fatima, when father gave his consent! Beware of jealousy, Ali ! There were those who . . . Where was I? ... Adam Lindsay Gordon, gentleman jockey, set the pace in poetry. English by birth, he died by his own hand, laureate of Australia. He wrote of horses and racing things that bore me. I like best his poem to one of the explorers, Wills or Leichardt, dying of thirst in the Never-Never. I can see the desert, and the blood-red sunset, the tracks of the doomed man, and all the shadowy forms of the night : "With the pistol clenched in his failing hand, With the death mist spread o'er his fading eyes, He saw the sun go down on the sand, And he slept and never saw it rise. Twas well; he toiled till his task was done, Constant and calm in his latest throe; The storm was weathered, the battle was won, When he went, my friends, where we all must go. THE SHADOW-SHOW No tears are needed fill out the wine, Let the goblets clash, and the grape juice flow; Ho! pledge me a death-drink, comrade mine, To a brave man gone where we all must go." Then there is Brunton Stevens, of the Queens- land Civil Service. His "Convict Once" is the most sustained poem written in Australia; it has a true "atmosphere." He is a poet of distinction, but one born in England. Paterson, the "bard of the bush," set all Aus- tralia talking of "The Man from Snowy River." He is the new laureate; I give him thanks for "Black Swans," "Kiley's Hill," "Saltbush Bill," "In the Droving Days." Paterson, and all these Australian poets, reek of the "bush." That is their glory, for the "bush" is Australia. Haven't I known that since I was fourteen"? "As I lie at rest on a patch of clover, In the Western Park when the day is done, I watch as the wild black swans fly over, With their phalanx turned to the sinking sun; And I hear the clang of their leader crying To a lagging mate in the rearward flying, And they fade away in the darkness dying, Where the stars are mustering one by one." I have seen the swans flying in their phalanx; I have heard the clanging too. I was steeped in the "bush" ere I knew Africa. It's funny, I can't open my eyes; but I re- member things. . . . "Kiley's Hill" is a gem. It is a deserted bush farm Paterson tells of, and he ends thus : A GRAVE IN SAMOA 233 "Where are the children that throve and grew In the old homestead in days gone by? One is away on the far Barcoo, Watching his cattle the long year through, Watching them starve in the droughts and die. One in the town where all cares are rife, Weary with troubles that cramp and kill, Fain would be done with the restless strife, Fain would go back to the old bush life, Back to the shadow of Kiley's Hill. One is away on the roving quest, Seeking his share of the golden spoil, Out in the wastes of the trackless west, Wandering ever he gives the best Of his years and strength to the hopeless toil. What of the parents? That unkempt mound Shows where they slumber united still ; Rough is their grave, but they sleep as sound Out on the range as on holy ground, Under the shadow of Kiley's Hill." Damn my head! ... I think I want to cry. . . . After Paterson came Victor Daley, and there is a poem by him "His Mate" I have read, oh! so many times. Again we are out in the far-back of New South Wales out on the salt- bush plains, in the drought : "No faintest sign of distant water gKmmered, The aching eye to bless ; The far horizon like a sword's edge shimmered, Keen, gleaming, pitiless." Presently there appears, dragging himself wearily, a swagman, old and dead beat. As we follow his halting steps, we feel the desolation, the scorching of the sun, and the slow passing of the long day. And when the sun is sinking 234 THE SHADOW-SHOW low, he comes suddenly on the Stranger. He is lying under a clump of salt-bush, dying of thirst, and the broken old swagman kneels to give him the last of his water: "Behold a miracle! For when that Other Had drunk, he rose and cried, 'Let us pass on.' As brother might with brother, So went they, side by side." But old Andy, the swagman, is done for. As they travel, in the early hours of that night, the stars reel, and he falls in his tracks : "Beneath the moonlight, with the weird, wan glitter Of salt-bush all around, He lay. . . ." It is the night of Christmas Eve, and this kindly old rip, for whom Christmas Days of vinous de- bauchery will not again dawn, hands his "cheque" to the Stranger. "To-morrow's Christmas Day: God knows where I'll be By then I don't; but you, Away from this death's hole should many a mile be, At Blake's, on the Barcoo." "Nay !" says the Stranger, with a smile. "You and I are mates. We will spend our Christmas together in heaven." A grim jest, thinks the old man; yet he accepts the wager, dying in the very act. "St. Peter stood at the celestial portal, Gazing down gulfs of air. . . ." A GRAVE IN SAMOA 235 When old Andy's spirit happens along, greatly daring: "I want my mate !" Behind those doors lay the "glory unbeholden." Angelic hosts were bursting into the anthem of the Nativity, and Peter at the wicket chafed to be gone. "The wrong gate!" he cried, and this humble old spirit, with no Wit of cockcrowing, bows to fate. Heed him not, old man ! A greater than Peter has given you rendezvous. See! "The gates flew wide. The Glory unbeholden Of mortal eyes was there. He gazed this trembling sinner at the golden Thrones, terrible and fair, And shuddered. Then down through the living splendour Came One unto the gate, Who said, with outspread hands, in accents tender, 'Andy! / am your mate!'" Let me think if I can. . . . There was that other sweet singer of Australia a woman, divine of voice, strong of brain. We talked of melody, and I told her the miserere in "Trovatore" excelled all. She did not gainsay; but why should she*? my ear for melody is quite acute. Master in this, the palm must rest with Verdi; deny me his miserere, and I shall win you over with the in- cantation of the priestess in "Aida." Once I slept at Assouan, on that island in the Nile, and at THE SHADOW-SHOW dead of night awoke. It was not the river I heard, not ". . . the long ripple washing in the reeds," but the thin, silvery notes of the violins, prelude to the third act, that portray this very lapping of immemorial Nile at its banks. That's genius; but "Aida" is all genius; was it not written to order the greatest work in that galley. Verdi writes, Ismail pays, and we buy the Canal shares so runs the world away. All the operas are surging in me now. An immense orchestra has tuned up in my head; it is playing in an unknown key, and the conductor is rapping. Now for a "thunder of lyres." . . . That is the chant and barcarolle from "Die Stumme," the first I ever heard, back in the Stutt- gart days, when Anton Schott rode on his white horse. . . . Incomparable Plangon ! It was surely your great bass that started the serenade to Mar- guerite. . . . Yet why should I finish it*? ... "Till she have a ring. Hal ha! ha!" Poor girl ; the preenings of an elderly Schwerlein cost her that. . . . I was in Venice four months ago. They played "Boheme" there, a new opera. There is a time when snow falls on the stage, and soft, white snow was falling in the music. That falling will live in my brain that, and a bell that chimed at Malamocco, across the lagoon. . . . A GRAVE IN SAMOA 237 Wagner died in Venice, too. That night, I like to think, a storm-cloud burst in the North, by the shores of the Baltic Sea, and amid the thunder and the spindrift aerial trumpets proclaimed a motiv. Two ravens flew out of the mist. Credu- lous listeners swore to the stately Walhalla chords, others to the rushing of unseen squadrons, and the sturdy shouts of Walkiiren, convoying, as of ancient wont, a dead hero. They lied! The trumpets were bidden play for no victor, but for a soul storm-tossed and world-weary. It was the haunting cry of the Dutchman rose that night above the tempest, as Wagner passed. I hold him Germany's greatest. Where can she point to a brain of like calibre, to a subtlety so profound ? Has Wagner been fathomed ? Has the intellect put into the "Ring," into the "fire- music" into "Siegfried," that pinnacle in the world of art yet been gauged 1 ? Where am I? . . . Lying on Stevenson's grave, with a touch of the sun ... I think I'm better! I rose to my feet. My eyes and brain now; took in all the beauty of the scene: "I saw Here no sepulchre built, In the laurell'd rock, o'er the blue Naples Bay, for a sweet Tender Virgil ! No tomb On Ravenna sands, in the shade 238 THE SHADOW-SHOW Of Ravenna pines, for a high Austere Dante! No grave By the Avon side, in the bright Stratford meadows, for thee Shakespeare! . . ." For this grave lies in a clearing on the hill- top, on whose sides the tropical forest grows rich and luxuriant. Far down below are coco-nut groves, beyond them the roofs of Apia, the blue sea, and the white line of the surf as it beats the reef. I plucked tropical ferns, that I laid at his head and his feet; then I read the raised lettering of his charming farewell. Feeling my own man again, I started down the mountain. CHAPTER XI MINE OWN PEOPLE TODAY we are to scour the countryside of Eng- land. Springtime is here, so that the hedges are white with their May, and wild violets grow in their shade; in the woods of oak and elm and beech, primroses and wild hyacinths are out, and the meadows are yellow with cowslips. You will find no countryside in the world so green, nowhere a finer soil, nowhere sweeter grass ; and because of these things, nowhere such a quality of food. Eng- land's beef and mutton and venison, her poultry and game, cannot anywhere be equalled. Her field crops are of the best. Her fruits and veg- etables of a rarer flavour. The bread, the milk, the cheese, the bacon, the beer of a fineness un- known in the South, and in no other coastal waters are such fish. These fine foods have been the very foundation stones of our race, and have combined, in times gone by, to the building up of prodigious men: to the building of Newton, profoundest of the world's intellects ; to the building of Shakespeare, poet of all time ; to the making of Cromwell, who 239 240 THE SHADOW-SHOW paved the way for your freedom and mine ; to the making of Nelson, who sealed our race for ever to the sea; to the making of Harvey, whose dis- coveries about the blood came full-fledged, perfect from his brain, and many, many more of the greatest of mankind. A race so singled out by Nature, so exalted by its great men, was destined to burst its island barriers, to grasp at what the outer world had to offer; and for some hundreds of years now, daring and determined Britons have sailed forth to dis- cover, to annex, to consolidate. They sailed West, and Virginia and Pennsyl- vania were peopled by them. North America was launched on British beef and beer. Newfound- land was annexed, that bleak island of morass and stunted forest, and later Canada, a kindlier region, where, in autumn, they saw the maple forests turning to gold. Down in the western tropics they first annexed Barbados; taking, as time went by, Jamaica, Belize and other colonies from the Spaniards; Trinidad, St. Lucia and many more islands from the French; Demerara from the Dutch ; building up a Caribbean heritage. But it was the East where their destiny lay. It was to the East especially to India that the thoughts, the imagination of great men in England used to turn; and to the East the adventurous sooner or later set forth. The way thither by sea MINE OWN PEOPLE lay South; and so the annexing of the Cape of Good Hope came about. Out of it were to grow possessions all over Africa; but its first and only value was that of a harbour the harbour of Table Bay on the direct sailing route to India. British merchants were in India before the year 1600, and soon our ships, carrying traders and explorers, were at home in the Persian Gulf, along the coasts of Arabia, in the Red Sea, and down to the island of cloves Zanzibar. In 1640, Madras was founded, the first annexation in the East, and soldiers and administrators, the first in a long and distinguished line, began to arrive from England. Calcutta was founded. Ceylon was to come our way later. Bencoolen, in Sumatra, was taken, Penang was ours, and our traders and explorers passed down the Straits and entered the China Seas. Later, under the lead of great Cap- tain Cook, they were to take Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and half the islands in the South Pacific. But always India lay at the back of our mind. All the glamour, the imagination, the vague East- ward longing centred there. As our grip upon her strengthened, so that instinct strengthened, telling us our ways lay together the way of the masterful, grasping, full-blooded islanders of the cold, and the way of the sun-shrivelled, selfless, mystical men of the heat for better or for worse. THE SHADOW-SHOW These instincts and longings to grasp the world, and especially to root ourselves in India, were soon to be focussed in one of those prodigious men of ours. Consider his story. Robert Clive, a boy of eighteen, lands in Madras. He has come out a clerk to the East India Company. He is un- known; has no money, no prospects. His duties are mere routine; his future, saving the un- expected, must be the trivial round. Now, what could the unexpected be? Hah! The French are installed near by, at Pondicherry. Their prestige is fast rising, and that of the British, in the eyes of the natives, is going down. The French, and the native princes who encourage them, must be wiped out if the British are ever to control in India. And so there comes fighting before Pondicherry, opportunity, and the young civilian turns out a born leader. He is now placed in charge of certain attacks, succeeds, gains his commission, goes on succeeding, and before long is Commandant of Madras, conqueror of the great Dupleix, victorious all along the line. The fight- ing, against both the French and the natives, waxes fiercer. The young leader performs mir- acles of daring, and is worshipped by his men. He is undefeated; he has raised British prestige in all India. Now in poor health, he returns for awhile to England. MINE OWN PEOPLE The years pass. It is now 1756, and Suraj-ud- dauleh, Nawab of Bengal, perpetrates upon the British at Calcutta the massacre of the Black Hole. Heavy punishment awaits him, and be- hind his punishment lie great political issues, A big man is needed for the work, and Colonel Rob- ert Clive, aged 30, comes sailing up from Madras. He takes the field with 1,000 Europeans more than he has led in all his career and 2,000 na- tives, and marches to where the Nawab awaits him with 50,000 men. They meet at Plassey, a hundred miles from Calcutta, and the fate of India lies in the melting pot. A council of war is held under some mango trees. Clive tells his officers that he has bought Mir Jafir, the Nawab's general, promising him, if he will desert at the critical moment, his mas- ter's shoes. "Will he stay bought 1 ? Are we strong enough to attack without him 1 ?" asks Clive. The gallant Eyre Coote, second in command, is all for attack; but not until Mir Jafir's message comes does Clive make final decision. I journeyed to Plassey, and stood out on the lonely plain; with a chart, and the cement cairns now placed by the Indian Government, I recon- structed the battle. I saw where Clive's force had lain entrenched, where the French gunners of the enemy had stood, and where the Nawab's own troops were drawn up. Nearest of all, and 244 THE SHADOW-SHOW right on our flank, had been the army of Mir Jafir. But that crafty person was watching events. He saw that Clive, as ever, was gaining ground; and repairing to the Nawab's tent dur- ing the battle, put so great a fear in that ruler's heart that he fled the field. The immense prestige of Clive, his weird mili- tary skill, and his cunning, won us Plassey. He had played the oriental at his own game, and beaten him. Bengal, the heart and the core of India, was ours for the taking. The Black Hole of Calcutta was avenged; the little Madras clerk had entered on immortality. # # * j}s * %. A roll of drums in the darkness. Quick cries of command. The tramp of many men. As I spring from my bed the bagpipes skirl, and a Gurkha regiment goes marching by. It is four o'clock in the morning; the month December, the year 1911; today, after two hundred and fifty years, an Emperor again enters Delhi. A British battalion comes marching in the dark- ness; then in succession come Sikhs, Rajputs, Brit- ish and native cavalry, more battalions of the line, batteries of guns. The music is continuous now, with distant bugle calls, hoarsely shouted orders, and a steady tramping; by sun up, down this one road, forty regiments have gone to meet the Em- peror. MINE OWN PEOPLE 245 Presently I come to the Maidan. Lines of soldiers guard the royal route, and there seethes behind them a white throng, turbanned in many hues. Tens of thousands stream out of Delhi, cluster on the great stairway of Jama Masjid, swarm upon every roof; and, where Chandi Chowk, the street of the jewellers, enters the city, become wedged and immovable. A general, white-plumed, with his aides, gallops by in a final survey. A governor's carriage and four, with the scarlet and gold liveries, and princes with their retinues pass down to the cita- del. A million natives stand expectant. The British, some thousands in number, have taken their stance, and within the fort the red-sand- stone citadel of Shah Jahan the high officials of India and all the ruling princes await the royal train. A gun booms the first salute. While it yet re- verberates a hoarse cry passes, is taken up again and again, and as seventy thousand soldiers stand to attention, the royal standard floats out over the fort. The Emperor has arrived. Within the royal shamiana he is receiving homage from the princes. Some one hundred and forty prepare to follow him through the city, and only proud Udaipur, whose ancestor cursed Akbar, and Akbar's Delhi 246 THE SHADOW-SHOW for ever, will skirt the city, and meet him at the durbar beyond. The salute swells to one hundred and one guns, and when it merges into rifle fusillades, all eyes turn to the fort. In the gateway, between the stone elephants, a horseman appears, a herald trumpeter. A troop of cavalry, with their music, follow him out across the Maidan, and so the long procession begins. After many squadrons, drive the Commissioner of Delhi, the Chief Com- missioners of Provinces, the Lieutenant Gover- nors, the Governors of Madras and Bombay with their escorts. A fanfare is heard, and the head of the King's procession emerges. Half a mile of cavalry seem to defile, and after them Delhi Her- ald comes riding, the royal standard bearer and the trumpeters. Then a plumed cavalcade, all scarlet and gold, with blue sashes rides past, and in the middle the Emperor, with his viceroy, his generals, his suite, and in his immediate train great princes like Gwalior and Bikanir. He goes by to deep British cheers. His Indian people, who do not cheer, receive him with im- mense waving, and thousands, who even stand im- mobile, will carry this moment with them to the grave. Ere he has entered Chandi Chowk, come the princes. At their head, four white horses to his chariot, rides the new Nizam, prince of Hyder- abad, ruler over eleven millions. His black robe MINE OWN PEOPLE 247 is buttoned at the neck, his turban and aigrette are yellow. The British Resident sits by his side, his minister of state opposite; his Arab bodyguard ride behind. The Gaekwar rides next, a thick-set Mahratta. In white muslin, with squat red turban, he makes small appeal to the eye ; yet he is the second prince in India, and a man to reckon with. He is fol- lowed by the Maharajah of Mysore. Young, magnificent, and a militant Hindu, he is wearing gigantic emeralds, and the crowd receives him well. Hard upon him there follows a prince ly- ing back on the cushions. He is the ruler of Kashmir, an oldish man, exhausted, and drugged, it may be, for this day with opium. His stal- wart bodyguard follow. After these, as is the precedent of India, come the princes of Rajputana. At their head today is old Jaipur, and his bodyguard ride in coats of mail. Later, at the durbar^ he was to kiss his jewelled sword, lay it reverently at the Sover- eign's feet, and I saw no courtlier act in Delhi. Udaipur, the first Rajput, as we know, is not here. Bikanir rides behind the King. The boy Jodhpur is with the cadet escort; but their chariots pass, their caparisoned, led horses, their camels, their riflemen, their musicians, together with the Ma- harajahs of Boondi and Kotah and Jaisalmer, and all that is gallant in Rajputana. 248 THE SHADOW-SHOW The procession of the princes defiles for two hours. In this vast India exist many, many di- verse races, and their chiefs are here today from the uttermost confines. Here pass statesmen, men of affairs, great social figures, escorted by their modern troops, and Western bands of music ; and here, in their due precedence, pass outer barbar- ians, followed by archers and spearmen in coats of mail, or by men beating gongs. Travancore passes, of great lineage, suzerain of many Brah- mins, who goes at four o'clock each morning to his devotions; Kolhapur, the Mahratta, of the blood of great Sivaji; Patiala, the Sikh, whose four prancing steeds put all others to shame; Pud- ukota, English gentleman and subtle bridge- player; Newanagar, in a silver coach, puffed out in pink silk, greatest batsman in a generation of cricket; the consumptive boy Cooch Behar, death already in his face; the veiled Begum of Bhopal, the one woman among them; and after them wild looking Pathans from Hill Tribe and Frontier; Mongols, like Sikkim, or Bhutan but lately come under the flag; Shans, from out Burma way, coated in scales of gold one hun- dred and forty rulers of the Empire of India, whose words are law, whose persons are sacred to millions of subjects, yet who are all here to pay homage, to follow in the King of England's train. MINE OWN PEOPLE 249 .You have seen Clive laying our foundations in India; I shall show you another laying them in the farther East. When the East India Company took Java from the Dutch, in the year 1811, one of the Com- pany's officials in the Straits, by name Raffles, was installed Lieutenant Governor. He ruled wisely and constructively, gaining the respect of the people, giving the island laws suitable to it, build- ing fine roads, even laying out the botanical gar- dens at Buitenzorg the finest in the world. But when, after five years, it was decided that Java be handed back, he opposed this so tenaciously that he fell into disgrace, almost suffered dismis- sal; and we hear of him as reduced to the Resi- dency of Bencoolen. The Dutch again becoming aggressive, our trad- ing rights in the Straits were menaced, and John Company took stock of the position. Penang and Malacca, our main settlements, were none too well located, and word was sent to Raffles, the most knowledgeable Briton in those parts, to search out and secure some more central, strategic station without delay. His knowledge was unique. And within a month or two he had acquired the island of Singa- pore. It lay at the extreme point of the Malay Peninsula, separated by half a mile of water. Twenty-two miles by twelve, rather larger than #50 THE SHADOW-SHOW the Isle of Wight, it was covered with primeval forest, and save for a fishing village of Malays was uninhabited. The seller was the Sultan of Johore ; the price paid him was the eastern equiv- alent of one barleycorn. Raffles had secured the most strategic point in the East, the choicest site in the Seven Seas. Every vessel sailing to the far East, unless it makes detour of hundreds of miles, must pass down the Straits of Malacca. On their West lies Sumatra, on their East, Malaya; at the South end, where they narrow, a host of small islands broken off fragments, as it were, of Sumatra lie across the Straits ; and the safest, deepest channel, sometimes but a stone's throw wide, is that be- tween the nearest islands and Singapore itself. This was in 1819. Soon afterwards Raffles, his health affected, and still in disgrace, returned to England, where he lived in London; and in these years he founded the Zoological Gardens. By 1826, at the age of forty-six, he was dead. He was one of the greatest Englishmen, yet the very site of his grave, in the Parish Church of Hendon, was not known. In April, 1914, this church was being enlarged, and under the site of the new Sanctuary they found a vault. Here lay Raffles, and here (no matter how) I presently descended. The coffin lay by itself. The wooden case was rotted away, MINE OWN PEOPLE 251 the leaden shell itself far gone. It was the coffin of a small, small man. A shield bore his super- scription; the which, as I dusted, came loose, and underneath it a hole was corroded, larger than my hand. In all respect and reverence, for I hold him one of our greatest, I took out his shoulder- blade for a few moments. When I came out of the vault, the masons bricked it up; so that be- tween his burying, and the blowing of the Last Trump, I am the only one who has had truck with Stamford Raffles. That Raffles knew the value of Singapore, his report to the East India Company bears witness; he foretold its future in unmistakable words. Yet even he, coming back to the scene a hundred years later, would surely be staggered. Where the Malay fishing village rested, there rises a city with a population of 300,000. Forty races of men walk its streets. Miles of wharves, basins and dry docks abut on that narrow waterway. It is the eighth port of the world; one of the greats geographical assets of the British Empire; and the nucleus of a vast hinterland, which keeps growing by leaps and bounds. Singapore, in the main, is a Chinese city. It is true that thousands of Malays, the people of the country, walk the streets; that there are Japanese, Javanese, Arabs and the like; that there are many Tamils, Sikhs, and other races of India; that there is the Eu- 252 THE SHADOW-SHOW ropean quarter, with its white-suited men; but so preponderating are the Chinese, that these others seem hardly to count. The city is Chinese one sees that at a glance; how much of the business, the real estate, the wealth, is Chinese too, is more gradually revealed. So imperial in its setting, Singapore is now capital of a great hinterland. There are the Straits Settlements. There are the Federated Malay States. There are other Malay States, come but of late under our protection. Nearly the whole Peninsula is ruled from Singa- pore. Several decades ago all these States were one great forest. Malays were settled in the valleys, and about the rivers, and the petty Sultans strove together unceasingly. In course of time a British Resident appeared at each Sultan's court. He was duly followed by British miners and plant- ers, and by a rush of Chinese, and so the new era set in. The gold mines they opened were not profitable, losing their values at shallow depth; but immense deposits of alluvial tin were found, and these, worked mostly by Chinamen, have yielded, and continue to yield large profits. Then came far-sighted Britishers who cleared the forests, and planted rubber trees the rubber of the Amazon Valley. The land was ideal for this, inferior only to the Amazon itself, and in a few years many thousands of acres had been MINE OWN PEOPLE 253 cleared, many millions of trees planted. Later, came the first tappings, a quickly increasing out- put, and the trade's acceptance of the plantation product; the Singapore hinterland had evolved an industry of the first importance. The Government of the Malay States, which meanwhile had federated, has not been idle. Levying export dues on the two great staples, tin and rubber, its income has not only exceeded ex- penditure, but may be said to have burst the treas- ury open. It is the richest government, relatively, in the world. Its schools, hospitals, bridges, roads and the like are the best money can buy. It owns the railroads; it holds priceless assets in Crown lands; it has built an elegant little capital at Kwala Lumpor; further, the federated sultans, emerging from their forests, meet together and vote a Dreadnought to the Empire. Malaya is become a planter's paradise. End- less plantations line the roadsides. Now it is a coco-nut forest, now a stretch of pineapples. Here is pepper; there tapioca; and the Malays still plant their rice. But above all there is rub- ber. In the cleanly weeded soil, the trees wave over hill and dale, running sometimes for miles unbroken. Most have passed their first maturity a girth of eighteen inches, three feet from the ground ; this is tapping girth, and attached to each tree is a small cup for the latex. The rubber is 254 THE SHADOW-SHOW almost exclusively British. Where Malay or Chinaman planted, there he left the trees to their fate; and there, as to the sower in scripture, have thorns sprung up and choked him. It is awful, this Malayan forest growth ! Clear a space, and leave it alone^in a month it is unrecognisable; in a year it is blotted from all knowledge. In Perak State lie the principal tin washings. Up out of these man-made cavities used to come Chinamen in a stream, carrying the tin-bearing soil in baskets. This was primitive. Now, the more enlightened owners have installed suction pumps, and Australian and London sompanies have erected dredges. As we reach the coast, and Penang, rubber plantations again cover the land. Penang, oldest of the Straits Settlements, is an island one half, the size of Singapore, and like it, lies hard against the mainland. Mountainous and forest clad, it is one of the loveliest islands of the East. The botanical gardens, at a distance of several miles from the harbour, lie in a basin of the hills; and not those of Buitenzorg, not those of Rio de Janeiro, can show such forest setting. I suppose the spot to have been indicated by Fran- cis Light, first Governor of the island, another great Englishman in this part of the world. Georgetown, the capital, large and prosperous, is a great Chinese depot. Singapore, as we have seen, is Chinese. Everything is Chinese. These MINE OWN PEOPLE 255 people are the finest colonists we could have had ; to say that, under our governance, they are the making of tylalaya, is but statement of a bald fact. England's foreign policy, as I see it, can be summed up in four words : "Prestige in the East." The keystone of this is "Solidity in India," and to that I add: "Friendship with the Chinese." We are not so strong in China as once we were. Parkes has gone. Hart has gone; we have lost ground to Japan. All the nations look longingly to China. Today we find rivals, where fifty years ago were none; but there is a subtle some- thing between Briton and Chinaman that should win out for us again. This combination of Briton with Chinaman is a peculiarly happy one. It is not only a union of the two world personalities, but of the two great colonisers. Each in his own way has unrivalled energy, exceptional self-reliance, and each, in the development of new countries, an easy mastery. Glance at Hong Kong ! Here is a small, moun-, tainous island off the coast of China. Ceded to us all but barren, a town springs up, becomes in time a city, and now overflows the mountain sides. The harbour, pan passu, becomes the greatest in the East, and a vast depot of trade. Hong Kong is still growing. More and more Chinese are com- ing under her flag. But long ago she showed 256 THE SHADOW-SHOW Briton and Chinaman what they could achieve to- gether. Here, in Malaya, they have allied forces again. Beginning at Singapore, a marvellously chosen base, they have already advanced five hundred miles. In their wake has followed magic pros- perity, and a momentum gathers which should carry them further yet. Why should the partnership end here*? My vision of it, frankly, is a vision of a second In- dia an India based on the Chinaman : an Empire embracing the Peninsula, stretching from Singa- pore through Bangkok to Bhamo, and by sea, from the Straits of Malacca to near Chittagong. Bur- ma and the Shan States would fall naturally to it. The outside Malays would come in. Western Siam would belong, and sooner or later, I believe, much of Yunnan. A second India! Based neither on greed, nor land hunger, this should be deliberately created for safety. I would offset the Hindu of Clive with the Chinaman of Raf- fles. I would balance the two great races of the East. "Si Monumentum Requiris " If you would understand England's meaning to the world, consider the East, gaze upon India. If you do not know the East, and India, and what India means, then hold your peace. For you do MINE OWN PEOPLE 257 not know England. Our stability is bound up with India. How much bound up, only those who govern and those who have lived in this east- ern empire can realise. India means everything to us. She means more than all the colonies to- gether. She is linked to us hand and foot; they but by sentiment, which a moment's strain might sever. She has brought out the best that is in us; she has rounded our character. England's strength, and her prestige, is her lordship in the East, her control in India; when we lose these,, our place in the world is gone. We could not withdraw if we would. If we withdrew, a hun- dred jarring races would be at each other's throats, and the butchery of pusillanimous Hindus for their wealth and their women would be appall- ing. If we withdrew, it would be but to make room for someone else. We must be in India for all time. Who are those who denounce us about India? I tell them they do not know the facts. We ex- ploit the country of course we do but not cyni- cally. We draw wealth from India. But the Indians are fast piling up wealth themselves. Look at Bombay! Where will you find richer communities than the Parsees, the Bohras, the Banians? Look at Rangoon, where owners re- fuse 10,000 an acre for land on the foreshore! Look at the native wealth stored in the Punjab, 258 THE SHADOW-SHOW in Benares, in Calcutta! The currency of India is silver; yet I estimate that seven hundred mil- lion sovereigns have gone into India, and will never come out again. It has been written : "gold is a metal dug up in Africa, to be buried in India," and as things look now, all the gold in circulation will eventually disappear there. So much for British greed! No, the argument is unsound; the British have put more into India than they ever took out. There is some unrest in India. There is in all lands. It comes in this case from a fractional minority, half-educated, unused, and dissatisfied, who think they can govern themselves. This mi- nority is largely Hindu: if we withdrew, they would go down before the frontier tribes the followers of Mahomet as corn before the reaper. But we make mistakes too. We encourage young Indians to be educated in England. They go to the universities, they mix with us, they are treated as social equals. Then they go home, and are treated as inferiors. Is it surprising that they nurse anti-British ideals'? The caste of the Anglo-Indian is rigid as that of the Hindu. With the natives, if he is not genial, he at least is just; but the Eurasians half-caste men of his own blood he cruelly ignores. Yet I have found all men human. These men of colour would re- MINE OWN PEOPLE 259 spond; treat them with consideration, and they will help you to hold India. These poor peoples of India for they are mostly peasants and mostly poor are a sacred charge on us. They look to the white man to pro- tect them, to hold the scales of justice. Educa- tion they do not need : it is futile as yet ; missions, too, are doubtful; but an assured food supply, medical treatment, irrigation, good land laws, the control of usurers and extortioners these are the things England is called on to provide, and they do not call in vain. How could India really govern herself? Whom would she rally round? Whom would she look to? To the Nizam? To the Gaekwar? To some Bengali mystic? To a Brahmin? To a Mahomedan? To a Sikh? To aMahratta? To a Raj put? To a Ghurka? To a Pathan? The idea is fantastic. India is not one people, but a hundred peoples. She is not swayed by one prince, but by a hundred princes. In all her history no one Indian gained her will- ing allegiance, and those who gained the most won and held by the sword. There was Akbar greatest of all. Yet he rose to power from out a sea of blood, and on all his borders, during a long reign, there was continuous war. He was a man of the truest nobility, of the deepest religious tol- erance, yet but few of the princes loved him; the rest feared him, biding their time. 260 THE SHADOW-SHOW An independent India there will not be. In- dia is bone of our bone by now, a unit deep within the British Empire. But if these communities, these different races ask for responsible govern- ment within that empire that is a different mat- ter. Can we refuse this 1 ? Can we refuse if but one in a hundred understands*? It is true these^ people are dark skinned. They are Orientals. They do not see with western eyes. They never will. But they are our own people. They are lovable. There are ties between us stretching back centuries; and again I say: "if they ask for this thing, can we refuse it?" They have asked. And we, with great search- ings of heart, have promised. We have pledged ourselves to responsible government, or something very like it, in India. It is a big and daring pledge. A landmark in our history. But if the Indians "make good," their political emancipa- tion now stretches clear before them ; for we shall keep our pledge. I believe we have done right. I believe in al- ways putting responsibility. But I do not expect the Indians to make good certainly not in our time. There are individuals there are always individuals but this century will not see five per cent, of the people fit for the task. That they can talk, is fully granted. That many Bengalis have a subtler intellect than our own, is granted. MINE OWN PEOPLE 261 That numerous Sikhs and Mahrattas have a cer- tain forcefulness, those who know them will ad- mit. But that, our example and help withdrawn, they can govern^ hold the balance between races and religions, deal out justice to rich and poor, to the Brahmin and the outcast alike, handle money honestly, I cannot really believe. But it will be a r?re experiment. Loving England, I would tell of her strength; but in no dithyramb : loving her, I must show you her weakness too. Her strength is her "char- acter." The character of the British, as real as it is intangible, is humanity's best asset. This "character" has little to do with brains or morals. It is built up of respect for the law, the strongly developed sense of justice, liberty, and fair-play, a fairly high standard in money matters, and un- failing common sense. In one word, it is balance. That is our secret. We have balance, and because of it have been called, naturally and inevitably, to rule over half the world. Then again, we are the personality among the nations we, and the Chinese and the richest in the Old World. These things our balance, our personality, our wealth bring us the respect of all peoples. We may not be loved, but we are respected. Our prestige is tremendous; the prestige of an English gentleman is assured all over the earth. 262 THE SHADOW-SHOW This "balance" of ours, this ruling facility, is unquestioned; yet to say all the British possess it would be far wide of the mark. I speak of a million or two million individuals in each genera- tion, men and women, high and low, who leaven the rest. These, who know instinctively the high- est interests of our race, have always counted, and still count for very much indeed. It is only yes- terday that this generation of them, fighting with their backs to the wall, pulled England through her peril. Among us, as amongst other races, it is the few who count; to class the ruck of England su- perior to the ruck of France or Germany would not be justified. The tradition that our soldiers are the bravest, our sailors the best, our artisans the most skilful, that, in general, a Briton is worth more than others, will not hold; with us, as else- where, mediocrity abounds. We have character. Our greatest are of the very greatest ; but in aver- age, we are neither brainy nor brilliant. Men- tally, French or Italians are more subtle; by the side of educated Russians we are children, and in the United States ten new thoughts are seething for one here. As a nation we rank mentally low, and to complete the picture, our education has been appalling. The mass of our people are dull and insular. They have their good points, but mentality is not of them; of our splendid history MINE OWN PEOPLE 263 they know little, and care less, they often go soggy with beer, and the gorgeous outer world, with its peoples, means nothing to them at all. Without her two million, believe me. Britain would cut no world figure. When the Great War broke out, in 19.14, we British found ourselves up against a new kind of reality. At home, our land had rested in- violable well nigh a thousand years. Abroad, we had built up our Empire, and fought our wars against native races. Now, here came the Ger- mans, a white race, hurling themselves upon us. It was the blonde brute, the Teuton gone mad; yet it was unthinkable, to nineteen Britons in twenty, that he could strike at our heart; the British Navy, our wealth, our resources, our pres- tige, placed us far beyond Germany's reach. But the twentieth man knew. Men knew who had lived in Germany, had seen her pass slowly, surely under the obsession of welt-mack^ knew her military strength, knew her to be organised as one man ; knew, and knowing, greatly feared. And they were right. For four years Britain passed through the Valley of Death. On land, again and again, our armies were sent reeling. Our cities were bombed from the air. On the seas Nelson's seas our warships were sunk, hundreds of our merchantmen blown to pieces. 264 THE SHADOW-SHOW Our wealth was dissipated; our credit lowered in the eyes of the world. Britain was Britain still, but all her foundations were shaken. ****** Now the war is over. It is a January evening when I write, and upon our Northern land her wintriness has again descended ; as I sit before the fire, gazing into the embers, my thoughts go back over the dreadful past. Of what is England thinking to-night'? I warrant you not of victory, nor cheers, nor wav- ing banners. My own thoughts are a sort of dazed wonder, a deep humility; round about a thousand firesides there must be others thinking the same. Germany, the wild beast, lies at last in the dust. But it took half the world on her back to bring her down ; and the whole world came near going down with her. Her cause was a brutal cause; yet the Germans fought four years wholeheartedly, powerfully, with the utmost bravery, and a greater military skill than is re- corded in history. Given our navy, and command of the seas, given our resources and material, what might Germany not have done 1 ? Could the Brit- ish, fighting the world in a good cause, have achieved all the Germans achieved in a bad one*? My thoughts go out to our allies: to France, and all her great generals; to Belgium, for those ten precious days of August ; to the peasant army MINE OWN PEOPLE 265 of Servia; to Italy; to the Russia that was; with- out these allies where, I wonder, had the world been reeling to-night? Especially my thoughts go out to America, in name not an ally, yet the most relevant of them all. Late to enter the war, she came in with tremendous momentum. Her money, her food, her war materials, her vast re- sources were thrown freely on the scale so freely that the enemy was shaken; and once her great army took the field the end was in sight. Germany, the wild beast, lies dead. Upon our Empire fell the main strain in those years, and upon our Old England the brunt: in the world's eyes we emerge as victors, and yet I cannot cheer. The England of our dreams, our boasts, where is she 1 ? Those seven hundred thousand of our dead are she; but in the fabric of the liv- ing there are deep rents and seams. Selfishness has taken England. Clever and crafty men and women tens of thousands of them made gain out of the war. While our true men fought, and our true women worked, these sleek ones span their web, and out of our land's danger made their money. Their example has wrought England untold harm. Their vulgar ostentation will continue to do so. They helped to bring us measurably near finan- cial collapse. Today England owes eight thou- sand million pounds, owes her broken soldiers, 266 THE SHADOW-SHOW owes her orphans, and must brace herself to the heaviest taxation for many years to come. Even in the old days the idle rich of England were an eyesore. Not those who made the money : they, as a rule, were strong, self-reliant, incor- ruptible. But those who inherited it, the drones who spent it. They toiled not, neither did they spin. Their lives were passed in idleness at golf, shooting, fishing, fox-hunting, or in dilettante travel: they were parasites, of no value to the country. These people had lost their bearings, had run to seed. They were fine material wasted. When the war came, every man of them went to fight, every woman to work. The men officered the new armies. Under conditions that appalled, they developed character, balance, and such quali- ties of leadership that the troops would follow them to hell. But, alas! with the coming of peace, they return to their loafing, to their aim- less routine. And when they have been joined by the many families of the war profiteers, the eye- sore of England's rich will be greater than before. The labouring classes shamed England too. There were, of course, many of these who fought bravely, many men and women at home who worked, and worked hard; but there were endless strikes during the war, eternal bickerings in the face of our deadly peril. We had to bribe labour MINE OWN PEOPLE 267 often to carry on. If the rich profiteers were con- temptible, so were these many labour groups; their callousness, their unjust demands, undermined the whole State. And still do. Today, after victory, after peace, after all England has done to raise the standard of living, I see labour more disgruntled, more capricious, nursing a deeper hate in a word, more selfish than ever before. This is the deep- est rent in our fabric. There are many labour men in England today drunk with power, head- ing for revolution. England's past is nought to them. That she is Europe's sheet anchor is nought. That their fathers and brothers died of late for England they care not at all. Only they think of themselves, of their power, and of pulling down to gratify that power; they are traitors to their country, and most detestable. Yet I am not dismayed. The world may crash. Half Europe may fall. But England will not fall. She sways today. She will be hard put to it for years to come. But she will get through. Have we not the gifts of law and or- der? Have we not that unfailing common sense? Have we not our character? Our balance? The nation will discipline itself. If the revolutionists behind labour are out for trouble, they shall find trouble. But if the solid men gain control, and 68 THE SHADOW-SHOW carry labour sanely towards power, they shall have a fair and sympathetic deal. That immense debt must be paid off, and we shall bravely face a taxation which must be very heavy. If it can be shown that a levy on the well-to-do is of real good to the State, I, for one, shall gladly surrender my share. We have but to set ourselves to this task in earnest. Behind us is our world- wide trade, ever growing; our vast shipping to carry it ; sixty per cent, of the output of gold, to finance it; and thousands of the world's astutest and solidest traders (and I do not forget the Americans), to bring it to fruition. Shaken as we have been, we yet bring great assets out of the war. Our King is trusted. In our years of trial he showed himself a steadfast man, doing his duty, always sharing in self-denial with his people. In these days, when "Divine Right" doth no longer hedge a king, the common sense trust of his people is a greater thing to him by far. So long as our Empire holds together, so long must we have a visible head, a link; and then he is the Emperor of India. Under him, the war threw up Douglas Haig the very man to lead our armies, and typifying those armies down to the ground. We do not think of him as subtle or brilliant; but the English character, the Scotch dourness, the balance^ the seeing it through, day by day, to the end, were there all the time ! MINE OWN PEOPLE S69 Our military position, too, is assured. Five years ago, across the North Sea, lay that dreadful menace. But today there is no menace, nor any power in Europe which can threaten. For the British Army one need never fear again, nor for the martial instincts of the people. Once the British Navy was our first our last line of defence. The war showed that Britain rules the waves still ; but under the waves she was grasped by the throat, nearly strangled to death. Our position, dwellers on an island, growing but half our food, is gravely compromised by the submarine. There is no real answer as yet to its menace. The convoy system, and the depth charge, do but palliate the menace; a Channel Tunnel is something of an answer, though, and growing more food at home; and to these two things the country must set itself. The battle- ship, threatened under water, is become vulner- able from the air, too, and here again our future seems charged with danger. Yet I am not ap- palled. The war has shewn Britain, and the Do- minions, taking to the air, and there displaying such nerve, such mechanical genius as to approach mastery. I see the next war waged fiercely, per- haps predominately, in the air, and I urge our people to prepare, but in all confidence, for this new warfare of tomorrow. Our Empire stretches world-wide vaster than 270 THE SHADOW-SHOW ever. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa the older dominions full fledged now, prepare to leave us : not in sentiment, not in race- instincts, but as managing utterly their own af- fairs. India receives notable allowance of self- government, and even the Egyptians an inferior people receive the first instalment. Thus, to a great extent, England is at a parting of the ways. On the other hand, there are the Crown Colo- nies, the vast Asian and vaster African Protec- torates, and islands all over the world, growing up, getting ready to take their place. Their col- oured peoples, and that under our aegis, keep gaining in education, in wealth, in national con- sciousness ; they are going to keep our administra- tors at full pressure for generations to come. And there are all the territories fallen to us after the war: there is Mesapotomia, where irri- gation will bring about utmost fertility; Palestine, and the leadership of the Jews; suzerainty over Arabia; the almost suzerainty over Persia in- deed, the war forces upon us, and that without our seeking it, the trusteeship of the Near, the Mid- dle, and much of the Far East the East of our affinity. The vista opened up is almost stagger- ing. If Britain to herself remains but true, her career, so far from ending, is only about to begin ! Finally, most vital, most precious of all, are those two millions. I have been in every land, MINE OWN PEOPLE 271 and I tell you again that these, this backbone of the British race, are humanity's best asset. With all their faults, with all their limitations, you may place your trust in them. They have pulled Eng- land through in the old days. With their backs to the wall, they have pulled her through again doggedly, not gloriously though; and if the mass, the great herd, with the bit in their teeth, do not run violently down a steep place into the sea, they will pull England through again, and save Europe, in the critical years which are to come. CHAPTER XII "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" Do you remember that blue dome, the tomb of the Agha's father at Teheran, that flashed in the sun, and grew dull again, and changed colour with every cloud in the sky? That is like our world the Shadow-Show; joy and misery, good and evil, are crossing our sky from birth to death, and our moods reflect them as those old Persian tiles reflected the heavens. There are days when I know myself a god, when all things bend to my will. And there come times, as surely, when I writhe in my depression, and the waves close over my head. Who or what am I? for I myself do not know. But a moment agone I was a patriot, a thinker for England ; yet at this moment, all the evil and the misery of the world sweep before me, and I know myself, in a wider field, a grappler with disillusion. Humanity is shrieking of its progress, and I do not see it. Change in material things I see profound change; but of ethical advance, that blending of human nature with the Divine Es- sence that must lie behind things, there seems no vestige. 273 "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 273 Can you see progress*? Is machinery, with its great steamers, swift trains, submarines, and air- ships that are to drop dynamite progress? Is rapid travel progress, or greater commercial turn- over, or the Stock Exchange, or party politics? Are our law courts progress, where rich litigants wear poor ones to death; or our newspapers, which, mad for a sensation, would plunge the peor pies into war? We are envolving. Our brains are become sub- tle, our organism complex, our nerves raise us to heights, depress us to depths, the earlier men never knew. Yet we have left the vital problems unsolved. Selfishness, jealousy, and hate have come through unscathed, as have love, effort, and courage ; human nature stands just where the Crea- tor left it. Let us open the window of humanity and take stock of our so-called "progress." Strange, angry cries reach us from all directions. These are not the cries of idealists, who see the absolute stand- ards set at naught, but of partizans, fighting man against man, creed against creed, nation against nation. The cries of humanity are only factional cries; the warning about those two who went up into the temple to pray is forgotten, and intoler- ance is roaring at large. Intolerance, in nations as in men, is a symptom ; the disease is ignorance crystallization of mind, 274 THE SHADOW-SHOW to be feared by us as our fathers feared the devil. In this twentieth century, as ever, the nations are vain-glorious and self-righteous. Majorities are patriotic, rarely critical, yet brains, energy, brav- ery, altruism the things we value are wide- spread as the world; good and bad are not to be localized. Do you hear a piercing cry rising momentarily above the rest? That is the English denouncing the Congo, who shout, "Down with Red Rubber and the Slave Gang!" The charge is true ex- aggerated, yet in essence true. Slavery has ex- isted there, and torture, and Belgium is stained. Yet who are we to cry out? Are there not in London, at our own door, many beings as miser- able and degraded as any in the Congo*? Read, too, as I did some years ago, an official report on the natives of West Australia and their treatment. It was horrible. It was worse than slavery. And what of our opium trade 1 ? What of the Indian Government, the greatest opium merchant in the world, who for many years made millions of profit out of China, and only of late relin- quished this revenue? "Oh," reply the English, "if India hadn't sold opium to China, some one else would. Better we than they." "Quite so, quite so!" murmured astute old Leopold of Belgium. "Our case is a similar one. - "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 275 If we hadn't forced the natives to work, and to collect rubber, their own chiefs would do so. Bet- ter we than they." Or turn to America. The Yankees fix their eagle eye on the wrongs of Finland or Armenia. A mass meeting of denouncement is called in Bos- ton, where, as it closes, ten thousand perspiring ratepayers stand and sing: "My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty." And out in the street newsboys are calling. There has been a massacre of blacks in Georgia by the mob. A white woman has been outraged by a negro; to avenge her, some twenty innocent and respectable men have been shot and burned at the stake. "Home was never like this!" think the Finns. There are worse things, though, than intoler- ance, darker shadows that cross our sky; disease is one, and grinding poverty, and the drink traffic, and the unfit, and the misery that stalks at noon- day. What is our vaunted civilisation? For the rich, for the well-to-do, it is a soft cushion, a bed of feathers; but they must not look beneath, for it rests, ultimately, on an army of the very poor. The poor are always and fearfully with us, and as our wealth increases so does their degradation. Actual hunger they often know, actual want; 276 THE SHADOW-SHOW while wearing anxiety, bad food, insufficient warmth and sleep and leisure and happiness is their lot from beginning to end. Poverty belongs to the scheme of things. You may pay robust labour all it demands, and believe the poor abolished, but there are millions of the weak, the inefficient, the ill-equipped for life, whom you never reach. And the more wealth and luxury at the top, the keener, the more poig- nant poverty at the bottom. The tnisery of European cities we know; and there are tenement streets in New York or Chicago, the land of promise, which may well give the optimist pause. These people are slaves. We cannot explain the ugly word away. They dare not have wills of their own, wants of their own. Such beings have no reserve fund, nor can they build one up. They live from hand to mouth. They have rarely twenty-four hours' start from hunger; if they fall, they fall for ever, and the ranks close in. We mean well, no doubt; but that inexorable thing, the law of supply and demand, is the real factor. Do you hear a sort of deep rumbling*? It is the new generation coming along. There are millions of them ! Millions more slaves ten, for one man's place and the clergy are egging the people to breed ! Hurrah for a denser population ! See how the capitalists and the great employers leer, washing "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 277 their hands with invisible soap ! Labour is cheap today ! Forget, a moment, the poor and degraded, and take note of this dreadful army who approach. These are the mentally and bodily unfit, on their way to get married. They go with the good wishes of society and the Church. With light hearts they will beget children, bestowing on them physical and mental heritages from which there is no escape. But you must not interfere, we allow these things ; those of us who know the facts are too cowardly to protest. Some of these men are partis, and your British mother is a dragon when the parti appears. Who said "phthisis"? Heaven help such officious wight! Let us close the window again. The tale of evil and misery and futility is but half told, yet told enough. All religions die in time. Their early, virile conceptions become lost in a maze of mysticism, ritual, and dogma. Our religion is dying this way. She is but a shell now; and vestments and wafers and oriented genuflections and intonings and Athanasian creeds and burning candles are what she offers as the Waters of Life. The Church has lost its hold. By refusing to come in line with modern thought, it alienates those who think. What signifies an audience of old women or flighty girls, when the brainy men 278 THE SHADOW-SHOW of the community are in their libraries or out on the links? The man who gives the Churches the go-by is not a bad man. He is, more often than not, the thinking man; and when he thinks what religion was meant to be, and what it has become, he laughs aloud. What are dogmas to him? Will they bring peace to Ireland? Will they breed sympathy between labour and capital? The "two-and-seventy jarring sects," with their va- garies, their narrowness, cause him amusement rather than otherwise. Our thinker is a traveller, and he notes in China, in Zululand, in Central Africa, in a hun- dred foreign parts a great dissipation of money and energy in missionary effort. Some of it seems to be good, some bad, and the greater part use- less. The heathen, who have neither our wants nor our complex organisms, are, on the whole, happy and contented. If one thing in the world is certain, it is that the heathen are happier than our own submerged, whose need for uplifting is in all senses greater. Our thinking man is kindly and tolerant; when he hears of Christian Churches denying the rites of burial to some poor suicide, venting their rancour on him, dead, on his family, living, it makes his blood boil. Who are we to assail these poor tortured creatures? What had their final "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 279 / agonies to do with us? "Judge not, that ye be not judged," my lord Archbishop of Canterbury! One hundred and seventy-one Bishops of the Anglican Church assemble at Lambeth, and they make decision, by 87 votes to 84, to deny the blessing of the Church to the innocent party in a divorce who may marry again. Pshaw! You old men are no doubt well-meaning, but you don't know. You must adapt yourselves to modern in- tellect, or it will presently pass over you like a steam-roller. Moreover, such a union is legal to the State, and yours is a State Church. Go care- fully, if you would escape disestablishment! There are social dignities and fat endowments some of you would ill surrender. Religion, as we have evolved it, is become a flabby thing. It is a creed for the well-to-do, a creed of the tall hat, whose votaries dare not peer below the surface of things. We are concerned with the supernatural, with miracles, with three Gods who are one God; scornful of science, we treat sin and misery as casual factors, removable by prayer, and ignore the Reign of Law through which we move from birth to death. Does our religion look into the causes of things? No! It ignores scientific inquiry. Empiric, cred- ulous, it thinks to cure by indiscriminate charity, and floods the country with organisations which pauperise the masses, breed parasites, and ruin 280 THE SHADOW-SHOW the character of the lower classes wholesale. Christianity can give men money. My religion would teach men to earn it. And our ethics are become flabby. We build free sanatoria, we glory in saving the lives of con- sumptives and weaklings generally. Well and good. Then we allow them to breed ! Under the aegis of the Churches an orgy of generation goes on. The unfit breed, and the mentally weak, and the degenerates, and the submerged, whose im- mense families overflow into State homes or work- houses. Owing to our flabby brand of religion, which welcomes the halt and the maimed and the half-witted, we are vitiating the strain to the last degree; we are blocking the likeliest of all paths of human progress. If this be the way of constructive Christianity 7 , I declare for the other way. I would take in hand paupers, drunkards, loafers, criminals; I would spend on them on our own problems the mon- eys now wasted on the happy heathen, and I would start scientific reform. Some of these would be reformed; quite as many would be un- reformable, and these latter, whom you now fill with bread and soup and allow to perpetuate the race, I would sterilise, or keep rigidly apart. If they worked, they should live; but the lunatics, the degenerates, without qualm on my part, would go to a painless death. "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 281 Now let me ponder. Reason sits in her seat today, and I know things are not what they seem. Do you think that in a thousand guesses theologian or philos- opher has reached the heart of things'? No not in a myriad ! Our meaning, in time and space, is utterly vague. Could we but gaze on the white light of reality, all our codes must shrivel up, Christian and agnostic alike stand aghast. This is the Shadow-Show. It is no figure of speech. We men and women, who come we know riot whence, go we know not whither, who move through a world we do not comprehend, in the grip of inexorable laws we cannot explain, are the Shadows of all time. The "Reign of Law" holds us as in a vice. Nature, who can be kind, as she can be infinitely cruel, makes her sport of us. Of her ultimate de- cision there is no faintest hint. The world around us, Nature materialised, is a beautiful world ; I, of all men, know that. But under her beauty, what awful forces lurk, what inexorable laws! The Law of Life, be it for man, animal, or plant, is the same struggle. Eat or be eaten. Overthrow or be overthrown. Stand firm or be swept aside. The strong and the adaptable sur- vive, as they were meant; they are effective and joyous, finding life, on the whole, a pleasant 282 THE SHADOW-SHOW thing. The weak and the unfit fail and die, as they were meant; they are ineffective, altogether futile, and for them life is ugly and wretched. There is Cause and Effect a thing so inexor- able, and so relentless, as to rivet our keenest faculties. Cause and Effect is the manifestation. Behind it lies the law, and the law I take to be the "inter- relation" the oneness of all things. We have seen, in these very pages, how a stop- page of tram-cars in Delhi, some years ago, was a direct result of the marriage of Mahomet's daughter with Ali, in the seventh century. We have seen that the discovery of silver at Potosi, in 1545, led to Roosevelt becoming President of the United States in 1901; the two events occur 356 years apart, yet their inter-relation is un- doubted. Now consider an example, supposititious yet not improbable, which we will ourselves con- struct. A London paper receives important news, and issues a special edition. The sub-editor, pleased with the look of the "extra," and with the celerity displayed, takes a sovereign from his pocket, and gives it to the compositor mainly concerned. This man, with a large family, living on the border-line of debt, has an ailing child, and uses the windfall to take his child to a specialist. The specialist, "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 283 examining, sees an unusual development of dis- ease, and following this up, makes a minor dis- covery in pathology. He writes an article on this which is published in a medical journal. Another doctor buys a copy of this journal, and accident- ally leaves it, opened at the article in question, on a table in a tea-shop. A woman next occupies his seat; she sees the open journal, and her eyes note the words, "We must now proceed to diag- nose. . . ." The syllable "nose" becomes con- notative, and she proceeds to use her handker- chief with some violence. Returning it to her reticule, she notes with satisfaction the initials embroidered in the corner, and starts off to order a dozen more at Marshall and Snelgrove's. We will not accompany her up Bond Street, nor try to follow up the effects of the composi- tor's gratitude, the child's treatment, the special- ist's future, the thousands to be benefited by his discovery, and the changes wrought in their for- tunes; but we will note this: that just as vibra- tions, from a stone cast into a pond, reach every drop of water in that pond so, sooner or later, every man and woman in the world, and most things living and dead, would be, some in greater, some in lesser degree, brought into touch through that act of the editor, that giving of a small piece of yellow metaL I need not further elaborate. The inter-relation of all things, mental and ma- *84 THE SHADOW-SHOW terial, the "oneness" of the Universe, is absolute, and our connection with the great mosaic utterly close, utterly inextricable; a wine merchant may sneeze and the destinies of Denmark be affected, a billiard professional travel second-class and the price of tea harden perceptibly. There must be a meaning of Cause and Effect, and of this inter-relation of things. I believe it to be that all things are the manifestations of some ONE THING some all-embracing medium receiving into itself, and giving out again, the myriad permutations of matter and mind, of be- ing and not-being, that make up the universe. Let us take this problem, this search for the ONE THING, to the physicists. These men have been probing very deeply into the heart of things; they are going to be they now are nearer to the Infinite than all the mystics, all the metaphysicians who ever lived. "You in search of ONE THING*?" cry the physi- cists. "So are we. From the time Mendeleeff rounded off the Periodic Law, we have known that all elements, all matter, must be variations of some underlying ONE THING. Furthermore, the discoveries of radio-active substances, and their extraordinary metamorphoses, have set us hot on the scent." (Here follows a physical dissertation on atoms, and on the electron one thousand times smaller again.) "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 285 We need not follow the atomic discoveries ; but we must listen to the words of a President of the British Association, to the words of the man with the most penetrative brain in England today: ". . . for the most natural view to take, as a provisional hypothesis, is that matter is just a col- lection of positive and negative units of elec- tricity." These units are the electrons mere whiffs of energy; yet these whiffs of energy seem to be not only the basis of the universe, but the universe itself. They are energy, yet their inconceivable rapidity of movement causes them to assume sub- stance. Matter would thus seem to be born out of energy; and a bunch of grapes, a wardrobe, a man, a star, are merely so many impalpable elec- trons, grouped in varying atomic structures, and revolving inside their atoms with a force truly appalling. If the physicists are right, matter is merely energy in violent movement; ENERGY looms up as the ultimate basis of the universe, the ONE THING, and our Shadow-Show becomes a reality! I, too, will set a provisional hypothesis before you: "If matter is energy, brain is, and all that brain brings into being; it follows that thought and will are energy, and many, if not all, forms 286 THE SHADOW-SHOW of good and evil, happiness and misery. And be- ing energy, they are indestructible. "Inherent in this subtle energy which may underlie all things, as it is inherent in electricity, must be 'polarity.' The forces we call good and evil, happiness and misery, and all the positive and negative forces of life, are polarized forms of energy. They are balancing factors in the structure of things." I feel that "polarity" or "balance" may be the master-key to the universe. A universe of energy, with a guiding brain in control, would establish itself along just such lines. The theory of "bal- ance," looked into deeply, shows so world-wide a tendency as to suggest a law. Balance permeates all things; there seems to be no positive without a negative, no negative without a positive. We may liken the universe to a mass of grains of sand, so tightly packed that a man's finger pressed into one part of the mass will cause a bulging, exactly equal to the depression, at some other part. In other words, for each movement, each happen- ing, each thought in the universe, there is a bal- ancing condition set up. We may not see it, we may not realise it; but in some form, mental or material, palpable or impalpable, it is inexorably there. If energy forms the fabric of the universe, and balance should be its law, where do we stand? "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 287 We see now that evil and misery, and all the negative forces, may be part of the fabric itself, and indestructible, but so, too, are good, and hap- piness, and all the positive forces; the position might be worse. It is because there is evil that there can be its balancer good ; it is because there is poverty that there can be those who alleviate ; it is because there is disease that there can be those who heal; the policeman gains promotion at the expense of the criminal, and the barrister wealth because men still hate; it takes, literally, all sorts to make a world. In a "balanced" universe, the evil side of things is a necessary condition. You think not"? Well, we shall test it, on conventional religious lines. A famous divine, before a vast congrega- tion, prays to the Almighty to abolish disease from the world, and the Almighty hears, and answers. Disease ceases. But at the same time cease, from disuse, medicine, surgery, research work, nursing, hygiene, antiseptics, drainage, and such personal qualities as cleanliness, self-denial, caution, and fortitude that is to say, many of the noblest paths of endeavour, many of the finest qualities known to man. Disease has gone ; but so have its balancing factors. The same could be demon- strated with the other negative forces ; so that the "calling-in" of all sin, all misery, by the Al- mighty, would mean the simultaneous disappear- 288 THE SHADOW-SHOW ance of all active good and happiness. There would be general running down of the fabric to a neutral condition; humanity would exist on a far lower level than before. I have verged towards that hateful thing metaphysics; that way lies mental sterility. But this I feel : the things we have dealt with Inter- relation, Polarity, Balance are not casual fac- tors ; they fit, could we but find the key, into some vast generalization, with an appalling simplicity. And sin and misery they are not casual fac- tors. If "balance" be the key, they have a tre- mendous purpose of their own, they are subject to inexorable law, and not tears, fastings, nor the exorcisms of white-robed clergy, are going to turn them one hair's-breadth aside. Beyond the veil there is Oneness Oneness that may be white, whizzing Energy; and the subtle brain of it, the Permeating Essence, is God. This is a true God; no jealous, capricious deity, fash- ioned by the minds, swayed by the conflicting prayers of little men, but a Force of immeasur- able power and finality. This is a God to wor- ship! And for you, for me, what lies beyond? Does our caravan start for the "Dawn of Nothing,'* or is there, far away over the desert, a fair oasis? What of those who have gone ahead? What of that dead multitude who sleep on the uplands "THROUGH THE SEVENTH GATE" 289 of Samarkand? As I stood beside them the sun went down, and it was night, yet was the night calm and peaceful. What of them? In Shadowland there is vast interrogation. The figures are dancing on the curtain, and there is furious movement as of yore. But what do we shadows know? "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, And our little life is rounded with a sleep." A 000125209 7